Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Bullying

[Kathleen Lowry (kathleenlowrylpcclmft]

As a therapist I often am helping the “victim” themselves understand they feel 
bad because they allow themselves to be bullied.
As a parent at a small public charter school, talking to the parents of the 
bully didn’t work, asking a group of parents of “victims” to talk to the 
parents didn’t work, the school intervention didn’t work. What finally worked 
was teaching my daughter to shove me up against a wall -she never actually had 
to do it to the bully-and the bullying stopped. My daughter needed permission 
and skills to change her energy I guess. 

> On Aug 6, 2022, at 8:40 AM, Diana Leafe Christian <diana [at] ic.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello Alan and all,
> 
> I appreciate these observations as they're what I've observed too. It's 
> common for enablers — usually conflict-averse, fairly insecure people 
> (usually women rather than men) — attempt to minimize, discount, or deflect 
> attention away from  bullying behaviors by implying that there's something 
> wrong with you if you want to address the serious issue of bullying. This 
> minimizing and deflection helps keeps the bullying in place in the community. 
> It doesn't get addressed at all but continues on, year after year. The way I 
> see it, there are two equivalent factors to bullying in community: one is the 
> bullying behavior and the other, equally harmful factor, are those who offer 
> New Agey, pop-psychology, or communities-movement platitudes to induce us to 
> ignore it. Pure manipulation, and, as Alan says, it's gaslighting:
> 
>      "Everybody has a bad day sometime."
>      "How can you say that? Don't you have any compassion? He's not a bad 
> person!"
>      "Give him a break; we're all only human."
>      "Why are you trying to stir up trouble? Why are you trying to create 
> community conflict?"
>      "Why can't we all just get along?"
> 
> I also totally agree with Alan that bullies tend to target meeker community 
> members, mostly women. I think it's not quite misogyny, however, as most of 
> the community bullies I've seen or been told about by other community members 
> are women, who. And they also target other women in the community, especially 
> those who may be empaths or what some mental health professionals call 
> "highly sensitive people."
> 
> I  these issues in my article series too: gen-us.net/DLC.
> 
> Alan, I'm glad you addressed this in your book — it's such a needed topic, 
> and for many, a community taboo topic.  I just looked up your book on Amazon 
> and plan to buy it.
> 
> We can't get too much good information about what works well when we live in 
> community!
> 
> Diana Leafe Christian
> 
>> On Aug 6, 2022, at 8:45 AM, Alan O'Hashi via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
>> cohousing.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Susan: Bullying stifles participation. We have three/four bullies at our 
>> place. They gaslight their social malady as "initiative." Initiative is one 
>> thing, but when it evolves into self-interest and hubris because they don't 
>> get their way, that's when it becomes bullying. The problem at my place, is 
>> the bullies have cronies who are enablers, "Oh, It's not about So-and-So. 
>> Let's get back to the issue." My bullies tend to gang up on the same people, 
>> who are the meeker community members - mostly women - so misogyny also is at 
>> play. One person was so adamant about getting in the last word on an issue, 
>> that on the night of the community meeting, they wrote a terse and whiney 
>> email threatening not to follow the policy if it was adopted.
>> 
>> I devote a few chapters of my book to bullying behavior, causes and 
>> accountability:https://smile.amazon.com/True-Stories-Aging-Do-Gooder-cohousing-ebook/dp/B08P4WRRG1/
>> 
>> 
>> Alan O
>> 
>> 
>> Alan O'Hashi 
>> Donate and get "Beyond Heart Mountain"books and DVDs
>> www.beyondheartmountain.com
>> www.bouldercomedia.com..303-910-5782....307-316-2113.. 
>> 
>>   On Saturday, August 6, 2022 at 04:16:16 AM MDT, <cohousing-l-request [at] 
>> cohousing.org> wrote:  
>> 
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>> Today's Topics:
>> 
>>  1. Bullying (Sue Donaldson)
>>  2. Re: Bullying (Kathleen Lowry)
>>  3. Diversity Training Package (Crystal Farmer)
>>  4. Re: Bullying (Diana Carroll)
>>  5. Re: Bullying (Kathleen Lowry)
>>  6. Why communications software is important (Sharon Villines)
>> 
>> 
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