The Essence of Bullying

Dr. Terrence Webster-Doyle
Parenting for Peace and Justice Newsletter

Dr. Terrence Webster is an educator and author who has a Ph.D. in Psychology, a sixth degree Black Belt in Martial Arts, and has written fifteen books on understanding conflict. Dr. Webster-Doyle’s internationally acclaimed Martial Arts For Peace and Education for Peace books have earned him the Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing for six consecutive years.

In my book Why Is Everybody Always Picking on Me? I write about what you can do about being a bully or a victim. At the end I write special notes to the reader:

“My father used to say, ‘Boys will be boys.’ I don’t think he meant anything negative by it’s just that, in his eyes, boys fighting and being rough was just the way it was. Boys were allowed, and even expected, to be somewhat aggressive and combative. This was, and still is to some extent, the accepted, conditioned view. But as a boy I suffered a great deal from this attitude because I was not particularly aggressive that is ‘manly.’ I did not like fighting with my male friends or being aggressive with girls, as many of the other boys were. I felt pressure to be aggressive and to dominate, yet I couldn’t live up to this expectation. So I got picked on and bullied. And it hurt, both physically and emotionally.”

“What the essence of my book is saying is that we are all subjected to, and are engaging in, one form of bullying or another. We all have been raised in an incredibly violent “dog-eat-dog,” cutthroat world. Even the way we approach solving these problems can become another form of bullying and hence, produces more conflict. The only “solution” (which is really not a solution as in “problem solving”) is to: 1) come into direct non-judgmental contact with the fact of what we actually are, and 2) begin to be aware of the deeper causes of this reactive way of living. If we can observe the tendency of bullying in ourselves as it is happening and question its place in our lives, then our deeply conditioned tendency can end in that moment of clarity and questioning.

“Being aware of this deep conditioning to bully, to manipulate, to be self-centeredly aggressive, can only come about in society if enough of us become seriously concerned about understanding this issue.”

“The most important thing to remember is that we don’t need to bully. We do so because we are hurt and afraid. Each of us feels alone, separated from each other in our own world, our own life. It is important to see that we are not alone, that we are all human beings who need to cooperate for our mutual survival. Many people feel that they must fight for their own survival because they feel isolated. So being a bully is part of self-preservation; bullies think they need to compete, to be aggressive, and push to get what they want. This way of living creates pain and suffering. And in the extreme, war.’

What we need is so simple. What we need is to care for each other. And in order to care, it helps to understand what makes a bully so we can be free of being one, or of being a victim of a bully. If we can understand why people bully, then there can be real peace in the world because we will have understood one of the major causes of war. Understanding is intelligence, and being intelligent is caring, loving.

The First Three Steps

The way to stop bullying is to:

1. Take an interest in stopping it.
2. Learn to understand why people bully.
3. Develop nonviolent skills to deal with bullies.

Why Other Young People Fight

• Someone makes fun of you.
• Someone embarrasses you.
• Somebody wants something you have.
• You want something somebody else has.
• You feel empty or hurt and want to hurt back.
• Somebody wants to control you or make you do something they want you to do.
• You are jealous of someone.
• Someone is jealous of you.
• Someone wants to be better than you.
• You want to be better than someone you know.
• You are hanging out with the “wrong” crowd.
• Someone wants to prove how tough he/she is.

(From Why Is Everybody Always Picking on Me: A Guide to Handling Bullies, Terrence Webster-Doyle. Atrium Society, Middlebury, VT. 1991, pp 51-52. Write to Atrium Society for a catalogue, PO Box 816, Middlebury, VT 05753. Phone: 802-388-0922)

From the Parenting for Peace and Justice newsletter, July 1996, published by the Institute for Peace & Justice, 4144 Lindell Blvd., #124, St. Louis, MO 63108
www.ipj-ppj.org