Classic Characteristics of a Bully
Certain behaviors are classic symptoms of a bully, making diagnosis relatively easy. The most obvious are recurring outbursts, serious threats, intentional harassment and harsh ridicule.
1. Recurring Outbursts:
Unlike a bully, a good person maintains a fundamental respect for others even though burdened by personal stress or extreme frustration. He has no desire to exploit a relationship and is certainly not using his anger to control others.
In contrast, a bully shrewdly uses his anger as a weapon of intimidation. His recurring displays may be violent verbal tirades or soft-spoken diatribes; or, in order to keep you off guard, alternates between methods. His explosions of anger, create an atmosphere of fear, which he uses to control and intimidate the victim.
How a Bully Displays Anger
In the more obvious cases, a bully rants and raves, screams and yells, and barks orders like an abusive drill sergeant. At other times he displays a soft-spoken anger, barely under control, but with a hair trigger, ready to explode at the slightest provocation.
A bully may be emotionally volatile to the point of physical aggression against inanimate objects (dropping a set of files, slamming down the phone, throwing a pen across the room). Or he may use angry gestures, such as pounding on the table.
Dealing with someone who crosses the line into potential or actual physical aggression or violence against a person means the bully is classified as a psychopath.
How a Bully Lies About His Anger
A bully becomes angry when you refuse to let him control you (towards his own selfish ends, of course). With utter hypocrisy, he then complains that his anger was triggered by your stubborn selfishness.
Why a Bully Expresses Anger So Eagerly
Many bullies lack impulse control and thus are quick to express anger. This is unlike well-adjusted people who, out of respect for others, will usually suppress displays of anger; or who act to address the underlying issue that is causing their anger, thus diminishing it.
In contrast, a bully rationalizes anger as a normal method of expressing emotions: “I always express anger rather than bottle it up,” and “People who don’t show their anger are hurting themselves.”
This unhealthy attitude ignores the value of releasing anger in a mature, controlled manner without negatively impacting other people. Once again, he has chosen a destructive behavior trait, either, not caring that he is harming others or believing that the “beneficial” end result justifies his behavior.
Why a Bully Has So Much Anger
Rather than attempt to avoid or diminish his anger, a highly aggressive bully intentionally fuels it. He considers it an asset, parts of his strong, forthright character. As a result, he never bothers clarifying simple misunderstandings and he never wants to hear the other side of the story (although he might let you talk briefly so he can later claim he heard your explanations).
Also, a bully never develops the empathy that could help him diffuse his anger. As a result, his anger fills a reservoir within him. Then when someone breaches the dam by openly opposing him, it unleashes a flood of ranting and raving until the bully gets his way.
2. Threats:
If a bully can’t convince others to follow him willingly, he may try to force compliance using, initially, subtle threats. One of his most powerful weapons is to threaten. It causes fear, hurt, anxiety, stress and the ripple effect will extend to family and loved ones causing an enormous amount of distress to the victim and his family.
He may make a casual suggestion, with only a brief hint of the negative consequences of disobeying him. For example, in order to convince you to work late, he may jokingly mention that he will soon be filling out performance reviews.
Although a well-intentioned boss may mean this as an innocent (though inappropriate) joke, a skilled bully is more likely making a veiled threat. In response, you will probably change your behavior, particularly if he has unfairly criticized you on past reviews. Ignoring the threat could have a direct impact on your future promotions and pay raises, of which the bully is well aware. It is a serious threat disguised as a casual joke by a cunning bully.
Obvious Threats
Alternatively, he may blatantly promise to make trouble for you. His intention is to force you to succumb to his demands. And he is likely to make good on his threats, like a loan shark who doesn’t want to get the reputation of being a pushover. The bully won’t break your thumbs, but the impact can be just as damaging.
Obvious threats include keeping you at your current pay level while everyone else gets raises, giving you a highly critical written performance evaluation, opposing your future promotion, telling upper management about your poor performance, reducing your role in his department, or exiling you into an isolating, dead-end assignment.
When stress takes its toll and health suffers, the bully may make comments that there will be no sickness entitlement and time-off will be unpaid, and will result in a poor performance report jeopardising holding their job. Furthermore, will threaten that they will not be able to get another job anywhere else because he will give a bad reference to any future employer seeking a reference from the bully. If he is particularly vindictive, he will threaten to destroy your reputation and your career and then demands, if you are going to stay, must sign a confidentiality agreement before you receive your next pay cheque.
Emotional Blackmail
Threats may also be in the form of emotional blackmail.
In traditional blackmail, the blackmailer says that unless you give him money, he will reveal something that will destroy your reputation. In emotional blackmail, he implies that unless you submit to his demands, he will take actions that will destroy you emotionally.
For example, a bully threatens to withdraw his approval, respect and camaraderie unless you do what he wants. He doesn’t use these words, of course, but his message is crystal clear. He may say: “I don’t know why you’re questioning me on this; I thought we had a good working relationship.” Or: “You don’t want to disappoint me, do you?” "If you really loved me..." , "After all I've done for you..." , "How can you be so selfish..." . They are all emotional blackmail.
