Often we have heard stories about people who have faced terrible forms of mockery and humiliation at school as well as at their workplace. These things leave people with emotional scars and often lead them to depression. In a world where technology has advanced so much, human behaviour is still a major concern all over the world, since every human being is either helping people in need to build their lives or they are bent on destroying it. So let’s first know what is bullying and how far it can go in terms of affecting people throughout the globe.
Bullying is a form of aggressive behaviour in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort. The bullied individual typically has trouble defending him or herself and does nothing to “cause” the bullying. Around 28% of young individuals from ages 6 to 18 suffer from bullying and parents only know about it half of the time.
According to mental health professionals, bullying is unwanted physical or verbal aggression directed at a specific person, repeated over a period, involves an imbalance of power, and involves acts to exclude the victim from a group. It is characterised by the bully repeatedly using higher social status over the victim to exert power and to hurt the victim. Bullying leaves children as well as adults scarred for life and inculcates fear of the unknown in them. Their self-esteem and confidence get trampled and it takes years for them to rebuild it.
Bullying has come in three forms, known as verbal bullying, social bullying as well as physical bullying. Verbal bullying includes people getting rude remarks, name-calling, and inappropriate sexual comments. This often evolves into cyberbullying where people are harassed online. Social bullying happens when people leave a person out of their group on purpose, spread rumours about them, and embarrass them in public. Lastly, physical bullying is when a person is hit, pushed, pinched, or kicked on regular intervals. Bullies also spit on the bullied, dominate them and make them do menial jobs. Physical bullying is mostly seen in colleges where seniors rag the newbies.
In organisations, some employees are made to do servants’ job, insulted for small mistakes, and are regularly forced to do extra work without giving them enough credit. This is also a form of bullying done by professional people who want to exert their authority. People often think that only physical bullying breaks a person but it is not true. All forms of bullying make the victim go submissive, socially withdrawn, scared as well as depressed. Bullying is a major source of depression because the repressed feelings people have often lead to them feel suffocated from within. People also commit suicide in some cases.
Some of the few ways to stop bullying are to foster an efficient communication system to hear everyone’s complain, establish policies of mutual respect and teaching employees to understand each other. In a stand-up conference hosted by the Northeastern University, a high school student took the microphone and spoke about unrelenting bullying that she faced which ended on the students shouting ‘We love you’ to her.
Therefore, strict rules, proper vigilance, and equality policies at school, college as well as the workplace goes a long way in stopping bullying. People have to be more observant and look for signs of bullying. Empathy and kindness are the two virtues people should swear upon to lessen bullying and help build foundations of strong interpersonal relations. Those are the only things which act as support for the bullied and help them overcome it.
Shivangi Sinha