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One thing I need to say is that if you are a grown person and you are still a bully, you need to go get a new life, because there's no way that you are in your twenties, thirties, forties, whatever and you still terrorize people.

Like if this is high.

School and kids bullying is one thing, but like adult bullying for what?

For MoMA Mia, I'm your host, Ashani Dante.

Welcome to But Are You Happy?

The podcast for people who start therapy then immediately want their therapists to be really proud of them.

And I'm doctor Anna Stagia.

Hernis a clinical psychologist passionate about happiness and mental health.

Now, bullying isn't something that just happens in childhood.

It can happen to adults as well, in all sorts of settings.

You can never really get rid of bullies, can you.

Unfortunately, bullying is more common than many people realize.

Today, we're going to talk about how we can stand up to adult bullies in a mature and effective way.

Let's get into it.

So, when we think of bullies, we often think of that classic archetype that you see in high school, right, But the reality is bullies are in every stage of life.

So I guess my question is why do people bully?

Good question?

Why are people mean?

Tell us they give me lots of different reasons, right, So one reason might be that a person wants to establish power, control, or dominance over someone else or a group of people.

So, I know we're talking about adults bullies and bullying, but if we use a sort of childhood example, imagine the sort of new kid that starts at a new school and they're immediately quite mean and bully some of the other students.

They want to establish their place in the pecking order, so to speak.

So it really can be about trying to find status and assert dominance in those situations.

It's really interesting that you're talking about essentially social hierarchy and it's like, oh, the meaner you are, the more power and respect you have.

But it's also that's not actually the case.

It's like this false idea of power.

It's power and respect as a result of people fearing you rather than sort of truly respecting you for your.

Values and your morals exactly.

And I think you know, this notion of control, status, power, we all need to feel like we have control in life, right.

Control is a fundamental need that we all have as people.

But if some people don't feel like they have control in certain areas of their life, maybe at home we don't feel like we have control, or in certain aspects of our life we feel out of control, then we might try and find that control in other ways by asserting power and dominance over other people in our life.

So true, there's so much more going on beneath the surface that we actually don't know.

Yeah, yeah, so are the other to white people bully?

Well, I guess.

Hand in hand with this sense of power and control, we often see that people who bully might have low self esteem and kind of low self worth, negative thoughts and feelings about themselves.

And typically if someone has low self esteem, they might do one of two things.

So they might try and put themselves above other people, or they might sort of undermine other people.

So this might be sort of big noting themselves talking about how great they are, or it might be trying to put other people down so that they can feel better about themselves.

So with bullying, we see that these bullies might be quite mean and critical towards other people as a way to make themselves feel better about themselves.

And this isn't too far removed from that kind of need for power and control, right If I need to assert power and control over someone else, obviously I don't feel good about something, either within myself or within my life, So they sort of go hand in hand.

True, And it essentially kind of feels like bullies are putting on a bit of a mass, right, like in a way of coping with what's actually going on beneath the surface too.

Yes, yes, And I guess beyond that, we of course have sort of a category of people who maybe have those very cold, callous traits where we're sort of now looking along a line of maybe psychopathy, right where people are really just sort of mean because they lack empathy.

But that's probably a smaller portion of the percentage of people who bully others compare to those who have these feelings around low self worth and a desire for control and power.

So who tends to be the target of bullies.

Unfortunately, People who might display I want to say weakness, weakness to the bullies, but not weakness in terms of how you or I would describe weakness.

People who maybe have a softness to them, people who are maybe more passive in nature, people who are less likely to fight back to a bully, but also people who perhap apps take on some sort of minority status by way of who they are, or people who are quote unquote trouble makers.

There may be someone who might be a risk of stirring the pot, and the person who's the bully doesn't want that person to kind of rise up or speak up, so they will bully them to sort of keep them in their place.

That's a really interesting subgroup because I mean I thought a lot of the time it would be more of the vulnerable minority groups.

But also thinking about that other archetype around someone that is going to speak up, it's seen as a threat, right.

Yes, yes, and again on both sides.

Right, someone who is maybe passive and doesn't fight back could be a target, but on the flip side, someone who does react.

You know, often when we talk about kids and we coach kids who are being bullied, one of the key things we sort of say to them is try not to react, just walk away from the bully, because it sometimes is that rise and that reaction that actually fuels the person who is bullying to do it.

Even more.

When we think of bullying with think of playing out in school, workplaces, maybe even community groups.

But there's also online bullying, and often it can be even more brutal, right.

Totally, I think in many ways it can be more brutal and more damaging and more far reaching.

Right Like, if we think about online bullying, so many more people have access to us online than in our day to day life.

