Bullying has become a popular subject for media psychologists. When Dr. Phil addressed the subject the other day, he predictably ascribed the problem to a lack of self-esteem. Almost everything is attributed to a lack of self-esteem these days. This plague of low self-esteem is cited, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, in spite of the thousands and thousands of awkward, tone-deaf people who audition for “American Idol,” cocksure of their talent.
When it comes to bullying, both perpetrator and victim are assumed to be suffering from low self-esteem. The accepted interpretation is that the bully torments unpopular classmates because he/she actually feels inferior and needs someone to belittle. In turn, the victim of bullying is assumed to suffer because he/she is too ready to believe the cruel jibes of the bully. Dr. Phil’s recent guest was a woman who was carrying the pain of the verbal assaults she’d suffered in high school on into her adulthood. Dr. Phil assured her that the reason for her pain was low self-esteem. She’d internalized her tormenters’ remarks, become her own worst critic, and perpetuated the pain by repeating the insults to herself over and over, convinced of the truth of them.
Well, maybe. But I think there might be a more basic, yet a more unreachable reason for the actions and reactions behind bullying. The TV psychologists’ interpretation of low self-esteem is too much the standard jargon of 12-step programs. The problem of bullying might be beyond the reach of all those pat self-help dictums.
Maybe a bully’s behavior stems from the age-old, animal impulse to dominate, to conquer, to prevail through brutality. And maybe the victim’s pain stems from a more complex instinct. First, the victim might feel a need to protect herself physically from the kind of mob violence that often has its roots in “mere” playground bullying. But a victim’s more difficult, more diffuse need might be to avoid recognizing that cruelty in others in the first place. People long to feel that the world is a beautiful place worthy of their efforts to enter it and fully engage with it. They long to feel that there are others waiting in that larger world, capable and worthy of receiving their mature gifts - most importantly, their gift of love.
Many people, but perhaps young people and heartfelt young girls especially, long to be enamored, to have a hero who is worth the love they want to bestow. So when a victim meets with the bully’s sneers and sadism – she wants to avoid recognizing that behavior for what it is. She wants to twist the other’s innate cruelty around, to call it something else, to call it deserved. That way, the bully can still be perceived as a wonderful, worthy being. The victim only needs to correct her own faults. Then everything will be all right. That’s ultimately a more manageable project than trying to correct the evil in others. Such evil, if fully acknowledged, would make the world a grim, uninviting place.
We don’t want to see that our world is riddled with profoundly flawed, morally deformed people, people incapable of receiving the bounty of our affection. If we perceived this reality, we would lose all motive to reach out with effort and ebullience to such a world. Such a world would plainly have no room for the upwelling of love. And, as all the songs say, who are we if we have no one to love? Such a prospect is excruciating.
To make an analogy with more extreme cases, we might remind ourselves of the otherwise inexplicable persistence of battered wives and abused children. Why do the victims of such abuse so often refuse to leave their persecutors? Why do they so often refuse to blame them or name them when the police come to their doors, ready to help? Again, these victims’ problem is usually diagnosed as either fear of their bully’s retaliation, or else low self-esteem. But that doesn’t explain the victims’ frequent, ardent defense of their tormentors.
In most of these cases, self-blame is likely just the victims’ cover-story. Deep down, the victims probably don’t fully believe they are at fault. It’s all just a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion of the goodness of others.
I wasn’t bullied in school, but I lived in fear of being bullied. I wasn’t energetic enough to go to all the trouble of conforming to accepted standards. So in order to avoid becoming a target, I kept a very low profile. I made myself a ghost. My school life was built around avoidance. Again, that wasn’t primarily because I had low self-esteem. If I were to have become the target of bullies, I would not have thought any less of myself. I would have thought less of all my tormentors. My shadow existence was my way of protecting myself from the knowledge of others’ cruelty.
