Bullying at Home

More often than people realise bullying occurs in the home environment. These are very difficult cases because the one oppressing you is a loved one or somebody close that you probably trust greatly. A bully in the home is also the most difficult because it is very hard to admit that in the sanctuary that is your home, where one would normally feel safety and security, you feel afraid, anxious, and hopeless.

Who can be bullying you at home?

• your partner
• your family
• your neighbours
• your friends

Many times when one is being bullied at home it is by their partner. When you hear the word “love ” you probably do not want to believe that the person you have chosen to share your home and life with could be capable of harming you. This is very dangerous because when you love someone you have a higher tolerance, allowing them to get away with more than others. It is also very hard because you feel an obligation to your partner because you made promises to each other that you may not want to break, making it nearly impossible to speak out against him or her.

When your partner is bullying you, it is also can be impossible to tell anyone because you do not wish to have people believe that your union is anything less than perfect, and you may also be concerned if any children are involved.

You may be wondering where you draw the line between sibling rivalry and ostracizing you from the family. The family unit is a solid foundation to anyone's life, and many adults say their family defined who they are. However, beneath this happy appearance can be a hidden menace.

A casual fight between you and your mother or father can turn into them leaving a mark on you forever. If they repeatedly pick another sibling over you, it can lead to you feeling left out. Double standards are most definitely a form of bullying. You may, however, decide to brush it under the rug as though you somehow were supposed to be learning something or deserved it and you don't. It is important to know that bullying happens repeatedly and for no apparent reason.

Sometimes if you're being bullied within the family unit that person may not even realize what they are doing to you. This doesn’t mean you should just brush every offense under the rug if you repeatedly feel as though they are bullying you and they do not stop after you bring it to their attention, then you may wish to seek outside assistance.

Your friends are also very close to you. They may even be like family but a friend can bully you as well. A friend can take advantage of you and make you do stupid things to be in their group. You can also have a friend that treats you as a convenience friend meaning that they are only friends with you when it makes them look good or they gain something from it, but other times they say mean and hurtful things behind your back.

The first thing you must realise is that this person is not really your friend and what he or she is doing is wrong. A real friend would not make you earn their friendship or change who you are if you wish to remain friends with them. A friend is someone you are yourself with. If for any reason they make you harm yourself or do things that you know are wrong, then they are bullying you. They may play on your emotions to make you give them things like money or objects they say they will return, then never do. The best way to deal with this would be to remove yourself from this person or group of people.

The last but not least place that you may encounter a bully on home territory is your neighbours. Because these people live in such a close proximity to you, it is very rare that you will never have any interaction with these people. Again, it is hard to draw bounders between “my garden is prettier than yours” and “let me kill your prize rose bush.”

A neighbour can cause you distress by deliberately playing the radio too loud at two in the morning or parking their car in front of your home so that you cannot. Though these things may seem trivial, they are a form of bullying because they are taking control of bit and pieces of your life that you are meant to be in control of. The less trivial things are if your neighbour tries to get you evicted out of your apartment because they have a personal grudge against you that you seem to know nothing about. Bullies have many faces including people we love the most.

How do they bully?

• face-to-face
• online
• through others
• through fear
• by taking away
  • your sense of belonging
  • your feeling of safety
  • your being valued
  • your control

There are many ways that bullies in the home environment can choose to strike, but regardless of how it is done it is terribly hurtful. One of the many ways that a bully can attack you is face to face. Now this can range from verbally insulting you in front of other family members, such as children, to take authority away. If a child sees you being disrespected and bullied by your parent or partner, they will believe that they do not need to respect you either.

A bully can also start a conversation and proceed to openly mock you in front of friends to make you appear unintelligent. When a bully has the ability to make you feel worthless in front of others, then they know that they have the ability to control the conversation at hand. When you lose control of a conversation or of a situation, it makes you vulnerable meaning the bully has won.

They want you feel as though you have no control so that they can step in and control you for their own selfish gain. A face to face conflict could also turn into physical abuse. A bully uses face to face bullying because they are able to see you in fear and that is what drives them. A bully likes bullying because they want to feel better about themselves through controlling you. Another way a bully can control you is through other family members. A sibling, for example, could bully you into believing that you do not agree with them over a certain situation, then they will turn a parent or another valued family member against you. It goes back to sibling rivalry, only unlike when a child says “I didn't do it. He or she did!” it is a fiercer competition for affections.

Most family units centre on a number of things but it may come down to children. If you are being bullied by your parent or partner they could threaten to take your child or children away from you so through the threat of you losing your children, you let your parent or partner bully you. A bully could also go out and turn others against you so that they can stay far away from the situation.

If someone is trying to bully you in the family, they may turn other members against you so that at a family gathering, perhaps for the holidays, no one will talk to you or they will start saying mean things about you because of the bully that planted those ideas in their heads. If the bully is someone respected within the family unit, it can be especially difficult. This can become very distressing, because if the bully starts turning the rest of your family against you, they are taking away your security and safety net.

Your family is supposed to be the ones who take care of you and protected you from the rest of the world and, seeing that as humans we are naturally sociable creatures, we need that since of belonging to survive without that safety net a person is left completely opened to whatever the bully's wishes are. A bully knows that there is power in numbers because they are one person trying to make you feel as lonely as they do so they want to take away people they know will back you up. In this case, the bully will purposefully put you in situations where you will feel left out of what is happening and eventually you will feel out of place even in your own home environment.

If you do not feel safe or you feel as though you do not belong anywhere, they will be able to better take advantage of you. Most of all, a bully wants you to be afraid and worthless. A bully in the home environment will do this by taking away your responsibility or making you do more work then you normally would because your partner refuses to share the load. If your spouse is bullying you, they may use threats to bring fear to you such as losing your house, possessions, children or anything else that they know you value.

Bullies are very creative in the way they choose to go about hurting their targets. In the family unit, it is very easy for the bully because they know you very well, perhaps too well, and that is a perfected tactic that a bully uses. They want to know your greatest fears so that they can use whatever it is against you to try to destroy you. Again, the thing to remember is to know the difference between joking around and when someone is seriously attempting to hurt you and take the necessary precautions to protect yourself and the ones you love.