If I go to school and I get bullied, I may be bullied by you know, some of the thirty kids that are in my class, or the hundred kids that are in my year, or you know, even a thousand kids that are in the school.

But if I decide to post on social media and I have a public account, I could be bullied by anyone in the whole world who sees it.

So the potential for bullying is so much larger than what it is in real life.

And on top of that, the potential for the bullying to sort of go viral or to spread is also so much greater than it is in real life, and the psychological damage that can result from this is quite significant.

It's really interesting because it gets me thinking about back in the days when you know, we were at school Millennials, and how we were really on the edge of social media and how I think in a way we missed the online bullying era.

And it's like, wow, we are in this time where so many more people feel like they can have more of a voice online, and I like to call them those keyboard warriors, where you know, it's where people can have an outlet to let it all out, but it can be so damaging.

The online disinhibition effect is what you're referring to.

It's like this ability for people to be less filtered, less inhibited when they are commenting or posting online.

Now, this can have pros and cons, right, because we see a lot of positives where people very vulnerably share parts of their lives and their story that maybe they wouldn't have felt the ability to do in their day to day life.

So we have great pros from this disinhibition effect, but the con is that we see more people being mean and cruel and trolling people where they wouldn't necessarily do that in real life.

There's this sense of anonymity.

I can act online without consequences, and I can be somewhat anonymous.

I can go on that celebrities profile and write a really mean comment about how they look, and I feel a little bit invisible because I'm just one of thousands of people maybe commenting on that post.

So there's this anonymity or feeling of anonymity with commenting online.

But it's not to say that the person on the other end is still not receiving that and feeling the impact of it.

And it gets me thinking about, you know, being on the receiving end of bullying, right, Like the impact is massive, Like what are the consequences for someone who has been bullied?

They can be very far reaching, both psychologically but also physically.

We know the body the mind are connected, right, So the main thing that we often see is this internalization of the bully's voice.

Particularly if someone has been exposed to repeated patterns of bullying, they may unfortunately start to internalize some of those real negative messages that they've heard from the bullies.

We may see that there's greater feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

We might notice that there's greater sadness or greater anxiety.

Maybe they're now worried about going to the workplace or going out in a social group or posting online if the bullying is happening online, so we see an anxiety and potential avoidance that can come with that.

But in addition to that, physically, we know that the more stress we experience, the more we activate cortisol in our body, which is the stress hormone, and prolonged cortisole activation can lead to all sorts of physical health difficulties for us.

We see sleep disturbances for people who've experienced bullying, chronic headaches, all these sorts of physical impacts as well.

Well, yeah, it really is mental and physical impacts, isn't it.

Yeah.

We'd all like to say that, you know, when we see bullying in the workplace or in circles that you're in, that you want to intervene, But sometimes it can be hard to even take that first step, right, It.

Can be, It absolutely can be, And I think we would ideally all like to think that we would intervene if we saw someone struggling or if they were being bullied.

And I think if I went around and asked lots of people, would you intervene if you saw someone being bullied?

Most people would say yes.

And hopefully that is true.

But there is also something called the bystander effect, and this explains why sometimes we might see someone in need but we don't necessarily act.

So the bystander effect is this idea where when we see someone who is a victim to something and we're in some sort of social group, we might actually not act to help that person.

So there's this sense of what we refer to as diffusion of responsibility.

So this essentially means that I think someone else will have done something.

I won't call the ambulance if I see the accident because surely someone else driving by has called the ambulance or the police already.

You know.

I won't intervene because surely someone else has already done it.

So it's this diffusion of responsibility.

But there's also something called pluristic ignorance.

So it's this idea that we look to other people to assess the severity of a situation.

So again, if I see the car accident but no one else is doing anything, I can think, oh, well, it mustn't be that bad.

If no one else is intervening, if no one else is stopping to help, if no one else is calling the ambulance, it mustn't be that bad, right, And This applies to bullying.

If we see someone being bullied, or we know of someone being bullied, but no one else is kind of doing anything about it, we think, ah, well, maybe it's actually not that bad.

Maybe I would be overreacting if I were to step in and do something.

The third kind of feature here is the fear of social judgment.

If I am the only person who steps out and does something, I might worry that other people judge me and think I'm overreacting, and this bystander effect.

The term has been coined based on a famous case actually of a lady called Kitty, and she was living in New York.

She was coming home one evening and she was actually quite viciously assaulted outside of her house and she died.

And what happened is that very few to no people actually contacted emergency services, even though there were reports of them hearing that there was something happening outside.

And again when they were interviewed as to why they didn't do anything, it was these same reasons as to well, I thought someone else would have done it.