If I’d had this cruelty flung in my face, I’d no longer have been able to believe that most other people were deliciously, secretly primed to be my friends and lovers, if only circumstances would allow them to demonstrate their affection. By hiding from the reality of other people’s all too frequent prejudice and hatred, I could be like every Academy Award winner – gushing my thankfulness to my family, my co-stars, my producer – the whole wide, wonderful world. I would not have to face the fact that in actuality, my spouse was cheating on me, my co-stars had all been working to upstage me every step of the way, and that the director and producer hadn’t wanted me to star in the film in the first place because they had crudely declared to each other that “Her ass is too BIG!”
No, as long as I was careful not to elicit or overhear any negative reactions from others, I could still believe in their goodness and good will. I could remain enrapt by the possibility of them. That option, that imagining was left open. As long as I didn’t see the little boy pull the wings off the fly, I could dream him into an ideal friend. As long as I could aggressively deny anyone else’s testimony that the boy did in fact pull the wings off of flies and beat up weaker students on the playground – I was still able to count him among the many who could be loved. I could remain eager for each new day because it held him in it.
The constant struggle of avoidance and denial was exhausting. But I managed it until a relatively advanced age, largely because my family and I had the resources to build our own world and keep carefully inside of it much of the time. But perhaps others who have to be out in the “hood,” out in the “barrio,” out in the more subtle enforcements of condo associations and suburbia, without supportive parents to buffer them from all such ambient tyranny – perhaps they tend to succumb earlier to the hopelessness of there being no one to admire, no one to love.
The Irish say that “Sooner or later, the world will break your heart.” That’s a bitter pill to swallow. Maybe it doesn’t happen with quite that kind of melodramatic flourish. Perhaps the dying takes place more as a downtrodden resignation – more as a whimper than a bang.
I remember the low-key wisdom imparted by Mr. Adams, one of the many itinerant handymen my parents employed to help maintain our odd, echoing quarters. We had a new puppy then. The mutt followed Mr. Adams everywhere, yipping at his feet. We couldn’t corral or control it. It got out of our grip over and over, and before we knew it, was snapping for attention at Mr. Adams’ heels again. I thought its annoyances would soon have to provoke a really angry outburst from Mr. Adams, But no, Mr. Adams remained patient. He was one of the few people I’ve met who didn’t seem capable of rage. I doubt if he would even have yelled obscenities at someone who cut him off in traffic – if he’d ever had a car or ever driven (which was unlikely). But after a while, he did react to the incessant barking for attention. He leaned down forlornly and addressed the dog. “Hey there, little one. You’re not a newborn any more. You’ve got to think about being on your own. That’s what growing up is – learning how to be alone.”
That struck me at the time as being an indescribably sad piece of experience to pass along. I was just a teenager myself then, and didn’t want to contemplate that aging held such a fate. But I feared Mr. Adams might in fact be right.
Love probably won’t happen for most of us. It is rare to find anyone who was never a bully or who wouldn’t become one given the opportunity. It is rare to find someone who doesn’t honk and swear in traffic. And it’s rare for any of us to be so admirably devoid of petty self-interest and petty tyranny ourselves. All most of us can do is struggle along and try to maintain some illusion that we ourselves, but more urgently, that the partners who have come to be our lot in life, might still be worthy of the infinite love we haven’t completely forgotten is our reason for being. We have to hold onto that fiction.
And so we desperately try to get thin, get buff, get stylish, get rich, and generally improve ourselves. If we are in need of correction, if we are in the wrong - then the other person’s criticisms must be right, and therefore the other shines all the more brightly.
Dr. Phil says our desperation is low self-esteem. And we hang our heads dejectedly and agree. We play into the idea. Yes, our parents never really gave us the boost we needed; they never made us feel special; they never praised the artwork we brought home from school. All the while though, we know our struggle is much bigger than low self-esteem. Our struggle is not to feel better about ourselves, but to feel better about other people. We battle, not to be loved – but to love.
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