Stop Bullies: Girls Bullying Girls

Just as many girls as boys are bullies but girls more often target other girls. Girls do bully other girls physically.  One publicized example is the Florida girls who beat up a classmate and then posted the video on YouTube.

However, most girl-girl bullying is verbal and emotional.  Seven of the nine bullies were girls in the publicized case that led to the recent suicide of Phoebe Prince.  Their attacks on Phoebe were choreographed, strategically planned and relentlessly executed.  The abuse was verbal, physical and through cyber space.

“Mean girls” are masters of catty remarks, put-downs, scorn, mockery, criticism, sarcasm, cyber bullying and forming cliques led by a Queen Bee.  Mean girls are also masters of covert, “stealth bullying;” backstabbing, rumor-mongering, telling secrets, cutting out and spreading gossip and innuendo while pretending to be friends.

Girl bullies often are control-freaks and emotional blackmailers.  Common bullying statements are, “If you don’t do what I want, you’re not my best friend, “ or “My best friend wouldn’t talk to that other girl,” or “You hurt my feelings, you’re a false friend.”  They often set up boys to attack their targets.

Boys tend to use overt physical tactics more than girls.

Girls: it’s easy to tell if you’re being overtly bullied; it’s harder to tell if the bullying is stealthy.  You’re probably being bullied if you’re feeling controlled, forced to do things you don’t want to do, scared of what another girl might do to you, afraid of getting ostracized or ganged up on, or not wanting to go to school at all.  Trust your gut and talk to your parents no matter how reluctant you are.

Parents: the major signs that your daughter is being bullied are unexplained, 180 degree changes in behavior.  For example, no longer talking about school or friends, not wanting to be with classmates, spending all her time in her room, avoiding checking text messages, social web sites or answering the phone, no longer doing homework, not eating lunch at school, stopping after-school activities, wanting to change or quit school, loss of weight, chewing fingernails, not caring about appearance, can’t sleep, nightmares, loss of confidence and self-esteem, emotionally labile (crying suddenly alternating with explosive anger and temper tantrums alternating with despondency and depression – “I’m helpless, it’s hopeless”).  Be careful; teenagers typically go through periods of these behaviors.  Parents must check out the causes.  Be persistent.  Don’t be stopped by initial resistance. If your daughter is being bullied, parents must proceed down two paths simultaneously:

• Teach your daughter how to protect herself.
• Make teachers, principals and school district administrators protect targets.

Bullying at school is rarely an isolated event.  Usually there is a pervasive pattern of overlooking, minimizing, denying, tolerating or even encouraging bullying.  Strategies for how parents can proceed depend on the situations they’re dealing with; especially the people.  The bottom line is that most, but not all, principals want to avoid the subject, do nothing, cover-up with platitudes, avoid law suits and won’t confront bullying parents who protect their darling little bullies.

Beware of principals who think that their primary task is to understand, rehabilitate or therapeutize bullies.  You will have to get other parents involved and be very tactical in order to get principals to act firmly and effectively. There is one absolute “Don’t.”  Every female client and every woman who has interviewed me said that they were verbally bullied when they were young.  Unfortunately, their mothers told them, “Rise above the bully.  That bully is hurting so much inside that they’re taking their pain and inferiority out on you.  Understand and forgive them.  You’re better than they are.  If you act nice enough, people will return your kindness with kindness.”

Every one of these bullied women bears deep wounds including stress, anxiety, negative self-talk, lack of confidence and self-esteem problems.  They also bear an underlying hatred of their mothers for those messages.  Those messages are absolutely wrong.  Mothers must teach their daughters how to protect themselves, not how to act like willing victims.

Remember, the Golden Rule doesn’t stop real-world bullies.  Prepare your daughters for the real-world they’ll face in school, at work, in intimate relationships and with friends.

