Victim response to the bully

Zbig asks about possible responses to bullying

The bottom line in the victim dealing with the bully really has nothing to do with the bully at all. People will become involved in relationships (of some duration and importance) that support their life position. People will use such relationships to reconfirm over and over what they decided about themselves and life in general as a child.

If they decided ‘I’m OK’, they will become involved in relationships which support that view of self. On the other hand if they decided ‘I’m not OK’, they will become involved in relationships which will reconfirm that for them over and over. If therapy can assist the person to see self as more OK then the relationship with the bully just wont happen. The two people wont fit in the relationship. Of course this is easier said than done



Many potential victims of bullying simply use the avoidance technique. I have heard numerous clients tell me over the years how they would spend many a school lunchtime break in the library and the like simply to avoid the bully. This can be easily done when the victim has the choice but at places like school or work or in the family it becomes much harder as the person is forced to be in a particular environment. However if they can reasonably easily avoid the bully then that seems to be a sensible approach at least to take in the interim.

My personal view is that in the final analysis it is necessary for the victim in some form to stand his/her ground against the bully. To behaviorally make the statement - ‘I’m OK and will not accept the abuse”. This however is a vexed point and there are some who would definitely disagree with it. They say it is incumbent on the ‘organization’ to protect the victims from bullies and furthermore may make the point that standing up to the bully directly only encourages more violence and conflict.

I am all in favor of schools and the like having bullying policies and organizational strategies which children can use to assist them in dealing with the bully. I think they are a very good idea. I would want any child of mine to tell me if they were being bullied and then I would take some kind of action to assist.



However it seems to me it is important for an individual in the final analysis to make a stand for them self. Having others assist is a great idea but at some point one must stand up for self as that breeds self respect and a belief in self. If one uses an organization to try and stop the bully often the bullying simply becomes more subtle and sooner or later there are going to be circumstances where there is not an organization there to assist.

As to the idea that pushing the bully back breeding more violence and conflict one needs to look at the degree. If a child is being beaten up that is not bullying, it is criminal assault and needs to be dealt with by the police. Bullying at school with males usually involves shoving, verbal abuse, maybe a few punches, taunts and so forth. I agree that ignoring it to see if it goes away is a good first strategy. If it does not go away then pushing back is needed. As I said before there will be those who disagree with me on this matter. I understand their argument but it does not ring true to me. When the bully realizes the person is not going to take the position of victim the trouble stops. It does not cause an escalation of violence.



I understand this is also very easy to say and can be very hard for a child or teenager to do if they feel intimidated, lack confidence and a belief in self. So it may not happen over night but I would see it as a potential goal to look toward.

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The bully victim dynamic.

I was recently asked by a journalist to make a comment on bullying which I have and have decided to include it here as well.

The bully victim dynamic is a particular relationship style. Two or more people relate in a particular way such that bullying can be seen to occur between these people. The relationship is primarily based on power. From a psychological point of view the central feature of the bully victim relationship is power.

The bully and victim are actually quite similar in their psychological makeup in this way. They are both people who have a pervasive sense of powerlessness. This is something that humans find quite repugnant - feeling powerless. Humans have a strong, even very strong need to feel powerful or have a sense that they have some power in their life. They will at times go to great lengths to regain a sense of power. This is a core psychological need in the human psyche - feeling powerful.





Some children are raised in such a way that they have a sense of feeling powerless or not having any power in their life. Both the bully and victim are the same here. As children they both felt powerless. However they differ in how they dealt with that sense of powerlessness as children. Some children learn they can find a sense of power if they make others look bad. They discover they can feel powerful by making someone else feel powerless. The child who discovers this way of coping is a bully in the making.


To explain the psychology of how this work on finds an answer in the theory of seven life positions - here.

The theory of four life positions has been shown to have significant theoretical inaccuracies and that seven life positions more accurately describes human psychology in this way. With the four life position theory the bully would be seen as adopting the position of I+, U- (I’m OK, You’re not OK). The seven life position theory describes the bully as I-, U-- (I’m not OK, but you’re worse). This acknowledges that the bully has a basic sense of not okness (powerlessness) and deals with it by making others feel less powerful than him. This then allows him to have (at least a temporarily) a sense of feeling powerful. The victim gets caught in the relationship because it supports their life position and a sense of feeling not ok about self. The relationship psychologically fits for both parties. It allows them to reconfirm what they have always known about self and life. It feels ‘right’ in this sense.



I used to see this when I worked in prison. It was called ‘stand over’. The ‘stand over man’ would bully and usually extort items from the victim. Prominent stand over men would often have a group of younger men who hung around with him. None of them liked the bully but would associate with him and flatter him for some other reason. It may be because they felt it was better to be a sycophant to the bully than to be a victim to him. Or some may associate with him to increase their reputation in the prison.

