Healthy Living DIY

When we began this series, you may remember that my inspiration was a story I'd heard about a woman whose 7-year-old son was being bullied at school. The conversation exploded with various people's suggestions about what she should do.

Some people suggested that the authorities should take care of it:

* Make the school system remove the bully.
* Get a restraining order against the bullying kid and his family.
* Retain a lawyer to make sure the school system does its job.
* Go to the media and expose the whole mess!

Other people suggested that the focus be on empowering the kid:

* Tell him to fight back. Sign him up for boxing lessons.
* Have him identify a kid the bully wouldn't go near and model that kid's behavior.
* Get him into counseling to learn better conflict-resolution skills.
* Someone should have a talk with the bully and find out what things the victim is doing that trigger him. This could be a good learning opportunity for the victim. Ultimately, he might choose to add or drop certain things from his typical daily behavior. (The idea here was to help victim develop a stronger presentation, not just placate the bully.)

So we have some pretty reasonable examples of the two main types of remedy available in most "bullying" situations.

* External remedies that concentrate on righting the wrong once it's happened.
* Internal remedies that focus on making the victim less vulnerable to further attack.

There was some bally-hooing back and forth on this, of course. Some said it was the responsibility of the authorities. How can you expect a smaller kid to stand up to a big bully with a hockey stick? (Yes, the bigger kid went after the littler kid with a hockey stick.) It's just wrong!

Others said that even if the authorities get rid of this bully, the smaller kid's still going to be vulnerable to the next one until he learns to protect himself.

Who was right?

Obvious. They both were.

Someone :-) pointed out that there was no reason to choose one approach over the other. That allowing the authorities to do their part while also empowering the kid was probably a reasonable compromise.

Oh. Yeah. Both.

Now let's take this same example and apply it to a bully with a different name.

What if instead of "playground bully," you were dealing with...

* cancer
* heart disease
* financial loss
* a cranky boss
* an abusive spouse
* or any other namable situation or circumstance that causes you to feel like a victim?

Here's what you do.

1. Name the bully.
2. Identify external strategies you can access - like conventional Western medicine, a financial planner, the human resources department at your workplace, or a social service agency.
3. Identify internal strategies you can begin to work with, over time, to make yourself unattractive to future advances by this same bully (and even his close cousins). Strategies like healthy eating, resolving life stress, financial planning, finding different employment, or learning the telltale warning signs of a potential abuser so you can avoid the next one.

Then do both. External and internal. Just like peanut butter and jelly, huh?

Who's responsible? Ultimately of course, you. You're the one who's going to live or die by the success of your strategy. So you'd better be responsible. But you can certainly have some help!

To be continued...