What is psychological bullying and how to avoid it?

He bullying It is defined as bullying carried out by one or more schoolmates on one or more victims from the same educational environment. These acts of abuse violate human dignity, which is why we must fight to completely eradicate this dark social scourge as soon as possible. Within the concept of bullying several types or manifestations are included, including physical, verbal, psychological, sexual, social or relational bullying or even cyber bullying. Specifically, in this article we are going to address verbal or psychological bullying.

In the following Psychology-Online article we explain What is psychological bullying and how to avoid it?, what are its causes and consequences, as well as different ways to prevent it and address it in cases where it is not possible to avoid it.

Index

1. What is psychological bullying
2. Causes of psychological bullying
3. Consequences of psychological bullying
4. How to avoid psychological bullying

He bullying It is all bullying against one or more victims from the same educational background as the bullies. This type of social harassment is, unfortunately, very frequent today and causes very hard situations for the victims and their families. In extreme cases, some situations of bullying they can even lead to the suicide of bullying victims. Here you will find others Types of bullying and their consequences.

Psychological bullying is a type of harassment that encompasses any manifestation of intimidation or threat towards the victim by the aggressor. This type of bullying can go more unnoticed than, for example, physical or verbal bullying. because it can be covered up through psychological strategies of manipulation and mistreatment of the victim.

In general, the causes that cause psychological bullying are usually the same as those that generate any other type of bullying. bullying:

• In the case of the offender: it is likely that the aggressor has certain emotional imbalances caused mainly by unstructured family environments or of overprotection that have gestated in him an authoritarian, impulsive personality, with no capacity for empathy and with a low tolerance for frustration.
• In the case of the victim: a victim with a vulnerable or weak personality also due to affective deficiencies, or with a great simplicity and sensitivity, becoming the perfect target for the attacks committed by the aggressor
• In the case of the observer: a group of passive observers that the only thing they can do in this situation is reinforce the aggressor, showing themselves totally insensitive to the pain suffered by the victim

Likewise, another of the causes of psychological bullying may be the envy that the aggressor may feel towards his victim. In these cases, the vulnerability that the aggressor experiences when he begins to feel inferior (not very intelligent, not very creative, unskilled in certain skills...) can be the springboard that pushes him to start bullying and the manipulation strategies and intimidation of his victim in an attempt to regain her false but apparent security and superiority.

The consequences of psychological bullying are very devastating. In fact, a large part of the negative consequences of the different types of bullying are psychological, since the victim's self-esteem is severely damaged when being injured in an intense, atrocious and repeated way until causing serious injuries to the emotions and psyche of the victim.

Psychological wounds are, as we well know, the most difficult to heal. For a psychological wound to be generated, the person's mind has created a complex network of beliefs and schemes about yourself, about others and about the world, and unraveling this elaborate mental web is a complicated task.

psychological bullying generates significant injuries to the victim on a mental and emotional level by making him believe that he is worthless, that people are dangerous and he cannot trust anyone and that he must protect himself from everyone at all times to prevent them from harming him. This internal vision, created from all the psychological abuse suffered, causes great unrest within the victim and a great discouragement in life. In the following article you will find What are the emotional wounds of childhood and how to heal them.

First of all, to completely avoid any type of school bullying, it is essential educate children in values ​​from infancy, both in the family context and in the school and social context. This constitutes the best bullying prevention strategy, since it would almost automatically cause its eradication or, in the event of an isolated case, could be quickly denounced by the rest of the colleagues who did not tolerate, due to this same education in values, this type of degrading behavior against the victim.

This will allow them to become good people as adults whose main objectives, beyond getting good professions, success and money, be taking care of each other and, from there, building good societies that nurture and protect all.

Despite the fact that more and more structural changes are taking place in this regard, today the educational institution still continues to prioritize the teaching of theoretical content through on top of personal, ethical, moral and civic education, which is reduced only to specific transversal educational work without sufficient force to carry out profound social changes.

Strategies to prevent bullying

It is essential to make families, teachers and students aware of the need to establish fair, supportive and constructive relationships as the only way to grow as people. To achieve this, one of the strategies to prevent bullying will consist of give various talks and educational workshops in which the entire educational community participates.

As intervention strategies, once a case of psychological bullying is located, it will be a priority perform affective therapy with the victim as an essential means for her to minimally recover her dignity and self-esteem and stop her personal psychological deterioration.

In turn, the therapy with the aggressor, with the group of passive observers and with the families involved it will also be necessary if we are to eradicate this particular problem in its entirety.

This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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