Where Do Bullying and Jealousy Come From?

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
- Lazarus Long, fictional character in Robert A Heinlein novels

"Neurotic" in this case may be taken to mean "emotionally excessive to the point of being harmful."

Insecurity breeds jealousy. The two are not irrevocably linked. Insecurity can also lead to bullying, to lack of an ability to commit to a relationship, to various emotional problems other than neuroses, to addictions, to violence and rage, to bad relationships and to divorce.
Consider how prevalent these are in our society.

They are so common that social scientists refer to them as social problems, meaning that so many people have these problems that the numbers alone create further problems in churches and clubs, in communities, in the workplace, in legislative assemblies of government, in countries, even at the United Nations.

People learn to feel secure during their maturation, as they grow from children, through adolescence, into adulthood and beyond. They key word in that last sentence is "learn." People learn to feel secure. It doesn't come as a matter of course. People learn insecurity as well.

If security or lack of it is learned, who teaches it? We all help in the process of teaching insecurity. Insecurity is another word for fear. People learn insecurity in their families, as children, in school (not intentionally in the classroom), in the playground, in various groups and unhealthy friendships. They learn it from television and newspapers that encourage us to fear each other, on the street, in offices, in elevators, in our homes. They learn it from clerks in stores who ignore them while helping other customers who came in later.

Where do people learn security? That which should be learned is usually taught by someone, isn't it?

No one teaches people how to be secure. No one teaches them that fear is not just harmful, but unnecessary. In the United States, the recently retired president, self-titled "the war president," taught the necessity of believing in a War On Terror (with what results?) and he personally controlled the status of alerts (Amber Alert, Red Alert).

Learning to avoid fear and how to feel secure can be taught. It's a matter of understanding certain facts and mastering some skills. If it can be taught and if it's so important and so damaging to us personally and to our communities and our countries, we should be teaching it.
The information needed and the skills to be learned are available. They are neither hidden nor secret. They simply are not taught.

Are you afraid of anything? Do you feel insecure? Lots of people do, but it's not a necessary consequence of modern society as ultra-conservatives would have us believe.We fear and we feel insecure because we have not learned how to avoid these harmful emotions.

Someone has something to gain by making us feel afraid and insecure in such massive numbers. Of that you may be certain. I won't point fingers because it will not take much thinking on your part to figure out who is responsible for your fear and insecurity.

The economy is bad, are you afraid to lose your job? Unless you die within the next two years, you will survive the recession and get another job. Plan now what you would do and how you would go about it if you were to lose your job. If you don't make a plan, maybe you have something to worry about. If you do, you won't need to worry because you will know exactly what you will do.

If your spouse died or unexpectedly announced his/her desire for a divorce, what would you do? With a plan, these events would bring unhappiness. But they would not necessarily destroy your life. Having a plan of what you would do in case of tragedy is not a self fulfilling prophesy. It's simply being ready.

There are two ways to avoid insecurity and fear. You learned them by reading this article.
It would be wise if this kind of information and these skills were taught to everyone. It could be taught in schools, if we wanted it.

It would cost almost nothing to prepare teachers to teach social and emotional skills. Just give each teacher a book about it and the authority to teach it.

Imagine a world without fear.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow secure and self confident children into adults who won't contribute to the social problems we endure today and who will lead emotionally and socially healthy lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Behind The Curtains Of Bullies And Cheaters

Forgiveness is an inner correction that lightens the heart. It is for our peace of mind first. Being at peace, we will now have peace to give to others, and this is the most permanent and valuable gift we can possibly give.
- Gerald Jampolsky, American psychiatrist, founder of the International Center for Attitudinal Healing

Forgiveness is only necessary because we believe that others should treat us fairly and they have not, thus we try to hold their offences against them.

This belief in the need for fairness between people is built into us. For a long time it was said that "Life's not fair, get over it." A study completed recently (at the University of Toronto, as I recall) indicated that babies have a sense of fairness. Given a choice, the subject babies tended to turn to a person who had done something fairly and away from someone who had done something we might consider unfair, and that was a fairness judgment involving other babies, not themselves. A sense of fairness, it seems, came along with our genetic material when we were born.

