Being Bullied?
Nearly everyone is bullied at some point in their lives: by brothers and sisters, by neighbours, by adults or by other children. If you are being bullied, you may feel scared, vulnerable and quite alone but you owe it to yourself to try and sort out the situation so that the the bullying stops. Remember, no-one deserves to be bullied.
There are lots of different definitions of what bullying is. Some will describe everything from feelings, effects, consequences and others will describe that bullying is something that is about power and that is done on purpose. Bullying can be verbal (using words), non-verbal (without words), physical (using actions), emotional (playing on someone’s emotions) or psychological (messing with someone’s head). Lots of bullying behaviour can be a mix of these thing. It can also be direct action - like threats, intimidation or physical/verbal violence or indirect action - like deliberately leaving someone out or blanking them all the time. Here are some examples:
- physical bullying such as hitting, kicking, punching, spitting;
- threats and intimidation;
- cussing family (“he/she said my mum was useless”);
- being bullied because of religion;
- racist bullying - bullying someone because of where they or their family come from, their skin colour;
- homophobic bullying - using words like ‘gay’, ‘poof’, ‘lesbian’, ‘batty boy’ as insults against a person; physically assaulting someone or leaving someone out because of their real or assumed sexuality;
- ignoring someone, leaving them out of a group, not talking to or including them;
- being forced to pick on someone as part of a group to look hard;
- spreading gossip and rumours about a person;
- cyberbullying, e.g. prank calls on mobiles, malicious text messages, hate websites or postings on Social Networking Sites, receiving emails that are upsetting or saying bad things about family members;
- grafitti;
- copying, stealing or ruining someone’s work, clothes or property;
- manipulation and control, peer pressure - making someone do something that they don’t want to do or stopping them from doing something that they do want to do;
- sexual harassment or sexual bullying. Being made to feel under pressure to act or look a certain way;
- abuse for standing out from the crowd, looking different or having different tastes and opinions;
- making fun of someone or singling them out, because they find certain things difficult, like reading, maths or even sport;
- generally making a person feel bad about himself or herself;
- having a talent or ability can make you a target;
- having a disability or learning difficulty can be the cause of you being singled out and picked on.
Getting Help
Do you need help? Not sure if you're being bullied? Think you may even be bullying and you want to stop? Then this is the place for you.
Find out what you can do if you're being bullied, learn about making a safety plan and read about other people's experiences.
The thing about bullying - whatever form the bullying takes, happens when a person or group of people who are in a powerful or secure position, and pick on someone who is more vulnerable than them and less able to defend themselves. It usually happens over a period of time and the longer it goes on, the more the person being bullied feels upset and alone. Bullies will often pick on someone at a time and place that they know will never be seen or observed by another person or adult.
Basically, if the bully feels they can get away with it, they’ll do it. These days, it’s much harder for bullies to get away with it, because so many of us now know what we must look out for and the sorts of places bullying happens. But all of us, bullies, bullied, bystanders, adults, teachers, parents etc, must understand that we are all together in this.
Bullying never just affects one person or one family or one school. Everybody is affected and that’s why all of us must try hard not to accept bullying when we see it, and come together to beat bullying!!
