(Picture Credit - Isebrook College, England)
The following piece had a good run on "Beyond Jane" (Triond), receiving thousands of Views (over 40,000 to press):
The other day I dreamt I beat up a big
school bully. It felt good. But why such a dream? I wasn’t bullied at school.
Or was I? Am I still bullied? What can I do about all this? Well...
Recently I woke up from dreaming I’d thumped a gross
school bully. It felt great. Then I got to thinking. Have I still got issues?
Yet I was seldom bullied at school. Or was I?
A memory hits me. A then new friend Michael Rose
once told me he bumped into one of my primary school “friends”. That old
acquaintance told Michael that he and others had enjoyed “taking the **** out
of me” mercilessly all day.
My Mum says that one of my primary teachers once
turned a blind eye when I actually did thump someone who was bothering me. At
last I had stood up for myself.
Okay, so things were never as bad for me as they
were for a relative of mine: surrounded at school by gangs of bullies (probably
armed) and having to complete his final years with home tuition. Girls and
women brought up in the fifties and sixties like me must have had it tough too:
being indoctrinated into being “obedient”, submissive, passive with men. They
were nurtured to be victims of bullying.
Luckily for me those big school bullies who beat
everyone up were always in the minority. Being a boy myself I didn’t have to be
prim and proper or anything like that.
Yet I must have suffered from lots of “banter” over
the years. On reflection I was lucky not to be very badly bullied. As a youth I
was very quiet, indeed mainly silent. I was, and still am, something of a
dreamer: not very street-wise. A prime target for potential bullies.
Social
strategies required
You see, the trouble was I had somehow learnt to
rely on just the one social tactic: keep your mouth closed and your head down.
It works up to a point. But quiet, mousy people are prime targets for bullies.
To have any chance of avoiding being bullied or
otherwise abused, you have to employ a full range of social strategies. Simply,
you must act confidently, assertively, sometimes aggressively, even
rudely if necessary. Imagine you have a bag of skills to draw upon and use
wisely.
Play
your cards right
The trick here, overall, is to judge what ploy will
be effective and appropriate. Some have likened this to playing cards. You need
to play a card of the right suit, and also the lowest card possible to win the
hand. (Actually they only mentioned the lowest card but I’ve taken the simile
and metaphor further).
It’s all about Acting and Behaving in a positive or
intelligent way. At times you need to display the full range of emotions: be
angry, soothing, aggressive, sympathetic, happy, sad, critical, supportive,
thoughtful, crazy, objective, subjective. Yet within yourself you must maintain
complete self-control and rationality.
The old male and female stereotypes need to be
thrown off when you work at being socially effective. Many books have been
written about one certain social strategy: Assertiveness – especially for
Women. Yet I submit that you need “Assertiveness Plus”. Sometimes you have to
be rude and aggressive. Often I wished I’d done at least one martial arts
course in my youth.
For now, just get shuffling that pack and laying
down those astutely chosen cards.
Paul
Butters
Tags: beat the bully, social skills,
assertiveness, social effectiveness, assertiveness skills for women and men,
acting skills, play your cards right
