What is Bullying?

What is bullying?

It is the aggressive behavior with peers at school to exhibit power and influence in the group.

This exhibition of power is an undesirable behavior and tends to get repetitive and more aggressive over time.

This makes bullying a serious problem for both the children who bully and those who get bullied, and is usually continued into one’s adult life, either as feelings of victim or persecutor.

It’s difficult to describe what is bullying without observing the nature of the action of the persons involved. It’s important to consider the intensity of such behavior before labeling it as bullying.

There are some characteristics peculiar to such unpleasant behavior.

Aggression:

A kid who bullies uses his power in a number of ways that may harm other children. What is bullying in terms of aggression? It includes various factors such as physical strength, popularity among school children, gathering and revealing personal information or extreme domination over the group. Such behavior is extremely unpleasant and disturbing.

Repetition:

A kid who can see the effect of his behavior is likely to turn increasingly aggressive over time. Bullies derive sadistic pleasure from their actions. They feel happy with what is bullying and the behavior tends to get repeated often. This aggravates the problem even further and the aftermath may sometimes be drastic. Incidents of children committing suicide because of constant bullying are not uncommon.

Types of bullying

Physical bullying:

Bullying by attacking a person physically is the most common type of bullying. Schools and colleges often witness such incidents. What is bullying as a form of aggression?

• Using physical strength to harm someone who is weaker in appearance or someone who can be attacked easily can be referred to as physical bullying.
• Actions such as hitting, kicking, punching, pinching, or other body attacks.
• Spitting on someone to make him feel helpless at that moment.
• Intentionally pushing or making someone trip over to cause physical harm
• Making a display of power and influence to gain superiority
• Physical bullying also includes damaging a person’s possessions.
• Making rude or obscene hand gestures.

Verbal bullying:

Making mean or impolite remarks to embarrass a person or writing unpleasant comments against a person can be referred to as verbal bullying. Verbal bullying is intended to harm or weaken a person emotionally. Verbal bullying tends to have a lasting impact. Repetitive attacks strongly instill the element of fear, especially if the victim does not share the incident with parents or friends school authorities. Many times such events come into light after the victim may have taken drastic steps such as suicide.  What is bullying a person with words?

• Teasing, especially when the person is alone
• Calling names to mock a person
• Making sexual comments
• Making derisive remarks to insult a person
• Intimidating or threatening a person with physical or personal damage.

Social bullying:

Damaging a person’s reputation or damaging a person’s relationship through scams and plots is a form of social bullying. Social bullying is also referred to as relationship bullying. What is bullying to create a bad name for the victim is the main aim of social bullying. It includes:

• Embarrassing someone or putting someone in an awkward situation in public
• Spreading rumors about a person
• Intentionally excluding a person from the group or excluding the person from important activities
• Asking other children to be away from the person or not to be friends with that person and isolating him

Where does bullying take place?

Bullying takes place when parents, elders or school authorities are not around. Most bullying takes place during school hours. Incidents that are reported mostly take place in the school premise. Incidents that take place on the playground or in the school bus may go unnoticed or unreported. A person may also be a victim of such incidents in places away from school, such as, in the neighbourhood.

Why does bullying take place?

When growing children begin to experience various strong emotions such as anger and hostility, they react in different ways. Every such reaction may not be labeled as bullying; however, when it begins to interfere with their behavior as they interact with each other, incidents such as bullying begin to take place.

The main reasons could be:

• The urge to draw maximum attention
• Superiority complex
• Exhibit power to compensate or other drawbacks in academics or other productive areas
• Derive pleasure from harming others

While early childhood experiences are about sharing, cooperating and understanding each other, it is devoid of strong negative feelings. Ages 9 to 18 are marked with stronger feelings of power and influence. If such behavior is not controlled well in time, the consequences could be disastrous for both the victim and the person who is bullying.

All the best,
Natalie Dee
London Life Coach & Business Coach, London UK
Certified High Performance Coach & Master NLP Practitioner

020 3411 4888

Natalie Dee, London Life Coach works in the area of lifestyle management as a London life coach, using life coaching with confidence coaching and NLP both in London and throughout the UK, applying techniques such as NLP,EFT and Hypnotherapy to improve levels of self-confidence as well as relationships, personal health, finance and career. Life coaching London, UK and worldwide available.