Tackling the Bully Epidemic

“A bully is someone who is regularly overbearing. He or she looks to cause humiliation or discomfort to another, particularly if that other is weaker or smaller. This can be physical bullying, emotional bullying or mental discomfort and humiliation.”
 (Bullying Statistics)

Bullying most often is about imbalance of power, has intention to harm and is repetitive. It is usually culturally based. That is, it comes out of a culture, be it in the family, schoolyard, neighborhood or workplace. Therefore it is frequently systemic rather than isolated. Addressing the larger systemic issues of bullying is a much more daunting task, but usually more significant toward affecting solution-oriented change.

It is this larger, more systemic, more societal form of bullying that is particularly alarming. Yes, unfortunately, bullying behavior has always existed. But given the culture of our current leadership, it seems as though there is greater permission, if not direct role-modeling for mean, hate-based behavior.

We see this play out in families all the time. Someone in authority, usually a parent or a grandparent with specific biases like racism, sexism or faith-ism will model or teach those biases toward others directly or indirectly to their children and grandchildren. Those families within certain neighborhoods, ethnics groups, religions will tend to create bully culture in a more widespread fashion, giving that behavior and hate-driven mentality greater credence and room to grow.

Most of the research literature focuses on school age children and rightly so, in that they are the most vulnerable. School bullies can do the most irrefutable harm, because the psychological impact to a younger brain is potentially so much greater. This is easily evidenced by the sharp rise in teenage suicide in recent years.

School systems have done a very impressive job across this country of designing and implementing anti-bullying programs. Their diligence is paying off, but I’m afraid that we need much more on all levels of our greater society.

The fact remains that bullying exists at every age and social strata, which is ultimately harmful to us all. The current impact and our projected future from what appears to be a growing trend in our society seems to be one of increased anxiety and mistrust among us. Therefore, what effective interventions can we as mental health professionals employ now to help curb this epidemic?

Those of us in the mental health field can certainly make a marked difference. We can help our educators of children interrupt and reverse this paradigm of hatred and harm by introducing, modeling and actively supporting a lifestyle of respect for self and others to each individual, couple and family we serve, thereby creating a healthier environment for us all.

 

Respect-Focused Therapy (RFT) is a foundation on which all modalities and techniques used in therapy can be strongly grounded, in order to produce sound, effective outcomes. This approach offers clients the opportunity to gain experiential understanding of being respected, possibly for the first time, from the therapeutic relationship and then be able to heal old wounds by creating more respect for self and others in the therapeutic process.

Meaning and Purpose

Victor Frankl is perhaps one the most famous leaders in the discussion of meaning.  In his signature book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he talks about his many years as a prisoner in Auschwitz where mere survival was the source of meaning, and yet in such a deplorable setting, the search for further meaning became even more important. In this book he says, “Striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force.” (2006, p.99)

To explore our daily sense of meaning and purpose may be a more significant starting point.  For instance, one meaning may be about just getting out of bed every day and going to work or getting the kids off to school for that day. The larger purpose in the daily tasks are obviously about making a living, parenting or getting an education, but those sometimes get lost in the details. Therefore, we can lose sight of this grander perspective and perhaps develop a sense of meaninglessness or lack of purpose.

It is when we “get stuck in the weeds” of life that we are prone to have more existential anxiety about the meaning of our lives; about our identity as human beings. Many times we may not be fully aware of the complete nature of this anxiety, we just know that we feel something’s missing.

This feeling is amplified exponentially, of course, by experiences of trauma or loss. Depending on the severity and timing of such destructive life events, it can be that an individual has not been able to develop such an identity or that identity has been seriously damaged.

Breaking out of this existential angst or repairing an identity to a fuller meaning and purpose is a central part of psychotherapy. There are several ways in which a therapist can be helpful in this process. The primary way is through the qualitative tone in the relationship. If therapists can genuinely provide a comprehensive presence of respect for the client sitting in front of us, we can better foster the opportunity for the growth of internal respect.

We can then foster and support the courage of our client to widen the lens from the mundane existence of daily living. To understand a larger scope of life to include a more solid sense of meaning, such as a spiritual, values or a cause-driven sense of purpose.

Finally, we can assist in the creative process that the client embarks on to build the tools and resources necessary to implement and grow into a restored identity.