I assumed someone else would have called the police, or no one else was sort of doing anything, so I didn't want to be that person who sort of overreacted and did something when it was actually nothing to really worry about.

What I'm hearing in all of it is that it is taking that courage, that leap of trusting yourself to be like, you know what, I'm going to do something even though other people aren't.

And that can be really hard because we're really conditioned to respond by the way that other people are showing up in an environment too.

So it's a tough one absolutely.

I think in all of this as well, because I know we've talked a lot about why bully's bully and the impact it can have on the other person, but I think it's also really important to hold compassion for the bully too, especially with some of those reasons around.

There's so much going on in the inner world that we don't know, and in a way it kind of reminds me of the episode we did two seasons ago under the narcissism episode, and how you know, it's so easy to look at the negatives in narcissism, which is completely valid, you know it's not okay, but also holding it with compassion to to know that they're going through their process.

Absolutely, it's this notion that we can empathize with someone's internal experiences, with that feeling of low self esteem, with the feeling of needing control and power, whatever it is.

We can empathize with those internal experiences, but it doesn't mean we agree with.

The bullying totally.

So if you've experienced bullyan and you've internalized those messages, like, where do you start with that healing process?

How to undo the damage that bullying can do to our own inner voice?

Yeah, first part is always becoming aware of what thoughts are mine and what thoughts are actually the voice of the bully.

What's my sort of true self saying to me versus?

What is that voice saying that's taken all its messaging from the people that have been mean to me and have hurt me along the way.

And when we think about this very critical voice that develops as a result of bullies, it might not be just one person's voice.

It might be that we we've had multiple negative experiences or multiple experiences with bullying, and we've kind of accumulated all those voices into one, and so we developed this really mean inner critic that's quite harsh to us.

So the first part is really about acknowledging and recognizing those voices, those thoughts, they're not mine.

I really love this one because I actually did an exercise on this for myself.

I was going through old journals the other day, which is really funny.

I wasn't planning that for this episode, but I had written down all the things that previous people have said to me that have really hurt me, and then I actually rewrote, like I reframed those sentences, so it's like, blah blah said this, now I say this, And it was just a really nice way to literally reclaim my voice because I had given that other person's voice so much power over me, and it was my truth.

And it took time, right, Like, it's not something you're just going to believe over time, but you're setting that intention in.

Yes, absolutely, I love the reframe.

Right once you can acknowledge that this is what someone else has said to me, you know, this is the comment they made, How can I reframe this in a way that's going to be more empowering and impactful for me to work with.

I love that you did that.

I love that you went through your old journalism.

I just randomly looked it up.

I'm like, ah, I used to say that, Yeah, And it's a process, right, Changing that kind of inner voice that might develop as a result of bullies is not going to happen overnight, but it's a process and it takes practicing reframing those thoughts.

I also really encourage people to think about the internal qualities that they have that they see as strengths for themselves.

Right, so we can get into the tug of war with what that bully said and what they didn't say, and how true or untrue it was, But if people can start to reflect on what internal qualities they have, and I say internal qualities, because no one can take those away from us.

You know, if we lose a job, if we lose a relationship, if we lose a friendship, those things can sort of end.

But no one can take away my own personal internal qualities that I feel are really valuable.

So actually reflecting on those and building that self compassionate voice that's really kind but also really wise and can recognize the personal strengths that we have.

So these are things like recognizing your own kindness, the fact that you're caring, the fact that you might be empathetic, the fact that you might be a really great problem solver, the fact that you might be a really creative spirit.

Whatever it is, these internal qualities you have, no one can take them from you.

No bully can take those from you.

So leaning into those qualities.

So do you suggest anything for the bully, like for them to start their healing process or can they just not be helped?

Oh, they can be helped, absolutely, Yeah.

And you know, I think people often know when they've been unkind to others.

Really, yeah, there's some level.

It doesn't just happen.

I don't just like fall onto social media and like magically type out me in comments without realizing it, right, you know, we know we do it, And you know, there's obviously different degrees of being unkind to people, But people who are unkind know when they're doing it a lot of the time, and if it's an accident, they're usually pretty open and willing to receive feedback.

So if someone is engaging in patterns where they're being unkind to others, I would really ask them to reflect on the question of what need am I trying to fulfill for myself by doing this?

What is this actually giving me?

Is it giving me that sense of power?

Is it giving me a sense of control.

Do I feel superior when I speak to someone in this way or comment on their post in this way?

Do I feel better about myself?

Do I feel like I'm kind of top dog if I do that?

What need is that filling within you?

If you can identify that, then you can find healthier ways to fulfill that same need?

