The Bully Victim

I remember in grade five, I confronted the kid, who for years preceding, had routinely pushed me off my bike, pulled my hair and called me names.

We met in the back forty and for a wondrous 40 seconds or so, we kicked and scratched the crap out of each other. I was never afraid of this kid and his bullying tactics - I was annoyed by the inconvenience of getting pummeled out of the seeming blue; if there was any fear in the matter, it was of being caught fighting back, getting caught in a fight, and thus being put in the same category by authority (adults, teachers etc) as the perpetrator.

Plus, deep in my heart I knew the best thing was to walk away - however, after years of walking away, when the opportunity came to confront it that day in the woods, I took it. When our parents, horrified, asked what had happened, neither of us would admit to anything. We'd settled our karma and moved on - without any outside help, or compartmentalization of which one of us was the bully, and which one was the victim.

Somehow we knew we were both simultaneously responsible for the discourse, and it was easier to keep our mouths shut vs project falsehood on the matter.

This kid never bothered me again, although his younger brother liked to rip the heads and limbs off my Barbie dolls any chance he got. Our parents were friends, so we were often together whether we wanted to be or not.

A bit more insight into the development of the discourse between myself and this other child. The kid that used to kick me and scratch me was the same kid that at the age of five, innocently showed me 'his' when I showed him 'mine' -naked together in a closet, comparing male and female genitalia.

Who knows, maybe it was unrequited love that sparked his ill treatment of me later on, perhaps he wanted to wipe the look of contempt off the face of someone he had a crush on. Somehow, I knew that I played as equal a role in the whole bullying thing as he did.

The so-called victim at work, in this case, cost the Canadian government a lot of money in lost wages, severance pay, and company moral.

Here's how it went - the secretary of the agency brought personal issues to work and for whatever reasons, felt they should be solved there. This person was always a 'victim of this' or 'victim of that' and was continuously soliciting help from higher-ups for personal matters on company time.

I was the main target for the seeking of this assistance as I was knowledgeable on the topic she needed help with. Every day, this person would bully me with questions and requests for help with personal matters - matters that to me, were really not as big of a deal as she made them out to be.

I tried the usual protocol for dealing with this, starting with telling her that I didn't mind helping, but perhaps at lunch or after work, since her requests were taking me away from my job. This, for whatever reasons, infuriated this person as she apparently saw her situation to be more important than me getting work done.

Soon enough, she was going to other employees at the agency and telling lies about me, she refused to do the secretarial work for me that she was supposed to be doing, and continued asking me for help - these requests grew to asking me for help doing her work for the agency, and not just personal issues. She used all sorts of 'disabilities' to maintain her victim status - dyslexia, mental health, personal problems.

Pretty soon she was the center of attention in the office and it was a complete and utter mess.

She continued to bully me, now saying derogatory things to me, snarling at me when I came into work vs greeting me pleasantly, claiming I had a personal vendetta against her for not helping her with her problems on company time. I know now that it was an attempt to sabotage my employment and to bring me down - this woman was severely jealous of my position, my education and who knows what else. There was an aura of insecurity about her that brought the whole office to its knees trying to placate her.

Eventually, she was fired, and let go with a healthy severance pay. The office was in a 'secretarial shambles' in her wake. We were shocked to discover that she had been hiding documents in obscure places and watching while everyone else in the office scrambled to find what they needed.

She left the office literally screaming bloody murder about suing the agency for unlawful firing, going to labor relations, claiming she'd been bullied by everyone in the office, the whole nine. It was like being in the wake of a volcano that had erupted and burnt everything in it's radius. The rest of the office was shell-shocked.

Dealing with a bully victim in the workplace is devastating - and the ironic thing is, the bully claims to be a victim as if it's a right of passage. And, if we look at the victim perpetrator paradigm, perhaps it is - again, today's bully is yesterday's victim, and vice versa.

Now, to the bully victim I met online. Actually, I have met more than one online bully, simply through the content that is projected, I just haven't been sucked in as I was in this case study (why? because this case study is my karma).

Pages that claim "we're all victims" of bullying are written by bullies in disguise, if you ask me, claiming victim hood in order to continue the victim-perpetrator cycle. This is true, because I am not a victim of bullying unless I perceive it as my karma for past deeds done.

Bullies that are unaware of being perpetrators, however, want folks to share in their perceived victim hood - misery loves company, perhaps. This one bully in particular uses the word victim to hide behind, all the while behaving like a bully. I was initially pulled into the story, (why? because there was something in it for me- seemingly beneficial interaction online) and gave this person merit for their stance, gave them the benefit of the doubt (I no longer bother doing this - when I see information that blames the bully only without taking the responsibility of the victim into context, I don't bother reading as half the story is literally missing). I withdrew from participating on this person's pages, thinking that was enough to get away from them.

Seeing we'd met online, there was no opportunity to duke it out in the back forty. I received some accusatory emails and kept them for documentation, plus forwarded the info to the regulatory party for the online program we both participated in. This was all I did on the matter until I saw them outright bullying another person online.

When I saw this, I realized that indeed, the victim-perpetrator paradigm was at play (the victim-perpetrator paradigm describes how a person will go back and forth between bully and victim, using whichever side holds the most advantage at the time). I knew I was in for trouble when I called this person on being a bully, but like with the kid in grade five, I was ready to fight and take on whatever bully karma I may have vs be a victim. It didn't seem right for this person to claim to be a victim of me when in the meantime, they were harassing me with unwanted emails, comments in my guestbook, and posting articles online that painted a picture of me as a bully, or someone with a 'bad heart'.

I took this person's advice they give online in order to confront them. I confronted them, called them on their behavior, and sure enough, I became their target. This person went from person to person online, trying to solicit support against me, perhaps unaware that folks were relaying the information back to me. This person wanted support against me for calling them on their bullying behavior - which as you can see, kept the victim-perpetrator paradigm going in full swing.

Again, not giving the bully any 'fuel' is imperative, because all interaction will be used as such.

Othercat: "One more way to stop thinking of yourself as a victim is to turn it around and think of it a whole new way. Think about all the time and effort this bully puts into trying to make you miserable. The only time they even enter your thoughts is immediately after they bully you. But they plot and plan and think about you all the time. For anyone to spend that much time thinking about you, well, that must make you a pretty special person."