Why Do Some People Like To Bully Others?

Bullying is an act of aggression against another person designed to make their lives miserable. If you watch a nature programme on television, you'll see all manner of animals chasing and attacking others. But this can't be called bullying. It's purely instinctive.

Humans, on the other hand, don't go charging around killing one another for food. This is why bullying is such an obnoxious, insidious practice. The bully will find someone who's a lot weaker than he/she, and simply pick on them. They revel in the laughter this raises from other workers. So these people revel in dominance.

Love's a fertile breeding ground for certain types of dominance. If you meet and marry a person who loves you for who you are, whom you respect and are respected in return, then obviously enough you've found the right partner for life. But if they start doing things for you that you never asked them to do in the first place, then let's hope to goodness you find this out before your walk to the altar.

The problem here is that they will probably turn round and ask you for something horrendously expensive or perhaps extremely difficult to do. You can be faced with the situation where that person turns round and say;

"After all the love I've shown you and all the things I've given you, now you can't even do this one little thing for me."

You're being dominated. There's no other way of putting it. However, while domination equals aggression, it doesn't mean to say that the aggressor doesn't love the person they're dominating. It can be an unconscious aggression. The person doesn't mean to hurt their partner. It's just their nature.

But when we come to bullying proper, then that's an entirely different kettle of fish. Verbal and/or physical bullying at this level can wreck people's lives. Bullies know instinctively how people function, but at the same time have a complete lack of empathy.

All right, but why are some people bullied and others, not. Their favourite victims are people who are hard workers, but shy and nervous. Why hard workers? Because a shy and nervous person is afraid of being sacked if he/she doesn't stay hard at work.

There are certain needs that we all have. Safety and Security, Quality Attention, Privacy and Reflection time to name but three. The bully will know instinctively what these needs are, and will go out of his/her way to block them from his victim.

The bully delights, too, in managing to have his victims 'sent to Coventry'. In other words, social exclusion, where the victim is totally ignored by all his fellow workers. He manages this by telling a lie, perhaps, about his victim, so that everyone joins in.

The only thing you can do is to stiffen the sinews and report the behaviour.