The Wrong Response When Someone is Being Hurt
I stood there speechless for a moment. My son (in middle school at the time) was being bullied at school, and the teacher I was talking to about it said that he’d noticed that these things were occurring, but he didn’t want to ask my son about it or address it with the bully because sometimes that makes the bullying worse.
I was taken aback by his perspective. Ignore the problem so it doesn’t get worse? It’s already bad. And that was OK with him as long as it didn’t get worse?!
How bad would it have to get before he thought he had a responsibility to stand up for the victim?
That’s a question that everyone should have to answer, because there are too many times that people on the “outside” qualify what’s going on on the “inside.” In other words: they make judgments about whether things are bad enough to warrant a consequence.
Yet, when there is no consequence for the “decidedly not-so-bad” bullying, what reason does the bully have to change his behavior? The reason they are able to bully someone is because no one is saying anything, no one is asking, and no one seems to notice or care.
And what message does that silence send to the victim? The silence says, “We don’t want to know.” And so the victim doesn’t tell. [Click here to read my article about why we shouldn’t stop using the term “victim”]
If I had a nickel for every time I heard some version of “I don’t need to know” or saw the fear in someone’s eyes of “I don’t want to know” as I revealed what had occurred in our home . . .
It’s not called bullying when you’re an adult. It’s called abuse.
I’d asked a pastor that question once: “How bad would the abuse have to get before you’d be willing to call it abuse and say that it was grounds for divorce? If I had a black eye? A broken bone?” His answer: “If I got a call from the hospital and the doctor said ‘I don’t think she’s going to make it’.”
Whaaaat!?!?! I’d have to be on my death bed before you’d say I have grounds for divorce as a result of abuse?!
I kid you not. (You can’t make this stuff up.) [Read my article on what the Bible really says about divorce]
But I can’t fault the pastor. Many people have false beliefs about abuse. They believe
the abuser can change if he gets the right counsel
there are things that the wife could do to reduce the conflict
the couple is turning little things into big quarrels [Read the list of “little things” that people don’t realize are a big deal]
everyone has conflict
And if the pastor (or anyone) doesn’t know any better, he can’t do any better. If someone has never experienced the chaos of being in a relationship with someone with abusive character, it’s truly impossible for them to grasp the reality (or even the possibility) that someone’s character could be that corrupt. In the eyes of many people, anyone can change, and we all have goodness in us that just has to be tapped into. [Read my article that addresses the myth that anyone can change]
But for those of us who have tried to believe in the goodness of someone with abusive character and experienced the confusion as we try to reconcile what we want to believe (that everyone is inherently good) with the reality that the person we love is inherently bad, it becomes clear that some people simply do not have the capacity for goodness, and they cannot change.
And that’s why it’s important for victims to talk about it – because people who think they don’t need to know, NEED to know. They need to know what abuse looks like (even emotional abuse) so that they can stand up for the oppressed.
Edmund Burke said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Silence allows abuse to continue.
Addressing the bullying/abuse changes the dynamics of what is occurring:
it lets the victim know that someone is on their side
and it lets the abuser know that someone is on the victim’s side
Abuse can only happen where there is an imbalance of power. And letting the victim and the abuser know that you know gives power to the victim and starts to level the playing field.
The right response when someone is being hurt:
1. Trust your instinct
If you think that someone is being bullied or abused, don’t doubt yourself. It’s always better to err on the side of being wrong than to assume you’re wrong when you actually could be right.
2. Tell the victim that it looks like he/she isn’t being treated very well
It’s important for the victim to know that someone notices, because it’s a reality check for them. Many times victims are in denial about the reality of what is occurring.
3. Give them a resource where they can get support
Whether it’s you or someone else or even a website, point them in a direction that will give them an opportunity to gain some perspective on what is occurring.
4. If you are in a position of power, use it to confront the bully/abuser
Often the threat of legal consequences (or some other authority) or social embarrassment will deter an abuser, at least for a time. But if you don’t have any power to back you up, you’ll become a victim, too, if only for a moment.
5. Understand that the victim may not yet be ready to admit reality
In a victim’s good faith efforts to love the one they’re with, they deny reality for a long time in hopes that if they pretend long enough, their dreams will come true. (I know because I’ve been there.) If the victim denies that your concern is valid, just give them the resource and let them know that it’s for “in case they change their mind.”
Defend the victim
In the case of my son and the bully, I encouraged the teacher that, as an adult, he has a responsibility to protect children. I explained to him that saying nothing only allows the bullying to continue and sends the message to my son that the teachers don’t care if he gets hurt (another reason that victims don’t talk).
What kid-bullies need is to know that adults are going to continue protecting other kids and will also continue giving consequences, even for the most seemingly minor infractions, not only for the good of the victim, but for the good of the bully as well.
And sometimes, the kid-bully just needs to know that there is someone in his life who is predictable, non-retaliatory, consistent, and reasonable in how they expect to be treated. Once my son was able to establish that standard and had the authority of the teacher to back it up, the bully no longer had power over my son and began to respect the integrity, consistency, and good character that my son displayed. And believe it or not, they are close friends now – on equal ground.
Kids who are bullies often grow up to be adults who are abusers. They aren’t affected by appeals to empathy like “how do you think it makes that person feel when you do that to them?” The emotional energy they get from having power over others is so much stronger than people’s attempts to tug at their heartstrings. Their answer to the question of how it makes other people feel, if they could put it into words, might be a triumphant “It makes them feel weak – and it makes me feel strong.” Unless they are shown in a loving but firm way that they cannot have power over others, their craving for power will continue into adulthood.
[Often, the craving for power stems from a bully’s own feelings of being controlled by someone else because they, themselves, are being (or have been) bullied, often by a parent or sibling.]
It feels hopeless to be continually overpowered by someone. That’s why even our children need to learn that it is OK to have standards for how they’re treated and to learn how to defend those standards so that they don’t rely on others to change their situation when they are hurt but, rather, realize that . . . .
hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it is found in our situation . . .
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