A more aggressive emotional blackmailer takes a harsher approach: do either what he wants, or you can expect to suffer some very unpleasant emotions, such as fear, guilt and failure. For example, he says: “If you don’t do that, the project will fail, and you will have to live with the embarrassment.” He may also make the dire claim that unless you yield to his desires, you will permanently damage your relationship with him, leading to your isolation within the organisation, with dire consequences for your future.
3. Intentional Harassment:
When you resist bullying, you may experience repeated attacks over the course of weeks or months. Through this harassment, the bully attempts to grind you into submission.
Wearing You Down
Any single outburst, criticism or punishment may seem innocuous, but over time he wears you down. You may experience frayed emotions and rattled nerves, reduced confidence and a sense of mental exhaustion. Eventually--at least this is the bully’s intention--you learn to avoid future pain by changing your behavior to accommodate his desires.
Variety of Tactics
A harassing bully may employ a number of different tactics. He questions your integrity or demeans your role in the company. He suggests you are incompetent, or even that you have emotional or psychological problems. He yells insults at you. He repeats hearsay that belittles you. He makes unjustified accusations, or punishes you for petty things. In a less conspicuous form of harassment, he bothers you incessantly in an attempt to control your smallest move. Other bullying behaviors contribute to this overall pattern of harassment.
When harassment crosses the line into the area of sex, it may or may not be a result of intentional bullying. Regardless, the element of sex within a pattern of harassment can be a serious issue.
4. Harsh Ridicule:
If you resist a bully’s attempts to control you, he may intensify his attacks. Ridicule is among his more damaging tactics. This goes beyond harmless ribbing--like you would see from a good-natured boss or peer--and into the realm of purposeful derision.
Why a Bully Ridicules You
A bully uses ridicule to embarrass or even humiliate. His intention is to either coerce you into submission or punish you for resisting. If you are a threat to him, he may use ridicule to damage your reputation and weaken your influence within the company.
When a bully makes you an object of amusement, his thinly veiled contempt tends to denigrate your character and intelligence. And because ridicule is easy to deny (“I was only kidding around”), a bully can usually get away with harsh attacks without exposing his true intentions.
How a Bully Ridicules You
A bully may use a variety of methods to ridicule you. He tells amusing stories that suggest you are immature and naive. Using a sarcastic tone of voice, he gives you obviously insincere compliments. He may even mimic your mannerisms with humorous exaggeration in front of others.
He repeats your words out of context, intentionally misrepresenting your meaning, in order to make you sound confused and ill-informed. He suggests you don’t think very clearly, and jokes about your supposed inability to make a decision. Without any basis in fact, he mocks your specific fears or feelings of guilt, or even your supposedly unhealthy attitude and unstable personality.
How a Bully Covers His Tracks
A bully uses the more charming side of his personality to claim his ridicule was nothing but good-natured teasing. He says you misunderstood his meaning, you are overly sensitive or you have no sense of humor. Thus even his lies about his harsh behavior can further demean you in front of others.
A bully’s favorite statements when confronted about his ridicule are:
“I was just kidding.”
“Why are you so sensitive?”
“You need to lighten up.”
“You need to learn to take a joke.”
“What’s the matter, can’t you take a little ribbing?”
A common tactic to silence those he hires or dismisses is to make them sign confidentiality clauses to silence the victim before receiving their next pay cheque.
A Bully’s Hypocrisy
At the same time, a bully never tells an embarrassing story with him as the subject of mirth. And if you ridicule him in the exact same manner as he ridiculed you, he explodes in anger.
Even your most casual, friendly, good-natured teasing could set him off. After all, he judges your actions through the lens of his own twisted intentions. He will naturally conclude that you were attempting to diminish him in the eyes of others.
Thus, in a bully’s upside-down world, innocent kidding, when directed at him, is bad (deserving harsh retaliation); whereas truly demeaning ridicule, when directed at you, is good (resulting in a few harmless laughs).
5. Bullies Love Trouble :
They thrive on trouble. It gives them something to control, manipulate and to play with, and then make a promising report about how the problem was solved. Any problem that comes under his control, the bully enjoys. If trouble comes his way, that's one thing, but he also creates trouble in order to force people to succumb to his control and his demands.
Bullies enjoy being involved in a dispute. One way of fuelling the dispute is to avoid a resolution by not answering calls, not agreeing to discuss the matter which increases the suffering of the victim. He has no feeling, no empathy of the pain and suffering caused to the victim caused by the delays. Eventually he may agree to have a meeting to discuss the matter but in the meantime has collected a substantial amount of negative material and false accusations to bring to the table. This is how a bully intensifies his attack on the victim, usually bringing more threats to the table instead of mediation and solutions. His solution is to attack and attack until the victim goes away.