How To Spot A Bully

So you think just because I'm small, you can yank me around? Think again.

It's easy to spot a bully. They are the ones that like to utter the following statements.

• "I think he is too soft and needs to be toughened up."
  
  Hello, newsflash: You are not toughening people up, you are damaging them. Emotional trauma and taunts can take years to heal. Being a recipient of verbal abuse myself and counseling others who come from similar backgrounds, I see the devastating damages of stinging words all too clearly. God created the world with words.
  
  He said, "Let there be light." And there was light.
  
  Similarly, we create worlds of our own with our spoken words. We can either contribute positively into someone's world by life-giving and encouraging words or make their world a living nightmare with a careless word or two that bruises their spirits.


• "Aiya, you are too sensitive lar! If I can take it, so can you."
  
  You think that just because you can take brash comments, other people would be able to take it, too. But think again. I heard of this bully who taunts his girlfriend's friends and parents and when she does the same to his, he found that he actually did not like it one bit. That's double standards in action.


• "I was just joking! You don't have a sense of humor ah?"
  
  This is a favourite cop-out amongst bullies. Once confronted and backed into a corner, they will pull this line to pin the blame back on your 'lack of humor'.


• "How can you like this thing, man? It's rubbish!"
  
  They make you feel silly or stupid for liking things that they deem to be uncool. Never mind if they have crappy tastes or not, to them, everyone who chooses things contrary to their preconceived mindsets deserves to be put down.

It's sad that there are so many bullies lurking around, thinking that they are doing the public a service, not realising that their brash comments are wounding others so needlessly. But when we have identified one or more such persons in our lives, we need to:

• Remind ourselves not to take their words seriously. Most of them do not really mean anything by their careless words. They are just talking crap for the sake of saying something.


• Learn to look beyond their words and hurtful attitudes to see their hearts. To do this, we need a lot of grace from God.


• If you do not have the emotional resources to face them because you are too battered or tired, then try to avoid encounters with them until such a time when you are ready to deal with them again.


• When you are ready, tell them the boundaries that you have set - what they can do and cannot do. And when they try to bulldoze their way through, call them on it firmly and seriously.

And to the bullies, I want to end with this statement - There are so many words in the dictionary to choose from. So many better and positive ways to say something. Why must you choose the most hurtful words ever in the name of fun? Now that's just being mean.

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