THE BULLCRAP BUSTERS 
We Take The Bullying By The Horns


EMOTIONAL BULLYING






















By Elana Laham © 2013 Elana Laham

THE EMOTIONAL HEALING PROCESS

    When I decided that “enough was enough” I embarked upon my own “victim no more" journey by believing that I was only going to have to tell off the one bully who happened to be victimizing me in that moment and then I was done. Little did I know how wrong I was! After I told off that one bully, something inside of me broke, which released an emotional turbulent flood of images of one unwelcomed bully after another and another and another and so on and so forth, emerging from my memory banks like floating drift wood off of a sunken ship. It was not until many years later, and countless confrontations with bully(s) that I realized that in order to overcome bullying, the victim has to undergo an EMOTIONAL HEALING PROCESS. The emotional healing process is very similar to how the physical body repairs itself. It occurs in STAGES. For example, if you were to observe how your mouth repairs it self after a tooth has been extracted from it, you will notice the following various stages the gum tissue undergoes in order to return itself back to normal. The hole that is left in the gum where the tooth was removed does not close up instantaneously. Instead, Stage #1 – the hole bleeds profusely. Stage #2 – the blood, clots. Stage #3 –little specks of white tissue – white blood cells – enter the congealed blood in the gum – red blood cells. State #4 – the blood clot hardens. Stage #5 new gum tissue grows from the base to the crown. Stage #6, the gum tissue fuses to itself.  

    This stage-by-stage physiological process of reparation is similar to the psychological healing process that the victim undergoes in order to overcome bullying. Suppose you contracted a flu virus. Stage #1 – the body becomes aware that bacteria (foreign matter) have invaded your body. Such can be compared to the victim REFUSING TO BE IN DENIAL that he is a victim of bullying and thereby realizing that the bully has infiltrated his psyche. I refer to stage one as the PHASE OF ACCEPTANCE of the emotional healing process. Stage #2 – the body attempts to get rid of the virus by producing a fever. This is equivalent to the volatile feelings that the victim starts to sensate as a result of MAKING KNOWN TO HIMSELF the negative emotions that he has pent up within him that the bully gave the victim. I refer to stage two as the PHASE OF EXPRESSION of the emotional healing process. In stage #3 one’s flu riddled organism vomits for instance from its stomach organ the partially digested food that was contaminated with flu toxin. It does this repeatedly until it has cleansed the digestive tract of all poisonous substance. The flu’s invasion of the body is akin to how the Bully Culture has infiltrated our society by way of the bully forcing his psychopathic sociopath sickness onto the victim until...the victim can no longer stomach it. The victim having been victimized by so many-a-bully REGURGITATES the destructive emotions that the bully gave him back onto the bully over and over and over again until the victim purges all of the bully’s toxicity from out of his emotional being. I refer to stage three as the PHASE OF RELEASE of the emotional healing process. The nausea sensation that the body has, just before it upchucks, correlates to the anxiety the victim feels, just before the victim confronts the bully. The sensation of relief that the body has after it has thrown up corresponds to the cathartic feeling that victim has after he has dealt with the bully. The physical cleansing process and the emotional purging process are both stage-by-stage processes of elimination that the human organism has to undergo in order to preserve sound physical health and psychological wellbeing.  

​THE JAMMER FEELINGS

    The Bully Culture promises us that if we pass our negative feelings onto those beings and things that have nothing to do with them we will experience emotional healing. But undesirable feelings never ever get resolved until they are returned to their source of origin. If the bully does not return his undesirable feelings to the one who made them – namely the bully who bullied him – the bully will become addicted to bullying. Since the bully takes his undesirable feelings out on innocent others, because they have nothing to do with his negative emotions, the bully will only experience a temporary sense of relief. His bad feelings will have taken a leave of absence so to speak, but only to return to the bully with a vengeance. Thusly, in order to keep his undesirable feelings at bay, the bully has to keep on taking them out indefinitely upon those who did not inflict them upon the bully. If the victim does not return his undesirable feelings to the one who made them – namely the bully who bullied him – the victim will inherit what I call The “JAMMER FEELINGS”. The Jammer Feelings by way of bully intimidation and/or bully manipulation make certain that the victim keeps the victim’s undesirable feelings to himself by coercing the victim to deny that the victim’s real feelings exist.

    The Jammer Feelings are the butt-hole double standards that the Bully Culture imposes upon us to prevent the victim from ever farting out his protests against the bully who is always permitted to take a crap all over innocent people. Just as our tight butt Bully Culture conditions us to hold in our natural functions such as the passing of wind, the Jammer Feelings make certain that we hold in our otherwise natural emotional outbursts. The Bully Culture regards flatulent farts and instinctual emotions as disgusting gestures. However, if we do not release the pent up gas from within our intestinal tract we will risk serious injury to our internal organs. Flatulence is the means by which our body safely lets go of pressure that has built up within our body. Yes farts stink but so does manure. Yet fertilizer grows beautiful flowers doesn’t it? The same holds true for our emotional wellbeing. We must diffuse our instinctual emotional emissions through facial expressions, body gestures and vocalizations no matter how unpleasant they may be whenever and wherever emotional toxicity is present within our environment in order to sustain our emotional wellbeing.  

    Unlike one’s genuine feelings, which will go away if one accepts them, expresses them, and releases them back to their maker, the Jammer Feelings only go away if one overrides them with one’s real emotions. This is because the Jammer Feelings are artificial emotions. They are imposters much like a software virus is to a hardwired computer program. They invade our mind by jamming up its divine signals with the Bully Culture’s sick mental programming. The Jammer Feelings are what I call UNEARNED SHAME, UNEARNED FEAR, and UNEARNED GUILT. If one gets a genuine emotion that emerges to warn one that something is wrong, and that one therefore ought to do something about it, the Jammer Feelings emerge to block one’s real feelings from gaining ACCEPTANCE, EXPRESSION, AND RELEASE. For instance, let’s say that you are feeling upset because the Jerkoholic cashier clerk is laughing at you since you accidentally put the wrong date on the check that you are writing to pay for your food at the grocery store. You know! The check that pays the store to give the Jerkoholic cashier clerk a job. The Jammer Feelings will invalidate your indignation with what I call “unearned shame” by telling you things like, “Oh, get over it”; or the Jammer Feelings will stifle your justified anger with what I call “unearned fear” by saying, “Don’t say or do anything or that mean clerk will get you into some sort of undeserved trouble”; or the Jammer Feelings will discount your warranted rage with what I call “unearned guilt” by insisting that, “You are making a big deal out of nothing”.

    The Jammer Feelings will attempt to sabotage your effort to stand up to the bully in a meaningful way. Never ever try to reason with the Jammer Feelings. They are as unreasonable as the bully who reinforces them, and as irrational as the Bully Culture that perpetuates them. Don’t give them any more attention other than the split second that you notice that they happen to be there. Otherwise they will stop you from liberating yourself from the victim role by strengthening your belief in the Bully Culture myth that “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying”. The victim is going to have to be determined, doggedly persistent, and relentlessly persevering in order to defeat the Jammer Feelings. If the victim does not pay attention to them while the victim is in the throes of battle against the bully, the Jammer Feelings will gradually dissipate. After they go away, they will never ever return since the victim is no longer dignifying their parasitic existence because the victim is vigilantly returning them to their source – the bully who brought them into being. In other words, in order to overcome the Jammer Feelings, feel the unearned shame, the unearned fear, and the unearned guilt but confront the bully anyway!!! With each bully encounter that the victim bravely undertakes, by feeling the Jammer Feelings, but fighting back against the bully anyway; the overwhelming, all consuming, uncomfortable sensations that the victim’s unearned shame, unearned fear, and unearned guilt, make the victim feel, eventually become manageable, barely noticeable, annoying sensations, and then finally, disappear, altogether.  

​THE VICTIM LEGACY

    “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying” myth is so pervasive within the Bully Culture that it has brought into existence the Jammer Feelings. The Jammer Feelings make us prisoners of what I call “The Victim Legacy”. The VICTIM LEGACY keeps us in a perpetual state of feeling unearned shame – helpless, unearned fear – hopeless, as well as unearned guilt – worthless about ourselves. The victim legacy is the Bully Culture’s underlying message that, “Because the victim had a helpless past, the victim has a hopeless present, and will have a worthless future”.  

UNEARNED SHAME

    Unearned shame stops the victim from escaping the victim role by making the victim feel UNMOTIVATED to fight back against bullying by pervading the victim’s psyche with thoughts of FUTILITY that make the victim wonder, “WHY ME?” Initially when I embarked upon my “victim no more” journey I began to feel a sense of self-empowerment after I gave the bully back his own medicine. However, as I continued to confront the bully(s) who invaded my life my path began to take an unexpected turn. It became a rocky road of self-doubt and confusion for I started to wonder, “WHY does the bully pick on ME?” The answer I got back from myself was, “Because you are a helpless wimp!” Then I realized that I had answered myself in that way because I had been brainwashed by the Bully Culture to believe in the Bully Culture's myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying.” After that I realized that it is the Bully Culture’s fault, not mine, that the bully victimizes me. For thanks to the Bully Culture’s exoneration and toleration of the bully mentality, most people today are aspiring bullies. So the odds of anyone, not just me, being bullied are extremely high.  

    Unearned shame is the result of family upbringing. It has to do with the way in which parents raise their child. If the child is regarded as the “black sheep” of the family he will become the victim for his caretakers will always blame him for everything that goes wrong in his life, whether or not he is at fault. Thus, his siblings will follow suit and treat him in the same way as his so-called guardians do. Or at least one sibling will. It is the sibling that is considered the “golden fleece” of the family unit, and so he becomes the bully of the household. The sun rises and sets upon his head for his caregivers never blame him for anything that goes wrong in his life, whether or not he is the cause of it. To make matters worse, such dysfunctional parenting will pit the black sheep child against the golden fleece child by comparing one to the other, but only if and when it is advantageous to the favorite son or daughter, and disadvantageous to the un-favored son or daughter. And so, the victim-bully conflict is born under the guise of sibling rivalry. To add insult to injury, if the victim survives childhood, the Bully Culture will keep the victim legacy alive and well, by for instance, having the bully therapist mistreat the victim patient. For example, the bully therapist will insist that, due to the neglect and abuse the victim patient has received from his family, a dysfunctional people pattern has been established. As a result the victim attracts negative people into his world so that the victim can have the opportunity to resolve the victim-bully conflict. Never mind that the bully created the victim-bully conflict. So, here we have, once again, the Bully Culture reiterating, via the bully therapist’s psycho lingo babble, the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a people pleasing doormat.”  

    Unearned shame usually means that the victim will acquire a timid disposition due to the learned behavior patterns that the Bully Culture has branded the victim with, which is the “one size fits all” mentality that “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying”. So, for example, the bully therapist will evaluate the victim patient, who happens to be shy and withdrawn as a socially maladjusted person. Then, the bully therapist will wrongfully label the victim patient as being “chronically depressed” or having a “social anxiety” disorder. When what is really happening is that the victim is simply doing what is natural – being honest with himself about his own feelings – by avoiding the toxic environment that he finds himself in. 

    Whenever and wherever the victim is in contact with bully(s), which thanks to the Bully Culture, is more often than not, the victim gets perpetually anxious and/or chronically unhappy. But instead of society recognizing that the victim’s coping mechanism is a healthy adaptation to the Bully Culture’s sick way of socializing, the Bully Culture dictates that the victim as being anti-social and therefore mentally ill, and gives the victim a pill for his so called psychological affliction. Taking medication for the victim is like swallowing ex-lax for diarrhea. All prescription drugs do for the victim is numb out the victim’s already severely desensitized feelings so that the victim can survive the never ending emotional torment, and/or physical torture that the bully(s) of the Bully Culture inflict upon his person. However, the longer the victim’s body of emotions – primarily, his anger (rage), his fear (terror), his sadness (sorrow) and his pain (loss) – remain dormant, the harder it becomes for the victim to open up his mouth, let alone, talk back to a bully.  

BREAKING THE ICE

    Unearned shame corresponds to stage one, breaking the ice, which is the PHASE OF ACCEPTANCE of the emotional healing process. The Bully Culture persuades the victim to feel unearned shame so that the victim will IGNORE his feelings. Breaking the ice influences the victim to ACKNOWLEDGE his feelings so that he will realize that he is a VICTIM OF BULLYING.  

    One of the ways that the Bully Culture manipulates the victim into feeling unearned shame and thereby emotionally impotent is by making the victim believe that the only feeling that the victim ought to have is the “pursuit of happiness”. But ironically, the victim who decides to only feel joy is unable to feel happiness. This is due to the simple reason that by denying himself the divine right to feel his negative emotions such as anger, which warn the victim that something is wrong, the victim denies himself the divine right to feel his positive emotions such as joy, which tell him that all is right with the world. Emotions are like a body of water. Both are thoroughly integrated. All water droplets contain the same elements. If one were to split a drop of water it will become another drop of water. If one were to put the two droplets of water together they will fuse back into one drop of water. So too, with emotions! They cannot be divided into positive and negative feelings for they all contain both types of feelings within them. This is why when people are really happy they cry as if they are very sad. The victim who decides to be emotionally dishonest about what he actually feels will behave as if he is happy in order to avoid being victimized by bullying. Result, the victim will be emotionally inactive to such an extent that he will no longer be aware that he is not aware that he does not feel anything.  

    One of the ways in which the Bully Culture intimidates the victim into feeling unearned shame and therefore emotionally immobilized is by forcing the victim to endure unbelievably traumatic life changing events. The victim’s only recourse to be able to survive such pain is to make it surreal to him self by completely shutting down his emotions. The cost of doing so is very high. The victim has to detach him self from him self in order to disconnect from his unbearable pain. Being chronically emotionally shut down subjects the victim to enter such undesirable psychological states of being as “depersonalization” – being emotionally detached from the self, and/or “de-realization” – being physically detached from the self. The duration and intensity of remaining in these self-fragmented states of unreality depends upon how much trauma the victim has to undergo. Such altered psychological states as depersonalization and de-realization are the way in which the human organism protects itself. Nevertheless, nature intended them to be temporary not permanent coping mechanisms. It is a panic button so to speak to be pressed only during immensely stressful situations. If the Bully Culture makes the victim chronically undergo traumatic circumstances of one sort or another, nature’s panic button will be left on too long or used too often robbing the victim of his divine right to experience life as a sentient being. The victim who decides to be emotionally dishonest about what he feels will deprive himself of his other feelings in order to cope with being victimized by bullying. Result, the victim will be emotionally stifled to such an extent that he no longer knows who he is.  

    The only way that the victim can eject himself out of his emotional armor is to FEEL THE UNEARNED SHAME BUT CONFRONT THE BULLY, ANYWAY. This will initiate stage one, breaking the ice, the phase of acceptance of the emotional healing process. Having been trapped within an emotional coma for so long it will take some time for the victim to emotionally process that he is a victim of bullying. The span of time and effort that it will take the victim to break the ice of his own immobilized emotional tomb will be determined by how severely the victim has been traumatized by bullying. Although breaking the ice may appear to be a colossal roadblock towards victim liberation, it is a humungous opportunity for the victim to free himself from the victim role for it allows the victim to tear down the wall that keeps the victim from being united with him self and thereby there for him self.  

THE BEGINNER'S LUCK PHASE OF OVERCOMING BULLYING

    When you start to learn a new sport or play a new game there are a lot of uncanny moments in which you are in the groove. You are so great that you can beat the pros. It is effortless and fun. You hardly have to think about what you are doing. You are simply in sync with the universe. This phenomenon is known as Beginners’ Luck. Beginners’ Luck happens to the victim at the beginning of his journey toward overcoming bullying. During the Beginners’ Luck phase of giving the bully back the bully’s own medicine, the victim’s emotions remain rather frozen. This means that the victim’s facial expressions and body language are virtually non-existent. Yet the victim is able to speak to the bully. The victim’s frozen blocks of emotion begin to break up after the victim confronts the bully with words, which puts the victim into a state of catharsis.  

    The victim’s state of mental cognition - the mental processing time it takes the victim to recognize that the bully has insulted the victim and knowing what to say or do back to the bully – is virtually non-existent as well. But every bully that the victim confronts from the victim’s past makes the victim better and faster in the future at giving the bully back the bully’s own medicine. It also makes the victim instantaneously aware of another unresolved past bullying issue that has to be dealt with and another and another and so on and so forth. This sets off a chain reaction that culminates into the victim emotionally purging himself of all past bullying encounters. By repeatedly making the choice to confront the bully(s) from the victim’s past, the victim shatters his jammer feeling of unearned shame in the present that dictate to the victim’s psyche that the victim is too helpless to fight back against bullying.

​***

THE DEEP IN ME

In the gloomy darkness that filled my nights
I awaited the sun to arise from dawn’s lights.
When, suddenly I felt apart from the rest.
A cryptic pain had pierced my chest.
It seared my spirit; it scorched my soul.
It left my being a burning hole.
I trembled in terror. I shook in vain
at the force by which it came.
For the deep in me that I now grasped
was that emptiness had ruled my past.

By Elana Laham © 2013

***

UNEARNED FEAR

   Unearned fear keeps the victim from freeing himself from the victim role by making the victim feel PETRIFIED to fight back against bullying by invading the victim’s psyche with an attitude of DESPAIR that makes the victim wonder, “WHY TRY?” While traveling along the road of “victim no more”, I discovered that after I gave the bully back his own medicine I felt a sense of relief. But after a while, my path petered out into a dirt road full of potholes of difficulty. For although I confronted the bully more and more often I found myself having trouble knowing what to say or what to do to stop myself from being a victim of bullying. So, I started to wonder, “Why am I taking so long to put the bully in his place?” The answer I got back from myself was, “Because you are a hopeless moron!” I had answered myself in that way since I had been conditioned by the Bully Culture to believe in the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying.” After that, I became cognizant that it was the Bully Culture’s fault, not mine, as to why I had such a slow learning curve. For thanks to the Bully Culture, the moment I opened up my mouth and uttered one word of protest against being bullied, the entire world sided with the bully by ganging up on me. So the answer to the question of, “Why try?” became “Because no one taught me that I had to defend myself, and no one taught me how to fight back, and no one supported me for standing up for myself, either.” No wonder why I was slow! I had zero practice, having been given no coaching and instead of having a fan club to cheer me on, I had the bully’s minions to turn me off.  

