The Benefits and Pitfalls of Ignoring a Bully

The advice you most often get as a target of a bully is to ignore them. It is good advice if you can manage to do it, but the fact is that bullying in the Pagan community (and most others) is usually cumulative - taken by itself, almost any incident can be laughed off or explained away. On the other hand, when the incidents run up into the hundreds, and each one of them makes you more upset, they become nearly impossible to ignore. What is truly unfortunate is that most other people do not notice the accumulated bullying events - they just see individual insults, which you are apparently over-reacting to. This lack of acknowledgement is what bullies count on, and how they get away with what they do for so long.

So how can one ignore a person who keeps targeting you repeatedly? Perhaps an explanation of what motivates a bully will help.

You have to remember that the bully's aggression comes from a deep insecurity, which they are terrified of acknowledging. They have been deeply wounded at some point in their lives, and lashing out at others is the only way they know how to cope with it. The pain which is shown through their aggression has nothing to do with you nor with anyone else.  If you can view the bully as being emotionally crippled and socially inept it may be easier to feel empathy for them. Can you imagine feeling so bad about yourself that the only way you can relieve some of your pain is by bad-mouthing others? These people really are quite sad and pathetic.

In fact, when a bully targets someone, they are paying that person a very high, if twisted, compliment. They only pick on people they perceive as a threat, or who have character which they do not possess themselves.

A possible problem with ignoring a bully is that they may step up their attacks because you do not give them the reaction they are looking for. If they have decided to drive you out of the community through gossip, innuendoes, half-truths and outright lies, but you don't leave when they expect you to they are going to be angrier than ever and things could get really ugly.

If you are able ignore a bully in spite of their continuing bad behaviour towards you, then you have my admiration. If, on the other hand, you want their behaviour stopped, go back to the previous page and keep reading.

The Benefits and Pitfalls of Befriending a Bully

Some people will tell you to make friends with the person who has been targeting you. This all sounds very nice, but it may not work for a couple of reasons.

Yes, the bully probably really feels intimidated by you in some way, and perhaps letting them get to know you might dissipate some of that. However, it might also freak them out even more because if you are in close proximity to them people are even more likely to make unfavourable comparisons between you. They really don't want you near them for this reason.

The more manipulative or sociopathic bullies might appear to respond favourably to your offer of friendship, but then they use the new intimacy to gather information about you. If you have decided to try to become friends with them and they pump you for personal information, my advice is to be very wary of telling them anything that you would not want the general public to know. It's not unusual for a bully to befriend a person to later turn on them, so be warned.

There are of course cases where there has been a early misunderstanding which can be cleared up, and you can become friends with someone who had once vilified you, but are you sure you want to? You may need to ask yourself if you can really trust them to not do the same thing again.

If you can manage to make a bully your friend, that's great, but be careful - and whatever you do, don't help them to bully other people later.