When I was a teen I had a lot of problems with being teased and bullied. In the 10th grade one of my coworkers at a Library taught me how to deal with this problem and it hasn't been a major problem for me since.

When I was clumsy, I learned how to laugh at myself and make jokes about my clumsiness well before anyone else could. Then everyone could laugh, but people didn't feel like they needed to make the jokes go to the darkside as much.

If I said something accidentally crude or sexual, I would just play along with everyone else that the stupid thing I said was intentional to make others laugh.

If someone was making fun of some core aspect of myself, I turned the SAME joke around right away so that I made fun of a core aspect of the harrasser. This usually makes the harrasser realize that they went too far and why.

I still haven't figured out how to deal with Physical harrassment. The only thing I have found to help is to turn my voice to ice and say "How would you like it if I did that to you?" When people go "cold" instead of crying/upset, you scare others. That fear sometimes keeps them from bothering me again. Practice in the mirror your "cold" expression and tone of voice. If you don't think your bunny slippers are scared of you, keep practicing...

I like those suggestions. I think I have (unintentionally on occasion) used those ideas myself. For the physical bullying, I've also tried to use the "bored" approach. Rolling the eyes and saying something to the effect of, Please, can you be any more juvenile? or a sarcastic That was pretty original. Lots of times, people who do those things are doing it to avoid ridicule themselves if they are bullies, so turning it around makes it unproductive for them. (shrug) Just a thought.

My biggest problem was that I wouldn't get all the jokes, so I'd laugh at everything to keep from missing all the punchlines that were at my expense. I don't really know a good way around that.

The "bored" approach would probably work better with male bullies than female bullies. Female bullies will take it as a challenge to come up with something that will get you to react.

For female bullies, making it seem like they aren't worth your time and energy to acknowledge them is the only thing I can think of to get them to stop. Similar to "bored" except you can't acknowledge their existence at all, which is very difficult and something I have never mastered.

(06-08-2010, 03:31 PM)beck7422 Wrote: For female bullies, making it seem like they aren't worth your time and energy to acknowledge them is the only thing I can think of to get them to stop. Similar to "bored" except you can't acknowledge their existence at all, which is very difficult and something I have never mastered.

That's a good point. And I have never mastered that, either. Maybe just being a smart-aleck? Although, I'm not terribly good at that, either! But I can do dead-pan seriously answer their questions, and sometimes, that bores them and makes them quit. Although, luckily, I haven't had to deal with that recently.