​   Unearned fear is the result of family upbringing. It has to do with the way in which parents raise their child. If the child is regarded as the “black sheep” of the family he will become the victim for his caretakers will always punish him for everything that goes wrong in his life, whether or not he is at fault. Thus, his siblings follow suit and treat him in the same way as his so-called guardians do. Or at least one sibling will. It is the sibling that is considered the “golden fleece” of the family unit, and so he becomes the bully of the household. The moon rises and sets upon his head and so his caregivers never punish him for anything that goes wrong in his life, whether or not he is the cause of it. In addition, to make matters worse, such dysfunctional parenting will pit the “black sheep” child against the “golden fleece” child, by making the “black sheep” child the scapegoat for the “golden fleece” child. And so, the victim-bully conflict is born under the guise of sibling rivalry. To add insult to injury, if the victim survives childhood, the Bully Culture will keep the victim legacy alive and well, by for instance, having the business bully a) get the manager to side with the trouble making bully worker against the unsuspecting victim patron, or b) call security to have the victim shopper thrown out of the establishment for daring to defend himself against the offensive employee or c) have the police arrest the consumer for daring to exercise his consumer rights. Hence, here we have, once again, the Bully Culture reiterating, by way of the corporate elite bully, the myth that, “The victim is to blame for being the customer who is always wrong.”

  Unearned fear means that the victim is clueless with regard to how to deal with bullying. Such is due to the learned behavior pattern that the Bully Culture has beaten into the victim, which is the “one size fits all” mentality that “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying.” So, the victim, who has dedicated himself to liberating himself from the victim role, finds him self getting frustrated with his slow progress with regard to how to deal with the bully. The victim does not grasp that the reason why he seems to be such a moron when it comes to the art of kicking bully butt is because the victim believes in the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying.” Thus, the victim spends his entire life span trying to figure out why he keeps getting beat up by the bully instead of trying to figure out how to fight back against the bullying. 

  Moreover, the victim does not get how to bash the bully’s butt since the victim’s significant others also believe in the myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying.” Thus, they give their victim child no guidance as to how to protect himself. To the contrary! The victim child is ignored, punished and/or ganged up upon by his own family for attempting to exercise his inalienable divine right to preserve the self. Meanwhile, the bully child has been bred to be a bully by his significant others. They either put up with the bully’s behavior, let the bully get away with his bullying, or reward him for being a bully. Hence, the bully child gets plenty of opportunity to use people as his own personal punching bag. 

  Furthermore, the victim does not comprehend, understand, or know that the reason why he appears to be a dolt in training when it comes to defeating the bully is due to the fact that the rest of the world also believes in the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying.” Thus, the indifferent by standers side with the bully against the victim whenever and wherever the victim fights back. At the same token, the apathetic on lookers look the other way whenever and wherever the bully beats up the victim. 

  Finally, the elite bully reinforces the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying.” by arguing that the victim fighting back against the bully will only result in the victim getting more hurt by the bully. With such odds against the victim child, by the time he reaches adulthood he has no motivation left to fight back against bullying. Though it may be true that the victim who teaches himself how to fight back against the bully is at risk for getting hurt by the bully, if the victim does not defend himself against the offensive bully he is going to get hurt anyway for doing nothing. So the victim may as well fight back against the bully and by doing so the victim will preserve the most important thing that the victim has – his DIGNITY and his FREEDOM.  

THAWING OUT

  Unearned fear corresponds to stage two, thawing out, which is the PHASE OF EXPRESSION of the emotional healing process. The Bully Culture convinces the victim to feel unearned fear so that he will be too COWARDLY to fight back against the bullying. Thawing out convinces the victim to EXPRESS his feelings so that he will have the COURAGE to confront the bully.  

  The moment the victim decides to confront the bully the victim’s emotions introduce them selves to the victim. As a result of having been pent up for so long, the victim’s emotions will greet the victim with overwhelming intensity causing the victim to run away from them. In psychological terms this is known as affective phobia. It means being afraid of one’s own feelings. It is like having a close friend that you have not interacted with for years, who suddenly pay you a surprise visit. You are both so overcome by each other’s presence, after such a long absence from one other, that your visit becomes overly excited. The victim’s emotions will spew forth like lava coursing down the side of an erupting volcano. Thus, anger having been confined within the victim for so long will be released from its captivity as rage. Fear having been submerged within the victim for so long will emerge from its depths as terror. Sadness having been buried within the victim for so long will come forth from its grave as sorrow. And pain having been silenced within the victim for so long will cry itself out as agony. But happiness, too, will get magnified as a state of catharsis. 

  Unlike accepting that one has emotions, which entails becoming aware of them in the unearned shame phase of emotional healing, expressing one’s emotions in the unearned fear phase of emotional healing requires that one be still and let the self sensate them. Such means that they will come and go of their own accord, unless and until they have been returned to their source of origin – the bully – who brought them into being. But how can the victim return them to their maker – the bully – when every time he tries to do so his feelings well up inside of him like a giant Tsunami tidal wave? Here you are wadding in the ocean of emotion when a wall of water many stories high, foaming at the crest, and swelling like a rip tide at the trough, comes rolling towards you. I used to have dreams during my sleep at night about such waves. My dreams showed me what to do. You don’t swim away from such a wave otherwise it will crash on top of you and crush you. You swim towards it so that you can dive underneath and through it.  

  In other words, do not think any thoughts while the biblical flood of kaleidoscope emotion overtakes you. For thoughts will take you away from emoting your feelings. Instead use your mind to concentrate on the sensations that your feelings are generating within your body. All of the bodily sensations that you undergo are the result of your emotions giving expression through your organism, which, until now, you had ignored. So, focus on what your body is doing and where is it doing it as a result of your intensified emotions. Are you feeling cold all over? Has your face become feverishly hot? Is your mouth quivering? Is your throat swelled up like a dry lump of desert dune? Are your lungs feeling so constricted that you can barely breathe? Are you breaking out in uncontrollable sweating? Is every particle of your being trembling? Is every nerve tingling? Is your heart pounding like a jackhammer in your chest? Does your stomach have the urge to barf or is it undulating like a run away elevator. Does your colon have the urge to make a diarrhea bowel movement or does it feel constipated? Have your knees dissolved into mush? Does your body feel like it is shrinking down to the size of an insect? Are there any other intensifying uncomfortable sensations that you are experiencing? These sensations may come and go for minutes, hours, days, even weeks, BEFORE you confront the bully.  

  Though expressing your emotions may make you feel like you are going to be deathly ill, it is just a passing discomfort. You will not die from permitting your emotions to be released from your body. It just means that you are no longer physiologically petrified like a piece of wood. Instead you are beginning to thaw out like the free flowing liquid of animated being. I remember when I initially embarked upon my quest to confront the bully. I kept having repeating dreams at night while I was asleep that the bully was hurting my feelings. Although I desired to tell the bully off, I was in so much emotional pain that my throat became too clogged up for me to speak. As I persevered in talking back to the bully my night dreams changed. They went from my being mute to my being able to whisper, to my being able to speak audibly, to my being able to talk out loud. Meanwhile, the painful lump inside of my throat diminished until it was no longer there. What my dreams were telling me was that my throat was the place where I harbored my emotions. Because I had entrapped my feelings inside of my self they had become stuck in my throat. I refused to give up on expressing my feelings and so I eventually prevailed in dislodging them from there. By letting myself experience my own emotions I was getting in touch with how they felt. “Hello feelings my name is BB”. My feelings answered back. “Hello BB. I am Miss So Angry that I have caused your throat to constrict so much so that you cannot even speak. Hello BB I am Miss So Sad that I have caused your throat to swell up so much so that you cannot even cry. Hello BB I am Miss So Afraid that I have caused your throat to be so suffocated that you can hardly breathe. Feeling my feelings made me realize that they are not my enemies as the Bully Culture programmed me to believe that they were. They are my best friends. They never lie to me. They always know what is best for me. They are my God given guardian angels. So I have come to trust them...one hundred percent.  

  The only way that the victim can rid himself of his affective phobia is to FEEL THE UNEARNED FEAR BUT CONFRONT THE BULLY, ANYWAY. This will initiate stage two, the PHASE OF EXPRESSION of the emotional healing process. During the thawing out stage the victim’s emotions begin to manifest themselves as non-verbal language – facial expressions and body gestures – as well as verbal speech – words. The difference between success and failure with regard to the unearned fear victim confronting the bully is based upon one thing that the victim must do. The victim has to let his unearned fear be felt BEFORE and/or AFTER his confrontation with the bully. DURING the victim’s confrontation with the bully, the victim is to concentrate on nothing else but what he is saying and doing to the bully. Otherwise the victim’s unearned fear will be too overwhelming for the victim to be able to give the bully back the bully’s own medicine. 

  Depending upon how severely the victim has been traumatized by bullying will determine how much time and effort it will take the victim’s emotions to thaw out. With each passing day that the victim permits himself to express his emotions towards the bully, the victim will process at a faster and faster and faster rate the ways in which the bully victimizes the victim. Such will assist the victim in becoming better prepared to confront the bully in the future. Although emotionally thawing out by being willing to express one’s own uncomfortable feelings may appear to be a monumental task towards victim liberation, it is actually a huge opportunity for the victim to free himself from the victim role by making the victim cognizant of all the things the bully has done, does, and will do to the victim so that the victim can develop the necessary skills to defeat bullying.  

THE LEARNING PHASE OF OVERCOMING BULLYING

  The victim is now going to be dealing with the bully(s) that the victim encounters in the victim’s immediate present. At this juncture the victim starts to make mistakes. When the victim encountered the bully(s) from the victim’s past the victim already knew what had transpired. So, the victim had time to figure out what to say and do to the bully after the bullying event had already transpired. When the victim encounters the bully(s) of the victim’s present, the bullying event is still in progress so the victim does not know until it is happening in the moment what is going to occur. Thus, the victim’s mental cognition – the mental processing time it takes the victim to realize that the bully is insulting the victim and knowing what to say or do back to the bully – has to be spontaneous. But, since the victim has not had any practice in dealing with instantaneous bullying events, the victim’s mental cognition is going to be sluggish.  

  The Bully Culture attempts to prevent the victim from discarding his unearned fear by making the victim feel that if he does not execute a flawless performance then he does not deserve to breathe another breath. So thanks to the Bully Culture the victim is not only afraid to confront the bully, the victim also has performance anxiety about doing so. Don’t let your quest to be liberated from the victim role give you a compulsive-obsessive personality disorder. Try not to berate yourself for making mistakes or for not knowing how to handle yourself in every bullying circumstance. I know it is hard not to since, because we have been conditioned by the Bully Culture to believe in the myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying”, we tend to blame ourselves for anything and everything that goes wrong in our lives, even if we are not the cause of the effect. So, we overcompensate by becoming perfectionists. So when you do error keep in mind the following affirmation: “FAILURE IS ONLY DELAYED SUCCESS.”  

  Going about the task of giving the bully back his own medicine has nothing whatsoever to do with having to be perfect to make it happen. For the goal of confronting the bully is not to be flawless. The goal of confronting the bully is to NOT let the bully INTIMIDATE or MANIPULATE you into being a victim of bullying. Also keep in mind that the GOAL of your campaign to become “victim no more” is not about being responsible for things that are outside of your control – changing the bully’s behavior – as that is up to the bully to decide to do or not do. Rather, the GOAL of your campaign to become “victim no more” is about being accountable for things that are within your control – changing the victim’s behavior – so that you, the victim, can liberate yourself from the victim role that the Bully Culture has conditioned you to be in.  

  The Bully Culture has trained the victim to live according to the word “perfect” in order to make the victim responsible for things that are outside of the victim’s control. At the same token, the Bully Culture has trained the bully to use the word “perfect” in order to let the bully escape accountability for things that are within the bully’s control. Hence, whenever, wherever, and however the bully is caught doing a wrongful deed the bully will use the word “perfect” to make excuses for his wrongdoing by saying things like, “I am not perfect”. The real issue here is that the bully “does not even try” to clean up his own mess. Mistakes are unavoidable as they are part of the learning process. The one who never makes a mistake is the one who never ever accomplishes or achieves anything. The material in the Bull Crap Busters Website is tried and true because it was conceived out of trial and error. So don’t get upset when you make a mistake. Instead use such opportunities to come up with new ways or reinforce your execution of old ways on how to deal with the bullying.  

  Overcoming bullying, like anything else, takes work so expect frustration. But, thanks to the Bully Culture, the victim is going to have plenty of bully(s) to practice confronting the bully. Correcting mistakes is what speeds up slow mental cognition. In other words it is called learning. What makes the learning curve phase difficult is that the victim has to learn what things to say and/or do to the bully in any given bullying event. But, if the victim will observe from the mistakes that the victim made in the past, what works and what does not work in the present, then the victim will know what to say and/or do to the bully in the future. The victim will grow immensely during the learning curve phase for the victim’s comfort zone in dealing with bullying will become more expansive. It will also be an experimental phase in which the victim discovers new ways of confronting the bully.  

   The following will teach the victim how to observe the victim’s own mistakes in a way that will allow the victim to learn how to improve at being a “Bully Buster”:  

  I recommend that the victim make and keep a list of all of the bullying events in which the victim experienced set backs in telling the bully off. This list can be a diary or a journal describing the victim’s and the bully’s dialogue. Then, the victim will ask himself what he did not say and/or do that was applicable to the past bullying event. After that, the victim will document what things the victim can say and/or do in future bullying events. Bully(s) for the most part are not very innovative people. Most bully(s) use the same repertoire of manipulation and intimidation victimization tactics over and over and over again. Therefore, many-a-bully is going to bully the victim by saying and/or doing the same darn thing that many-a-bully has already said or done to the victim. This means that, once the victim figures out what specific things to say and/or do in a particular bullying event, the victim’s work is done. For the victim is going to be able to repetitively say and/or do the same things to the bully over and over and over again. This will give the victim the necessary practice to speed up his mental cognition,  

  I also recommend that the victim make and keep a list of all of the bullying events in which the victim was victorious in thoroughly telling the bully off. This list can be a diary or a journal describing the victim’s and the bully’s dialogue. The victim is to refer to it from time to time to see how much progress the victim is making at confronting the bully.  

  The more the victim totally tells off the bully the more complete the victim’s emotional healing process is going to be. The victim’s mental cognition will be slow, medium, or fast depending upon how much practice the victim gets at confronting the bully. So practice, practice, and practice some more! A slow rate of cognition means that it is going to take the victim months to weeks to mentally process a bullying event. A medium rate of cognition means that it is going to take the victim weeks to days to mentally process a bullying event. A fast rate of cognition means that it is going to take the victim days to hours to mentally process a bullying event. The fastest rate of cognition is when the victim mentally processes a bullying event within minutes to seconds. Thus, the victim is going to miss opportunities to strike back at the bully in the moment. Hence, to remedy this, the victim can go back and confront the bully, as many times as is necessary, to say and/or do all that is necessary to the bully.  

  If the victim misses an opportunity to confront the bully, and is unable to go back and do so for whatever reason, the victim will be compensated for it by giving the next bully that the victim has to deal with a double dose of verbal can of whoop butt. One dose will be for the bully that is not getting away with being a bully, and the other dose will be for the bully who got away with being a bully. Don’t feel bad for the bully who is being served a double dose of his own medicine. Bullies have gotten away plenty with hurting innocent folk. So doing so will not throw off the scales of justice any.  

  As the victim overcomes his unearned fear and confronts the bully, the victim may notice that he OVERREACTS to the bullying situation. This may be disconcerting to the victim, the bully, and the bystander, who are present during the bullying scenario. Most people are not aware that overreacting is part of the natural emotional healing process that the victim who confronts the bully has to undergo. The victim cannot help this. Overreaction is the human organism’s way of compensating for all of the bullying instances in which the victim under reacted or did not react at all to bully victimizations. As Sir Isaac Newton once said, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” It is a simple rule of Physics. It is nature’s way of re-aligning what is out of alignment. If the victim continues to deal with bullying on a consistent basis, then eventually, the victim’s psyche will regain its equilibrium in accordance with the golden mean of the natural order of things and return to its “once upon a time” naturally balanced self. After that, the victim will stop abnormally reacting altogether and start normally responding to bullying in general. 

  Thanks to the Bully Culture, for the most part, no one will give the victim any support to stand up to bullying. By focusing on both your failures and your successes you, the victim, will become your own best support person. The most important thing to remember is “DO NOT EVER GIVE UP!” By refusing to give up, you give the world no choice, but to give you your freedom to be “victim no more!” I was a victim for half a century. Yet, I was able to break out of the victim role. So, you can too! By repeatedly making the choice to confront the bully(s) from the victim’s present, the victim shatters his Jammer Feeling of unearned fear that dictate to the victim’s psyche that the victim is too hopeless to fight back against bullying.

​***

I WISH I COULD CRY

I wish I could cry.
Isolated from the human race,
I’d let my tears roll down my face.

I wish I could feel
Embracing me from my very core
the arms of myself and many more.

I wish I could be
A hot salty tear of truth,
washing away my embittered youth.

I wish I could cry with gentle rage,
flowing freely, easily, un-caged,
holding onto not a thing,
letting myself go, surrendering.

Without wondering why
I’d allow myself to.
I wish I could cry
for what crying could do.

By Elana Laham © 2013

***

UNEARNED GUILT

  Unearned guilt prevents the victim from liberating himself from the victim role by making the victim feel HUMILIATED about fighting back against bullying by permeating the victim’s psyche with thoughts of DEGRADATION that make the victim wonder “WHY AM I NOT ENOUGH?” As I continued to press onward with my “victim no more” campaign by diligently giving the bully back his own medicine I felt a sense of freedom. But soon enough my path altered its course for I began to wonder, ”Why is what I say and what I do to the bully not enough?” The answer I got back from myself was, “Because you are a worthless nobody!” It took me sometime to realize that I had answered myself in that way because I had been programmed by the Bully Culture to believe in the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying”. After that, I realized that it was the Bully Culture’s fault, not mine, as to why I felt that what I did and said to the bully was not enough. For thanks to the Bully Culture, I was given NO constructive inner programming to work with. No one gave my mind any wisdom, understanding, or knowledge – OPPORTUNITY – my heart any love or guidance – SUPPORT– or my being any social or financial status – ATTENTION – to overcome bullying. So was it any wonder then why I was not satisfied with my own performance in fighting back against the bully? My glass was neither half empty nor half full since no one put any water into it at all. The Bully Culture had made an empty vessel out of me by having its members fill me up with nothing but lies, and lies, and more lies about who and what I really am and how the world actually works. So, my answer to my own question of “why am I not enough?” became because “I am a work in progress”.  

