Thirty-one percent of Americans have experienced adult bullying, according to a Harris Poll survey.
Bullying is an attempt to feel powerful and to gain recognition/status at the expense of another. Any type of bullying stems from a need for approval/attention and/or insecurity (e.g., a crabs-in-a-barrel mentality).
This holds true regardless of whether the bullying involves kids shoving peers in lockers and doling out swirlies in restroom stalls, or adults defaming and undermining each other in myriad contexts (e.g., familial, professional, religious, political, athletic, or social).
“A bully gains power in a relationship by reducing another’s, and shows little regard for the consequences to a victim’s mental health or well-being,” says Charles Sophy, D.O., a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist and medical director. “Bullying is a coping strategy used to assert control when faced with personal limitations.”
Beneath this drive for power and control are usually traumatic experiences that have left bullies feeling inadequate, insecure, overlooked, neglected, or abandoned.
Examining the emotional roots of bullying helps elucidate several unconscious patterns of adult bullies.
1. Unconscious Powerlessness
Unconscious powerlessness (e.g., victim mentality) can explain why adult bullies often fail to see beyond their own victimhood. As I describe in an earlier post, adult bullies can do mental gymnastics to justify and rationalize their unprovoked antagonism.
Unconsciously, their past victimization can prevent them from conceiving of themselves as antagonizers, instigators, provocateurs, or people with emotionally manipulative and abusive coping mechanisms. Yet, while their victim-playing/blaming is often chalked up to conscious manipulation, perhaps many are truly convinced that they are victims in one-way power struggles they provoked and escalated.
2. Unconscious Insecurity
Unconscious insecurity can explain why many adult bullies cannot distinguish between the actual character of their targets, who are often accomplished and competent, and the character flaws of arrogance, elitism, or self-promotion that they project.
As I note in an earlier post, adult bullying often begins with the projection of “they think they’re all that,” “they’re just showing off and desperate for attention,” or “don’t applaud too much, or they’ll get a big head.”
Ironically, adult bullies often choose a target who is both confident and humble enough to laugh at themself, not take themself too seriously, and receive constructive criticism without defensiveness or blame-shifting.
Adult bullies may not be able to sense these qualities, however, since their relational trauma likely taught them that all people are self-centered, egotistical, and competitive. So, at best, they misjudge targets as snooty and stuck-up, and, at worst, they misperceive targets as “intimidating” because they cannot delineate their sense of inadequacy from projected character flaws.
3. Unconscious Fear of Rejection for Being Different
Unconscious fear of rejection for being different may explain why adult bullies tend to select targets who are nonconformist and unconventional. As I describe in a previous post, adult bullies often attempt to “level down” distinctive or eccentric peers who seem secure in their creativity, voice, and independent mindset.
While others may admire these courageous traits, adult bullies can see an opportunity to reenact dynamics where others ostracized their differences. Hence, adult bullies can distort uniqueness into an allegedly pathological deviation (e.g., “they’re crazy”) from the “common sense” of conformity, sameness, groupthink, and people-pleasing. Many may even juxtapose themselves against targets to seem more “normal.”
4. Unconscious Desperation for Popularity
Lastly, an unconscious desperation for popularity compels many adult bullies to cover up their harm with a “nice guy” or “good gal” persona. Many seem to experience no cognitive dissonance protecting their own name/network while, on the other hand, damaging the reputation and standing of a target through rumors, smear campaigns, and “venting” sessions with associates and higher-ups.
Where Does Relational Aggression Come In?
Relational aggression is what many social psychologists call this two-faced behavior of self-elevating through/while sabotaging targets’ social networks and relationships.
According to various scholars, relational aggression has been defined as:
- “Harming peers’ relationships through exclusion, rumors, or manipulation.”
- “A covert form of aggression, defined as a set of manipulative behaviors used to inflict harm on another through damage to relationships, threat of damage, or both.”
- “Intent to harm another person through non-physical injury to or manipulation of relationships—covertly (i.e., spreading rumors, gossiping, ignoring, excluding) or overtly (e.g., directly telling a peer, ‘If you don’t do what I say, I won’t be your friend.'”
Notably, relational aggression can inflict trauma tantamount to that of physical bullying. Yet, unfortunately, relational aggression receives less attention and resources than physical aggression, similar to how emotional, narcissistic, and spiritual abuse are minimized compared to physical abuse.
Moreover, a key aspect of adult bullying is its inconspicuousness. In the Harris Poll survey mentioned above, for example, a quarter of respondents had experienced the silent treatment from an individual or group on a repeated basis, and 20 percent reported having lies spread about them that no one refuted.
Some onlookers may not have detected anything, however. As Rachel Simmons wrote in her book Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, “Covert aggression isn’t just about not getting caught; half of it is looking like you’d never mistreat someone in the first place.”
The calculated underhandedness, subtlety, and insidiousness of adult bullying often means that targets are isolated not just in terms of who publicly defends them, but also regarding the extent to which others believe them privately.
Since gathering evidence of covert aggression is usually difficult, if not impossible, gaslighting and manipulation often work on bystanders. Adult bullies can be very successful at undermining the believability of targets, which leaves targets doubly traumatized—once by the bullying in and of itself, and, second, by being disbelieved despite exhaustive explanation or evidence.
So, how might you incorporate your awareness of relational aggression into your understanding of interpersonal/social dynamics?
Arguably the most important takeaways regarding relational aggression are, firstly, to assume that anyone willing to bully someone else is also capable of bullying you eventually, and secondly, to not feel confused about whether a “nice” bully actually is or isn’t a bully––believe patterns, not facades aimed at damage control.
