Doug's "ten first thoughts" on bullying

Doug Wilhelm was recently asked for his "first 10 thoughts that come into your mind, when you hear the words 'bully' or 'bullying'." Here are his responses:

1. Loneliness. Bullying is extremely lonely, both for those who receive it and, often, for those who inflict it.

2. Fear. Kids in early adolescence, when bullying is most severe, are almost all scared. Bullying comes out of this. Kids inflict pain on other kids to show that they're more popular, more powerful—and out of fear that if they don't deal out this pain, someone will deal it to them.

3. Memory. It's amazing how many adults remember with great specificity and detail how they were bullied in middle school! People all the time tell me their memories, and they always involve a particular person, and particular incidents, that are remembered so vividly. We may remember nothing else about this time of life—we generally regard it as painful and cruel and bewildering—but, for some reason, we remember this.

4. Trust. Kids who are bullied severely often grow up feeling that they can't trust other people, that they're not safe with others. This is very sad.

5. Columbine. The two students at Columbine High School in Colorado who murdered 12 fellow students and a teacher in April 1999, before killing themselves, had been severely bullied, and were looking particularly to shoot athletes, as they'd been bullied especially by "jocks." In fact, after a rash of U.S. school shootings around the time of Columbine, the U.S. Secret Service conducted in-depth interviews with all the surviving school shooters, and found that 75 percent said they had been severely bullied.

6. Compassion. Bullying involves a lack of it—it's a statement that the victim has no feelings. In fact, bullying is basically the denying of another person's humanity. This is why it's so important to address—because when bullying is successful it's a seed ground for all the other forms of denying people's humanity: racism, religious and political extremism, and so forth.

7. Popularity. Kids in early adolescence feel so insecure that they'll often do almost anything for popularity. This leads to ...

8. Bystanders. Kids who watch, or mildly participate, in acts of severe bullying when they know and feel that it's wrong and hurtful often do so because they're terrified that if they speak out, they'll be next. This insecurity of early adolescence haunts everyone involved with bullying.

9. Girls. There is more and more attention being paid to so-called "girl bullying," or bullying that centers on feelings and social belonging. Girls tend to bully much more often than we used to think, mostly in groups that exclude or humiliate certain girls. Often those groups and those target girls are constantly changing, making things feel so much more insecure for girls, often, than for boys at these ages. But I'm told that these days, because physical boy-type bullying is less and less tolerated in schools, boys are also becoming skilled at "girl bullying," which is sometimes also called mental, emotional, or social bullying.

10. Power. It's surprisingly often true that bullies are those who have power and status in the social hierarchy, and that their victims are those who have little or no power and status. In fact, I often think that bullying is really all about power—and our best responses involve challenging and helping young people to find their positive power: the power to tell the truth about how bullying feels ... the power to stand up and stop being guilty bystanders ... the power to face the consequences of your own actions.