What is Bullying?

Bullying is any situation in which someone else is making you feel bad about yourself on a regular basis through a number of seemingly small, yet hurtful actions, causing you to suffer physically, mentally, or emotionally. A bully's ultimate goal is to break down your self-esteem for their own personal gain. His or her actions can happen in many different ways.
The bullying can be physical, mental, emotional and the bully can use

• spoken word
• written words
• physical means

Bullying is any situation in which someone else is making us feel bad about ourselves on a regular basis and putting us a negative frame of mind like feeling

• helpless
• hopeless
• worthless

Sometimes bullying will take the form of spreading hurtful rumours or outright lies to co-workers or friends to hurt your image. This could include posting these things on a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace or even hacking your account to make it look like you are saying these things yourself!

With the rise of technology, cyber bullying has become an issue. Constant harassment online or through text messages does fall under the category of bullying, and can be very damaging to you mentally or emotionally. Not to mention, this can make you look bad to current and future employers who could look at your Facebook and MySpace before hiring you.

A bully may purposefully leave you out of activities or projects. These projects can range from you being left out making a decision with other family members or co-worker purposefully leaving you out of an event that they knew meant a lot to you or could have given you a big break within the workplace. Being singled out for different treatment may be especially apparent in groups at work where leaving you out of a group can cause you to miss hearing about important information you may have needed in order to do your job. The bully may make degrading comments about you in front of a group in an attempt to undermine you.

Situations can also occur where there is not just one single person carrying out the bullying. This can occur in several ways. The bully could be one person who has gotten a group of other people to help or back them in their efforts, some who like feeling powerful and important and others who are afraid of becoming the next target.

The bully could also be controlling the group from behind the scenes, not part of the group directly bullying you, but still orchestrating it. Bullying could also come from an organisation itself, especially if the company is controlled by a bully. Organisational bullying occurs when your employer places unreasonable demands upon the employees, such as forcing you to work extra overtime hours.

Destroying or stealing your personal belongings is also part of bullying since the bully wants you to feel unsecure and worthless. Destroying physical property is especially common in cases of bullying at home while in the workplace stealing ideas or projects occurs more frequently.

Forcing you to do things that you do not want to do is also a classic trademark of bullies. This can happen at work where extra work or responsibility is placed upon you for no valid reason and you have no choice but to accept it. This can also happen at home where manipulation can come in the form of repeated derogatory comments and extreme criticism that are not deserved. These comments may be extremely difficult to ignore, especially since they may pick at our insecurities. Bullies may set unrealistic goals or deadlines for you, which suddenly change either in timeframe or criteria; you may not be informed of these changes until too late.

In some cases, bullying can morph from verbal to physical violence, such as hitting or punching. Not all bullies resort to physical violence, but in some cases, especially in a home environment, this can and does happen. As you can see the ways the bullies hurt their victims differently from simply leaving you out to causing you bodily harm. This definition however only scratches the surface of what bullying truly is. The other component of bullying is the effect which their actions have on you. These effects may be physical, mental, or emotional. The physical results of bullying are visible - they may be wounds on your body or damaged or stolen property.

If occurring in a work environment, bullying may cause poor job performance leading to disciplinary action or warnings. What is more difficult to measure is the mental and emotional hurt that you are feeling unlike the financial costs from loss of pay through to the costs of therapy. Bullying takes a heavy toll on you emotionally causing you to feel worthless, left out, and leaves you with damaged self-esteem and self-worth.

Mentally, bullying can have a lasting effect on the way you think, how you view certain situations or people, and even how you act and react in certain environments. A bully is someone who spends the time to find your weaknesses and then use it for their own selfish gain, most likely to cover their own insecurities.