I once found myself having to investigate why an adult behaved in a disturbing way towards me that I wanted to understand better. My readings kept referring to bullying, bullies who have grown up, people who were bullied themselves by their primary caregivers when young and kids who were never given adequate developmental support. Before then, I thought bullying was only an issue for oversensitive teenaged kids. On the other hand, some of what I dealt with in experiencing such behaviour was through emails, and I felt such an idiot for letting it affect me so much.

I offer my thoughts that bullying can manifest itself in recurrent situations with another individual, where oneself starts wondering if one is making any sense whatsoever.

It wasn't the insults and taunts that worried me as such, but the constant subtle implication that my entire way of seeing things wasn't viable, and that I was somehow always ending up upsetting the other party with things I said. This happened with just enough glimmer of a reprieve, some insight and a rewarding reconciliation. The effect may well be unintentioned, and the bully could be just copying how s/he's seen people relate at a surface level, but they're often said to lack the depth which would quite naturally imbue a sense of wanting to ensure that others are ok. For the bullied, the energy and focus required for dealing with this can imperceptibly start to eat into areas of one's life thought remote from the area being discussed, until it seems to take over. I'm not one to insist on just one way of seeing things, and I feel that much discussion about bullying is all about insults and violence. Not much is said about how the bully, in effect, sets up such a narrowing view of reality for the bullied. The interaction becomes mutually reinforcing.

I'd try to help by saying that bullying is the strict imposition of one person's reality over another, but I don't think people who like to go on about finding some sort of "truth" could handle that. It's a pity... I can see solutions to be gleamed if such a line of thought was comprehensive and disciplined enough. You'll see that in another way on my website, I've come to a view with which intersubjectivity doesn't have to lead to solipsism.

Related to not insisting on absolutes, is my opinion that a preponderance on encouraging self-esteem as a solution to such problems is pretty much neither here-nor-there. Self-esteem is very much involved, but just consciously trying to build that doesn't lead to much understanding of how manifestations of "bullying" can vary. For me, self-esteem fell into place more solidly, once I acquired quite a thorough understanding of how I could have been so affected.

Intimate partner abuse and personality disorders were also mentioned in what I read. The popularist information can get slaphappy, and one can start seeing pathologies in all things, if without care. Nonetheless, situations which suggest a pathology is operating, may well warrant such regard towards psychological processes which really require specialist approaches.

inordinate words

[Although I acknowledge how self-serving my explanations may be, I think a conscientious person can easily feel so complicit when interacting with bullies, because they can find themselves reacting badly, and feel terrible about their own behaviour as a consequence. I'd suggest that their strength is turned in on itself. It's not as if no one apart from those with a significant tendancy ever does lose their cool and act irrationally. A reasonable individual, will acknowledge, account and try to mitigate effects that their stress may at times have had on others. I'd contend that what we know as bullying results so much in the subtle undermining of the bullied, that aggression is not necessarily a distinguishing feature. Positions tend to become entrenched; and it becomes difficult to approach an espousal of the positions as a way of finding shared ground rather than sounding as deluded. There is a sense in which it is delusional to remain interacting, but good judgment erodes with time spent in such situations.]