YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hi friends.

With your kind indulgence, I'd like to unburden myself with eight thoughts about bullies. This will take two posts, with a bit more healing in the second set of four thoughts.

1. Who has time for this?
2. Bullies are stupid idiots. They lash out with unthinking rage. They better be careful with this.
3. What my counselor says.
4. "Threats" to big fish in little ponds.
5. The amazing "Cobra Kai".
6. Male aggression versus healthy vigor.
7. In which I learn I do have power, after all.
8. Where I go from here.

1. Who has time for this?

Perhaps because I am a normal, non-sick person, I not only don't, but can't consider, spending time and energy to intentionally bother someone else. Why would I want to make enemies? Why would I want to upset another human, or have more negativity in my life than is already there, which is almost too much negativity in the first place?

I have about five things to work on in my life: finding a job, increasing my physical fitness, surviving COVID and quarantine, and finding a meaningful intimate relationship. These are big, important, worthy goals. Why would I yell at a cashier, abuse a family member, or mentally torture a coworker? Who has time for this?

2. Bullies are stupid idiots. They lash out with unthinking rage. They better be careful with this.

Bullies are really stupid.

Man, I have seen karma happen to work bullies. It chills me. I've seen some stuff in my life, and I don't want to mess with karma. It comes back, so hard.

I remember, thirty years later, the rage in my early-teens bully. It was the eyes of a vicious animal. Ironically, and I'm trying not to dox him, he now works "promoting justice" for "the youth" for a well-known (and recently demonstrated deeply hypocritical) religious institution. Perhaps I say too much! Yet again, he was very public in his assault and battery of me. Again, I'd press charges today had the statute of limitations not expired. He is lucky indeed: I'd be glad to send him to prison for his crimes.

But the system (see below), the hierarchy, protects him. Funny how that happens. So much for "justice".

3. What my counselor says.

My counselor stated that my bullies must be deeply threatened by me.

They are surely not threatened by me physically or by worldly power (though I do incrementally grow in both since getting sober).

It must be some presence. All I know is that it makes them crazy.

4. "Threats" to big fish in little ponds.

Of all the bullies and self-described tough guys I've run across since getting sober, I notice two trends:

a. They rely on the hierarchy to protect them. The system.

b. They are big fish in very small ponds.

An example:

In the excellent Netflix series "Last Chance U", the first two coaches are screaming crybabies. Were any man to speak to me like that, I'd walk away. Yet, frankly, JUCO football coach in a forgotten backwater is not impressive to anyone outside these tiny towns.

Of all the bullies, they're all really tough in their little hierarchy. They seem really intent on demeaning men who intrude on their little fiefdoms.

Thoughts on loser bullies, in general

So: men lash out with blind rage to new, "threatening" men. How this is a good way to spend one's time, energy, and life is incomprehensible to me.

Part of me is genuinely sorry for these sad people. To get to the end of one's life, with their conscience weighed by knowing they were stupid troublemakers: how sad.

Yet I don't have any sympathy for them. In fact, I am actively taking steps to be less of a victim of them going forward.

I'll write more about this, especially regarding the excellent Netflix series "Cobra Kai" soon, but for now, bullies are losers.

My main experience with bullies was high school. My view was always that it was some animal instinct to be the alpha in the group. The big fish in the little pond. I always figured I was the weak one in the herd and therefore the easy target. Other members of the herd would then join in to feel like part of the group and to feel superior to me. The damage these people did to me was immense.
In my adult life, the only real bullying I experienced would have been working retail. I had one supervisor there who treated me like crap and then there was the occasional customer who would take out there anger on me because they knew I couldn't say anything to them.