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Defining bullying

What is and what isn’t bullying?

‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’

Mahatma Gandhi

‘The first time things went wrong for me as a child was when I was bullied by my classmates’ ... ‘I think everything began to fall apart when I got bullied as a kid’ ... ‘I lost my self-confidence when I was a child and I fell out with my friends’ ... Variations of this sentence are being heard today and every day by counsellors and healers in therapy rooms all over the world. When I first worked as a psychotherapist, initially I was astonished by how many clients traced their first feelings of depression or anxiety or other mental health issues back to when they were bullied or excluded as a child, but as the years went by, I have now come to expect it.

According to Dr James O’Higgins Norman, director of the National Anti-Bullying Centre in Dublin City University, bullying can be described as ‘repeated, aggressive behaviour by somebody with more power’.3 Bullying, often deliberate and premeditated, tends to occur over a prolonged period of time. Bullying behaviour generally peaks at about age 12 while cyberbullying peaks at about age 15, but as anyone who has experienced a bullying boss will tell you, it certainly isn’t confined to those years.4 Bullies, of course, ultimately bear the responsibility for hurting others. However, if we wish to understand what is motivating bullies, then we must go beyond assigning blame and begin to properly analyse this area so that we can become much better at figuring out how to reduce the impact, intensity and frequency of bullying.

There are many different types of bullying, but the following analysis, taken fromreachout.com, classifies the main types of bullying:

• Verbal – you’re probably familiar with this one. It’s name-calling, put-downs, mocking or threats. It can be face-to-face, written or, often, over the phone. It can also include sexual harassment.

• Physical – being punched, tripped, kicked or having your stuff stolen or damaged. It can also include sexual abuse.

• Social – being left out, ignored or having rumours spread about you. Often one of the hardest types of bullying to recognise and deal with.

• Psychological – this type of intimidation can also be hard to pin-point – dirty looks, stalking, manipulation, unpredictable reactions. It’s often less direct than other types of bullying and you can feel like it’s all in your head.

• Cyberbullying – being slagged off or harassed by email, text, on social networking sites or having your account hacked into. This is a new-ish and pretty tough type of bullying, because you can feel like there’s no let-up from it.5

Why do some people bully?

Through examining nature, we can see that living things have the instinctual desire to gain some power and control over their environment so that they improve their chances of survival. When this need is met the body feels satisfied.

Many humans and animals also have, to a greater or lesser extent, an innate desire to herd together and create a pecking order. There is a valid reason why animals and humans tend to form groups. Weaker animals need the herd so that the stronger animals can protect them, and it is easier for animals to survive in a herd than all alone.

The term ‘pecking order’ (originally used to describe the hierarchical behaviour of chickens) describes the system of social organisation that many animal species, including humans, l