“BULLYING” a traumatizing experience that leaves a lifelong SCAR

Imagine waking up in the morning and the first thing that comes to mind is the traumatic experience that you may have to face at school, college or workplace. That is the life of victims of bullying. Every day is a struggle for them. Their days go by either getting targeted by bullies or being preoccupied with the thought of being bullied.

Bullying is an act of aggressive behavior towards a victim to hurt, dominate, or intimidate that person. This behavior is most often repeated over time. Bullying may be verbal harassment, social harassment, physical bullying, or cyber bullying.

Bullying can have a long term effect on the victims. They may lack the will to attend classes or to go to work to avoid getting bullied or humiliated. It may affect their academic qualifications or they may have difficulty in staying in a job and managing their finances. They may have mental health issues like depression, anxiety, personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. They may even get into substance abuse to deal with the stress. All of this for no fault of theirs.

On the other hand, bullies are people who are insecure about themselves or are facing difficult situations at home. Sometimes a victim of abuse displaces his anger on someone else who he thinks is vulnerable hence, becoming the bully. This forms a cycle of bullying. To end this cycle a more comprehensive step should be taken.

Families, institutions, and peer groups can play an important role in reducing instances of bullying.

If we talk about bullying particularly in schools, there are several cases where the victim does not share what he is going through and often suffer silently. This is most common with verbal harassment. It is, therefore necessary for the school authorities to be more sensitive towards these issues and participate in molding better characters out of the students. It is not enough to teach them Moral Science merely restricted to textbooks but it should also be applied practically.

A bully may be born due to issues in the family. As mentioned above, a bully may be a victim of abuse at home. A good family system forms and molds better characters. Hence, it is necessary to concentrate on the loopholes of our family system. The neighbors and the society as a whole can also play an important role in maintaining harmony within family systems. This will prevent the creation of a bully.

When peer groups enjoy watching someone getting bullied or choose to ignore it the bully gets encouraged to continue the harassment. Peer groups can play an important role by either discouraging their friend from bullying someone or by standing by the victim. This will help in preventing repeated instances of bullying.

Thus, a little more care, compassion, and understanding towards one another can break the cycle of bullying. Let us BREAK THE CYCLE!