  Unearned guilt is the result of family upbringing. It has to do with the ways in which parents raise their child. If the child is considered the “black sheep” of the family he becomes the victim for no matter what he does or does not do his caretakers are never satisfied with his performance. Thus, his siblings follow suit and treat him in the same way as his so-called guardians do. Or at least one sibling will. It is the sibling that is considered the “golden fleece” of the family unit, and so he becomes the bully of the household. The entire solar system rises and sets upon his head for no matter what he does or does not do his caregivers are always satisfied with his performance. In addition, to make matters worse, such dysfunctional parenting will pit the “black sheep” child against the “golden fleece” child by spoiling the “golden fleece” child while depriving the “black sheep” child. And so, the victim-bully conflict is born under the guise of sibling rivalry. To add insult to injury, if the victim survives childhood, the Bully Culture will keep the victim legacy alive and well, by for instance having the clergy bully wrongfully preach to the victim that a good person is the one who rises above it all by not letting anything or anyone upset him. This means that, if the bully is bullying the victim, it is because God is punishing the victim for being a bad person. Hence, here we have, once again, the Bully Culture reiterating by way of the clergy bully the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a goodie two shoes.”  

   Those who serve the Bully Culture perpetuate the notion that it is the victim who is to blame for being a victim of bullying.  Their argument is that no one can cause you emotional pain unless you give them permission to.  If someone hurtles a brick at your head you can go ahead and pretend that it does not bother you when it makes contact with your skull. But I guarantee that not only will it throb like the dickens, you might even get a concussion from it. So too with feelings! Moreover, emotional hurt is worse than physical harm. This is because our emotions affect our inner essence – who we intrinsically are; whereas, our physicality effects our outer shell – what we extrinsically are.  Furthermore, if it were so, that all we have to do is stop emoting the negative feelings that the bully thrusts upon us, then the world would have no bullies – those who beat up on others, and no victims – those who are beaten up on by others, and who beat up on themselves. For no one woulda, shoulda, coulda be affected by emotional bullying. 

   But just because we are in denial that we have feelings does not mean that we do not feel emotional pain. We cannot turn our emotions on and off like a light switch for the simple reason that we are SENTIENT BEINGS.  Because we live in a Bully Culture we choose to unnaturally consciously ignore our feelings. However, we become aware of them anyway since our subconscious naturally overrides our choice. So that, if not while we are awake, then while we are asleep, we dream about them. 

   Since we live in a Bully Culture, those of us who are honest about our feelings must be prepared for the consequences. Telling the truth will put you at odd ends with many people. But then, such people aren’t worth associating with anyway. They are empty remnants of the vibrant illuminations that they once were before they decided to succumb to the Bully Culture’s materialistic value system of false promises of everlasting prosperity. So, before you decide whether or not you are going to be a truth seeker, you will have to answer the following question honestly to yourself: Are you content living in a society that has become a quagmire of quicksand sinking forever deeper into an eternal cesspool of putrid unending degenerating status quo disgust? I have only been on this planet for half a century but it has been long enough for me to witness from my grandparents’ generation to my parents’ generation to my own generation to the next generation after me the spiraling decadence of humanity unfolding at a phenomenal rate. I’d call it “future shock” but some one else has already coined that expression. The decision whether or not to be a messenger of the truth, no one can make for you, not even me. Only you can make that choice. Only you can decide if the risk of telling the truth is worth the salvation of humanity, starting with yourself. Bullying will never stop until there is nothing left of our world, and nothing left of us, unless we, individual by individual, make the choice to stop the bullying.  

  The Bully Culture also hinders the victim from overcoming his unearned guilt by compelling the victim to have an “I don’t care” attitude towards his own suffering. On the one hand, the Bully Culture regards the victim’s pain as insignificant or non-existent. On the other hand, the Bully Culture regards the bully’s pain as NEWS worthy in importance no matter how trivial it is. Observe the hypocrisy otherwise known as the Bully Culture’s double standard. The bully is permitted to get upset over every passing annoyance that comes his way, including taking out his petty concerns on those who did not cause them. Meanwhile, the victim is forbidden to do anything about the traumatic life changing events that are continually thrust upon him other than suffer in silence. THE BULLY CULTURE HAS NO RIGHT TO PASS JUDGMENT ON PAIN NO MATTER WHOSE PAIN IT IS. All pain is a warning sign that something is wrong. So don’t ignore your pain. It is a personal message to you that something is not right. If you don’t pay attention to it, it will only get worse.  

  The Bully Culture also thwarts the victim from overcoming his unearned guilt by claiming that the victim who fights back against bullying will turn into a bully himself. To the contrary! If the victim does NOT fight back against bullying he is at risk for turning into a bully. As long as the victim fights defensively versus offensively – ends the fight does not start the fight – the victim will NOT become a bully. By directing his justified anger at the source – the bully who caused it, the victim will restore balance to his victim personality giving the victim the character to no longer have the tendency to be either a victim, or a bully.

FREE FLOWING

  Unearned guilt corresponds to stage three, free flowing, which is the PHASE OF RELEASE of the emotional healing process. The Bully Culture influences the victim to feel unearned guilt so that the victim will experience self-reproach about giving the bully back the negative feelings that the bully has burdened the victim with. Free flowing influences the victim to RELEASE his feelings so that he will experience the self-empowerment that comes with FIGHTING BACK AGAINST BULLYING.  

  The only way that the victim can rid himself of his self-incrimination is to FEEL THE UNEARNED GUILT BUT CONFRONT THE BULLY, ANYWAY. Unearned guilt is the final obstacle that keeps the victim from overcoming the victim legacy. Unearned guilt dictates that the victim hold back his genuine emotions while he fights back against the bully so that the victim will not return the destructive feelings that the bully has given the victim back to their source of origin – the bully. Thus, the victim’s authentic feelings remain stifled like a dam that prevents the natural flow of water by confining it to a designated boundary that the victim does not believe he is worthy of removing. In order to prevent the victim’s natural emotions from merely trickling forth having been unduly restrained by unearned guilt, the victim has to let his unearned guilt be felt BEFORE and/or AFTER he confronts the bully. During the victim’s confrontation with the bully, the victim must concentrate on nothing else but what he is saying and doing to the bully. Hence, if the victim does this, the victim will be able to overcome his unearned guilt and thereby release his real emotions while fighting back against the bully so that they burst forth like a free-flowing waterfall out of the victim’s system forever.  

  Depending upon how severely the victim has been traumatized by bullying will determine how much time and effort it will take the victim’s emotions to become free flowing. Once the victim gives himself permission to let his feelings go without self restraint, the victim’s mental processing will immediately accelerate to such a rapid rate that the victim will be able to fire counterattacks against the bully’s attacks SPONTANEOUSLY. Then there will be nothing that the bully says or does that will get passed the victim unnoticed, not even for a moment. When the victim comes to grips with the actuality that he has a divine right to release his own emotions upon the bully, and decides that he will do so, no matter the price that the Bully Culture makes him pay, he removes himself from his own emotional bondage by breaking down the emotional barrier that has been preventing his unearned PAIN from undergoing emotional healing.  

***

  There are many ways in which the Bully Culture keeps the unearned shame, unearned fear, and unearned guilt victim from transforming into what in psychological terms is referred to as a SELF ACTUALIZED individual..

   The following are a few of them:

   1) The elite bully dupes the victim into believing that he has a stake in the Bully Culture establishment so that the victim will continue to be a mindless, heartless, spineless conformist instead of an enlightened iconoclast who starts a movement that overthrows the dysfunctional lose-lose socioeconomic disorder of the Bully Culture regime.  

   2) The corporate elite bully bombards the victim with its advertising slogans that the victim has no value as a person and no purpose in life in so many words from A to Z, so that the victim will wait for the world to change instead of transforming himself into being part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

   3) The clergy bully preaches that a good person is a people punching bag victim, as no good deed shall go unpunished, and that a bad person is a bully coward who is to be unduly forgiven for committing evil. The clergy bully also preaches to the victim the lie that God rewards good people and punishes bad people when the truth is that people reward bad people and punish good people.  

   4) The enforcer bully clandestinely “takes bribes to ruin innocent peoples’ lives” in order to incarcerate the victim by framing the victim for trumped up charges of one sort or another; or by staging a vehicular accident to murder the victim while making it look like the victim was at fault for getting killed.  

   5) The playground bully child mercilessly targets the victim child for bullying who does not fit into the Bully Culture’s junk culture value system so that humanity cannot benefit from the unique God given genius that the victim child was meant to manifest as an adult into this world in order to further the progress of human civilization.  

   6) Society’s bully joins the band wagon of bullying to make certain that victim suffrage has no voice so that FREEDOM, which is the most dangerous concept to the elite bully and the Bully Culture regime, and the most threatening idea to the corporate elite bully and the Bully Culture establishment, will be CENSORED.  

THE MASTERY PHASE OF OVERCOMING BULLYING

  The movies in the media that perpetuate the Bully Culture’s hero/heroine myth reinforce the illusion that resolving one’s personal life changing issues of overcoming the villain only takes about an hour, give or take about twenty minutes of commercial time. BULLCRAP!!! So for example, the Marshall Arts of Self Defense is not only divided into various belts of color, but the black belt, which is the highest level attainable, is also divided into different degrees of mastery. Mastering the art of self-defense against bullying is the same is earning a black belt in Marshall Arts. Becoming masterful at dealing with bullying has many levels of mastery.  

   For the purpose of discussion I have come to define the mastery phase of overcoming bullying as follows:

  “The victim who has become so competent at dealing with the bully that the victim is confident that he can handle any bullying scenario that comes the victim’s way”.

  The victim who arrives at the mastery level of overcoming bullying is no longer crippled by emotional boundaries of unearned shame, unearned fear, and unearned guilt. Thus, the victim’s Jammer Feelings have become non-existent. Hence, the victim’s mental cognition –the mental processing time it takes the victim to realize that the bully has insulted the victim and knowing what to say or do back to the bully – occurs within a matter of seconds. In addition, due to all of the experiences that the victim has had in confronting bullies, the victim is able to anticipate the type of attack the bully is going to try to victimize the victim with ahead of time and have his counterattacks already to go before the bullying event takes place. How is that for being able to size the bully up? 

  Reaching mastery level means that the victim’s thoughts, feelings, and actions have become a synergistically unified whole of spontaneity. The victim who reaches mastery level experiences what it means to be really alive for he has actually attained FREEDOM. The freedom to exercise his freedom of choice to be who he is meant to be not what the Bully Culture dictates that he ought to be. And whether or not he intends to, he will be a role model and a mentor to the countless victims, bullies, and bystanders who silently admire and respect him as they bare witness to his unflinching determination to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. The mastery level victim’s self worth is not for sale at any price for he knows that his dignity is priceless. The mastery level victim’s self esteem does not need or want approval from others for it has integrity all by itself. The mastery level victim’s self respect has earned the highest and greatest badge of honor for he has chosen to enact the everlasting deeds of God’s universal natural order of things. The mastery level victim has become a self actualized individual. The Bully Culture will continue to tell him, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying“; But the Cosmos will be saying to him, “Congratulations! Job well done!”

***​

TOMORROW

My eyebrows do not sit as
perched even wings upon my forehead.
My teeth do not look like a
smooth picket fence riding along my gums.
My feet do not stand like a
strong archway below the pillars of my legs.
My back does not roll out like a
railroad track coursing towards its destination.

My childhood was lost
in a holocaust.

Eyebrows plucked out.
Teeth crammed into crocked chips.
Tailbone slammed against Spine.
Feet crushed into too tight shoes.

Instead of dying of sorrow,
I dreamt that tomorrow existed.

I dreamt that scarce trees grew
into dense forest of hair root above
the kaleidoscope pools of my vision.

I dreamt that braces erected white pillars
between my soft, shy, quiet, bow tied lips.

I dreamt that chiropractors coaxed
my withdrawn, twisted, isolated spine
into an erect, confident, upstanding citizen.

I dreamt that orthotics reformed my deformed feet.

I dreamt that my falling star re-entered  
the beautiful body that God had meant for me to have at birth.

By Elana Laham © 2013

***

EMOTIONAL BULLYING

  The emotional bully victimizes the victim with emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is defined as that which wounds the victim’s heart by way of betrayal, cheating, rejection, exploitation, and verbal insults. Verbal insults include but are not limited to name calling, sarcasm such as humor at the victim’s expense, mockery such as making fun of the victim, back handed compliments such as saying one thing while meaning the opposite other, insincere apologies, the invalidation of one’s feelings, the belittling of one’s feelings, harsh speech, destructive criticism, singling one out for social ostracizing, the ruination of one’s reputation by way of libel (false negative written statements) or slander (false negative verbal statements), and so on and so forth. The emotional bully, more often than not, is a metamorphosis of the physical bully. For instance, the playground bully will target children, kindergarten through senior year, with his blatant fist bashing. But by the time he has undergone his right of passage into adulterated adulthood, he realizes that the Bully Culture no longer sanctions such obvious brutalization of others as it is considered “uncivilized”. So, the grown up playground bully develops a more sophisticated means by which to beat up upon his victims. He tongue lashes them. “Tongue lashing” masks the bully’s unjustified hostility as acceptable gestures of socializing. Meanwhile, they sting the victim like a viper and poison the victim’s innocent sweetness by fermenting it into jaded bitterness.  

  One kind of emotional bully is society’s bully – the Jerkoholic. The Jerkoholic tends to emotionally target the population of adult civilians. It is difficult to fight back against the emotional bully because those who are honest about their feelings risk being socially stigmatized for daring to voice them. They are labeled society’s wimps for protesting being victimized by bullying and society’s criminals for filing legitimate complaints against bullying. Their resistance, which consists of the few, the proud, and the brave, have to do battle against the bully brigade, which is comprised of the billions of people who occupy our planet. The emotional bully’s torment upon the victim is the Bully Culture’s way of waging war upon humanity. It knows that if it kills the heart of human civilization by turning it from love to hate it will render all of us mindless, heartless, spineless conformists – conformed asses – whose one and only purpose in life is to blindly, deafly, and dumbly serve the Bully Culture’s exploitation of us all at our own expense. Thanks to the Bully Culture, in order to have peace we must wage war upon bullying. For as long as the emotional bully remains unchallenged the world will continue to degenerate into a meaner, crueler, and more dangerous place to live for all of us. 

  Because we live in a Bully Culture we believe that we are to blame for being bullied and that we are all alone in our plight so we do not have the heart to change the situation. Instead we spend the rest of our days feeling like we have “people problems” as there is something innately wrong with us. That is unless and until we choose to stand up to the bully. And if the rest of us decide to stand up to the bully as well, then, with our sheer numbers alone, we will obliterate bullying from the face of the earth. I urge each and every victim to stand up against the emotional bully. For by doing so not only will you make a difference for your self but you will also make a difference for the entire victim nation, which is made up of the rest of the human population. Your courageous bravery and dogged determination will be an example for other victims to do likewise. The last time I checked in the United States of America a citizen has what is called the Constitutional Right of Freedom of Speech. It is your voice. Use it! It is time for all of us victims to open up a can of verbal whoop butt on the emotional bully. For the Bully Culture, has given us no other option but to fight back against emotional bullying or self-destruct.  

***

THE BOUNTY HUNTERS

You can run but you cannot hide
from who you truly are inside,
a nerd, a freak, an individual “I”.
It won’t take long for them to spy
the tears cascading down your cheek,
leaving an open trail for them to seek.

They are the bounty hunters
And they are everywhere.
Stabbing us with their hostile glare
just because we, too, breathe air.
Shooting us with their sarcastic put-downs.
for to them, we are but circus clowns.
Gassing us with their mocking laughter
then blaming us for their insults, after.

By Elana Laham © 2013

***

THE HANDS ON APPROACH TO EMOTIONAL BULLYING

  Now that you know that society has become a Bully Culture that wages war against humanity let us forge our weapons! I have developed a method of verbal warfare that gives the emotional bully back his own medicine. I call it the HANDS on Approach. It is tried and true. I reality test it myself on all of the bully(s) that I come in contact with daily. So you don’t have to worry whether or not it actually WORKS! H.A.N.D.S. is an acronym that stands for, “Have a Nice Day Salvos".

  The purpose of “Have A Nice Day Salvos” is two fold. One, it gives the bully back the negative emotions that he strives to palm off onto the unsuspecting victim. Two, it ensures that the victim will not get into any trouble by the Bully Culture for using it.  

  “Have A Nice Day Salvos” are composed of three types of anti-emotional bullying ammunition. 

  The first HANDS ON defensive maneuver I refer to as the bombshells of TRUTH. The bully bombards the victim with lies, which are the victim’s most dreaded enemy, for they make the victim believe in the Bully Culture’s myths. Therefore, the victim will bombard the bully with his most dreaded enemy, the truth, which forces the bully to admit what he really is – a social disease. 

  The truth is to be launched by the second HANDS ON defensive maneuver that I refer to as the missiles of MOCKERY. The double standards of the elite bully and the wannabe elitist bullies, who lord it over others no matter how miniscule their power may be nor how mightily they misuse it, impede the victim from overcoming the victim role for they propose that the bully is to be taken seriously while the victim is to be regarded as nothing more and nothing less than a comical character. Thereby, not only is the victim to give the bully back the bully’s own medicine with the truth, but the victim is to go on the warpath against the bully with sarcasm. The missiles of mockery deliver the truth to the bully with sarcasm. Sarcasm makes folly out of the bully for trying to make sport of the victim. It is a most formidable piece of arsenal for it breaks the bully’s spell of intimidation and/or manipulation against the victim. It does this by making the victim accept that, just as the bully does not take the victim seriously, the victim does not have to take the bully seriously. Once the victim realizes that the bully is not credible, the victim realizes that the Bully Culture myth that, “The victim is to blame for being a victim of bullying” is not valid either. 

  The third HANDS ON defensive maneuver I call the proverbial shield otherwise known as the MIRROR. It permits the victim to use the bully’s own reflection against the bully in order to give the bully back his own medicine. The bully victimizes the victim by projecting his own pathetic, pitiful, world class, mega wimp, loser self onto the victim. The proverbial shield allows the victim to re-direct the bully’s projectiles away from the victim by having the victim mimic the bully’s behaviors back onto the bully. 

