Have you ever been a bully? Why?

[Sophiehoney]

This thread, if there's any interest, might get dark so this is just a trigger warning.

The recent thread about someone being contacted by her school bully was really long and I noticed a few people sympathising with the bully and at least one person admitting that they were bullies.

I suspect there probably were a few more people that bullied people but didn't admit it.

Name change if you must but I am just genuinely interested - if you were a bully, why did you do it?

Or if you're not a bully, feel free to give your reasons why you think they do it!

My best friend left her dream job as an air hostess because the workplace bullying was so bad.
Very bitchy industry.

I was never a bully but I would be interested to see if anyone confesses to being a bully as an adult. I was bullied as an adult, by friends and by work colleagues. I suspect they have created narratives as to why they behaved in the way they did, and will never see it as bullying

Someone used to make fun of me. I went back harder and would say the worst things about his mum, dad and siblings. I felt so horrible saying that now. This was in year 8. Come 6th form we'd matured so much and all that animosity was gone. I apologised a lot and he also apologised for being a horrible prick when he was younger. We were friends at the end.

I've said hurtful stuff to people if maybe they said something first. But I crossed then and I felt so bad.

In secondary I punched someone repeatedly and gave them a nosebleed after their constant bullying.

I do find psychology fascinating and listen to/read a lot on the subject. I will look this up.

But my perspective is one of personal experience; although I never suffered bullying myself (except the mildest, untraumatic sort), I’m the parent of a severely bullied daughter who has been permanently damaged by what happened to her (by affluent, able, fortunate children) and a teacher who witnessed it happening to some of my students.

The cleverest girl in my class, destined for Oxford, who was also pretty, popular and with great parents, shocked me one day as I was walking into class. Before she knew I was within earshot I heard her being vile to a classmate with mild learning difficulties. Her words wet so cruel and she was relishing the other girl’s inability to defend herself against the mockery and also the laughter of the rest of the group. It chilled me to the bone and I gave her a bloody hard time over it. My only real satisfaction was letting her know (subtly) that she’d lost her good reputation with me. She minded about that.

The victim had a very sad end, I’m afraid.

Thank you!

I still suffer attacks of conscience that I didn’t do enough to help her - but she was adamant she would not leave her school. This may have been connected with her ASD (mild and diagnosed as an adult).

She really is a very lovely person.

Oops - I think that reply was meant for Connieheart! Sorry both.

That’s a heartbreaking story.

It’s always a mixture of nature and nurture and some well-intentioned parents are dealt cards that they just don’t know how to deal with.
There’s a long-standing thread on here (perhaps you have read it) by a lovely-sounding woman with a diabolical adult daughter who lives on her parents’ land with her obnoxious boyfriend and showers her parents with abuse to the point they have decided to evict them.
The poster sadly admits that she spoiled her daughter, through love and desire that she should never go without, but given her daughter’s character, this has led them both to a very bad place. It’s sad to read.

Yes. Just once. I bullied the school bully when I was 15. Cornered her in the bathroom, pushed her against the bathroom mirror and threatened to beat the absolute shit out of her if she ever bullied anyone again. I was REALLY studious at school, so not only did word get about, I was also treated better after this. One girl actually contacted me on FB years later, after she left the UK and went back to India. She remembered the bully, and remembered I stopped it. So that was quite nice.

I never bullied anyone. I never felt like I was bullied because I thought that I was wasn’t targeted like some of my peers (a particular few who were relentlessly bullied throughout secondary school) but I was definitely picked on.

There was a large group of girls and boys that called themselves the popular ones. One especially was a nasty, nasty girl. Some were fairly clever and were in my top set English class with me. I was so concerned about drawing attention to myself, I refused to speak in English for the whole of year 10 and 11. I went from being predicted an A* to a C. I got a B in the end but the fact I hardly participated in class was solely down to not wanting to be spoken about. I also had red hair and people were so nasty about that. If I dyed it, which I did throughout secondary school, they were even worse. One time, I put my glasses on to see the board in science and then took them off to complete my work. One of the ringleaders laughed at me and said to her friend I was trying to hide my glasses. I remember being so embarrassed at the time!

One of the male group tried to pull me when we were in a club at about 19. I told him to go and f himself because of how he had been at school to me.

That wasn't bullying

I've been bullied and bullied myself.

I don't feel that embarassed about it. At the end of the day my childhood was relatively trouble free. I think there is a fine line between letting kids get bullied to much and not allowing them to build resiliance for when they encounter the real world, where many interactions might be counted as bullying.

