Bully Prevention: Ending the Victim Mentality

If you haven’t heard, October is National Bullying Prevention Month. This month, communities and schools participate in programs and events to raise awareness and provide education that will prevent bullying. On the awareness end, the outreach seems successful. I’ve seen anti-bullying memes and links all over my Facebook as well as a few news articles. Although I don’t think I noticed last year or the years before, I’m now aware that October is Bullying Prevention Month and I’m aware that bullying is still a problem in schools. But awareness isn’t all that hard to spread. The real obstacle is actually figuring out how to prevent one child from bullying another.

We can talk about how bad bullying is until we’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t tell us how we’re going to put an end to it. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s important for people to know that bullying is wrong and for them to have resources and information on the topic. But what I’m trying to say is that there should be more focus on teaching children to stand up for themselves.  An attempt to prevent bullying is an attempt to control the behavior of another person. In our society, we create laws in an attempt to control the behavior of other people. For most people, most of the laws work. But criminals have existed since the earliest civilizations and continue to exist today.

No matter what we have tried over the past few thousand years, we have not figured out a practical yet efficient way to control another person’s behavior. Thus, preventing bullying is likely to be as successful as preventing anything else. It will work on most people, but there will always be deviants. We cannot deny the existence of those deviants. We cannot deny the existence of bullies. I’m not saying we should give up on trying to prevent bullying, but rather that we must heavily increase our efforts in preparing children for encounters with these deviants. I think that we have more than enough focus on awareness, and not enough focus on building strength and independence within children.  Plus, studies show that some Bullying Prevention Programs May Have Negative Impact.

I realize that bullying is a controversial issue. When I speak on this topic, I speak not only from research, but also experience. In many occasions, I was bullied as a child. I was made fun of for being the new kid at school. I joined Lee Road Elementary School in first grade - a year after everyone had already made friends in Kindergarten. Kids called me “weird.” They would make inside jokes I didn’t understand as I would sit there dying inside with everyone laughing around me. I had tremendous difficulties with making friends. My parents had separated just a few years prior and while still struggling with the internal chaos it caused me, I was unable to handle the onslaught of jeers from my peers.

In first grade, I began to experience depression. I began to have suicidal thoughts. One day, my mom came home to find me standing on her balcony railing as I contemplated ending my life. I still remember being disappointed when she told me that there was a greater chance of surviving as a paraplegic than there was of the death for which I hoped. I would pray at night that I would not wake up the next morning. 

As the years passed, it didn’t get any better. Sometimes kids would push me or shove me. Whether it was in school, at the after school program, or at summer camp, I was targeted. Over the years the bullying became more and more physical. I started to be known for getting into fights and even started to be labeled as a “bad kid.” Rather than anyone coming to my aid, I was instead blamed. Since I was the one who was always fighting, I was seen as the cause. For years I struggled with fighting and getting bullied. I started to recluse. I just wanted to stay inside and play video games. And eat. Oh boy, did I want to eat. I ate to appease my anxiety as I slowly became fatter and fatter. You can imagine how that didn’t help the bullying. Sometimes I would tell the teachers or adults and sometimes the other kids would get in trouble.  I remember one time a camp counselor heard another kid making fat jokes about me and got him in trouble. That helped in the moment, but overall, nothing changed. I still hated myself, I still had suicidal thoughts, and I was still mocked wherever I went, now for being overweight instead of for being weird.  And for the most part, despite the few times we either both got in trouble or just the bully got in trouble, the majority of the time, I was seen as the troublemaker. I had a “record” of this type of incident so of course administration decided it was my fault.

Throughout the years, I did have some friends, but not many. A few times, I had the misfortune of spending a year becoming best friends with a kid whose parents decided they were moving the next year. Even when I did have friends, I often found myself being teased as the new member of the group. No matter where I went, I always felt as though I was late. I had missed something. And because I did, the other kids were going to have a laugh at my expense. This is a problem I struggled with all the way up until the end of middle school.

At that time, I had become fully submersed in the “Victim Mentality.” What I mean by that is that I accepted helplessness. I thought - No matter what I do, bad things are just going to keep happening to me. People are going to keep targeting me and keep labeling me as a “bad kid” or a “troublemaker.” I’m not in control of what happens. I’m not in control of anything. Life isn’t about joy or fulfillment. Maybe it is for other people, but not for me. For me, life is about trying to survive. Life is about being targeted as a pariah wherever I go and hoping to endure the pain. I became a victim of life. I thought – Life is something horrible that is happening to me. It is a nightmare. I wish I were not alive. I wish I had never been born. I hope something kills me. I have no control.