PREPARING FOR BATTLE

  Fifty percent of winning the war is being prepared for the battle. The following guidelines will assist the victim in wielding the HANDS ON approach against the emotional bully: 

   1) REMEMBER to follow this ONE RULE of thumb. The victim must always be on the DEFENSIVE never on the OFFENSIVE. The victim never seeks revenge against others. The victim always avenges the self. The victim is never a troublemaker. Don’t start a fight. The victim is always a trouble breaker. The victim ends the fight. THE VICTIM MUST ABIDE BY THIS CODE OF CONDUCT IN ORDER TO FREE HIMSELF FROM THE VICTIM ROLE. Otherwise, the wannabe-liberated victim will either remain a victim or turn into a bully. Remember, the purpose of HANDS is to show the victim how to break out of the victim role. It is NOT to make the bully sorry for hurting the victim’s feelings for the only pain the bully cares about his is own. It is NOT to get the bully to reform for the only person one can change is one self. It is NOT to gain popularity for as long as we live in a Bully Culture, people will not consider the victim “cool” for kicking in bully butt.  

   2) Know WHAT you are going TO SAY and DO to the bully before you encounter the bully. This is achieved by making your own “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list. This way you will respond instead of over reacting or under reacting to the bully’s victimization of you. The best way to put together a HANDS list is to recollect the personal life experiences that you have had, do have, and most likely will have with the bully. What insults did, does, will the bully attack you with? Build your “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list around them. Also, while you are inventing your “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list, keep in mind to write them up in as few words as possible and to have them convey the simplest message. Doing so will not only make certain that the bully grasps their meaning it will also help you remember what you are going to say to the bully.

   3) After you have launched your HANDS satisfactorily at the bully, LEAVE, immediately. Doing so will minimize the likelihood that the bully will be able to triangulate the enforcer bully against you in order to get you into some sort of unwarranted trouble by falsely claiming that you are the bully and he is the victim.  

   4) MEMORIZE your “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list. That way you will have your HANDS at the ready to confront the bully.

   Here are some suggestions that will help you do so:  

  (a) Review your HANDS daily. Sounds silly? You won’t think so when the bully hurtles an unexpected insult at you and you forget what you are supposed to say back!  

  (b) If you are still having difficulty remembering your “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list, write it down on a piece of paper that you can carry around with you. Then, when you encounter the bully read them to the bully. Sounds absurd? It is precisely how I familiarized myself with my HANDS. If the bully makes fun of you for doing so, practice saying this “Have A Nice Day Salvo” to him, “Unlike you, I think before I speak.”

  (c) Another way, you can help yourself recall your “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list is by focusing on the two or three salvos that come up most often with the bully and practice saying those.  

  (d) Go back as many times as is necessary to successfully put into the bully’s face anything and everything that you forgot to say to the bully. Doing this will not only REINFORCE your HANDS list, it will increase your HANDS reflex – the amount of processing time it takes you to figure out what to say or do to the bully. 

   Warning: You may only have one chance to give the bully back the bully’s own medicine with your HANDS before the bully gets the authority figure bully after you. No worries! You can take solace in knowing that you got the bully so upset with your HANDS that his so called invulnerable veneer cracked and he ran away and hid behind his minions. Meanwhile, the bully was not able to get you into any trouble since you have already exited the scene. So game over! You win! If for whatever reason you miss the opportunity to confront a bully with your HANDS, no worries! Thanks to the Bully Culture, you will have infinite opportunities to confront bully(s). So don’t be concerned if you miss some. Instead, use missed chances to launch your HANDS at the next bully that victimizes you. As long as you keep catapulting your HANDS at bully(s) in the present, you will take care of the bully(s) you missed in the past and in so doing undergo complete emotional healing. 

   5) After you get efficient at executing your most frequently used HANDS, use the HANDS for the less frequent bullying situations that come into your life. Once you get proficient at using your entire HANDS list, EXPAND your HANDS by writing up new HANDS to add to your HANDS list for the opportunities when the bully says or does something that you have never encountered before.  

   6) You can also MODIFY your HANDS by tailoring them to different bullying circumstances. Sometimes, using a direct “Have A Nice Day Salvo is necessary to get your point across. At other times, an indirect “Have A Nice Day Salvo is most appropriate. I happen to favor the direct blunt approach, myself. More often than not, the best way to infiltrate enemy lines is to do so with SUBTLETY. Riding up to the bully’s castle in knight armor, mounted on a warhorse, and thrusting your lance across its moat, will sound the alarm and activate the drawbridge. However, if you ride up to the bully’s castle in your “fix-it-all” wagon, wearing a plumber’s uniform, come to repair the pipes, you will have detonated your bomb before the bully knows that his kitchen just blew up. 

   7) CONFRONT the bully when the Bully is ALONE. Don’t try to be Batman fighting off the Joker and his gang absent of his sidekick Robin the Boy Wonder. Doing so will only wear you down. The Bully Culture has no pity on the victim. It takes no prisoners. So don’t expect a Good Samaritan, someone who will stand up for you on your behalf, to come to your aid when you take on the bully, unless you know yourself to be a very lucky type of person. The chances are nil that, even though the victim clearly has the right to defend him self, those witnessing the confrontation will come to the victim’s aid. Instead they will either do nothing to help the victim or they will join in with the bully to beat up on the victim to interfere with the victim’s mission to be “victim no more”. The lone victim will have difficulty being able to volley his, “Have A Nice Day Salvos” against numerous opposing voices.  

   8) CONFRONT the bully in a PUBLIC place. A public arena is the most neutral battleground the victim can hope to engage the bully in. A public setting is defined as a place and time where and when neither the bully, nor the victim has any one to side with or against them. That way if the bully becomes so upset with the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” that he entertains the thought of getting physically violent with the victim, the bully will think twice before going ballistic. A public scenario has potential witnesses. Even though it is more than likely that none of them will be Good Samaritans, the bully will be concerned that someone just might. In general, bully(s) won’t dare risk getting caught being a bully. This is because the bully has his reputation as a “decent person” to preserve so that he can go on being a bully.  

   9) BEWARE of the bully. If the victim has no other choice but to confront the bully in a private setting, if possible he is to bring trustworthy friend(s) to act as witness(s) in the event that the bully decides to get out of control. If that is not possible, keep your body a distance away from the bully. You don’t have to be on the other side of the room. Just give yourself enough distance between you and the bully so that his limbs cannot reach out and touch you. The bully being a coward will try to sucker punch you by being covert about his physical contact so he can make it look like an accident. For instance, he suddenly socks you in the arm so hard that it gives you bruises while making it look like he is slapping your shoulder in response to a joke. Or he might be overt about his physical contact by without warning lunging at you and giving you a body slam. So never let your guard down that the bully might invade your space. If the bully tries to attack you, and you can escape, flee! Don’t get into a physical brawl with the bully for it is very probable that you will get into trouble with law enforcement if you do. But if the bully has you cornered, defend yourself! Your dignity is at stake here. You have the divine right to protect yourself. Then, when you can call the police right away and file a police report. If there are any witnesses include them in your police report.

  The following is an example of what I did about a road rage bully that prevented him from doing any physical harm to me, or damage to my vehicle. I was traveling down a residential road at its speed limit of 25 miles per hour when I heard a car behind my vehicle honk incessantly. When I stopped my car at a stop sign the driver of the honking vehicle got out of his car and started banging with both of his fists on the roof of the driver’s side of my car while screaming obscenities at me that I was driving too slowly. I pulled my car seat down as far as it would go, climbed into the back of my car and with pad and paper wrote down his license plate number. Then, I climbed back into my car seat and through my locked car door window displayed on my notebook pad of paper to the road rage bully coward his license plate number while I held my cell phone in my opposite hand. After that, I rolled down my car door window ever so slightly, and I told him that he better not have damaged my vehicle, and he better leave me alone, or I will dial 911 and report him to the police. As fast as anyone can say “bye-bye” he jumped back into his car without another word, passed my vehicle and sped out of my visual view never to be seen again. Luckily for him there was no damage to my car or to me.  

   10) When the LOGISTICS are NOT in the victim’s favor, “Wait long but move fast”. For a myriad of reasons the bully may NOT be accessible for the victim to confront. He may be avoiding the victim by refusing to read his mail, answer the phone, or come to the door. Or the bully may have the day off, be on a vacation, or you do not know and cannot get access to the bully’s work schedule. When this happens the victim is to do what one of the greatest Martial Artists of the world did. Bruce Lee in his film entitled, “Enter the Dragon” was trapped by his foes in a tiny room no larger than a small elevator. He could not escape it to fight the bad guys. So he sat on the floor cross-legged, breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and waited. Soon after, someone opened the door and Bruce Lee sprung into action. If the victim is unable to confront the bully, relax and let it go for the time being. Then, when opportunity knocks at your door, strike the bully with all of the surprise that you can muster. Now, what happens if the bully becomes permanently unavailable? Perhaps he moved to a new place of residence so you cannot locate him or he is hiding behind his buddies so you cannot contact him. Don’t turn your frustration in on yourself! Let the issue go by realizing that you had the courage to confront the bully. It is not your fault that circumstances beyond your control did not permit you to, or that the bully was too much of a coward to face you.  

   11) Don’t let the bully MANIPULATE OR INTIMIDATE you. The bully will attempt to intimidate the victim into getting so scared that the victim becomes too afraid to confront the bully. The bully does this so that he can go on being a bully. As President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Overcome the fear by confronting the bully. The bully is a world-class mega wimp. The bully will accuse the victim of being “super” sensitive. Meanwhile, the bully is “hyper diaper” sensitive. The bully wears false “bravado” underwear. The bully hides his feelings by pretending not to have any. Meanwhile every thing bothers the bully. Moreover, as far as boldness goes, when was the last time you saw a bully pick on someone his own size, or fight a lone rival without ganging up on him? This is a rhetorical question.  

  The bully will also try to manipulate the victim into getting so angry that the victim gets himself into some sort of undeserved trouble for daring to fight back against the bully. The bully does this so that he can re-rationalize that the victim is the bully and the bully is the victim so that the bully can delude himself into believing that he beats up the bully(s) who beat up on him. Don’t get so mad that you scream at the bully, use profanity against the bully, threaten the bully, attack the bully, and/or damage the bully’s belongings. Otherwise, the bully will play victim by contacting the enforcer bully and you, not the bully, will get into trouble.  

  At best, when the police arrive on the scene they will misconstrue your cursing as “disturbing the peace”, and/or your yelling as “disorderly conduct”. So, replace your urge to use “colorful” language with the descriptive metaphors that you will have in your repertoire of HANDS. And replace your urge to scream at the bully by speaking to him in a sarcastic tone of voice instead. You will be surprised at how well sarcasm diffuses your anger. The bully knows. He does it all the time. At worst, when the police arrive on the scene they will arrest you for “uncivil” conduct. Threatening the bully is legally known as “assault”. Striking the bully is regarded as “battery”. And damaging the bully’s property is considered “vandalism”. Don’t give the bully the satisfaction. The bully is not worth the ruination of your life.  

  You don’t have to make a scene to give the bully back his own medicine. Use your “HANDS” instead. All by themselves they will blow the bully away. In fact, they might bother the bully so much that he will call security on you to get you thrown out of the establishment so that he can humiliate you. If he does, quietly and quickly leave the premises. Then, the bully can embarrass himself by exposing to all what a world-class mega wimp he is for calling in the troops just because you told him off by exercising your freedom of speech in a civil manner. In addition, if the bully cries “wolf” or yells “fire” enough times to the hired security patrol, his boss, who has to pay for their services, may decide that the bully is too much of a nuisance and relieve the bully of his job.

   The following is a real life scenario entitled “DOCTOR”, which illustrates how NOT to be INTIMIDATED or MANIPULATED by a bully.

   What gives a doctor POWER is their social position and financial status in society. A doctor is considered a well educated know it all member of our civilization and is regarded as the most important individual worker in institutionalized medicine.  

   MYTH: One is to respect authority figures just for being authority figures.  

   FACT: Every human being has an inalienable right to be valued just for being a human being.

   CONCLUSION: Authority figures are NOT to be respected if they do NOT respect you. 

   My spouse and I decided to join a health care facility called Clalit located on Haraqafot Street in Karmiel in Israel.  Telephone: 04-9900500 Fax: 04-9900545.  After we signed up, the intake nurse told us we had to make an appointment to see the intake doctor whose job it was to refer us to any and every health care practitioner necessary to address any and every health concern we might have. On the day of our appointment, our intake doctor, named Yelena Chefetz, ushered us into her office for our interviews.  

   We had barely got ourselves seated when the interview started with her interviewing me first and her asking me to tell her about myself. “What do you need to know?” I asked. Her reply was to set me up to be a victim of bullying by telling me, “Whatever you want to tell me”. So I started telling her about myself. Before I knew it, while I was in the middle of explaining to her how I got scoliosis of the spine, she abruptly interrupted me and rudely told me that I talk too much. In other words, “shut up”. Then she commented on how I was overweight. (I have lost a good deal of weight already on my own but I still have excessive weight to lose) and ordered me to go to a wall where there was a device to measure my height by saying to me, “You can stand up or lie down to tell me how tall you are.” Followed by “I’m just joking”. She also insisted I weigh myself on the office scale, which I did, only to hear her report to me how my BMI (body mass index) was so much more than her 26% body fat BMI was. After that she had me take a blood pressure test. During the blood pressure test I asked her a question. Instead of answering it she lied to me that I had to stop talking for the test to work properly. I have never ever heard of such a thing in the 56 years of my existence. Later on, my husband took the same blood pressure test and started talking about something. But she did not demand that he be quiet at all. The final insult to my person was her insisting that there is no such thing as being allergic to steroids when she asked me to report to her what medications if any I am allergic to and I told her steroids.

   Well…now it was our turn to give this hateful doctor back her own medicine. During one point of this pointless interview in which this doctor’s only agenda was to victimize her patients with bullying, I asked her if there was anyway we can take images of my husband’s knees, which he badly injured three years ago, and which still bother him. She rudely laughed and said “no”. So I told her, “You laugh for nonsensical reasons.” She said back to me, I don’t think I laugh for nonsensical reasons”. So I asked her, “Then why are you laughing?” She hemmed and hawed and finally came up with the classic bully coward excuse of, “I’m just a happy person.” So I told her, “You are full of nonsense” and my husband and I laughed right back at her. She looked angry that how dare we give her back her own medicine and shocked that we did, but tried to hide it with poker faced eyes and a tight lipped mouth expression.  

   Now my spouse said to her, “Don’t ask your patients questions if you are not going to let them answer you!” And “Why did you let me talk during the blood pressure test but not my wife?” Then I lifted my top, and thrust my naked right breast in front of her face to show her the pink web like stained discolorations all over its tissue due to topical steroids having been given to me by a doctor seven years ago to cure me of ringworm. And I said, “My body says I am allergic to steroids”. After that, I told her, “You are making fun of me for being fat? You are the one who is ugly. All you are is a butthole!” I continued, “Where did you get your doctor’s license from - the toilet?” Next, I said, “You are crazy”. Finally, my husband said to me, “Come on! Let’s go find ourselves a doctor.” I said “yeah.” The entire time Yelena Chefetz just stared at us speechless. Quietly I closed her office door behind us as we left, never ever to return.

   Afterwards, we sent a legitimate grievance to the Clalit medical services organisation about this so-called doctor Yelena Chefetz.  

​   If the reader is interested in viewing our e-mail about Yelena Chefetz then please go to Clalit E-mail at www,bullcrapbusters.com. 

   Why were we successful in being victorious over the bully coward?  

   It is every bully coward’s goal to get the victim into trouble for fighting back. Never mind that the bully coward starts the fight. This is so the bully coward can make it look like the victim is really the perpetrator while the bully coward is actually the victim. The bully coward does this in order to get away with being a bully coward. 

   We denied this hateful bully coward the satisfaction of doing so by not letting her intimidate us with her uncalled for nastiness so that we will get too scared to fight back nor did we allow her to make us so mad with her rude-for-nothingness that we will raise our voices at her, curse at her, argue with her, etc., so she can call security and have us thrown out of the clinic for being “combative”.  

   The bully coward tried to use her power as a so-called doctor to victimize us with bullying. By giving her back her own medicine (excuse the pun) and in such a way that she was not able to do a thing about it, we rendered her powerless over us.

   12) “When in DOUBT SHOUT it out!” Some bully(s) are such coward(s) they have to resort to insidiously victimizing their victims. This is my motto for the victim who is uncertain as to whether or not he is being bullied. He is to use the Shield of the Proverbial Mirror against such a bully. If it turns out that the bully is actually an innocent he will not be the least bit concerned that you mimicked his behavior. If the bully is really a bully he will be bothered that you imitated his bullying behavior. 

  The following is an example of what I mean. Once, while I was going to a public bathroom in an apartment complex, a complete stranger, who was watching the lounge room’s television set, without looking at me, started whistling in a derogatory tune. Besides him and myself, there was no one else in the room. So after I used the bathroom, I came back out into the lounge room. There was still no one else except for him and myself in the room, so I whistled the same derogatory tune without looking at him that he had. A moment later, he gave me a dirty look and started grumbling inaudible mumblings. So I gave him a dirty look and said, in a cheerful voice, “Right back at you!” And that was the end of that.  

   13) KNOW Your ENEMY. 

   The following are the kinds of reactions the bully will have to your HANDS: It will be worth your while to get familiar with them to prevent the bully from MANIPULATING or INTIMIDATING you:

   One, the bully is stunned into silence. The bully is shocked out of his wits that you dared to challenge him. Game over! You win! 

   Two, the bully offers you an insincere apology. The bully hopes that he will get away with being a bully by only pretending to be sorry. Continue firing your salvos by sarcastically and truthfully letting the bully know what a sincere apology is. The bully will surrender by giving you a proper apology or by taking back his insults. You can put your lock and load away. 

   Three the bully will bother you now and/or harass you again later. Be as relentless as he is by making him pay for each and every insult that he throws your way. The bully will give up soon enough by letting you know how upset he is, by leaving, or by threatening to contact the enforcer bully on you. Game Over! You win! 

   Four, the bully will never ever stop harassing you. No worries! Be as relentless as he is by making him pay for each and every insult that he hurls your way. He is going to give you a lot of invaluable practice at improving your ability to give any and every bully back his own medicine. Once again, game over! You win! 