That sense of fairness usually serves us well. Most people are fair with us as we are with them. That builds a kind of unspoken trust, even if it involves a shopkeeper we have just met, because we have had good experiences with other shopkeepers in the past. When someone betrays that trust, we treat it as an act of aggression, as if the person had thrown down the proverbial glove and challenged us to battle.

Those who do not act on their impulse to be aggressive in the face of unfair treatment may hold a grudge. "I'll never go back to that store and I will tell everyone I know for the rest of my life to never darken its door."

The thing about grudges, about acts of unfairness, about betrayals of trust, is that most of the time the offender doesn't know he has committed a violation of our expectations. Moreover, he usually wouldn't care if he did know. With rare exceptions, the offender remains guilt-free. The offended person is the one who gets hurt.

That hurt is totally self inflicted. The hurt usually causes more grief to the person who adopts it than the consequences of the original offence.

Most people believe that people who hurt themselves--for whatever reason--are not entirely sane. No matter how just the cause of the offended person, hurting themselves by holding a grudge or throwing a punch and landing in jail, or beginning a shouting match is considered anti-social.

Everyone accepts that people are not perfect. What we find difficult to accept is when the imperfections of others play themselves out on us through acts we perceive as unfair. It doesn't seem to matter how difficult the life of an offender has been before the offence, the offensive act itself gets the dander of the offended person up.

When the emotions surrounding such situations are laid bare, don't they seem kind of ridiculous?
That's where forgiveness comes in. In most cases, when we forgive we do a great favour for ourselves. Only when we allow ourselves that sense of peace can we spread it around to others.

As Gerald Jampolsky said, giving peace to others is the most valuable gift we can give anyone. But we must have that peace within us to share before we can give it to others.

Most people who treat us unfairly don't intend to hurt us. They just don't care. They have their own troubles and have no time for ours or our whining about them. How might we change their life by giving them forgiveness and peace?

Take this as a general rule: the most hurtful people are most in need of forgiveness and peace within themselves.

Which might give you greater satisfaction, venting your anger on someone who has offended you or giving them peace which could make their lives better for years to come? The former is faster, easier and more hurtful to ourselves.

I have had several occasions in my life to turn a bully into a friend. The first was in grade seven when I nearly strangled a bully who sat behind me in class, when he threatened to kill me at recess and he came at me with that objective in mind at the beginning of the break. I was happy that he didn't kill me and apparently he was pleased that I had let him live. We became friends for the rest of the school year. Other friendships have begun with people who began our relationship by cheating me in a business transaction.

As odd as this may sound, they needed the forgiveness, the peace I offered and the friendship overtures, likely because they lacked all of them in their personal lives. As oversimplified as it may sound, people who treat others unfairly, like bullies, need love and have neither the ready sources (such as from their mother) nor the skills to know how to make friends.

Now you're on notice. You know how to recognize people who need a friend. Someone of good character would accept that challenge.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book that (among other things) explains the background of bullying and ways for children and adults to work their way around it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Prejudice: Its Deep and Early Causes

"I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice."
- Clint Eastwood

What right does a Hollywood type have to an opinion on such an important subject? As much right as anyone else. Being a man involved with the public in many ways for so many years, Eastwood likely has a better perspective about how people act than most of us because he has been exposed to so many insecure people in filmland. Hollywood is a Mecca for insecure people.

Assume his observation is correct for the purpose of this discussion. What we have are two important parts to his statement: insecure people and those with extreme prejudice.

Why would anyone be insecure? A genetic defect? A nasty mother? Abuse as a child? The number of people who suffer from feelings of insecurity suggests that the cause is more pervasive than any of these. Almost everyone feels insecure about some things, or they should because they cannot know enough about every problem or situation they face to be able to cope with it effectively and efficiently.