The “Victim Mentality” is one of the worst mentalities that a person can have. In a sentence, it is the false belief that, “I have no control.” No matter the situation, this will always be a false belief. As long as we are breathing, we will always have some element of control. We can control what happens inside our minds if we can merely understand that it is an option. We can choose what to focus on. We can choose how to respond. We can choose how to react.  To have a “Victim Mentality” is to see oneself as an unfortunate passenger on an unbearable journey. It is to pity oneself and to feel sorry for oneself. This type of thinking and mentality cannot serve a person in any way. This type of thinking can only serve to further a person’s misery.

By the time I was in middle school at Jonas E. Salk, I was in a tremendous amount of internal pain. It was as though I were watching my hand blister on a hot stove, hoping that someone would turn off the heat. But after so many years of watching this, after so many years of being in pain, I finally realized that no matter how much I hoped, no one was going to turn off the heat. For whatever reason, on that day, I realized that no one was going to end my suffering for me. And on that day, I realized that I had the power to end my own suffering. I had the power to extinguish the flame, to end my own life. The suicidal thought was not new, but my intent to act was. I had not attempted to kill myself since the first grade. But on that day, I decided I could bare life no longer and began to contemplate what would be the simplest, most painless, way to kill myself.

As I thought, my mind swirled with possibilities. I became distracted. Without realizing it, I had stepped out of the “Victim Mentality.” Even though the control I chose was over whether or not to end my life, I had chosen control and in that moment, I ceased to be a victim. When I was a child and happened upon this moment, I did not possess the complexity to contemplate life. However as an adolescent, as I decided to take control over my life, I realized that there were many things I wanted to do before dying. There was so much I was afraid to do. But if I was going to kill myself no matter what in a week or two, then I figured I might as well take that time to do everything I had always been afraid to do.

Top on my list was making the bases with girls. I had always been too scared of rejection to step out of my shell. I’d heard enough of what other people thought about me to start thinking it myself. But all of a sudden, it didn’t matter. I started talking to girls. I decided it didn’t matter what they said, it was all for fun. I was planning on not existing in a week or two. As in the past, I experienced some rejection, but it was different this time. I didn’t let their words hurt me. I just kept talking to all of the girls. I figured I might as well talk to as many as I could. The more girls I talked to, the better the chances maybe one would think I was cute or funny. And believe it or not, it started to work. I realized that some girls weren’t mean. And I started to build relationships.

As circumstances began to work out in my favor, I forgot all about wanting to kill myself for a while. I was starting to enjoy this new attitude of not caring. I thought – You know what? I’ve always wanted to be popular. I haven’t even tried up until now. But hey, it’s worth a shot. So over that year, I began to make changes. I realized that if I wanted to get the popular kids to like me, I would have to try to look and act more like them. I realized that I needed to start losing weight because most of the popular kids were thin. I started paying more attention to what I ate and making an effort to exercise. I started being more of a class clown and trying to make people laugh. I tried to do whatever I thought would make people like me. I started to buy different clothes. I would even hand out free packs of gum, just so everyone would see me as a kind and friendly person. By Eighth grade, I could see results. After a while, I tried talking to a few of the popular kids from my class.

Again, I faced some rejection in the beginning. But slowly, I started to become a member of the group. As with being a new member in previous groups, there was a bunch of new guy hazing. I woke up to the guys putting honey in my ears. While we were at a pizza place, my friend sat at the booth behind me and dumped Parmesan cheese and oregano into my hair. I couldn’t feel it cause my hair was too long and ended up walking around that way for a while. This stuff upset me. I went from not caring to wanting to be accepted again. I was hurt, but I had to remember that I was in control. Instead of becoming upset and blaming the world or getting angry, I decided to take it as jokes and start joking back. Whatever pranks were being done to me, I figured should be just as funny if I did them to other people. I wasn’t going to sit there and be a target anymore. I was going to join the other side.

In high school, I was accepted into the popular group. It happened quickly over the summer after middle school ended. My mom had always felt bad for me and my struggles with friends. When she saw me making an effort to join a new group, she did everything she could to help. She opened her house to me and my friends. Over that summer, everyone started to hang out at my house. Throughout high school, my house functioned as a default hangout house. I had finally done it. I had transformed myself from a loser who wanted to kill himself into one of the popular kids. It was everything I had ever dreamed of. Or so I thought.