   Five the bully will provoke you so that he can make it look like the victim is the bully and like the bully is the victim. The bully does this to get the victim into undeserved trouble with the enforcer bully so that the bully can continue to be a bully. The victim will divert this, by keeping calm and exiting the scene as soon as the bully turns coward and runs away by calling the enforcer bully to rescue the bully’s sorry butt. Game over! You win!

   Last but not least, there is the bully who pretends that NOTHING bothers him. The bully will HIDE the PAIN that the victim deservedly metes out to the bully to DUPE the victim into believing that the victim’s counterattacks against the bully’s attacks have no affect or effect upon the bully, whatsoever. The bully does this to get the victim to give up so that the bully can continue to be a bully. DON’T GIVE UP!!! What the victim needs to know is that not only does the bully get upset when he gets a taste of his own medicine, but the bully gets ever the more upset than a victim does, who is being victimized by bullying. Knowing this can mean the difference between giving up and not giving up on the victim’s dream to become “VICTIM NO MORE”. Be as persevering as the bully by continuing to fire your counter attacks at the bully’s evasive maneuver attacks. Soon enough the bully will reveal just how really upset his concealed feelings actually are. Thereby you will ultimately and absolutely crack the bully’s false bravado veneer. 

  Here are some of the ways the bully pretends that nothing bothers the bully: He laugh sarcastically at you, puts on a phony smile, ignores you, lies to you, changes the subject, interrupts you, triangulates – get others involved in the bully-victim conflict, disagrees with you, then agrees with you, acts like or says that you do not bother the bully, persists in victimizing you the victim by leaving then coming back, or by stopping the insults only to start insulting you again. Don’t let the bully fool you. Keep firing your salvos and watch as this bully’s false bravado cracks. Outcome: One way or the other you will not have to deal with the bully anymore. Game over! You win!  

   The following section contains my “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list. You are welcome to use it. However, I urge you to make your own, as it will be more meaningful to you since it will have originated from your own ongoing life experiences with the bully. Be creative! Have fun! Oh, and welcome to the Anti-Emotional Bullying Resistance Movement.

THE HAVE A NICE DAY SALVO LIST 

“YOU LAUGH BECAUSE THE SKY IS BLUE”

  What do you do with a clown? You turn his smile upside down. Bully(s) make fun of me a lot. So the first “Have A Nice Day” Salvo that I ever invented was created for the bully who makes fun of others for no reason. Whether one or a group of bully(s) laugh mockingly at you for doing or not doing something try this salvo on for size: Just say, “You laugh because the sky is blue.” or “You laugh for nonsensical reasons.” Translation: The bully is an idiot for making fun of you since he is being stupid for being rude. No one but an imbecile laughs just because the color of the sky is blue. The bully’s reaction to this salvo might be to laugh some more. He is either pretending that your salvo does not bother him or he is making a lame attempt to mock your salvo. No worries. Just say, “You can keep on laughing because the sky will always be blue.” I have met some bully(s) who are so stupid that they will say, “The sky is not blue it is gray.” because it is overcast. So I laugh at them and say back to the bully(s). “The sky is always blue since it is made up of oxygen whose gas is the color of blue. It just appears to be gray because of the clouds beneath it.” Now I have made even more folly out of the bully. Another reaction the bully might have to this salvo is, “I am just a happy person.” The bully is trying to hide that he is being a bully. To this I say, “If you are laughing WITH people you are a happy person. If you are laughing AT people you are a miserable person.” I am letting the bully know that he is not getting away with being a bully. Get the idea? Usually the bully goes into a trance-like state of shock and laughs no more after I launch this salvo it him. One day while I was taking my mail out of my mailbox a neighbor, whom I did not even know and whom did not know me, started laughing at me and saying, “All you got was junk mail.” So I laughed back at her and said, “You laugh because the sky is blue.” Her mouth dropped open into the formation of a large doughnut hole and her face turned ghostly white. She laughed no more. I walked away.

“LISTEN TO THE NONSENSE”

  What’s the victim to do when the bully won’t take his own medicine? He denies that he is being a bully so that he can get away with being a bully by saying such things as, “I did not say, or do, or mean that”. He makes excuses so that he can go on being a bully by saying such things as, “I can’t help it.” or “I’m just kidding.” or “I’m sorry.” when he is not. He pretends that nothing bothers him so that he can get away with being a bully. He does this by saying such things as, “I don’t care.” He plays the victim role so that he can go on being a bully by saying such things as, “shut up”, or “that’s enough”, or “stop it already.” You can try to reason with the unreasonable bully. Good luck! You are going to want and need it. Or you can argue with the bully if you don’t mind going back and forth all day saying, “Yes, you did.” So the bully can say, “No, I did not.” But it is easier to just keep it simple by saying, “Oh listen to the nonsense!” or “That does not make any sense!” Throwing this salvo at the bully will surely put the bully’s Bull Crap right back to his lap, whether he likes it or not, and no matter what kind of bully, he is. A lady shopper came over to me while I was picking out some gold towels to buy in a home furnishing store. I picked up four of them and was about to put them into my shopping cart when she blatantly remarked, “Are you going to be a pig and take them all?” In shock I looked over at her and gestured with my right hand that there were plenty more gold towels on the self to be bought. Nervously she laughed, “I was just kidding”, she said. Incensed by her unbelievable rudeness I said back to her, “Oh, listen to the nonsense!” She said nothing more. I walked away.  

“SO”

  The know-it-all bully is notorious for victimizing others by pretending that he has a sophisticated intellect. In all practicality his thought processes consist of nothing more and nothing less than a brain fart. During a discussion, he will emphasize trivia instead of focusing on the content of the conversation. Hence he will knit-pick about the choice of words that the victim uses to convey an idea in order to make the victim feel stupid so that the bully can say, “I are smart.” I was trying to make small talk with a woman that I had just met. Ipso Facto, I was determined to make it a safe conversation. To no avail! As we were walking down the street I remarked, “Look at that pretty park inside of the school.” To this she blurted out in a snotty tone of voice with an attitude that not clarifying the matter might make the world come to an end, “It’s not a park in a school. It’s a school in a park”. So I said, “So?” So is such a little word. But upon hearing it, she gave me a sheepish look all embarrassed that she had made a dolt out of herself for making much ado about nothing.  

“YOU FREAK OUT OVER ANYTHING THAT IS DIFFERENT”

  The too-too train bully is the bully who declares that the victim is either too much of this or not enough of that. He surely knows how to make you feel damned if you do and damned if you don’t no matter what you do or don’t do. This is how I handle this bully. One day I was visiting a car dealership. I was looking for a new car to buy. A salesman came out to assist me in selecting one. He happened to have a broken right arm. When our business transaction was finished he made the civil gesture of closing our deal with a handshake. Instead of reaching for his right hand, I extended my left hand out to his left hand as I did not wish to accidently injure him. Instead of appreciating my polite gesture he started laughing at me. So I said, “You freak out over anything that is different.” He just stared at me in silence. I don’t know what put his right hand into a sling, but the snake sure got his tongue.  

“IF I TAKE UNASKED FOR ADVICE
I GET MYSELF INTO TROUBLE”

  This Have A Nice Day Salvo is for the rescuer bully. He victimizes others by pretending to come to their aid. He has no respect for other peoples’ boundaries and so he gets into everyone’s knickers by giving them unsolicited advice. Don’t go along with his charade. If you do his seemingly innocent “I just want to help you act” will turn into a “pushing you around” for nothing habit. People who sincerely wish to assist others preface their good will by saying such things like, “Can I help you?” After that, they wait for the potential recipient of their help to either decline their assistance, at which point they go on their marry way, or to accept their assistance, at which point they pitch in and offer their suggestions. I was sweating profusely as I jogged through the neighborhood park one afternoon. As I stopped to get a drink of water at the water fountain, a long, lean, tall, young male bicyclist braked in front of me and began gulping the water out of the water fountain. When he finished taking his ration of water and it was my turn to take a drink, this perfect stranger looked down at me and said, “You should put a towel around your neck to absorb all of that sweat.” It just so happens that I naturally sweat a lot when I workout. So putting a towel around my neck to absorb the sweat is like trying to drain a swimming pool full of water with a glass. So I said back to him, “If I take unasked for advice I get myself into trouble.” After I was finished speaking, I noticed that he was now staring uncomfortably at the ground. A moment later he climbed back onto his bike all slumped over and slunk away. Some modified versions of this salvo are: “Yes mommy. Yes daddy.” or “Thank you but no thank you.” 

“THANK YOU FOR MINDING MY BUSINESS BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE ANY BUSINESS OF YOUR OWN WORTH MINDING”

  Here is another example of the rescuer bully in action. I went down into the business center of a hotel that I was staying at to print out a huge document that I was working on. I had never ever used their printer before and it was state-of-the-art new equipment. I asked a front desk attendant to show me how to use it. After he did and before I had a chance to start copying my text, a white, young, tall, thin female, who was using one of the computers in the business center to shop on line, approached me and said in a condescending tone of voice, “There is another way to copy things on this machine.” Then she slid open the paper tray to load it with paper to activate the printing mechanism. I told her, “I have a huge document with many pages to print so this will not work for me.” After that, she ignored me as if I had not said anything and continued to dictate to me as if I was a little girl how to use the paper tray to activate the printer. I was old enough to be her grandmother and I never asked for, needed or wanted her assistance so I said, “Thank you for minding my business.” Now her tone of voice turned angry as she said to me, “I was only trying to help.” Incensed I said, “Because you don’t have any business of your own worth minding.” In a huff she exited the business center without saying another word to me. And that was that.

“HI SWEETHEART”

  Addressing people with inappropriate labels is the way that the name calling bully victimizes the victim and gets away with it. The blatant bully will call the victim dirty names like “nigger”, “honkey”, and faggot”, whereas the adulterated bully will resort to what appear to be harmless endearments such as “honey”, “dear” or “love”. I was certain that I was the only one in the whole world who had an aversion to being called by such names until one fateful day I noticed in the Dear Abbey column of the newspaper that I was reading a group of elderly women complaining to Dear Abbey about being called “honey” by other people. People, who call you things like “honey”, or “dear”, especially if they are strangers and of the same sex, don’t mean it in an endearing way. It is a condescending put down. Would you call a judge “honey”? Would you call a police officer “dear”? Would you call a politician “love”? Don’t bother telling the name calling bully that you don’t like it either. Once I did and the name calling bully said back to me, “Why not? I call my children honey all of the time.” And she was half my age! No matter the age or the gender when the name calling bully calls me “honey” or “dear” I say, “Hi, sweat heart.” If the name calling bully refuses to get the message and continues to do so, I say “Hi babes” or come back the next day with an empty jar of honey that I give to him or her as a gift.  

  On a cultural note, some name calling bully(s) make the lame excuse that they call people names like “honey”, “dear”, or “love: because that is the norm from where they come from. Any one who comes to a foreign country ought to know that you practice the customs where you are currently living not the customs of the country of your origin, just like you learn to speak the language of the country you are residing in, not the language of your mother tongue country.  

  On a pink note for women’s liberation, which in my opinion died a sudden death many years ago, it is equally not appropriate to address a group of males and females as “guys”. There is a movie called “guys and gals” and in my parents’ generation mix gender plural was addressed as “folks”. So when the male name calling bully addresses my husband and my self as “guys” I say “Hi gal.” And when the female name calling bully addresses my husband and my self as “guys” I say “Hi guy.” When the name calling bully refuses to get the message and continues to address my husband and my self as “guys” I literally turn into a guy by impersonating my favorite alter ego, named “Sergeant Fish Lips Bozo.” It is a $50.00 fine and a night in jail for calling him an inappropriate name. 

  One evening while my husband and I were walking from our apartment to our car we met our new next-door neighbor. “Hi guys.” he said to us. “Hello gal.” we both said back to him. Thinking nothing of it we continued on our way. Suddenly, a voice boomed into the night that crackled the air with anger. It was our new next-door neighbor’s. “I did not mean to offend you!” he yelled. “I know.” I said calmly and matter of factly. “But I am not a guy. It makes me feel invisible to be called a guy. Whatever happened to Women’s Liberation?” He let out an exasperated sounding sigh. After that, he proceeded to erroneously explain to me that plural for male and female in a group in English is “guys.” “No it isn’t.” I countered. “Have you ever heard of the movie called ‘Guys and Gals? In my parents day a group of males and females together were addressed as ‘folks”. “Well, it is an ingrained habit.” he said. “I know. Just about everybody we encounter calls the both of us ‘guys’. I correct them because people ought to think before just saying what everybody else says.” Finally I said, “Truce? We are neighbors.” After that, he introduced himself by name. And so my husband and I went over to him, shook his hand, and introduced our selves by name. All in all he was a decent neighbor. He never bothered us. He was very quiet too. He even went out of his way to park his car off of the premises and run into his apartment in order to avoid having to greet us whenever he saw us.  

“YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS UGLY
BECAUSE ALL YOU ARE IS A BUTTHOLE” 

  Let’s talk about the name calling bully who evaluates peoples’ God given selves according to the type of jeans (genes) that they wear. There is nothing wrong with looking your best. Having a beautiful appearance is something to admire. However, not all of us are endowed with a BEAUtiful outer shell, either because our priorities lie elsewhere, or because of monetary limitations that thwart our efforts to correct our physical flaws; or because of genetic anomalies caused by our ancestors’ hardships in life. Being that such trials and tribulations are beyond our control, they are forcefully permanently etched upon our flesh. But just because our moon got bombarded by a lot of asteroids, does not mean that our celestial orb is devoid of rich natural resources. Nonetheless, society torments the so called not so pretty people even though, due to no fault of their own, they look a certain way, but are not bothering anybody, and never mind that the definition of beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. This is because what is considered BEAUiful is the Bully Culture’s definition of beauty – only those bodies that are in power. Hence, ironically, the standard of so-called beauty is dictated and reinforced by the elite bully and by the wannabe elitist bully(s) of the Bully Culture. They make it their life’s mission to degrade other peoples’ outer layers because they falsely believe that, by calling other people “ugly”, they will be able to compensate for being such rotten people, themselves. Arrogance is what is ugly! Blind, deaf, and dumb selfishness is what is ugly! Ignorance is what is ugly! Greed is what is ugly! Cruelty is what is ugly!  

  This is what I do to the trouble making bully who goes out of his way to tell me, “You are ugly!”  

  Along came two adolescent males whom I did not know and who did not know me into the fitness center of the apartment complex that I lived in. They started pumping iron. After a moment or two, while I was watching television and doing my aerobic workout, one of them came over to me and said, “Geek”. Since I was not bothering him, and so saw no reason for him to bother me, I initially believed that he was referring to the movie called, “Cary”, which is about a teenage girl who was being ostracized by her entire High School for being different, that happened to be running on the Sci Fi channel. But then, I realized that he was referring to my “not so pretty” face and very fat body since he was looking right at me not at the television set while he spoke it. Calmly I got off of the elliptical trainer machine that I was doing my exercise on, went over to him, looked him straight in his eye and said, “You are the one who is ugly because all you are is a butthole.” He was speechlessness and immediately cast his eyes down to the floor. I finished my workout and left. 

***

  I was shopping at the prestigious store called Neiman and Marcus in the town of Bellevue in the state of Washington where the prices are so high that one woulda, shoulda, coulda expect decent customer service. I was undecided as to whether or not to by a dark blue silk jacket so I asked a sales representative if in her opinion the jacket was the right color for my skin tone. Her reply was to tell me, “If you wear some make-up it will brighten the jacket up.” To that I said, “I am allergic to make-up.” Her reply to that was, “If you wear nice clothes it will brighten the jacket up.” To this I said, “I am dressed comfortable today.” After she left I realized that she was insulting my appearance not answering my question. So I marched over to her and said to her face, “I decided not to buy the blue jacket because you are the one who is ugly because all you are is a butthole.” She just stood there, her body a frozen statue, her expression a poker face. She looked as if the Greek goddess Methuselah had turned her into stone. I exited the store.  

***

  The next time the trouble making bully calls you “ugly”, use this salvo on him. It will no doubt put him in his rightful place. And if you like you can add for good measure “Unlike you, I have a heart and a brain.”  

"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW I DON'T WORK HERE"

  This salvo is for the know-it-all bully who victimizes his victim by trying to make a fool out of him. His objective is to make the victim feel stupid for not knowing something even when it is not rational, not logical, and not reasonable to expect the victim to. I went to a department store to pick up a clothing item that I had put on a twenty-four hour hold. A sale’s person approached me and asked me, “Can I help you?” I told her that I was there to pick up a top that another sale’s person had put on hold for me. She started looking around for the top but was not able to locate it. I asked her, “Is the top still hanging on the clothing rack by the register that is used for holding clothing items?” She laughed at me and said, “Of course not. We only put clothes on that rack for a few hours otherwise the rack becomes too full.” So I laughed back at her and said, “How am I supposed to know? I don’t work here!” That shut her up.  

"I DON'T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH
YOUR DOUBLE STANDARDS AND DOUBLE TALK"

  This salvo is for the bully who talks out of both sides of his mouth although God gave people two ears. I was renting an apartment. My downstairs neighbor started making excessive noise. So, I went to the manager to voice my legitimate compliant. A month earlier a car alarm went off for about fifteen minutes in the apartment complex’s parking lot before the owner of the vehicle shut it off. The following day all residents got a flier that stated that such noise was not tolerated. According to my Rental Lease Agreement it was against the rules to bother other tenants by making too much noise. So, I honestly thought the manager would take care of the matter, no problemo! But, when I told her that the bathroom and laundry fans were running continuously 24/7/365 even when the tenants below me were not home, and that late at night they were talking so loudly that I was able to hear every word of their conversation, the manager said, “It’s as annoying as a bumble bee buzzing at your ear isn’t it? Does the sound of breathing also annoy you?” So I said, “I don’t have to put up with your double standards and your double talk. Goodbye.” She glared at me through her glasses but said nothing more. I walked out of her office. As soon as my Lease came up for renewal I moved out.  

"EXCUSE YOU HOW UNBELIEVABLY RUDE"

  Another thing the ill mannered bully will do to show off his unprovoked hostility is to collide into other people without so much as an “excuse me” as he crosses paths with yours in a supermarket aisle, or while entering or exiting an elevator, or while going in or out of an office door, etc. I am sorry, but two material objects cannot share the same space. Not even in New York City, New York. To such a bully I say, “Excuse you!” or I bump the bully right back.  