Stop Mean Girls Before They Trash You

“Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Gender and Violence,” edited by Meda Chesney-Lind and Nikki Jones, cites recent studies to show that violence by girls has decreased.  In a New York Times article, “The Myth of Mean Girls,” Mike Males and Meda Chesney-Lind also state that our common perception that there are mean girls and that girls can be violent, “is a hoax.” Well, that just gives new research studies a bad name, or at least those conclusions.  As Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

In the real world, not the world inhabited by academics and researchers, mean girls thrive and their violence toward other girls is no only verbal and physical, it’s now also done in cyberspace.  If you track only physical violence on police blotters, you miss the other damage done by stealth bullying mean girls.

Ignore academic researchers.  Remember your years in junior and senior high school, and in college?  Haven’t you also seen incidents of harassment, bullying and abuse by women against women in the workplace?  Ask your daughters what’s happening now in their schools.  Are their principals, teachers and staff protecting girls against mean girls?

Every woman who’s interviewed me on radio and television describes the mean girls they encountered when they were young … and also some they see in their adult personal lives as well as at work.  A lot of my coaching is to teach women how to defend themselves against mean girls who now masquerade as adult friends or who are still mean in parent groups at schools, boards of housing associations, book clubs, neighborhood associations, church groups and as mothers protecting their mean daughters.

Think about the seven mean girls in Massachusetts involved in bullying Phoebe Prince into committing suicide or the nasty girls who attacked Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato when they were teenagers, or the six Florida girls who made a video of their attack on another girl and are now being tried as adults.  CNN even reports, “There's at least one Web site devoted exclusively to videos of girls fighting.”

Although physical violence might decrease as these mean girls became adults, they still form cliques, viciously cut-out their targets and relentlessly put down women they consider as rivals or simply weaklings.

Of course, mean girls can also encourage mean guys to be violent toward other girls and boys, and mean girls can also verbally destroy young boys.

So, as a parent, what can you do?

• Get active as a citizen.  Organize a core group of active parents to pressure legislators to pass laws requiring schools to have policies and programs to stop bullying.  Media pressure will help.
• Get active in your school and school district.  Form a core group of active parents to make sure your district administrators and school principal actively enforce policies and a school-wide program to stop bullies.  Involve all teachers, staff and students in recognizing and stopping the first signs of bullying.  Immediate and firm action is necessary.  If principals and teachers turn a blind eye, saying “that’s just the way some girls are,” they’re colluding by creating a safe space for mean girls and boundary pushers.  The end of school and summer are great times to get these programs started so you’re ready at the start of school in September.
• Prepare your daughters.  Well-meaning parents are the number one risk factor for creating helpless girls whose confidence and self-esteem will be destroyed by mean girls.  Don’t tell your daughters to feel sorry for their abusers and to “rise above” whatever these vicious predators say or do.  Don’t expect pious sentiments to prevent stress, anxiety, negative self-talk or depression.  Don’t let your daughters be whipping girls or scapegoats.  Teach your daughters how to stop the mean girls.  If you don’t know how, you need coaching.
• Prepare your sons.  Tell them about the real-world.  Remind them that 10 years from now they probably won’t see any of the kids from high school.  Teach them not to take the mean, nasty, vicious comments personally or as a prediction of the future.  Their job is to grow up and find a woman who values and appreciates them.  Mean girls don’t represent everyone.

Of course, specific steps depend on your situation and the people involved.

Don’t believe studies that supposedly prove that mean girls are an insignificant factor.  Don’t believe that if your daughter ignores their meanness or treats them with caring and friendship, they’ll stop being abusive.  Real bullies, mean girls and mean women, take offerings of sweetness and friendship as weakness and an invitation to prey on you more.

As Azar Nafisi, author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran” and “Things I’ve Been Silent About” said, “My parents did not bring me happiness.  They armed me for the battle of life.”

Are you arming your daughter to stop mean girls?

