The Ultimate Revenge: Thriving Despite Bullies
Recently I was helping a client with a situation involving bullying / meangirling that seriously pissed me off. Having also been on the receiving end (and, shamefully, on the dolling out end) of that kind of thing, I decided to look into it a bit more. In reading about this awful behaviour, I came across a striking amount of info suggesting forgiveness and compassion for the bully.
Sure, forgiveness is much better for your health than holding a grudge. But telling someone who is in the throes of a bullying experience to "just try to forgive" the aggressor isn't exactly helpful. Speaking from experience, the last thing I want to do when I feel like I've just been wronged, is to jump straight to forgiving someone. F-ck. That.
I don't know about you, but I get so offended by relational aggression and meangirling that I basically see red. I don't give a f-ck what kind of trauma the aggressor may have sustained, nothing gives a human permission to act like an asshole. If through being an asshole they've ended up hurting someone else, then they need to own up and make it right. Otherwise they would have gotten away with being an asshole, and that feels unbelievably unfair to me. Because I'm a human being, I always want to come out "ahead" of the asshole. And I believe you can, but ironically, it won't happen if you actually try to keep them behind you. And it definitely won't happen if you try and avenge their actions.
Research shows that people like the idea of revenge better than actually getting it. Revenge rarely leads to a good outcome for anyone. The avenger will carry that revenge energy with them for a loooooooong time and they'll find that you keep attracting defiance from other people in return. The other problem with revenge is that it's a relationship-limiting move. And it creates enemies. When you have enemies you can never really be at peace. I'd rather be irrelevant to someone than be their enemy. Also emotions can pass, so you might not be mad at the other person forever. In the event you want to reconcile, having exacted revenge can be a significant barrier to doing so.
Oh and I also believe in being unimpeachable. Revenge is very very impeachable. It's not advisable.
But just because I'm anti-revenge doesn't mean I want you to just shut up and take it. F-ck that too.
The best "revenge" is going to be your happiness. Your success. Your joy. (I know, that's cheesy but you'd be SHOCKED how pissed off your joy can make the asshole in your life).
But when you're in the thick of the situation, when you still feel like you're under the asshole's thumb, or when you feel like they're winning (and you're consequently losing), there's no fucking way you're going to just tap into your happiness, success or joy. Actually, I think when you're in that situation you're REPELLING those feelings and experiences.
So what's one to do? Three things. (I call this the comeback strategy or ultimate happiness strategy.)
1. Stop the loss. If the person is CONTINUING to bring you down, then we need to do something about that. We need to get you your power back (which sometimes means we need to stop you from giving it up). This might mean figuring out boundaries that work for you, figuring out how you're going to enforce them. It might mean "correcting the record". It might mean making sure your ass is covered, and your side of the street is clean. It also might mean a lawsuit or taking legal action. You'll never get your power back if you allow the person to keep victimizing you. This is crucial. We need to stop your victimization.
2. Create a bigger (better) vision for your life than what you're living now. When we've been victimized we usually get into some mindfuckery habits. We sell ourselves short. Our standards for ourselves and others go down. We can lose belief in our own abilities. We lose our mojo. So we need to get it back, but, since we're also going to happiness, success, and joy, we've got to figure out how you're going to create a live that brings you TON of those experiences. Hence the need for a vision.
3. Devise (and implement) the plan and strategy to make it happen. Ok so this is the important bit because a lot of us forget about the three crucial parts of any comeback/ultimate happiness/life strategy: business; social; and individual experience. Business are logical/economical/legal/financial considerations; social is how you will manage others' experience of you and your new best life strategy; and the individual experience is (exactly as it sounds). A lot of my clients and I coach around what figuring out what will work for them in their unique situation. Coaching helps you ID your blindspots. It will get you to success, happiness and joy faster and make the results better than trying to figure it out yourself. And they tell me the experience isn't nearly as bad as it could have been because they weren't going through it alone.
(The icing on the cake, btw, is that once you're begun the "work" of your own comeback or ultimate happiness strategy it becomes a LOT easier to have forgiveness and compassion for the bully if that's also part of your end goal.)
Hang in there. Things will get better.
Suz xo
