There seems to be a widely held perception that physical bullying is more severe than other forms of bullying. In my experience, I find this to be far from the truth. I have asked a great many of my clients the same question:

 “If you had the choice of ongoing psychological bullying, name calling, sneering etc., or just taking a physical beating which would you prefer?”

 Almost everyone says they would prefer the physical beating. The reason for this is simple. Physical pain from being hit, only lasts a short period of time. Even if the pain is intense and if you are heavily bruised or cut, the pain will soon become numbness. Does it hurt to receive a ‘dead arm?’ Yes, in the moment, but we call it a dead arm because you can’t feel it afterwards.

 To a bullying victim, the real hurt is in the psychology of the situation. The thought of someone wanting to hit you for their own pleasure usually hurts far more than the hitting itself. Bullies are pretty wise to this. They make use of plenty of threats. Often they will even tell the victim their plans:

 “I’m going to get you after school”

 They know that the hurting begins when their victim know what’s going to happen. The victim gets to spend the rest of the school day thinking about being hit and, perhaps, making escape plans. The bully only has to carry out their promises every so often to be effective.

 So why do so many people think that physical bullying is the most severe kind?

When a victim decides to tell someone of their problems it can be very difficult for the person they tell to understand the situation. Here is an example:

Debbie is being bullied in subtle ways by Julie. Every time Julie walks past Debbie she sneers, giving a look of disgust. On one occasion, Julie slaps Debbie across the face. Debbie hates the sneers, which makes her feel awful. She does everything she can to avoid Julie and often spends the whole day thinking about what Julie does to her. Eventually she decides to tell a teacher about the sneering. Mrs Gardener listens well but doesn’t really understand why a sneer should bother Debbie. If anyone ever sneered at Mrs Gardener she would just ignore them. So she advises Debbie just to ignore Julie.

 To Debbie, this advice seems very dismissive. Her teacher has no idea how much this is hurting and doesn’t seem to think there is a problem at all. Debbie then tells Mrs Gardener about the slap. Now, Mrs Gardener is outraged. She promises to take action  to make sure Julie is punished.

 In this example, Mrs Gardener is relating to how she would feel if someone sneered at her. And she is relating to how she would feel if someone slapped her. She has come to the conclusion that the physical bullying is worse than the sneering even though, to Debbie, it was the sneering that was the problem.

 To people who have never been severely bullied it can be very difficult to understand what is going on. We could debate whether or not sneering is a form of bullying and the most accurate answer we would come up with is “it depends.” But hitting someone is somehow more tangible. We can understand this more easily. There are far less grey areas when it comes to hitting so we are able to say “yes, bullying has definitely taken place here.” Schools are far more likely to taken action with physical bullying because there is far more clarity that an ‘offence’ has taken place and evidence of bullying is far easier to get.

 Teachers, parents or any adult that a child tells about a bullying problem must attempt to put themselves in the child’s shoes. If they are being hurt because someone looks at them funny, makes strange noises around them, says some remark to them or does any other subtle form of bullying, it is essential to be non-judgemental on how severe or how petty the actions appear to be. Finding out how it is hurting the child and what their own thought processes about the situation is also paramount. Only then, are you taking the child’s complaint seriously and are you in a position to be able to help.

 For more information and to book a training session with me call 0141 552 7045 or email me at mark@bullyingfullstop.co.uk.

 Mark McKenzie