Recession-Stimulated Bullying and Abusive Self-Talk at Work

During economic ice ages or recessions, when times get hard, hardness tends to run rampant.  Most people are justifiably afraid they’ll lose their jobs and the lives they planned.  Will they get laid off or downsized through no fault of their own?  What will happen to their savings, insurance, college and retirement funds?  Will they be able to keep their homes or even eat next month? How do people react in the face of their recession-stimulated fears?  What type of bullying, harassment and abuse will increase at work?  How can we decrease negative self-talk that increases stress and destroys self-esteem and self-confidence?

Harassment by Leaders and Managers Managers and leaders will squeeze more from themselves and staff in order to reduce costs and stay afloat.  But some managers and leaders will abuse employees and subordinates just because they know they can.  Many people will tolerate bullying and abuse because they’re afraid they’ll lose their jobs if they don’t give in.  But don’t give in to bullying, harassment or obnoxious treatment.  You are still protected from those abuses.  Don’t be pugnacious in return, but do insist on politeness and decent treatment.  Know the law, get allies and advisors, and document on your home computer.

Bullying by Coworkers Expect a huge increase in stealth bullying by coworkers and managerial peers.  Many will think that their survival requires them to get rid of you.  Some will become masters of backstabbing, criticism, sarcasm, snide put-downs, blaming, spreading rumors and gossip, smear tactics, taking credit from you, and forming cliques.  They’ll smile when they do it.  Keep your opinions to yourself and watch out for people who produce nothing, suck up and cover their backs.  Form your own clique of productive people you trust.  Also, ally with someone productive who has great people skills and a sense of what’s happening throughout the whole office.

Negative Self Talk The worst problem will be a dramatic increase in this type of “self-bullying.”  Your inner voices will make dire predictions of the future, tell you that you’re helpless in the grip of huge forces beyond your control and predict that, no matter how hard you try, you’ll inevitable fail.  Your supercritical inner voices will try to stress, depress and discourage you, and make you give up.  Your inner voices, full of self-questioning and self-doubt, can erode your self-esteem and self-confidence, destroy your hope and immobilize you.

Self-bullying is the most destructive form of bullying because it saps your will to overcome your circumstances.  Self-bullying can rob you of your determination, courage, strength and skill.  With those voices shouting or whispering in your ear, it’s impossible to gather yourself and make consistent, focused effort.  If you let fear and self-bullying destroy your strength and will, you won’t have the right stuff, you won’t do the right thing and the economic tide will pull you under.

You know which people spoke to you in those voices.  You know who really didn’t like or respect or appreciate you.  And which people thought they’d motivate you better by beating you down.  In either case, whether they ridicule your efforts or are simply certain of the bleak future they predict, their old style is no good for you now.  You need encouraging self-coaching now, not self-bullying.

In addition to finding a great coach or therapist to guide you in the inner work necessary to convert those voices into effective coaches, there’s a lot you can do to help yourself.

Turn off the parts of the outer world that feed fear, despair and depression.  Turn off the television and radio; don’t read newspapers or magazines; stop checking the snippets of fear on your smart phone.  Don’t waste your life being discouraged by endless analysis of what’s wrong and the latest expert’s predictions of impending and long lasting doom.  Walk away politely from people who wallow in fear and panic.  You don’t need those moment-to-moment, panic-making obsessions to know what you need to do to stay strong and do your best.

Look around.  Who doesn’t waste their time worrying about the economy, but instead, handles things in as little time and with as little wasted energy as possible?  Who has an inner light that gives them joy even when they don’t have all the comfort and toys they want?  Ask them how they look at the world.

Make new friends and acquaintances who stimulate your strength, courage and joy.  Find other great people to stand with.  In one swift and mighty sweep, end the self-doubt, the need to analyze and question, the self-bullying and brainwashing.  You have great sources of inner strength and power, if you would but let yourself feel them.  You have the guts and grit to thrive in this little ice age.  Your ancestors did and you have their strong genes.

Don’t give in to self-bullying or harassment or abuse by other people.  Overcome your fears.  Be a courageous leader, wherever you are in your company.

Emerson was right when he said, “What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”