There is a lot of talk about what to do about bullies. While much of it is well intentioned it may be feeding the problem and not the solution.

Being bullied has a personal aspect for me. I had a situation where I was staying which taught me some powerful lessons about giving up my victim status and disempowerment in the situation. Being bullied is not nice, in fact it can be extremely distressing. My discovery was it was not the bully who was the problem, it was my feeling of powerlessness and the unwillingness to stand up for myself. My inertia, my lack of responsibility to meet my own needs and be less concerned with trying to appease those around me needed to be healed.

Once I stood up for myself and took responsibility for my own rights and welfare the problem became less. To stand in front of a bully and explain that while they carry on you own them is a powerful position to be in. I have nothing but gratitude to the other person in that scenario because I learned my weakness and my strength. They learned nothing, other than to think twice about trying their tricks again with me. In hindsight I was able to see the multiple times I had allowed myself to enter into disempowering situations and what to do in the future.

Bullies are like vampires, they prey on the weak and vulnerable, the classic predator/ prey scenario. If their is no energy for them to feed off they go somewhere else. I appreciate in a world which praises the victim, giving up the game is difficult.

I have been in situations where a victim has been able to manipulate events to feed their own insecurities. They steal energy from others to fed their own weakness, their own feelings of powerlessness. They disempower others to falsely empower themselves. These people are dangerous because they play the victim so effectively, simply because that is their belief. There is also a feeling of justification, that the world owes them something. Lack of personal responsibility is a key issue for those addicted to their victimhood.

The lingering myth that permeates our world of the cavalry riding over the hill, the messiah returning or some scientist finding the elixir to life blinds us and makes us give away our responsibility to freely.

We all have choices as Shakespeare so eloquently stated “to be or not to be that is the question”. A person who is unaware of this fact will not be able to accept this truth, it will take a lot of soul searching and rewriting of their inner dialogue to reach the next wrung on the ladder to feeling empowered.

Those fully dedicated to their victim conscious will either stay still or spiral downwards, deeper and deeper into a state of complete submission. While it is their right it is also a great waste of their human potential.

Overt bullies are obvious, they have nothing to hide, it is the covert bully the manipulative bully pretending to be the victim that wreaks the most havoc. We tend to feel sorry for victims and switch off our truth filters. We see the overt bully as the bad guy and miss the manipulative game being played on us by the covert bully.

I saw this in action recently, a stall holder was messed around by the organiser. As he walked away he swore. Immmediately the covert bully saw her chance to manipulate and sent the stall holder home. She played the victim, when it fact the rolls had been reversed. This happens every day. Parents manipulating children, teachers, bosses, government officials taking the opportunity to make themselves feel better by stealing energy from others.

There is a belief that your eyes and ears will deceive you, this is true when it comes to the covert manipulator, the con-artist and the many other forms of deception. We really need to stay present, be aware and have a “maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not” approach.

Victims are people with an inability to adapt or change, it is not a matter of good or bad. It simply comes down to the ability to deal with change and to keep moving. Inertia adds to their downward and backward slide into insignificance.

There was a great advert doing the rounds of the net recently. A young latino boy was being bullied at school. His father took him to self defines classes and over time the boy changed. The ad finishes with the boy walking down the street in a latino dance outfit and ignoring the bullies.

In conclusion, I was at a service station recently and a young man asked to borrow my phone. When i refused he called a C*#!. I smiled and agreed with him and went on to inform him just how much of one I really was. He was dumbfounded and kept trying to act tough as he slowly backed away.

Replace your sense of disempowerment with one of empowerment and watch your life change.