Yarb bearb Hearb, I'm palving a serious crisis.

BRB having a crisis.

We've reached that time in our episode where we answer a question or dilemma from one of you.

How but are you happy?

Listeners?

Anastasia?

This one comes from an anonymous source.

I never thought bullying would be something I'd have to deal with as an adult, but here I am.

There's someone at work who constantly is putting me down, whether it's snyde comments in meetings, undermining my ideas, or just general coldness that makes me dread going in.

I try to brush it off, but it's wearing me down.

Sometimes I question if I'm being too sensitive or if I'm just imagining things, but then it happens again.

I don't want to cause drama or make things worse, but I also don't want to keep feeling this way, I'm stuck between wanting to stand up for myself and fearing it might backfire.

How do you deal with someone who's bullying you when you're in adult especially at work.

That's so hard, bullied in the workplace because you can't, like you got to work to make a living, right, you can't avoid that.

Yeah, I actually feel like for me, this is the hardest listener question that's come through so far, because it really is tricky when you're talking about this balance of maintaining your job, because, as you said, people need to work versus feeling comfortable in the workplace and feeling safe in the workplace.

And by the sounds of it, this anonymous listener isn't feeling safe in their emotionally safe in their workplace.

I think there's something to be said for a kind of standard approach of considering having a conversation with this person, and that could be a kind of casual chat.

It doesn't have to be a formal sit down, you know, why are you saying these Snyder comments to me?

But more of a kind of casual like, Hey just wanted to check in, how are you going?

How do you feel like we're working together.

Is there anything we should do difference, Is there any thing we should keep doing that we feel like really working in terms of our working relationships.

So you can kind of frame it to be about work, but really you're sort of opening up a broader conversation.

But on the flip side, and I know it's not the fault of our anonymous listener, but I think there is sometimes something to be said for trying to detach from a situation where we can't actually change things.

I mean, if you get to a point where you think this workplace is not for me, I've reported it to HR, I've tried to go through all the necessary steps, nothing is changing, then you might want to consider is this the right place for me to be?

But we hope it doesn't get to that point.

And so this is where I encourage some degree of detachment.

This person being cold, saying snide remarks says more about them than it does you.

And I can assure you that if someone is coming to the workplace and taking out their anger and frustration and emotions on you, it's probably not about you.

So if that helps going into the office holding in mind that the coldness or the comments are actually not a reflection of you or maybe how that person even feels about you, but more about how they feel about themselves and how they're dealing with their own internal struggles.

If you can hold that close, that might help you get through the days.

Do you think as well something that the anonymous listener can also do, because I can imagine kind of standing up to the bully could be a lot.

And you know you mentioned you know, talking to HR, but could there be like building allies in the workplace where you have spaces to be able to talk about it or is that depending on the workplace, right?

I think it depends on the workplace, and I think it depends on the kind of relationship you have with other people at work and the balance between getting support versus something that might might be perceived as gossiping.

Yes, so I guess we wouldn't want a situation, but you certainly want to feel like you've got other people that you can go to for support or if you've got questions, you know, you go and ask your friends at work instead of this person.

So absolutely, building the kind of team around you can be very protective.

Yeah, good luck, Anonymous listener, You've got this.

Anastasia can you give us the main takeaways from today's episode?

Yes.

So.

First of all, people bully others for a whole range of reasons, including the desire for status, power, or because they have low self worth.

Second, bullying online can sometimes be much worse than bullying in person because of the online disinhibition effect and how far reaching online bullying can be.

Third, the consequences of bullying can be that we internalize the voice of the bullies and we start to be really mean to ourselves.

And finally, if you've internalized the voice of a bully, work on building your own self compassionate voice instead.

If you have a burning question for us, there are a few ways to get in contact with us, links through the show notes.

And remember, while I am a psychologist, this podcast isn't a diagnostic tool, and the advice and ideas that we present here should always take into account your personal medical history.

Next week's episode is all about empathy, fatigue and what you should do when you feel like you just can't hold space for other people's problems anymore.

Very relatable.

Stay tuned for next week's episode.

The senior producer of But Are You Happy is Charlie Blackman.

Executive producer is Naima Brown, and Social producer is Jemma Donaho.

Sound design and editing by Tina Matlov.

You can find us also on Instagram and TikTok search at but Are You Happy Pod?

I'm a Shany Dante.

And I'm doctor Anastagia Heronus.

The names and stories of people discussed have been changed for the purpose of maintaining anonymity.

If this conversation brought up any difficult feelings for you, we have links for more resources in the show notes.

If you're wanting more immediate support, you can contact services much as Lifeline or Beyond Blue.

Thanks for listening, See you next week.

Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.