If I just had the power, I would have beaten him up. If I just had the courage, I would have protected myself from this humiliation. Why did I allow him to talk to me that way in front of everyone? I am sure everyone must be laughing at me now. I want nothing but peace of mind; I hate my life.
End of Diary

It feels awful when someone bullies you. It makes you feel helpless, weak, ashamed, and sometimes worthless. However, if you understood the bully’s mentality, you will not just feel good, but you are actually going to pity him.

Why people bully others

A Bully appears to be strong, in control, and confident, But the truth is that bullying is some kind of compensation that the bully uses to get over some problems that he is suffering from. The following points will clarify the truth about bullies by letting you know the inner workings of their minds.

The bully will usually bully others because:

• Bullying to Compensate for Insecurity: If a person was bullied before by his parents or by other people, he might become a bully and feel in control. Some bullies feel insecure, and that’s why they bully others.
• Bullying To Compensate for Weaknesses: Some Bullies are really weak, so for them to feel good about themselves, they have to find someone weaker than themselves to exert their control over them.
• Bullying to Compensate for being unpopular: I am not talking about the bully’s perceived popularity, but I am talking about the bully’s idea of his popularity. Many of those bullies and attention seekers you see every day feel neglected and unloved even though they may appear to be popular. By bullying others, the bully grabs some attention to compensate for his feelings of being neglected.

The first step in dealing with bullies is to consider that you are dealing with an insecure and emotionally unstable person.

Dealing with Bullying

To deal with bullying, you should do two things. The first step is to build self-confidence to prevent bullies from thinking that you are a potential target and the second one is to learn how to be assertive to prevent them from bulling you.

If you noticed how bullies pick their targets, you would always realize that they pick up people who appear to be weaker than them.

Assertive communication can help you appear much stronger and in control. This may be enough to stop the bully from bullying you as he will not think of you as a potential bullying target.

The bully always believes that he is stronger than his target. If you can prove him wrong, then he might never bully you again. You can do this by being assertive and by using assertive body language gestures.

At the same time, building self-confidence will prevent his comments from having any impact on your mood.

I know that this might not be as simple as it sounds, but it’s certainly a surefire way for dealing with bullying if you were patient enough to apply it.

Self-confidence and bullying

Lately, new studies claimed that most bullies don’t lack confidence and bully others for other reasons. The people who supported these studies said that bullying happens because the bully gets raised in a family that teaches him that violence is the best way to solve his problems.

While their findings seem logical, they still didn’t explain why bullies bully others even if they gain nothing out of it. So the proper conclusion we can make is that bully is trying to fulfill a certain psychological need through his actions.

Yes, a bully might have learned that violence is the best way to solve his problems, but he won’t use this violence unless he faces some problems (like finding himself unpopular, for example).