Having been the bully, been bullied and stopped others from being bullied I had to ask myself some questions:
Why do people bully others? And how can Hypnotherapy and EMDR
help both victims and bullies alike?
We have all experienced bullying in some form at some time in our lives, whether it was at school or in work. One of the most common questions posed during or after is “Why?”
Why me? What did I do to them? Why do they act like that?
The answer is never as simple as it was this or that, unsurprisingly it is usually a number of things, some of which you may be surprised by.
Why people bully:
Insecurity in themselves
Low self esteem
Jealousy of other people
Triggered into a stress response which comes out in anger
A cry for help
Unstable home life
Worry and
Feelings of loss of control
Very few bullies are bad people, rather, they are people in bad situations. People who are hurt, hurt others. We need to address these issues. And see bullies as the hurting people they are.
I do not condone what bullies do by stating these things. I am just aware that bad behaviour often has a deep-seated cause, understanding those causes can in fact improve life for everyone in the situation, including the bullies.
Similarly when these hurt people impact their victims we see many of the same things in their victims lives:
Insecurity
Low self esteem
Lacking in confidence
Stress responses
Worry
Loss of control
And may even begin to have trouble at home and in school.
Perhaps unknowingly, these hurt people pass on their issues to their victims, and in no small measure, where a hurt person may have one or two of the listed issues, their victims can have all and more of the emotional issues. It is for this reason that we need to work with those bullying others. Whether it be in the workplace or at school.
One of the first problems encountered is no one wants to admit to being a bully. Bearing this in mind it is perhaps more effective to allow an anonymous response to an offer of help as in treating those being bullied and those bullying the same. It shouldn’t matter to the person treating the injured parties which of the two they are, rather they should concentrate on what that person wants to achieve from sessions provided.
There are two primary therapy techniques I would use for both, Hypnosis and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Hypnosis is a deeply relaxed state which allows the subconscious, our primitive protective mechanism, to listen to positive changes a person wants to make. Considering the above list, how relaxed do you think a bully, or indeed their victim is at any one time? Almost never if you imagine the victim waiting for the next attack or the bully waiting to be hauled up in front of parents and teachers or indeed their boss.
Keeping someone on edge or depriving them of sleep has been used as a form of torture in the past, add to that fear, anxiety and anger, and you have a volatile mix of emotions that could implode or explode at any point.
Using the hypnotic state to first relax and then identify and treat past hurts or problems enables the veil of hypnosis to cushion all realisations. Giving the client distance to review situations with the proper perspective.
EMDR enables any of the abnormally high negative emotions to be put into perspective and help the client to process them safely in a waking state, especially if sleep had previously been elusive.
How many schools or workplaces offer a comprehensive solution to bullying? Very few unfortunately which is why now, more than ever before, we need to address both sides head on.