But no one likes a bully. One of the main problems for the bully is he has no friends, the bully does not know how to have a friendship relationship. In the psychological sense a friendship is a relationship where there is no big power difference between the two parties. The bully finds this a very difficult thing to do as he needs others to feel powerless such that he can feel powerful. This need to bully others rarely only stays with the few victims the bully knows but pervades into other relationships in his life such as at home or at work. Often the bully is also being bullied by some other person in his life.



As to the question of cyber bullying. This raises an interesting gender difference in bullying. Male bullies usually at some point will physically assault the victim in varying degrees. They may use psychological bullying and taunts but they also have a ‘need’ to express the bullying physically. With females this tends to be less so. Psychological abuse and bullying allows them to achieve that sense of “You are worse than me so I am powerful” more so than with the male. Males tend to also need physical bulling to achieve the same psychological result. In this sense one could say cyber bullying is a feminized way of bullying as physical assaults are not possible. Males can certainly engage in cyber bullying but they also need the face to face physical contact at some point as well.

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The assumption of change in therapy

There continues to be much coverage of suicide in the press where I live in relation to the well known woman who recently suicided. The focus has now moved onto why and what can be done so that such a thing does not happen again. There is talk about diagnoses, what drugs could be used, other treatments and so forth.

From what has been said about her it seems it could have been a case of chronic suicidality. As I say in my book there are three common suicidal timelines.
Acute suicidal crisis. The suicidal urges appear quickly and usually in reaction to an event such as marital breakdown or incarceration. Suicide watch is very useful here as the urges can disappear after a not too long a period of time.

Slow suicidal crisis. The suicidal urges develop over time but tend to be cyclical over months. They come and they go due to treatments or spontaneous remission.

Chronic suicidal crisis. The suicidal urges appear and stay. They do not remit or come and go. Treatments have little or no effect. Suicide watch is of little use here. The woman under discussion seems to be of this kind.



There is an underlying assumption in all the current discussion about her in the press - that a solution exists to her suicidality. I am now going to say something that one rarely sees in the literature in the counselling industry. I may be labeled a heretic for doing so.

Sometimes clients don’t get better.

This is rarely said, let alone accepted. Psychological theories are so constructed such that there is always hope and always an explanation of why change is not currently occurring and what can be done such that it should. However some clients do not get better or they obtain only minimal positive result to treatment. This is probably a small group of clients but they certainly exist.

These people will report they have spent often years in different treatments including drug treatment, behavioural therapy, insight therapies, spiritual approaches and they have not gotten any better. I am reminded of one woman who suffers from chronic insomnia which she has had for years and no treatment has ever made it any better.


Some clients will try all kinds of different treatments to ease their angst



This is bad enough which leads to the horrible effects of sleep deprivation but sometimes people have suicidal urges which do not get any better no matter what treatment is used. Hence one has the chronic suicidal crisis.

Underlying all the discussion about the woman mentioned before is the assumption that something can be done. Sometimes people just don’t get better and hence the assumption in this case may be wrong. Of course we all like to believe there is hope and a solution but is that to make us feel better or the suicidal person feel better. How long does one persist with treatment that has so far had no positive effect?

It can be very hard to accept that sometimes clients just don’t get better.

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Reporting suicide in the press.

In the city where I live a high profile woman suicided two days ago. This has again re activated the debate about reporting it in the press. The danger of such reporting is a copy cat effect and you can get a spike of suicides when a high profile person’s suicide is reported. It does happen.

In this instance I think the press has done a good job of reporting. It has been done in a temperate manner. No reporting on the how of what she did or any sign of sensationalising it and so forth.



In my view there is a positive side to such reporting as well. It gets the topic out into the open and people do talk about it, when that happens it seems reasonable to assume that it could have the effect of reducing possible suicides. Unfortunately you don’t see any statistics of this of course. If people talk about their suicidality they are better off than if they do not. In my book I state that 75% of people do make some mention of their suicidal urges before a serious suicide attempt. It is a matter of hearing it which can be hard at times as it maybe mentioned obliquely.

This means there are 25% who make no mention of their suicidality prior to an attempt and as I note this is the highest risk group of all, which I call the DSR group. It seems logical to conclude that reporting suicides in the press could reduce the size of this group. But one will never know for sure because there is no way of recording this effect. If people are talking about suicides then it gives permission to others to do so as well.

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Me the psychotherapist

This may form part of the introduction of my book on counseling drug and alcohol users.

Professionally, the other major influences were Bob and Mary Goulding who taught me how to understand people. Not just how to observe people but how to listen with my eyes. How to stop listening to them talking and start observing them, then one can truly see who they are and what they want.

