Growing up, my parents have always wanted me to be strong. They have constantly urged me to be like them; they are strong and respected individuals in the society. My parents believed that because they have trained me to be strong, I could be alone for long hours; they ignored me most of the time and never gave me the emotional support I needed as a teenager. The lack of support made me emotionally vulnerable. However, I did not want to show this vulnerability. In order to hide my vulnerability, I started bullying my peers at school to project my feelings of vulnerability to them, although I managed to repress them.
In psychology, bullying is the act of harming or intimidating other individuals, particularly those perceived as vulnerable. Bullies often aim to exploit the vulnerability of their targets (Bullying Online, n.d.). They lack reflection, are fearless, and are often immature. Although these are the characteristics of most bullies, they only applied to me to some extent. My case was entirely different. My bullying behavior resulted from vulnerability and not wanting to become a victim of bullying myself. After bullying an individual, I would feel remorseful, although I refrained from apologizing as it would show that I am vulnerable too. According to MacNamara (2015), individuals with high emotionality cannot often control their emotions and become bullies themselves. Additionally, a report by CFCA about bullying indicates that children who are not properly nurtured by their families have poor bonding capacity, which often makes them bullies ( (CFCA, 2014) . This relates to my case; my parents' lack of emotional support played a huge part in me becoming a bully.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Bullying is often associated with the emotional vulnerability of the bully and the victim. For the bully, the act of bullying is often a projection of their feelings of vulnerability. In psychology, the concept of psychological projection is a defense mechanism, in which an individual uses their ego to defend themselves by denying a certain unlikeable attribute in themselves (Costa, 2017). Psychological projection is evident in my case; I used to project my vulnerability feelings to my peers through bullying. The urge to show everyone that I was strong and tough often exposed my bad side. Simple, I used projection as a way to deal with my emotional vulnerability, which was wrong. I should have obtained other methods to approach the issue. For example, I could have opened up to my parents or the school counselor to explain my feelings.
Although I had become a notorious bully, I managed to repress the feelings of emotional vulnerability, which shaped me into a better person. According to Cherry (2020), repression is a defense mechanism in which individuals keep certain unwanted thoughts, urges, and feelings out of their conscious mind. Often, the aim is to keep unwanted and unacceptable desires and feelings away to minimize their impact on an individual (Cherry, 2020). In my case, I used psychological repression to keep away the unwanted feelings of vulnerability and to keep me from bullying. Repression helped shape my behavior into what I have always wanted. I realized that bullying could not help resolve my emotional vulnerability. Also, bullying does not make me mature or strong. Instead, refraining from bullying and projection of my feelings to other individuals makes me strong.
Conclusively, psychological concepts are important in shaping the personality and character of an individual. In my case, the emotional vulnerability was a big problem, and I used bullying to hide it. I projected my feelings on the target individuals to prove my superiority and hide my inferiority. However, the concept of repression helped shape me into a better person. I kept the feelings of inferiority or the urge to bully individuals out of my mind. This has shaped me into the well-mannered individual that I am today.
References
Bullying Online. (n.d.). How People Are Vulnerable to Bullying. https://bullyonline.org/old/workbully/vulnerab.htm
CFCA. (2014). Children who bully at school. Australian Institute of Family Studies . https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/children-who-bully-school/parental-influences-bullying-behaviour
Cherry, K. (2020, February 18). Repression as a Defense Mechanism. (S. Gans, Ed.) Very Well Mind . https://www.verywellmind.com/repression-as-a-defense-mechanism-4586642
Costa R.M. (2017) Projection (Defense Mechanism). In: Zeigler-Hill V., Shackelford T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1413-1
MacNamara, D. (2015, February). The Vulnerability Problem of the Bully. Neufeld Institute . https://neufeldinstitute.org/the-vulnerability-problem-of-the-bully/