As part of this group, I ended up doing whatever everyone else was doing to conform. I just wanted to fit in. At the time, I was enjoying myself. But looking back, I realize that around this time is when I started to get involved with drinking. I started meeting people who were into drugs. I was overwhelmed with a world of new experiences and lost sense of my childhood self. As I became more used to the prank style of joking, I myself became somewhat of a bully. But I didn't even see it as bullying because of how many people were laughing. 

It wasn’t until the end of high school that I started realizing who I had become. I would intentionally try to crush people’s spirits with mean jokes. I was drinking heavily. I had started to cut myself. I had just narrowly overcome an addiction to prescription painkillers. I was ruining my life. I was a person I despised and I realized that I needed to change myself. I needed to become a better person.

I started re-directing my focus toward building my character. I started apologizing to those who I had harmed with my words and actions. I made a commitment that no matter what it takes, I will overcome the darkness within myself to become a messenger of peace.  For the rest of high school, I began to work towards that goal, but most of the real progress happened in college.

When I entered college at SUNY Albany, I had the chance to live on my own for the first time. There was no more group around me to influence my decisions. I was alone and I had both the time and the space to re-evaluate my decisions and my perspective on life. During this time, as well as throughout high school, feelings of depression and suicidal thought would come and go. I realized that despite all the changes I had made in my life, and despite acquiring so much of what I thought I wanted, I had not escaped my sadness. The realization dawned upon me that despite learning to gain some control of my life and what was happening around me, I was still not in control of my emotions.

Finally, I decided to seek out a solution. I joined the school’s meditation and yoga club. As I attended the classes, I learned that yoga and meditation are all about mastering one’s self. It is about controlling the mind and body through controlling breathing and movement. However it was more than that. Meditation and Yoga come attached with an entire philosophical metaphysical history and description if you choose to search for it. I began to learn about Indian culture and about spirituality. My perspective on life began to shift. I began to see life not as something that was out of my control, but as a game that we are all meant to play. Life continues to give us a series of tests, challenges, and obstacles, and it is our reason for existence to find solutions as we convert the unknown into the known. It is our destiny to learn lessons throughout life as we grow, expand, and evolve as conscious souls.

When I look back upon being bullied from this perspective, I realize that each person who faces this obstacle must find a way to overcome it. The best way to do so is through abandoning the “Victim Mentality.” In my situation, it took an overshot before I could find my way back to balance. I began to use humor as a weapon rather than as a defense or a coping mechanism. But at the same time, even in going too far, I learned that humor is a good way to deal with bullying. Standing up for oneself and giving the appearance that one is a strong, confident person is some of the best repellant against bullying I have ever seen. Often, the children who I have seen bullied are those who do not know how to speak their minds, and those who do not know how to make a stance. In general, I am against violence. I would typically recommend seeking an authority if deflection does not work. But at times, children must be taught to defend themselves if they are being attacked and have no other options rather than just taking the beating. We don’t want to create a nation of cowards or victims. Bullying is wrong but we need to focus on making sure children are strong enough to handle what life may throw their way.  

One method of Bully Prevention that might work is teaching yoga and meditation to children at young ages. When you think about it, if a kid is bullying another kid, then he is probably dealing with some emotional issues as well. Who knows? The bully at school might be the victim at home who is physically and/or verbally abused by his parents. And before you blame them, they might have been victim’s that are just modeling or continuing the patterns of their parents or their parents before them. In all circumstances, involving either meditation and yoga or another type of system or program that teaches control of emotions and self, body and mind, at the elementary or kindergarten level could have huge positive benefits for the “bullies and victims” alike. Even now, learning how to control one’s emotions, whether you are twenty years old or eighty years old, yields a tremendous benefit not only to that person, but to the people around that person. 

This week, let’s meditate on taking control of our lives. Let’s meditate on taking responsibility for our lives. In all areas of your life, see if you display any “Victim Mentality.” Find any part of yourself that believes you are powerless and erase it. Claim your power. Claim control over your life and over your self. This week and for the rest of this month, take a special effort to impart strength to the children that may be in your life. Maybe it’s your brother, sister, niece, nephew, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, or whatever. But if you have a child in your life, take some time to let that child know he/she is beautiful. Take some time to let that child know he/she is immensely loved. Teach that child some coping mechanisms of how to deal with emotions. Teach that child how to find an adult when he/she needs help. Teach that child to fight back. Teach that child to stand. And if you don’t have any children in your life then teach yourself. Every single one of us is guilty of the “Victim Mentality” and we must strive to fight against it, never forgetting that we are the ones who control our lives. We are the ones who choose our destinies. 

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