Getting more help
- The most obvious way is by having a face-to-face conversation. Find a quiet time, when you can talk to the person in private. If you are telling a teacher or youth worker, ask for a private word. If you are worried that the person bullying you will be suspicious, you could always pretend that you need help with some work. If your school has a peer mentoring scheme and you would prefer to talk to someone closer to your age, you could try going there first.
- Start to write down what is happening. Visit the Diary Room on the BBClic for more information about recording what is happening to you. Some schools have a Bully Box where you can post the form. Otherwise you could leave it somewhere that you know the person you want to tell will get it, like in the office with his/her name on it.
- Call Childline on 0800 11 11. Their lines are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it won’t cost you anything. You can speak to a trained counsellor who will listen to your situation and can advise you on the ways you can get help to solve the problem and talk through your fears and anxieties with you.
What else can I do?
People who bully do it because it makes them feel powerful to make another person feel upset, scared and harassed. They do it to have an effect on that person. Anything that you can do to give the impression that you are not bothered by the bullying will make it less satisfying for the person doing it. For example:
Try to hang onto and remember the things that you are good at and make you feel good. Make the time to do those things. This can help to cancel out the way the bullying makes you feel.
There are probably quite a few things that you are better at than the person bullying you. Keep that in mind and take what he or she says about you with a lorry-load of salt.
If you are being verbally bullied, try to act like you’re not bothered and that you think what’s being said is ridiculous.
Try to hold your head up, even when you wish the ground would open up and swallow you. If you refuse to look like a victim, the person bullying you may well get bored.
- Try not to hit them or abuse them back. It’s hard, but if you do you are quite likely to get into trouble and it will distract from the real issue -their bullying behaviour. You don’t have to be a doormat, just don’t be provoked into retaliating because that’s exactly what they want.
In our second set of trainings, we were given problems as peer listeners, like someone not being able to talk about a problem on the first visit and how we as a peer listener would react and encourage them. We spoke about how to use body language and tone of voice to help the other person.
We also talked about empathy – how you put yourself in that person's shoes and try to understand how they feel. This led into the effects of bullying and how bullying can take away your self-esteem and your confidence.
How easy it is to begin to believe nasty things that people bully you about like being fat, skinny, ugly, not tall enough, or short. The group started to discuss suicide; two of us shared our stories about other young people who had committed suicide.
One person told the group about a young boy who told the whole school he was gay and then got bullied by other young people in that school. We started to discuss homophobic bullying. Most reactions were very positive, like ‘If it was my best friend it wouldn’t matter to me because they would still be the same person’, ‘Just because they are gay don’t mean they fancy you’, ‘I think you should you accept people for who they are’ and ‘I don’t know how I would react’.
We then went on to discuss the subject of racist bullying and how we were confused about the word ‘coloured’ and whether was it politically correct.
Some of us said that it meant that you were just another colour, others felt people would find it offensive.
One yp asked ‘how could you identify someone without using that term.’
Descriptive good, pointing out difference bad
The use of language and terms was very interesting. We were encouraged to find our own level at where we're comfortable; and decided that as a guide you can’t get into trouble for using language that is descriptive. For example, to call someone ‘coloured’ you are pointing out that they are different and the assumption is that everyone else is white; if you describe someone as ‘black’ or ‘Chinese’ that is descriptive.