The kind of insecurity that Eastwood was speaking about is basic, far deeper than not knowing enough about the kind of flat screen TV to buy. This kind goes back to childhood, specifically to unfulfilled needs.

A baby spends nearly a year in the womb before birth, 40 weeks in constant touch with its mother. After birth, the need for constant touch continues, but the amount of touch time between mother and child decreases dramatically. As the child gets older, the need continues, though not to as great an extent as before birth. The child can look after itself in childhood passtimes. A fair amount of touching is still needed. It continues throughout our lives.

That need for touch in adults is vastly underrated by most people. How it affects single people (unattached to a cohabiting other of any kind), married people who become separated or married people whose spouse dies or becomes alienated in another way is seldom addressed to the extent it deserves. A man whose wife leaves him may be a bomb waiting to explode because he doesn't know how to cope with the loss of touch as well as the loss of a way of life.

Studies have shown that we each need the equivalent of 12 hugs per day to be satisfied with our lives. The ideal would be 18 hugs. But who has time for that?

Most of us do, if we make time because we know how important touch is to our welfare--both emotional and physical health. It doesn't always have to be a hug. It could be a touch while passing in the hall, holding hands while having coffee or walking together and sleeping next to each other. A kiss and huge when leaving each other and when meeting again counts as two each.

An insufficient amount of touch will make anyone insecure to some extent. The degree will vary and it's hard to measure. In general, all unhappy people lack sufficient touch from a loved one to satisfy them. Those who have extreme prejudice have accommodated themselves to insufficient touch for many years. They may even deny their need for touch.

A prejudiced person needs someone to hurt, just as bullies do. The unfulfilled need for touch for far too long has caused them to want to hurt someone else the way they have suffered themselves. They seldom want to talk about how they hurt or about their need.

Prejudice and bullying function at an emotional level, which is where our need for touch comes in. Lack of sufficient touch shows itself in emotional hurt, which may demonstrate itself in inappropriate behaviours. Sometimes the inappropriate behaviours involve touching the other person.

Now you know something about human needs that most people do not. Use your knowledge wisely and productively.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to bring important human needs out of the closet.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

The Harm Does Not Interest Them

"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them."
- TS Eliot, American-born British critic and poet (1888-1965)

This is a different take on the motivation of people who seek power. Eliot implies that power seekers are fundamentally insecure, thus seek ways to make themselves feel important.

I would put it slightly differently. I would say that these insecure people seek power to make themselves feel important in the eyes of others, so that others will see them as important. If they can't feel important within themselves, then receiving the respect that power accords will satisfy them.

This is a stretch when we think of people such as presidents of the USA or CEOs of powerful corporations. But then, those people are consumate professionals who have the skills to disguise what they don't want others to know and display what they do want them to see.

Let's move away from power and focus on ostentacious purchases. Why must Hollywood movie stars live in homes that are many times larger than our own? Do they require more space to run around before bed? They might say it's for entertaining, but that can be done easier (and porbably cheaper) when the star uses the facilities of a major hotel that is set up to handle such events. No, they just feel they want something grandiose to show off. The adulation of others makes them feel more secure.

Does an expensive Mercedes Benz drive or ride or park any better than a much less expensive Italian or American car? Maybe not, but their owners believe they are better because they get more notice from others by owning them.

Everyone who reaches a postion of power and many who own expensive possessions have caused some harm to others along the way. They don't care about the others because they consider their defeat or their subsequent poverty to be the consequence of the way that business is operated. Only the winners count.

When everyone in parliament or Congress is healthy and most are fairly wealthy, health care suffers more than any other part of government because sick people are losers to the politicians. President Bush plans to balance the US budget within five years by cutting back on health care funding. The poor health of his own people doesn't matter so long as his military has the money to kill or maim as many of "the enemy" as possible.

As Eliot said, the harm they do does not interest them. Feeling important is what matters.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make sense of the rat race so we can fix what is broken before it is destroyed totally.
Learn more at http://billallin.com