Most people, if not all, loathe and detest a bully. Bullying is nothing like friendly teasing or even fighting; it is a different problem altogether. It is a more malevolent effort to dominate, oppress, humiliate, and harm the victim emotionally, socially, and/or physically. The goal is to lift themself up by knocking another person down.

The bully will typically choose a victim who has less size, status, and/or power. Once is not enough. The bullying has to be repeated over time, whenever an opportunity presents itself. The bully will express their power over the victim without empathy or compassion. Their tools can include verbal and emotional abuse, ridicule, rejection, shunning, or some type of social humiliation. If they can trigger fear, anguish, suffering, intimidation, or obvious emotional pain, they are satisfied. If it worked once, why not do it some more? The hunting grounds can include school, playground, bus, neighborhood, cellphone, or the internet.

Some of the types of bullying that psychologists have categorized include physical, emotional, verbal, social and cyber types. Physical bullying can involve a long list of actions, including simple touching, hitting, punching, pushing, tripping, kicking, or spitting. Stealing the victim’s possessions is not uncommon, as is destroying or defacing their possessions or property. Getting in the victim’s face and verbally attacking them occurs frequently. Spreading false rumors is an indirect attack, as would be arranging some type of social rejection or exclusion. Emotional bullying can be done by both groups as well as by an individual.

The goal here is to harm the victim’s self-esteem, feelings, and emotional well-being by damaging their relationships, friendships, or anything that is dear to them. Without touching the victim, the bully wants to control, isolate, demean and humiliate. Fear would be a fringe benefit. A favorite and frequently used type is verbal bullying. The usual weapons are taunting, teasing, threats, sexual comments, name-calling, or anything that is mean, demeaning, and unpleasant. Similar is social bullying. The typical tactics can include purposely leaving someone out, excluding them, doing something to publicly embarrass them, telling the victim’s peers not to be their friend or doing something to hurt their reputation and/or relationships. The internet is heavily used for bullying, and is generally called cyberbullying. Just about any electronic media can be used to embarrass, humiliate, harass or threaten the victim. This method allows the bully to do the damage with anonymity. The bullying can be at any time, day or night.

How might the victim attract the bully? Bullies are typically drawn to victims who may be passive, submissive, unassertive, quiet, withdrawn, impulsive, have low self-esteem, and/or have trouble making and keeping friends. If the victim lives or has lived in a home with harsh parenting and discipline, they may accept abuse as normal and give in easily to the bully. The way the victim responds to being bullied may please and reward the bully. The victim’s emotional distress will be a reward. There are many other victim characteristics that can make them targets for bullying. The impact of being bullied can last long into adulthood.

Being bullied in school can result in depression, anxiety, suicidal thinking, feelings of loneliness, low self-esteem, and poor adjustment in school. Physical bullying can result in emotional and social distress. The impact can be compounded by school policies that punish a student for defending themselves and fighting back. The victim gets the same consequences as the bully. A victim will then have to take and absorb being bullied to avoid getting in trouble. The victim is in an illogical no-win situation in which there are negative consequences for self-defense. Telling the victim to ignore the bullying is not the best recommendation because the bully may interpret that as passive acceptance of being bullied. School performance may deteriorate, and the victim will develop a negative attitude to school, develop truancy issues, or even drop out. They may be quite capable academically, but hate school because of social difficulties.

The probability of developing some type of mental health problem is elevated, and physical complaints like headaches or stomachaches are not unusual. Parents need to talk with their children about how they want their child to handle being bullied and the bully. Being bullied is a very lonely spot to be in. They should be prepared with realistic strategies, options, and permissions before they find themselves in that situation. Zero-tolerance policies either are not effective or don’t work. By the time school officials find out there is a problem, it is too late. The trauma has already occurred.