As an adult I did see someone being bullied quite severely once by someone else and driven out of their accomodation. At the time I didn't think it was my fight. In retrospect I am ashamed I didn't stick up for them. That is probably the one bullying incident I regret. Everything else I would put down to learning social interaction, and other people learning their social interaction on me.

And some children who are pretty, clever, popular, talented and have lovely parents and homes are also bullies.

Pretty sure that's how 99.9 percent of the adults in my life would have described teenage me. Top sets for everything, never had to work for good grades, pretty enough to get anyone I expressed interest in, the big house, the beautiful clothes, the material things, my handsome charming father in his uniform and my engaging witty mother (who locked me in cupboards as a toddler, who wished I was a cot death statistic, who broke my precious primary school art works because it was worthless tat and who told me I was thick because I only scored 97% in my favourite subject). No one saw the drunken rows, no one knew my father almost bled to death in front of me as a 5 year old after a fight with my mother turned nasty or the fact that I had to help mop the blood off the lino.

So despite being pretty, popular, clever and talented by 14 I was so unhappy, I wanted to watch the world burn and being an utter bitch got me the same rush as self harm but without my blood and scars on my skin. I wanted boundaries, I wanted someone to say enough but no one ever did.

I'm still defective on the empathy front which my last psychiatrist put down to my childhood. Becoming a parent improved things a bit and 2 years of therapy helped but I definitely still struggle.

I definitely was in the first term in year 7. I was at a school where I knew no-one and where most kids knew others. One girl corrected me on something, I can't even remember what now, in front of her friends who laughed and I was absolutely humiliated so I decided to get even.

Growing up in my family it was almost considered a badge of honour to hold a grudge - not let someone get one over on you or get pushed around. It sounds utterly psychotic looking back, but I didn't really see what I was doing as wrong, so much as getting a form of justice.

For probably a month every time she answered a question in class I'd make snide comments under my breath to someone to make them laugh, or outside class I'd do impressions. I was a real little shit tbh.

Fortunately the teachers were on top of it, and within that first term I'd had a serious dressing down from Head of Year and told the behaviour would not be tolerated. By Christmas I'd apologised and the girl actually ended up being one of my best friends. Spending time with her family who were more normal was a revelation of how decent people act.

A lot of my family still act the same way (my DM and DGM in particular pride themselves on it) and I can see what a bitter and horrible person I could have become if the school had been more lax about it. I'm very grateful to them tbh.

One of the girls at high school was proper mean to me- we’d been really good friends in primary and she obviously wanted to break away so did this by being awful to me. I don’t see it as bullying though, just normal teen mean girl stuff.
ive also been mean to others, not repeatedly, and while I’m not proud of it I don’t think I was a bully.

I once sent my friend an invitation to a Halloween party which said Fancy Dress Only on the bottom. I only put it on his. He came dressed as a mummy, clutching a six pack of monster munch. We were about 14. I still regret that. Everyone laughed at him, and he’d made so much effort with his costume ☹️.

Bless him. What was his reaction? Did he know you'd set him up?

This is actually a really positive and encouraging story

Ah that’s really sad. Poor lad, hope you apologised?

I never bullied but engaged in the odd bit of mean girlness.

Why do bullies bully? Insecurities, boredom, bad sense of humour, dysfunctional family, some are just shitty people.

Why did you do it?

I was horrible to other kids about their weight. I didn’t have a lot else going for me really other than being slim. I told myself it was ok because they never let on that they were upset about it, but one of them was still reminding me what I did years later. I said sorry, and I am still disgusted at myself now. I did it because I wanted to fit in and I was weak.

One of my friend’s daughters came up with a brilliant phrase quite unconsciously. Describing an unpleasant girl in her class she said “You know - she’s one of the popular girls that nobody likes!”

Spot on!

I think it’s very much to do with power. Bullies gain power by intimidating their victims but also by impressing their weaker peers - the enablers who stand around and laugh. Bullies can’t really operate without their tacit complicity.

And bullies know that these people will stay on their side because they know if they don’t, they’ll be the next victim.

This is how people like Stalin and Robert Mugabe operated. Mugabe was able to stay in power for so long despite his appalling policies because those around him were terrified of criticising him. And they needed to keep him in power too, because if he died the population he’d oppressed so long could turn on them and take revenge.

@CoffeeCantata but craving power to me tends to come from insecurity.