  The same goes for the uncalled for rude behavior of the ill-mannered motorist. There are too many people on the roadway that honk at drivers who are following the Department of Motor Vehicles Driver’s Handbook of rules. So when such a driver honks at me for not running over a pedestrian while I am waiting to enter an intersection, or for not crashing into the oncoming vehicle while I am waiting to merge into oncoming traffic, or for not driving faster than the speed limit especially during a stormy downpour, foggy night, or snowy day, or for alerting that driver with my own horn that I am occupying the road space that he is changing lanes into, I slow down, wait until that driver passes me, and honk incessantly right back at him. The Bully Culture does not hand out traffic tickets to these dangerous horny moronic motorists. 

“EXCUSE ME I DID NOT REALIZE
I WAS TALKING TO A JERKOHOLIC”

  This salvo addresses the rude for nothing telephone bully, especially the cocky ones who work for an organization that may be taping your telephone conversation. The phony bully’s objective is to take his Bull Crap out on the receiver. You can hear it in the tone of his voice, discern it in his attitude, and notice it in the manner in which he picks his words. You only have about six to eight syllables of telling off the phony bully who might be taping what you say before your element of surprise is over and he cuts you off with his hang up. And you don't want to get into legal trouble. So just say, “Excuse me I did not realize I was talking to a Jerkoholic” followed by your hang up. Or you can just hang up on the telephone bully right in the middle of his catty chatty.   

  You can also combine the two Have A Nice Day Salvos of "Excuse you" and "Excuse me" by saying to a rude for nothing bully, "Excuse you how unbelievably rude". If the bully retaliates by being rude some more just say, "Excuse me I did not know that I was talking to a Jerkoholic. 

 “YOU ARE A MEAN, STUPID, SELFISH, LAZY,
ARROGANT, LYING FLUNKY”

  My husband was four hours late getting home from work one day. I tried repeatedly calling his cell phone to find out of he was okay but all I got was his voice mail. So I decided to call his work buddies to find out if they knew what was going on. That was when I discovered that I had used up nearly all of my cell phone minutes. In panic mode I went to the local grocery store to buy a refill cell phone card. I stood in the grocery store’s one open check out line squeezing my $15.00 refill card in both of my hands with tears misting my eyeglasses waiting as all kinds of worry thoughts filled my head about my spouse. There was only one grocery shopper ahead of me. But she had a whole cart full of grocery items. While I waited I noticed another cashier in another check out line. She stared at me periodically with a smirk on her face. As I was waiting my eternity, like we all feel like we are doing in an emergency situation, for the cashier clerk to ring up my one sale item, he said to me, “Go over to Teresa in that check out line she will help you.” I complied with his request. When I got there no one was there. So I walked around the area not sure what line I was supposed to be in. Suddenly, a very tall, very fat woman with black hair and a nametag that said “Teresa” on it appeared at the front of the cashier line that was empty. It was the same cashier check out line that I had seen her in before. She lied, “I was not sure that you were waiting over there to be check out.” Then she rang up my sale. Furious I said, “I am never ever going to shop at this store again.” She flat out said, “I don’t care.” I told her that I wished to speak to the manager. She called the manager. He came. I told him what had transpired. He just stood there and said and did nothing. Infuriated I left. I got in my car and added more minutes to my cell phone. I tried calling my spouse again. This time he picked up the phone and let me know that he was all right. When my husband arrived home I told him what happened. We both drove back to the store that I had previously been in. We walked up to Teresa, who was now checking out grocery shoppers in another cashier check out line. I said, “Are you Teresa?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “You are one mean, stupid, selfish, lazy, arrogant, lying flunky. You knew I had an emergency and you made we wait.” Teresa had a shocked look on her face but said nothing. We left.  

 “THAT'S RIGHT PROTECT THE BULLY COWARD
YOU BULLY COWARD”

  Being that we live in a Bully Culture do not be surprised victim if and when you confront the bully who wronged you with your, “Have a Nice Day Salvos” to make things right, and along comes the so-called Good Samaritan to take the bully coward’s side. The so-called Good Samaritan does not gang up on you because you are a VICTIM; the so-called Good Samaritan gangs up on you since he is a BULLY COWARD. The Bully Culture refers to him as a Good Samaritan as he happens to be in the position of a bystander/onlooker. However, he is nothing more and nothing less than a bully coward. You can be prepared for the pseudo Good Samaritan with the following Salvo:

   I went to a small kiosk in the middle of the aisle of the Southcenter Mall that sold jewelry called MAUI COLLECTIONS also known as MAUI SILVER located at 633 Southcenter Tukwila, WA  98188.   Phone 206-246-4055.  I had previously bought from an oriental woman named KIM who works there a black onyx sterling silver ring and a black onyx sterling silver pendant to match it. Currently, I spotted a pair of black onyx earrings that I decided to buy also. She rang up the sale and my husband transferred a $100.00 bill to her for it. She opened up the cash register and put our money into it. That’s when I noticed a flaw in the earrings and so decided not to buy them. She got nonsensically mad about it and insisted that there were no refunds. I told her she was crazy we had not even finished the sale’s transaction and she had not even packaged the sale items yet, and I demanded she give me my money back. She refused. I told her I was not going to do any more business with her. She refused. I threatened to sue her in small claim’s court. She refused. When I told her I was going to blog her on the internet by letting the whole English speaking world know what kind of a business she operates, she took the $100.00 out of the cash register and gave it back to my husband. I started to leave but she got verbally abusive with me. She told me I was picky and not to be a customer of hers anymore. I told her, “ I am an excellent customer. Two weeks ago I bought $200.00 worth of sterling silver black onyx ring and pendant from you.” She told me that she has been in business for umpteen years and has never had a customer like me before. I said to her, “Where are your customers? I don’t see any customers here! I’m the only one.”  She said nothing.  I was thoroughly incensed. Every time I shopped there I complimented her on how nicely she dressed. I always let her know how much I appreciated the assistance she gave me. Whenever I passed by her kiosk I greeted her by her name. She did not even know what my name was. I told her, “You are one mean, stupid, selfish, lazy, arrogant, lying flunky.”  And I left. As I was walking away, a black female who worked at the next-door neighbor kiosk chided me for defending myself against the offensive, spoiled rotten brat, bully coward, oriental woman. So I said back to her, “That’s right side with the bully coward, you bully coward.” That shut her up.  

"HYPER DIAPER FEELINGS"

  The bully wrongfully accuses the victim of being “supersensitive”. So victim why not rightfully accuse the bully of being “hyper diaper" mega sensitive?” It’s a rhetorical question!  There are two types of hyper diaper sensitive bully cowards.  

  There is the bully coward who reveals that he has hyper diaper sensitive feelings. 

  I was interested in joining the LA FITNESS CENTER located at 715 North Landing Way, Renton, WA 98057. Phone: 206-922-0350. It was near my home and I was hoping to lose some extra fat pounds. I expressed my interest in hiring a trainer to help me reach my weight loss goals. The sales representative for trainers, named GEORGE, promised me that he had the perfect trainer for me. Then, he boosted that the trainer was very enthusiastic about working with his clients. After that, he promised that he would have the trainer contact me. I gave him my private cell phone number. The trainer never contacted me. So I went back to the gym and told the sales representative George, “The trainer you suggested to me was so enthusiastic about working with me that he never called me”. Without even so much as an apology for telling me otherwise, George said, “They are not allowed to.” I said, “But you told me that he was going to call me. I don’t like to give out my cell phone number. It is a private number.” George’s reply was to give me a string of lame excuses. Annoyed I said, “Fine, I am no longer interested in hiring a trainer.” Suddenly and without warning, George threw a five-year old spoiled brat temper tantrum. First he made several angry grunting sounds. Second he exited out of his chair so hard that it almost fell over. Third he bolted away from me. I woulda, shoulda, coulda not believe the gross unprofessionalism. So I walked over to where he was and said, “DID I HURT YOUR HYPER DIAPER FEELINGS?” To this he barked “I am going to call security on you”. So I said, “You mean, stupid, selfish, lazy, arrogant, lying flunky, I don’t have to put up with your double standards and your double talk. Good bye”, and I left.

  There is the bully coward who conceals that he has hyper diaper sensitive feelings.

  On 8/25/12, I went to the MACYS at the NORTHGATE MALL in SEATTLE, WASHINGTON to buy some jewelry. While I was browsing for a pair of sterling silver earrings in the sterling silver jewelry department a clerk named Martha came over to where I as and asked me, “Can I help you?” I said, “No thank you. I am just looking”. I picked out a pair of earrings that I decided to purchase when suddenly Martha said, “Are you going to buy the same type of earrings that you are wearing?” I said, “Yes. They work for me.” Then Martha shoved a different type of earrings into my face, handed them over to me, and gave me her unsolicited advice that I ought to buy them instead of the earrings that I had picked out for myself. The earrings Martha had selected for me were horseshoe shaped. The earrings I had chosen for myself where round in configuration. After that, I showed Martha the rainbow necklace and matching earrings I was wearing and told her, “I make my own jewelry and I get similar earrings to go with the necklaces.” Now Martha asked me, “Are you going to by those earrings?” She was referring to the ones I had picked out for myself. I said, “Yes. From another sale clerk” and I left her department. 

   After I bought the earrings I went back over to Martha and said, “Is it okay that I bought these earrings from another sales clerk?” while showing her the earrings and the sales receipt that went with them. She pretended it did not bother her by lying. She said, “Yes”. In that moment I noticed that Martha was also wearing round shaped earrings just like I was. Only hers were gold instead of silver. So I asked Martha, “Do you wear the same kind of earrings?” She said, “Yes” followed by “No”. Then she lied again. She said, “I have a friend who makes necklaces to match my earrings. I am going to wear the necklace that matches my earrings tomorrow.”  

  After that, I brought the pair of earrings that Martha had originally tried to sell me over to Martha and asked her to ring them up for me. She refused and told me to have another sales’ clerk do so. And she brought another sales clerk over to ring up my sale. So I said, “You picked these earrings out for me so I want to give you the sale”. Martha said, “Are you going to buy them?” So I said, “No. These earrings that you picked out for me don’t work for me. They are horseshoe shaped not round”. I continued, “You asked me why I wear the same sort of earrings? What do you care!” Martha pretended that it did not bother her by laughing at me. So I laughed at her back.  

   After that, I told Martha, “You are rude to me so I will not buy anything from you”. While I was telling Martha how rude she was to me she pretended that it did not bother her by triangulating another Macy’s sales clerk from another department who was walking by into our private conversation. So I told him. “You don’t know what is going on. So this is none of your concern”. He left. “Martha” I said “Interrupting me to talk to someone else is rude”. She pretended it did not bother her by now interrupting me herself. So I said “Martha interrupting me while I am talking to you is rude”. Martha pretended it did not bother her by walking away from me and laughing at me from a distance. So I laughed back at her and said, “You laugh for nonsensical reasons”. Martha pretended it did not bother her by shrugging her left shoulder up in a non-verbal gesture of “It does not bother me”.  

   On 8/26/12 I was shopping at the Macy’s in the Northgate Mall again when I saw Martha at a cash registers in the Sterling Silver Jewelry Department. I noticed that she was not wearing any necklace at all to match her earrings and that she was wearing a different pair of earrings. They were the same sort of earrings she had worn the day before, round in shape, only they were hoops instead of coins. 

   On 9/3/12, I went to the Macy’s in the Northgate Mall again to pick up and purchase a blouse I had put on hold in the Women’s clothing department. Along with it were several men’s shirts I was also planning to buy for my spouse. I brought it over to the sterling silver jewelry department to look for another pair of earrings for another necklace that I had made out of Abalone shells. But I could not find any. No one was there except for Martha. So I went over to Martha to ring up my blouse and said, “I want to show you the necklace that I made” and I lifted it up for her to see. But Martha looked down at the cash register counter and slowly wagged her head back and forth in a gesture of “no”. Next I said, “You wear the same type of earrings. Yet you make fun of me for doing the same thing. You are funny!” Martha’s face looked at me but her eyes shifted from side to side. Then I said, “THAT’S RIGHT PRETEND THAT I DID NOT HURT YOUR HYPER DIAPER FEELINGS”. You can also say, “You act like nothing bothers you. But everything bothers you. Otherwise you would not be bothering me”. After that Martha’s “It doesn’t bother me” shell cracked and she said, “I am going to call security.” So I put the blouse and the shirts that I was going to buy on a nearby rack and I left. 

 “REJECTION IS GOD'S PROTECTION”

  You can say this Have a Nice Day Salvo to any group or individual who tries to take your dignity away from you by discarding your existence without an adequate reason and/or in an undignified manner.  As a for instance, let us say that you are going out on a blind date. You are a female.  Your blind date decides to terminate your night out early  because he does not like the way that you look. He has the right to only date females that he is physically attracted to.  But rather than be respectfully honest with your person, he disrespectfully lies to you and insults you by saying something like, “I have a headache" or "I have a stomache ache".  Just say back to his ugly personality, “Rejection is God’s protection” and take a cab home. 

MODIFIED HANDS

  All “Have A Nice Day Salvos” can be tailored to fit different bullying circumstances, I picked the following  “Have A Nice Day” salvo to illustrated how salvos can be modified from their original version to correspond to various bullying situations.  

  For the hostile bully who butts into your affairs in order to victimize you, you can give him the direct version of this salvo. Once I encountered a road rage driver. He was honking at me for no valid reason to hurry up as I was driving along the street. When I pulled into the parking lot space where I lived, lo and behold to my surprise, he had followed me there and started yelling obscenities at me from inside of his car with his window down. So, I said, “Get a life low life!“ He just stared at me. I exited the scene.  

  For the intrusive bully who goes out of his way to get into your face in order to victimize you, you can give him the indirect version of this salvo. I was in a grocery store paying for my groceries when the check out clerk rudely inquired of me, “Are you tired?” So I said back to her, “Shhh! It’s none of your concern.” Then I said, “Are you tired?” After that, she looked at me as if I had just slapped her in the face but said not another word.  

  For the obnoxious bully who goes out of his way to invade your territory in order to victimize you, you can modify this salvo to have a more direct approach. I was in a grocery store shopping for a knit knack. Holding up two different candles in each hand I was self engrossed in alternately smelling their scents to decide which one to take home with me when along came another shopper. She walked all the way over from half way across the store to the corner of the store that I was located in, just to pick up a candle, repeatedly sniff it, looked up at me, and laugh at me, while she said in a tone of voice that was dripping with sarcasm, “You can’t make up your mind which one you want.” So I burst out into my own laughter and said back to her, “Thank you for minding my business because you don’t have any business of your own worth minding”. After that, she turned her gaze to the ground, put the candle back down on the table, turned away without looking at me even once, and left.  

  For the nosey bully who goes out of his way to obliterate your boundaries, you can modify this salvo to have a completely indirect approach. I was in a grocery store buying some chocolate bars when I heard the check out cashier say to me, “I tried those once. They taste awful!” Gee, I never asked her for her opinion yet she is critiquing my taste in chocolate. So five minutes later, I came back through the same grocery clerk’s aisle and requested a return of my purchase of chocolate. She kept asking me why I wanted to return the chocolates. I politely ignored her until after I got my cash refund. She asked me again, “Is there something wrong with the chocolates?” I told her, “I trust your judgment. After all, you work here. So these candy bars must taste bad.” She immediately went into denial that she had ever made any comments about the chocolates. What’s new at the bully zoo, huh? I said, “I am sorry my purchase offended you. So I had you void it out.” And, I exited the store.  

SPONTANEOUS HANDS

  After using your HANDS on approach to bullying for a while you may find yourself spontaneously hurling a one of a kind in the moment salvo that excellently addresses that particular bullying situation. Even though it is not part of your “Have A Nice Day” Salvo List, go with it! For the HANDS on approach to bullying is just a guide to teach you how to handle the bully. You don’t have to necessarily stick with salvos that you have committed to memory all of the time. As long as you get across the meaning of your salvos, it is okay to be spontaneous when dealing with the bully.  

  I make frequent visits to the chiropractor’s office for my scoliosis. Some chiropractors use what are called activators to fix a crocked spine. Activators are metal devices that sound like the tool a roofer uses to insert nails into shingles and look like the device that one uses in an office to put official seals onto paper with. I get hands on manipulations to realign my spine. If an activator is used to correct my spinal misalignments my back will muscle spasm and have nerve misfiring. Most chiropractors that give me treatment do a wonderful job restoring my physical health. However, their holistic medicine is accompanied by emotional toxicity. I find that oxymoronic as medicine as about healing the whole body not just specific body parts. That is why, for instance, physicians used to have “bed side” manners. Therefore, I do not put up with the bully(s) who are in healing professions.  

  One day after I got my spine adjusted the chiropractor started clicking his activator gun in my ear and began laughing while he said, “Does that bother you?” He was making fun of me for not being able to physically tolerate the activator gun. After he was finished dancing around, I asked him if I could borrow his activator for a moment. He handed it over to me. “You know” I said, “There are other things you can do with this activator.” Then, I held the activator appliance in both of my hands, raised my arms up over my head, swayed them back and forth, and sang the song, “La Cuca Racha”. It’s a Spanish song about cockroaches. After that, I clicked the activator instrument to the song’s melodic beat. The chiropractor went poker faced and designated with his non-verbal body language that he wanted his applicator back...immediately! I handed it back to him while I laughed my full head off.  

EXPANDED HANDS

  Once the victim becomes efficient at blasting his “Have A Nice Day” Salvo List at the bully, the victim will become effective at launching multiple HANDS at the bully all at once.  

  I was in a department store shopping for some clothing items. My eye caught a white sweater hanging in front of a clothing rack. I went over to take a look at it when a woman appeared out of nowhere laughed at me and said, “That’s my sweater”. “Oh” I said taken aback. “I did not know”. Since she was making fun of me for not knowing that she had dibs on that sweater, even though she had not done anything to clarify that she intended to purchase it, I laughed back at her and said, “You laugh because the sky is blue.” She then gave me, you know, one of those insincere apologies by saying, “I am sorry IF I offended you”. So I said, “Oh, listen to the nonsense.” After that, she withdrew away from me. Thinking the whole matter was done with I sat myself down on a chair to rest for a moment when a man who was sitting down next to me said rather meanly, “She wasn’t laughing at you.” So I said back to him, “That’s right, mind my business because you don’t have any business of your own worth minding”. After that he called me a “cow”. So I said, “You’re the one who is ugly because all you are, is a butthole, you bully cow...ward (coward)”. Instantly, he turned his eyes away from me, his face fell into a deflated expression, and he bothered me no more.  