 

Respect-Focused Therapy (RFT) is a foundation on which all modalities and techniques used in therapy can be strongly grounded, in order to produce sound, effective outcomes. This approach offers clients the opportunity to gain experiential understanding of being respected, possibly for the first time, from the therapeutic relationship and then be able to heal old wounds by creating more respect for self and others in the therapeutic

The Blame and Shame Game

When working with couples, I often run into a repeating pattern of behavior I call

“The blame and shame game.” It goes something like this:

They came in initially because they were arguing too much—at least every other day, they reported—about money, sex and children. Maryanne was concerned that hundreds of dollars had gone missing over the past six months and John pled innocence, claiming that she was “trying to pin everything on him.” He, in turn, accused Maryanne of having a secret affair with her ex-husband, which she also denied. Accusations continued to be thrown. They both began yelling and pointing fingers at one another. They were blaming one another for various unrelated incidents from the past and upping the level of each other’s transgressions in rapid succession, overlapping their voices such that the volume increased so significantly no one voice could be heard.

This pattern seems to be prevalent among couples that have not had good parental modeling for problem-solving or conflict resolution. It is within this framework that winning supersedes resolution. The result is predictably that they both hop on this treadmill that takes them nowhere, except deeper and deeper pain.

The interventions to this cycle are multidimensional in nature. That is, they overlap; they work together. In Respect-Focused Therapy, the specific needs of each individual or couple supersedes any formulated model or technique. This approach rather suggests that all known evidenced-based and reliable techniques, etc. to a therapist be utilized as best serves the needs of each client’s situation.

For example, in the case sited above, I was deeply aware that I need to gently interrupt the pattern of “blame and shame,” but I also knew that such a pattern was deeply entrenched in their style of communication over the long span of their relationship as well as the pattern each had grown up experiencing with their respective parents. This could and would not be an easy fix; to assume so would be to disregard these two people who sat in front of me. For me to assist them in effectively, I had to first acknowledge and positively regard/respect their perspectives on how and why they communicated in the fashion they did.

By asking more questions about how each had grown up, I found out that competing and never losing face in the process was a highly held value in both homes. This being particularly true in John’s home, unfortunately also meant “win no mater what the cost.” This included attacking his wife with a charge of adultery, which later it was found out he didn’t believe, in order to cover his gambling addiction.

In order to get a foothold into any meaningful resolution, I had to openly state my awareness of how much raw pain they each endured every day and how much energy and stamina that must require.

Once it was established that I truly understood how exhausting and frustrating it was for both always needing to win and yet no one ever winning, then I was able to begin offering some tools such as active listening and non-violent communication to slowly break up the long-standing pattern. Eventually, with months of trust-building, we were able to reconsider and reevaluate the value of winning an argument vs. the value of resolving conflict.

 

Respect-Focused Therapy (RFT) is a foundation on which all modalities and techniques used in therapy can be strongly grounded, in order to produce sound, effective outcomes. This approach offers clients the opportunity to gain experiential understanding of being respected, possibly for the first time, from the therapeutic relationship and then be able to heal old wounds by creating more respect for self and others in the therapeutic process.

Parenting with Respect

Helping parents discover that children who experience genuine respect are more prepared to generate meaningful respect, is key to RFT oriented family therapy.  With that understanding, parents frequently begin to explore their own inner child needs for respect and initiate a deeper understanding of respect for themselves as well.

Forward and Buck (2002) say in Toxic Parents, that it is not the parents who make occasional mistakes who are truly harmful to their children, but those “whose negative patterns of behavior are consistent and dominant in a child’s life.” She goes on to describe “toxic” behavior as verbal, physical, and/or sexual abuse, drug or alcohol dependency, emotional unavailability because of mental/physical illness, rage, or instilling fear. Now some of these do not have to be consistent to be dominant, such as physical or sexual abuse. One incident of this severity can create lifetime damage.

Fear is probably the biggest underlying problem in any family. Any parent-child relationship based in fear has fundamental problems. Children who are afraid cannot develop a healthy sense of confidence and will either grow up to be intimidated by the world or will be reactionary, angry, full of rage, and not have a clue as to what real respect is all about.

We need to be able to distinguish here between respect and fear. While fear is a negative emotion, respect is a positive one. To respect is to have high regard, to appreciate, to feel good about another human being. Respect, then, is very different from fear because it is freely given.

This means helping clients truly honor their children by creating appropriate guidelines and limits that keep them safe along their developmental journey, combined with nurturing validation of the child’s unique abilities, personality, and spirit. Modeling this kind of supportive behavior for the parent as well as for the child is key in therapy.

Good parents, then, are ones, who know that they are not infallible, who know that they will and do make mistakes. They try, to the best of their ability, not to repeat their own parents’ mistakes, work at building respect between themselves and their children that is not fear-based, but, rather based on trust, caring, and positive regard. Finally, they set limits and guidelines for their children for their safety and teach responsibility through their own actions. Above all, they listen with their hearts to give them wisdom and guidance, as they continue to take on the tremendous challenge of raising another human being.