Another significant influence was the quintessential Gestaltist Jim Simkin who always left me marvelling at how he did what he did. Where he could take clients and how he took them there was craftsman like. The other person who did influence me was Michael Conant and his training in bioenergetics. How to understand the psyche of a person by looking at their body. How the bits fit together, the body holding patterns, where it bends and where it does not and how it moves. I have never been interested in practising body therapies but ‘body reading’ as they call it is a major part of bioenergetics which again taught me how to observe people.

Then of course there is the theory of transactional analysis of which cognitive behaviour therapy forms a significant part. This provides me with the nuts and bolts and practicalities of the counseling process. The behavioural things you do with the client.


Service

I was asked recently by a supervisee what approach do I use and I could not answer the question. I used to be able to answer that question and was a bit surprised that I felt I no longer could. I could no longer identify a approach that I would say defines me as a counselor or psychotherapist. Initially this concerned me as it seemed to be a retrograde step. I had gone from knowing who I was to not knowing who I was. Needless to say I subsequently pondered the question for some time.

I can state the practicalities of what I do with a client and I can cite the influences on myself as a counselor, as I have done above. Perhaps that means I am now eclectic in my approach. I have never liked the idea of being an eclectic counselor as it seems one is a collection of a lot of things but not really any of them. It seems to lack a substance.


Fainting woman and the dead mouse


As I thought about the question in the subsequent days, I wondered what had changed such that a question I once could answer, I no longer could. In my musing I calculated that I would have done between forty to fifty thousand hours of counseling in my thirty two years of working. It seems logical that if one does a task for that long then it stops being something that you do and becomes part of who you are. You have done the task so many times it becomes second nature, ‘in your bones’ and part of your character.

This idea then allowed me to answer the question. I am a person, Tony White and there are many parts or aspects of me, one being a counselor. When I go to work I am simply being me. This is what the client gets, me the person, with the counselor being part of me. I think I have shifted from being a counselor who happens to be named Tony, to being Tony who also happens to be a counselor. As you can imagine this answer left me feeling much more secure in who I am in my work.


Is this me or am I just doing it?

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Therapeutic relationship with the teenager

When counseling a teenager this is the therapeutic situation that I am wanting to set up with the various parties. This is the best case scenario and actually occurs in varying degrees.



1. In counselling the teenager one is wanting the parents or those people who are responsible for the teenager involved. Most often they are willing to be part of it but at times they refuse to do so or they may simply not be around all that much.

The age of the teenager is directly inverse to the importance of the parents in this process. If the teenager is fourteen years old the parents are central in the therapy process as shown by the diagram. If the teenager is nineteen then they are usually much less involved. However if there is an emeshed family structure then the parents remain pivotal to the process until the child can gain some kind of psychological separation.

2. The diagram is to scale in terms of the relationships of the three parties involved. I am wanting to establish myself off to the side of the relationship between parents and teenager but a bit closer to the teenager side.



3. In the teenagers mind I am wanting to establish myself as a benign confidant and advisor. I am not with the parents and at the same time I am not against the parents. This is at times a hard position to maintain. I try to sit off to the side of the teenager parent relationship in this way.

4. The more emotionally important I become for the teenager the better. I am wanting to be benign in the sense of not seen as an adversary by the teenager but if they can emotionally depend on the me this is a desirable situation.

5. I will actively interfere in the relationship between the parents and the teenager. Indeed I can use this to keep my position off to the side. For instance at times parents need to put limits and controls on the teenager. I will discuss with them how they do this and encourage it. This in one way is not fair to the parents as they take all the heat and it allows me to avoid conflict with the teenager and remain in the position I am in the diagram.



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The “Are you still there?” session.

It’s kind of nice when you get one of these and I have had one over the last two weeks. A 30 year old woman who I had not seen for three years. Prior to that I had seen her quite intensively for about two years. The time had come for her to deal with some childhood trauma which resulted in quite dysfunctional relationships with men. I would not call it a sex addiction but she did have some quite promiscuous periods. She did very well, got her life back on track and established quite a good relationship with an OK guy.



Then she stops coming and I hear nothing for three years. A few weeks back I get a phone call and she comes and sees me twice. She comes in and we greet, I catch up on all the developments with family, boy friend, work, social life and so forth. She talks about things that are troubling her and I keep waiting for the ’thing’ to come out and it never does. Nothing serious is being presented which leaves me asking myself why is she here?

She is getting on quite well with her partner but I can tell from how she is talking it is getting to the point where she wants a marriage type thing or that may be that. They are not arguing or anything and have talked about this type of thing but it is not moving that way and she is getting to the point where something may have to happen.



She is just checking out to see if I am still there, in case things turn bad and the relationships ends. Is he still there and is he still the same? - is what I think is behind this revisit. As a therapist it feels kind of nice when that happens.

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