THE PROVERBIAL SHIELD 

  In order to give the bully back his own medicine you have to be able to be quick on the uptake. However, being human, and especially if you are a victim, it will not be second nature to have any wits about you. You will have to practice, and practice, and practice launching your “Have A Nice Day” Salvos List over and over and over again at the bully to acquire some. In the meantime, you will have your “off days” because your brain is just not processing any salvos to counterattack the bully’s attack with. So when you cannot think of an appropriate salvo simply hold up the proverbial mirror to the bully. One way to do this, is to COPY the bully VERBATIM. By doing that you will re-direct it back at the bully. In other words, give the bully back the bully’s own medicine. I call it “the catch all phrase”. Here is an example of what I mean.  

  I was walking around in a “ritchie titchie” town that I happen to live in where everybody transports them selves by automobile, unless they are bicycling or jogging for recreation. As I was strolling through the mini mall parking lot near my home a stranger pulled up to me in his car and said, “Are you okay?” “I’m fine” I replied and continued on my merry way. A short while later, the same man in the same car as before, pulled up along side of me once more and said, “Are you still walking around?” So I said, “Are you still minding other peoples’ business?” He growled under his breath and sped away. Using the proverbial mirror will also help you come up with new salvos to add to your “Have A Nice Day” Salvo List. In this bullying instance, using the proverbial mirror on the bully is how I came up with my salvo of, “That’s right mind my business because you don’t have any business of your own worth minding”.  

  Another way in which you can hold up the proverbial mirror to the bully is to MIMIC the bully’s BEHAVIOR. By doing that you will re-direct it back at the bully. In other words, give the bully back the bully’s own medicine. I call it “echoing the bully”. Here is an example of what I mean.  

  There are bullies and then there are those bullies who make you feel unsafe walking around your own neighborhood. Across the street from the condo that I used to own was a mini mall. I was taking a walk over to the office supply store there to buy some print paper for my computer. As I stopped at the signal and waited for the light to change giving me the right of way to cross the street, six Mexican male gardeners, who were riding in the back of a truck, sped by, gave me mean looks, gesticulated wildly with their arms, pointed their fingers at me, and shouted in hostile voices at me...in Spanish. I did not know them from Adam or Eve. Since I am not fluent in the Spanish language, I had no idea what they were saying to me. So I flashed the proverbial mirror at them by giving them their dirty looks back, flailing my arms all around, pointing my fingers in their direction, and angrily yelling incomprehensible sounds back at them. A moment later they were staring at me with blank looks on their faces. As they disappeared into the sunset I burst into uncontrollable laughter until I cried.  

  Yet another way in which you can shine the proverbial mirror on the bully is by showing the bully his REFLECTION from a DISTANCE. If you are a victim I don’t recommend spreading gossip – slander or libel – about a bully. It is a Bully Culture myth that how one wins friends and influences people has to do with having the gift for gab – knowing what to say and how to say it. If the victim elects to play the gossipmonger game it will backfire on him. Most bystanders will not believe a word that the victim is saying behind the bully’s back for “once you are un-cool you are always un-cool.” Therefore, since the victim has no social standing also known as social clout, the victim will not be taken seriously. Most victims will not believe a word that the victim is saying behind the bully’s back, either. Instead they will be loyal to the bully either as wannabe bullies them selves or as victims that wish to avoid being victimized by the bully for siding with a victim. All that the victim is going to get for bad mouthing the bully, in this Bully Culture, never mind that the bully so readily deserves it, is either a) ignored or b) invalidated or c) retaliated against by many who add insult to injury by defending the bully to the victim’s face, and behind the victim’s back and by instigating their own gossip ring against the lone victim with the bully as their leader, of course. Another reason why it is not a sound idea to slander or libel a bully is because going about publicly making disparaging remarks about the bully will keep the victim from doing what is necessary to liberate him self from the victim role, which is to confront the bully mono y mono – one on one. So then, what does the victim do who has had enough of the bully coward’s wicked tongue, and the pathetic, pitiful, herd (no pun intended) mentality of most people who listen to it?  

  Meet Ms. Loud House. I discovered from a police report that her name was Denise Morrell. She was the neighbor who lived across the way from me in the Springs Condominiums in the town of Irvine in the State of California. At least, that is what I called her during a dream that I had one night because she disturbed my sleep so much by making a commotion early every morning, getting herself and her son ready for work and school. There was a lot of yelling and banging of doors. It was against the Association’s rules to make such a loud racket in a condo community. Oh well. When I thought I could endure no more, I politely approached Ms. Loud House and asked her nicely if she would bring the noise level down...just a little bit. You know. Kind of like when actress Halle Barry in the movie called, “Cat Woman” asks the obnoxious, party hardy, loud mouth neighbors across the way to turn down the music...just a little bit, while she is still only Patience Phillips. Anyway, instead of being reasonable about my legitimate request, Ms. Loud House got cattie with me. And so the excessive noise disturbance continued. But that was not all. Ms. Loud House got so upset that I dared to voice my legitimate concern to her that, even though we did not know each other, she spread lying rumors about me throughout the neighborhood. It did not take long before my dream about Ms. Loud House turned into a nightmare. There is no damage control for a mindless, heartless, spineless mob of people who have nothing better to do than make another person’s life miserable whom they don’t even know just because the bully on the block said so. So I made the choice to flash the proverbial mirror in Ms. Loud House’s view. I went over to her door one evening and put a flier on it that said, “Are you a gossip monger? Do you have trouble resolving conflict because you are a bully coward who talks behind peoples’ backs instead of to peoples’ faces? Do you have difficulty relating to people since you let your trouble making tongue get in the way? If so, come join us at Gossip Mongers Anonymous. Our Twelve Steps is an anger management program that we guaranteed will work for you!” The following morning when Ms. Loud House came out of her house she was walking with a gait that looked like she had had a broom shoved up her butt.  

THE HIERARCHY OF SELF-EMPOWERMENT

  As with any endeavor, the victim’s initial attempts at launching the “Have A Nice Day” Salvos at the bully will be most difficult. Not only does the victim have to give the bully back the bully’s own medicine, which is done by accepting, expressing, and releasing the negative feelings that the bully has given the victim back onto the bully; but the victim also has to overcome the Jammer Feelings – emotional blocks – that the Bully Culture has given the victim in order to do so. I have developed what I call, “The Hierarchy of Self Empowerment” to make it easier for the victim to execute the HANDS on approach to bullying. The Hierarchy of Self Empowerment is a step-by-step process, with each step being a little bit more challenging than the last, to help the victim muster up the courage necessary to confront the bully.

   Before you start utilizing the Hierarchy of Self Empowerment keep the following points in mind:

   1) Trust Only Yourself – No one can do this for you but yourself. Your own logic and intuition will tell you when you are READY to take the next step. At the same token, be honest with yourself. Don’t remain on the same step just because you are afraid to move on. Each new step will be harder than the one before it. This is essential for you to shed the victim role.  

   2) Take Vacations – The word vacation means to vacate. As with any vocation, you have to let yourself rest, periodically. So now and then, empty your heart and free your mind from the task of liberating yourself from the victim role. Remember you are a work in progress.  

   3) Reward Yourself – For each step that you successfully complete in dealing with the bully give yourself a reward for a job well done. Take yourself on a trip. Treat yourself to dinner. Buy yourself something nice to wear, etc.

   4) Do Not Compare – While it is important to learn from your mistakes in order to make progress, do not compare your rate of improvement with others’. Each stage of the emotional healing process resolves itself in accordance with your individual personal life experiences with bullying. Therefore, the length of time and amount of effort it takes you to do the steps of self-empowerment will depend upon how much and how often you have been, are, and will be traumatized by the bully. Since each and every one of us is unique like no other, we will all have different levels of hardship to surmount. So, there are no judgments here! What will determine your overall victory over the bully is how passionate you are about liberating yourself from the victim role.  
   5) Whenever and wherever you feel discouraged, instead of encouraged, to have the courage to confront the bully, just remember this, FAILURE IS ONLY DELAYED SUCCESS. If you refuse to give up you will undoubtedly make the transition from victim to victim no more.  

   6) Be True to Your Self – Don’t feel like a failure if you make the choice to remain a victim. I will NOT lie to you. Overcoming bullying is going to be the hardest thing that any victim will ever attempt to do in his or her life. The BullCrap Busters Website is not for the faint of heart nor the feeble-minded. Liberating one’s self from the victim role does not happen in an hour, a day, a week, a month or even a year. Your upbringing bred you to be a victim. The bully intimidates and manipulates you into remaining a victim. From the moment that you wake up to the moment that you go to sleep, the Bully Culture, through every facet of your existence, every one of your five senses, every when, where, what, who, and why that you encounter, will relentlessly insist that you continue to be a victim. Thusly, those who do not have the attitude of “do” or “die” will not prevail over bullying. The BullCrap Busters Website is for those who have decided that, “enough is enough!!!” I am one of those people. Being a victim had obliterated every aspect of my being. So, as a victim I was willing to do whatever it took to stop being a victim as I had nothing left to lose. But, I will NOT judge you if you decide to stay a victim. For just like me you have the right to exercise your God given freedom of choice to do whatever you like. Being a victim may be more comfortable for you then putting yourself through the challenging changes that you will have to make in order to throw off the victim yoke. So be true to your self. And thank you for reading the BullCrap Busters Website anyway, as I am sure that it will benefit you in one way or another.  

   The following section contains the Hierarchy of Self Empowerment scaffolding process for overcoming bullying:

MILESTONE #1: SENDING CORRESPONDENCE

  You have the fortitude to give the bully back the bully’s own medicine. So, the bad memories that the Bully Culture has branded you with are going to be completely wiped out. You are determined to abandon all of the Bully Culture’s lies and embrace the truth so your freedom is at HAND.  

  Sending correspondence to the bully relieves the victim of having any anxiety over having to deal with the bully for it permits the victim to confront the bully from a distance. Sending correspondence to the bully entails that the victim WRITE to the bully using the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list. The victim is to be as succinct as he can, but include everything from the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos’ list that the victim has to tell the bully.  

  The victim is NOT to use fowl language and NOT to make any threats to the bully on either the internal portion (letter) or the external portion (envelope) that the victim is sending the bully. Any derogatory communication that gets circulated through the mail system is a Federal Offense. So, don’t get charged with a FELONY by the post office!  

  Toward the end of the correspondence, the victim is to write a blurb that lets the bully know that the victim will not pay attention to any correspondence that the bully sends back to the victim. This is what I write: “Any correspondence I receive from you will NOT be read, NOT be opened, NOT be listened to, and either returned to sender or trashed”. Since the bully started the trouble, it is not cowardice for the victim to refuse to read the bully’s retaliatory mail. Moreover, the bully does not care about others’ feelings, only his own, therefore, although the bully is the perpetrator, the bully is not interested in resolving anything.  

  For the closing salutation the victim can opt to tell or not tell the bully whom the correspondence is from. I do tell the bully who wrote to him to show to myself that I have the courage to let the bully know that I am the one who told off the bully.  

  The victim is to send the bully only ONE piece of correspondence. It is to the victim’s detriment to get involved in a back and forth hate mail shuffle with the bully as by doing so the bully, due to the bully’s social clout and/or financial leverage, may be able to get the enforcer bully – police officer – to charge the victim with the MISDEMEANOR of harassment, especially if the bully lets the victim know not to contact the bully anymore, but the victim keeps doing so. Never mind that the bully instigated the bully-victim conflict.  

  The victim is to send his correspondence to the bully without any return address on it. This will increase the likelihood that the bully will read it since the bully will not know whom the correspondence is from and be curious about it. Unless the bully tries to send the victim correspondence back, the victim will never know if the bully read the correspondence the victim sent to the bully. No worries! Even if the bully did not read the victim’s correspondence, the victim can take satisfaction in knowing that the victim had the courage to confront the bully, and that the bully was too much of a coward to read the victim’s correspondence.  

  The victim must prevent the bully from sending the victim retaliatory mail. The objective of sending correspondence to the bully is for the victim to put an end to the bully-victim conflict so that the victim can undergo emotional healing, not to escalate the bully-victim conflict by going back and forth with bully and victim hate mail. The victim can do this by making certain that the victim’s address is unknown to the bully. However, if the bully knows the victim’s whereabouts and thereby sends mail back to the victim, the victim is NOT to open, read, or reply to it.  

  In the event that the victim receives retaliatory mail from the bully, the victim is NOT to open or read it. Instead the victim is to write on the outside of it the words, “Unread, unopened, refused, and returned to sender”. After that, the victim is to drop the bully’s mail back into the mail system. In most instances the post office is very reliable about returning mail to the sender. If the victim wishes to have some extra peace of mind, that the bully’s hate mail was returned to the bully without being opened or read by the victim, the victim can put some extra postage on the bully’s correspondence and then drop it back into the mail system to be sure the post office re-routes it back to the bully. To be sure that the bully gets the bully’s hate mail back, if the victim desires to do so, the victim may hand carry it back to the bully’s residence and either put it in the bully’s mailbox, or hand carry it to the bully’s place of business and slide it under the business’s front door, when the bully is not around, of course. This will frustrate the crap out of the bully, not to mention humiliate the bully in front of his family members or co-workers, who will see that the bully’s mail got rejected, and thereby circulate the whole matter through their gossip mill.  

  If the bully inundates the victim with a relentless slew of retaliatory mail, I do not recommend that the victim contact the enforcer bully – police officer, or the authority bully – postal clerk, to get the bully into trouble for doing so, or to stop the bully from doing so. Although the victim, just like the bully, is a taxpaying citizen, one of the perks of being a bully is that the bully usually has some sort of socio-economic stature, and so the bully will most likely get away with being the Santa Claus from hell. This means that the enforcer bully police officer or authority bully postal clerk will most likely demand that the victim stop returning the bully’s hate mail back to sender and give the victim the ultimatum to throw away the bully’s junk mail, or else get into some sort of undeserved trouble for not doing so. Do what the enforcer and/or authority bully tells you to do. Simply put the bully’s mail into the trash. The bully is not worth you getting into any trouble. You will still be victorious over the bully anyway for you know that you are NOT going to open or read the bully’s hate mail.  

  The bully may get so upset with the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” mail that the bully will try to get the victim to read the bully’s revenge mail by sneaking it passed the victim. The upside of this is that the victim has validation that the bully read the victim’s mail. The downside of this is that the victim is going to have to be very careful to avoid the bully’s mail.  

   The following are some of the tricks of the trade that the bully uses to penetrate the victim’s defenses in order to expose the victim to the bully’s revenge mail:  

   1) The bully will either, not put his name or address, put a fake name and address, or put a legitimate name and address that is not the bully’s, as the return address of the correspondence that the bully sends to the victim.  

   2) The bully will put a note on the victim’s work desk, car window, house door, etc.  

  Do NOT open and do not read this mail! It is most probably from the bully! Instead put the bully’s unopened and unread mail in another envelope, and seal it. Next, put the proper postage on it and write the bully’s name and address on the return to sender portion of the correspondence. Then, write the bully’s name and address on the sender portion of the correspondence. After that, write on the upper portion of the back ide of the envelope “unopened and unread”, and drop it in the mail.  

  Once, a bully sent me hate mail that had as the return to sender’s address an attorney’s office, and on another occasion, the bully had as the return to sender’s address a real estate agent’s office. Because I did not know who these people were, I recognized that it was the bully’s mail incognito, and so without opening or reading it, I sent it back to the bully.  

   3) The bully will send the victim a postcard.  

  Look and see if there is a closing salutation – who it is from – on the postcard. If it is from yours truly, the bully, do NOT read the postcard! If there is no closing salutation proceed with caution. As long as there are no derogatory words in it the victim may read it.  

   4) The bully will send the victim mail that the victim cannot help but read such as a flier or a magazine.  

  For this type of mail, use the proverbial shield – the mirror – against the bully.  

  Once, a heterosexual bully arranged to have a business send me a free copy of a gay magazine. Being that I am not a lesbian, I sent the bully sexually pornographic material to adorn the bully’s mailbox with. Another time, a bully sent to my overweight self, an advertisement to join a fitness center. So, I sent the skinny bully a brochure from a medical institute that deals with curing anorexia and bulimia.  

   5) There are many ways to send hate mail. So victim, beware! If you are uncertain as to whether or not a piece of mail is from a bully do the following:

  (a) If the correspondence comes in a see through envelope, hold the back of the envelope up to a light or shine a flashlight through it. This will make it possible for the victim to see through the front of the envelope to view some of its inner contents to determine if it is the bully’s hate mail. If so return it to sender unopened and for the most part unread.  

  (b) If the correspondence comes in a security envelope, steam its seal open by holding it over a boiling pot of water. After a few minutes the steam will melt away the sticky seal. Once the mail is unsealed the victim can open it up and remove its contents to read it to determine if it is safe mail or not. Be careful! Keep most of it folded up and read just one line at a time to discern whether or not it is a nasty gram. If it is, stop reading it, put it back into the envelope the way in which it came out of the envelope, and reseal its seal with glue. I find that Elmer’s Rubber Cement Glue works best for this. After that, return it to the bully with writing on the outer section of both sides of the envelope that says, “Unread, Unopened, Refused and Returned to Sender”. After all, the victim did not read it, now did he?!  

  Be very careful! Even if the mail overall appears to be legitimate, the bully may have inserted written abuse within its pages.  

  (c) The bully may resort to disguising his handwriting to get the victim to read bully mail. So observe the style of the written script without reading it to discern if it might be from a bully. That is, of course, if you know what the bully’s handwriting, looks like.  

  (d) The bully may send correspondences to the victim from the most unlikely places to make the victim believe that it is not bully mail. So take note as to where the mail is post marked from.  

  (e) The bully will send the victim a fax. This makes it harder for the victim not to be exposed to the bully’s hate mail contents. This is only feasible, however, if the victim has a fax machine and the bully knows the victim’s fax number. If the victim does not have a fax number but the bully does, the victim can send a fax to the bully from a neutral zone. This way the bully cannot send a facsimile back to the victim, since the victim does not live, work, or visit the place where the victim’s facsimile originated from.  

  (f) The bully will send the victim an E-mail. No worries! The bully cannot send correspondence to a victim anonymously. The E-mail system is set up so that all E-mails that are received and sent identify the user’s name.  

