Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Bullying

[Darien Payne (darien]

Observing my small flock of chickens, it seemed to me that we humans have much 
in common with them.
One dominant chicken would bully/terrorize others just because she could. The 
hesitant and meekest hens were bullied most and reacted the most fearfully just 
being close to the “alpha” hen. Occasionally one of the other hens would come 
to the aid of the bullied one, and briefly attack the bully. Bullying seemed to 
be about claiming status, and what reduced it was standing up to it.

I have seen similar behavior in human groups, in graduate school, in 
workplaces, and in voluntary associations. Sometimes we don’t recognize the 
bullying behavior at first. It might start by charismatic and popular person. 
Sometimes I have been so astounded by it I haven’t been able to react in the 
moment, but only after contemplating what happened.

What I have seen work best to counter group bullying (as adults) is practicing 
compassionate communication principles. But it took much coaching for all to 
see the destructive patterns, which returned shortly after the coaching ended. 
It seems to take a few confident and observant individuals to calmly describe 
what they observe, and persist in insisting the bullying behavior stop. 

Perhaps the “enablers” are aligning with the bully to align with what the 
perceive as the higher status individual.

D. Payne

> On Aug 6, 2022, at 6:58 AM, Kathleen Lowry <kathleenlowrylpcclmft [at] 
> gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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