MILESTONE #2: USING THE PHONE 

  I remember the very first time I decided to confront the bully on the phone. It took me over an hour of frantically pacing the floor back and forth, and trembling from head to toe while I repeatedly picked up and put down the phone back onto its receiver before I finally got the nerve to call the bully’s number. I made the decision not to think any extraneous thoughts, and not to feel any Jammer Feelings, but only to concentrate on how angry the bully made me feel. Hence, I was able to focus on the “Have A Nice Day Salvos” that I intended to say to the bully, and it worked! I told off the bully.  

  Being a victim, you will most probably get very nervous now that you have to get oral with the bully. Using the phone to contact the bully reduces the victim’s anxiety about having to deal with the bully by allowing the victim to only have to confront the bully’s ear. The phone permits the victim to hang up on the bully’s mouth after the victim has told the bully off. Using the phone entails that the victim READ to the bully the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list. The victim is to prepare a pre-written “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script from the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list at the ready to confront the bully over the phone with. Make it as succinct as you can, but include everything within it that you have to say to the bully.  

  Next, the victim is to verify that the bully is the one who the victim is speaking to, and that the bully is listening to what the victim is saying by asking the bully “Is this so and so?” If the bully answers the victim by saying, “Yes” the victim will have confirmation that the bully is the one on the phone and that the bully is hearing what the victim is saying. The victim is to speak to no one else other than the bully over the phone. This will ensure that the message from the victim’s mouth goes into the bully’s ear. They victim is NOT to rely upon any one to relay the victim’s “tell off” message to the bully. Others will not do so. Instead they will defend the bully and/or attack the victim. The victim is NOT to rely upon others to leave a message to have the bully call the victim back. Others may sabotage the victim’s attempt to confront the bully over the phone by either lying to victim that they will tell the bully to call the victim back or by refusing to do so. Persistence pays off! If the bully is not available the victim is to keep calling back until the bully comes to the phone. If the bully never comes to the phone after the victim identifies whom the victim is, the victim will have to come up with a ruse such as pretending that the victim is someone else in order to get the bully to come to the phone. Do NOT pretend you are someone the bully knows. The bully will recognize that your voice is not the person you claim to be and your mission to confront the bully over the phone will fail.  

  The victim is to quickly but clearly read the “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script into the bully’s ear. The victim is NOT to deviate from his “Have a Nice Day Salvos” script. The bully may try to prevent the victim from giving the bully back his own medicine. One way the bully will do this is by interrupting the victim while the victim is talking. If this happens, the victim is to tell the bully to let the victim finish talking and then the bully can have a turn to talk. Once the victim has told the bully off, the victim is to hang up on the bully without giving the bully a chance to say anything. If this does not work, the victim is to deliver his “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script by talking over the bully. 

   Another way the bully will do this is to change the topic of conversation before the victim has the chance to tell the bully off. If this happens, the victim is to wait until the bully is finished talking and then read the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script. Yet another way the bully will try to ignore what the victim has to say is by hanging up on the victim while the victim is still telling the bully off. To keep this from happening, the victim is to deliver his “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script so that the part that bashes the bully comes at the end. For instance, if the victim wants to tell the bully that the bully is stupid, the victim can say, “Excuse me I did not realize that I was talking to an idiot.” Notice how the bully does not know what the victim is going to say until he hears the last word. Thusly, it is too late for the bully to run away from receiving his own medicine by hanging up on the victim.  

  Immediately, after the victim has delivered his “Have a Nice Day Salvos” message to the bully he is to hang up the phone on the bully. I do this by having one finger on the “end” bottom of my cell phone the moment that I start having my telephone conversation with the bully so that I will be able to promptly end the call. Hanging up on the bully makes certain that the victim has the last word thereby giving the victim the emotional closure necessary for the victim to undergo emotional healing.  

  Finally, the victim is NOT to use fowl language or make any threats during the victim’s telephone conversation with the bully, and the victim is to only make ONE call to the bully. Making repeated calls to the bully, especially if the bully has requested that the victim not do so, may result in the bully getting the enforcer bully – police officer to charge the victim with the Misdemeanor of making annoying phone calls.  

  I do not recommend putting any messages into the bully’s answering machine. You do not know if the bully will listen to it. There is but one exception to this rule. If the bully always picks up his phone to send outgoing calls but never picks up his phone to receive incoming calls then you are to leave your message with the bully’s voice mail. Also, if you are going to put a message on the bully’s phone machine be sure to do it when the bully is not there. You don’t want the bully to shut off his phone machine or interrupt you while you are half way through telling off the bully. The one nice thing about talking to a phone is that it does not talk back to you. Since the bully is such a coward that he uses his answering machine to screen all of his calls, you are not a coward if you only talk to the bully’s voice mail. If you are going to leave a message on the bully’s “screen calls box” keep in mind that what you say will be recorded on tape, which the bully can use as legal evidence against you. Therefore, in this case, do not tell the bully who the call is from, block your call, or use a pay phone so that the bully cannot identify who the caller is so that the bully cannot retaliate against you by attempting to press annoying phone call charges against you. Also do not use fowl language or say anything that can be misconstrued as a threat. The purpose of your call is to tell the bully off in a legal way so that you can get emotional healing.

  If the bully tries to call the victim back, the victim is NOT to pick up the phone and talk to the bully. Remember the victim’s objective is to read the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script over the phone to the bully in order to express, release, and return the negative emotions that the bully gave to the victim back to the bully. So don’t undo what you have done by playing tit for tat telephone tag. Also, to protect yourself from retaliatory calls from the bully, do not leave your answering machine on. That way, the bully cannot leave any messages on it. If you must keep your voice mail on, for other callers, in the event that the bully does leave his unwelcome messages on it, delete them without listening to them. The best thing to do is to not have voice mail. I don’t! I get around the whole affair by having a cell phone that does not have its voice mail feature activated. That way, I can know who is calling me back and I can do so without having to have any voice mail. I simply keep my cell phone ringer off and allow my cell phone to forward the call to its memory bank. Later, I retrieve the caller by looking up the number that was left in my cell phone.  

  If the bully gets so upset that you have told him off that he continually rings your phone off the hook. Let him! Now you can have the satisfaction that your “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script bothered the bully that much, and that you are frustrating the crap out of him because he is unable to retaliate against you. What is fair is fair! Since the bully wrongfully starts the fight, the victim has the right to finish the fight. Many-a-time I have had the bully ring my phone nonstop. I either turn off the phone’s ringer, pull the phone’s plug out of the wall, or I make a game out of it. I calculate which bully will win the Guinness Book of World Records for ringing my phone the most by counting how many times each bully rings it. So far, the winner is a manager of a furniture store. He was rude so I launched my “Have A Nice Day Salvos” script at him over the phone promptly followed by my “click” of the receiver. He got so upset that I gave him back his own medicine that he rang my phone a total of one hundred times before he gave up.  

  If it really bothers the victim to receive phone harassment from the bully, the victim can make sure the bully never calls the victim again by getting a new phone number and making it unlisted. As I have already mentioned above, I do not advocate contacting the enforcer bully – police officer – to remedy a bully’s retaliatory phone calls. Been there, done that, no workie! The enforcer bully police officer, rest assured, will make matters worse for the victim by executing the Bully Culture’s good old double standards that it is okay for the bully to use the phone to attack the victim but it is not okay for the victim to use the phone to counterattack the bully. That is unless you get a peace officer to assist you in ending the bully-victim conflict.  

MILESTONE #3: FACE-TO-FACE

  During the initial stages that I was undergoing my “victim no more” campaign of confronting the bully I thought I was going to literally die of emotional distress. I felt like I was on a wild roller coaster ride. One moment, I was soaring like a rocket from the ecstatic emotional release I got after I told off a bully. The next moment, I was dropping like a stone from the pent up overwhelmingly intense negative emotions emerging to be “returned to sender” before I told off a bully. Meanwhile I was slamming into the wall of the Jammer Feelings like a car speeding over ninety miles an hour during a crash test. Overall, I had the sensation that I was agitating through a washing machine, spinning through a dryer, and being flattened by a steam iron.  

  The victim will RECITE the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos’ that pertain to the bully to the bully’s face. Make it as succinct as you can, but include everything within it that you have to say to the bully.  

  Unlike milestones #1 and #2, which require that the victim hurl his “Have A Nice Day Salvos” at the bully from a distance followed by the victim making an immediate retreat before the bully can react, milestone #3 focuses on the victim interfacing with the bully. This means that the victim has to prepare himself to not only field the bully’s initial attack but to be at the ready to volley repeated counterattacks against any retaliatory insults that the bully may make. This step is going to take longer and be harder than the first two for the victim to navigate through. This is because it will require lots of practice, being in the moment, and trial and error in knowing which, “Have A Nice Day Salvos” to launch at the bully in any given bullying circumstance.

   The following steppingstones will help make milestone #3 more manageable:

   1) If you are a victim who becomes speechless if you have to confront a bully, write down the “Have A Nice Day Salvos” that you are going to say to the bully on a piece of paper, and READ them aloud to the bully. If the bully makes fun of you for doing so, put this “Have A Nice Day Salvo” into the bully’s mug, “At least I think before I speak, unlike you.” I have read my “Have A Nice Day Salvos” out loud from a piece of paper to the bully many-a-time. Strangely I have never ever had a bully criticize me for doing so. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the bully was too pre-occupied feeling the pain that my HANDS on approach to bullying was inflicting upon him.  

   2) It is going to take a lot of repetition for the victim to be able to process in the moment, which “Have A Nice Day Salvos” is to be said in each bullying situation. To overcome this obstacle the victim is going to have to memorize the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list so that the victim can SAY them at will to the bully’s face. I recommend that you rehearse them once a day to your self in order to accomplish this goal. What I do every morning is drill them by recalling them from memory. After that, I check my “Have A Nice Day Salvos” list to make sure that I did not forget any. This may seem silly but it is exactly what a student has to do in order to pass his class exams and become knowledgeable in the subject that he is studying. Another thing that the victim is going to have to be willing to do is to go back as many times as is necessary to put everything that the victim has to say into the bully’s face. The victim has to do this if the victim wishes to attain complete emotional closure from each bullying situation, and if the victim desires to diminish the total duration of processing time that it takes the victim to know what to say and/or do to the bully in each bullying circumstance. There are no short cuts around this. This is because the best instructor on the bullying battlefield is life experience. Nonetheless, by doing this, the victim will gradually become utterly competent at being able to execute the “Have A Nice Day Salvos” that are most affective and effective for each of the myriad of bullying scenarios that the victim will encounter throughout the victim’s life span the moment that they arise.  

   3) In order to bolster the victim’s self confidence, the victim will work this step by, if possible, having a trustworthy friend accompany the victim on his bully buster missions. Why not? What is fair is fair! The bully has a crowd of butt holes to support the bully to be nasty for nothing to innocent people. Therefore, the victim ought to have some moral support so that the victim can get justice. Also, since the bully’s minions join in with the bully to victimize the victim, the victim ought to have at least one loyal companion who will assist the victim in standing up for himself against the bullying. In addition, it is overwhelming for the victim who is just starting out on his victim no more campaign to have to launch several “Have A Nice Day Salvos” at the trouble making bully. Two heads are better than one. Thusly, the victim’s companion can join in with the victim in launching the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” at the bully. A friend of mine had to confront a bully therapist and took me along to support his efforts. My friend said to the bully therapist, “When I shared an experience I had with you, you told me that I am paranoid. You are a mean, stupid, lazy, arrogant, lying flunky.” The bully therapist’s reply was “You rehearsed that didn’t you?” So I chimed in by saying “So!” The bully therapist then said, “I was just trying to help.” So, I said, “That’s nonsense!” Warning: although the victim’s friend may assist the victim in confronting the bully, the victim is NOT to use his friend as a crutch to fight the victim’s battles for him. The victim must be the one to deliver the victim’s “Have A Nice Day Salvos” at the bully. Otherwise, the victim will never ever be able to liberate himself from the victim role.  

   4) Being a victim, I am certain that it is going to be the hardest thing you have ever done to muster up the courage to face the bully. Just remember this, the word courage can be broken down into the words “cure” and “rage”. Having the courage to confront the bully will heal you from the all too real risk that the Bully Culture will turn your wrath into the very thing that you loathe – a bully, a bystander, or a suicide or homicide statistic. The Bully Culture’s sick social roles do NOT become you. You are better than that! So make the choice to have the fortitude and determination to get to know courage.  

   5) Being a victim means that, you will also succumb to the intensely overwhelming emotions of unearned shame, unearned fear, and unearned guilt, and in that order. Unearned shame tends to emote itself to the victim who has resigned himself to being a prisoner of the victim role. Unearned fear tends to emote itself before the victim confronts the bully in order to get free of the victim role. Unearned guilt tends to emote itself after the victim has dealt with the bully so as to prevent the victim from being liberated from the victim role. It is okay for you to experience these unearned emotions BEFORE or AFTER your battle with the bully has taken place. However, DURING the moment that you face off with the bully you must ignore these feelings by concentrating on nothing else but on vocalizing your “Have A Nice Day Salvos” at the bully so that you can achieve victory. Otherwise, these Jammer Feelings will STOP you from taking any action against the bully.  

MILESTONE #4: STANDING ALONE 

  All in all, you are going to keep asking yourself, like the kid who keeps asking his parents, “Are we there yet?” Is it ever going to end? The answer is a resounding “Yes!” Not only will it end, you will come out of the other side of the crucible the individual that you are meant to be. You will have undergone a total transformation. No I do not mean externally. My BullCrap Busters Website is not about getting a physical make over, a personality overhaul, or a financial renovation. It is about the internal everlasting – YOU. Liberating yourself from the victim role will allow you to regain your authentic self that got lost somewhere back in your childhood due to all of the lies that the Bully Culture has told you, continues to tell you, and will tell you, about who and what you are. Your own voice is going to awaken. You are going to feel vibrantly alive. You are going to look into the mirror and say, “I want to get to know that person” instead of having the need to avoid your own reflection in its looking glass.  

  It seems to be the most difficult milestone to give the bully back the bully’s own medicine all by the victim’s lonesome self. Until the victim realizes that he has already traversed this road before. Via correspondence the victim has already learned how to communicate his “Have A Nice Day Salvos” through the medium of silently writing them to the bully. By way of phone the victim has already learned how to communicate his “Have A Nice Day Salvos” through the medium of reading them out loud to the bully. Vis-à-vis face to face the victim has already learned how to communicate his “Have A Nice Day Salvos” through the medium of well thought out instantaneous oral verbalizations to the bully. The victim has done so with props and so the victim can do so without them. Plus, as a fail safe, the victim may periodically go back to confronting the bully by letter, over the phone, or with a friend in person to reinforce the victim’s determination to face the bully alone.  

  In milestone #4 the victim views the bully as a sparing partner. The more the victim engages in battle with his opponent the better the victim is going to be at beating the bully. Until, one day, the victim is virtually unbeatable. As they say practice makes perfect. The more that the victim exercises the HANDS ON APPROACH to bullying, the quicker the victim’s wit – execution of his “Have A Nice Day Salvos” – becomes. Until the victim’s mental processing of knowing what to say or do to a bully in any given bullying scenario diminishes from years, to months, to weeks, to days, to hours, to minutes and finally to the seconds.  

  The bully is the most cowardly of them all. He is weak willed for his lot is an easy one. He has the Bully Culture to take care of him. His is the path of least resistance. His appearance is well preserved for he has been sanctioned by the Bully Culture to take out his frustrations on innocent others without any repercussions. The bully starts fights without provocation and so it is he who is always at the ready. The victim who makes the choice to be victim no more is the bravest one. He is strong willed for his lot is a difficult one. No one protects him. His is the path of great obstacles. The victim starts at ground zero somewhere in the middle of his life span and has to endure the test of time as to whether or not he will liberate himself from the victim role. The bully is continually punishing the victim for making the gallant effort to escape his unearned lot in life. Few make it as is witnessed by the casualties of war upon humanity in the growing numbers of our children ending their own lives in their desperate plight to escape the Bully Culture. The visage of the victim is beaten, torn, warped, and worn with pieces missing as a result of having life’s stressors taken out upon him. The victim’s lips are slow to part for those who live by the truth die by it. There is no rest for the weary. The victim is forced into battle after battle after battle, against his will. The victim is constantly overwhelmed and overpowered by the sheer numbers of his oppressors, and so it is he who is always taken by surprise. In spite of the Bully Culture myth that the victim is a weakling and a wimp, knowing the opposition that the victim is up against will help the victim confront the bully all by his lonesome. For it will make known to the victim what a strong, courageous, resilient, resourceful individual he truly is.  

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FAILURE IS ONLY DELAYED SUCCESS

Failure is only delayed success.
Remember that when peoples’ mouths put you to the test
by insisting that your life will turn out to be
nothing more and nothing less
than a helpless, hopeless, worthless mess.

A teacher once said to me
 “You are learning handicapped 
earning grades below A,B, and C”
And flunking second grade I was made.
Then go to college I thought I could.
After that I graduated University
as a permanent member of its Honor Society.

A doctor once said to me,
“You can’t cure a face full of acne.
Its cause is due to teenage hood.”
Then diet healthy I thought I would.
After that my face cleared up after eleven years of sadness.
No more eating all of that junk food madness.

My father once said to me,
“You can’t publish your poetry and here is why.”
He showed me his unpublished poetry.
And his words did make me cry.
Then enter a poetry contest I thought I should.
After that thousands of manuscripts
were submitted for consideration.
 But National Poetry Press
and Pegasus asked me,
“May we publish your poetry?”

A boss once said to me,
“You can’t hold down a job”.
Job after job I kept getting fired.
Then, one day I said to my self,
“I refuse to live a life that
does not go higher and higher.”
After that, I tried teaching.
That job was more than far reaching.
But at the end of the year my job evaluation read
“A natural born teacher you are, you see.”

A woman once said to me,
“You will never ever get married.
Because you think and feel for yourself
we will keep you on the singles’ shelf.
Since you are nicer and more ambitious than we
we will make you suffer this decree –
For the next seven years or more,
we will gossip untruths about you galore.
Then no one will set you up on a date
for you will be too old and it will be too late.
And that, sweetheart, shall be your fate.”
After that, and despite their spite
I became my future husband’s wife.

To Be Continued...

It is not important what other people say.
If you listen to your heart it will show you the way.
For your mind knows that failure is only delayed success.
Remember that when peoples’ mouths put you to the test.

​By Elana Laham © 2013

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