PsyLetter #1 - Online Bullying, Dominance, Vulnerability, Self-Mirror

I was listening to a podcast, and it was about online bullying.

The question was what do you do if someone comments on your video very harshly, with very raw insults.

One person said, ‘just delete it and that’s it, there is nothing else to be done,’ to which the reply was, ‘but the feeling, the anger is within me! I can’t let it go.’

It suggested that they wanted to respond, they wanted revenge.

I thought about a solution that I believe is often missing from people's way of thinking. This is understanding before action, or instead of action.

You often don’t need to act. Not everything is about action. Action is changing something on the physical plane. But what sort of change is this? You act with the same state of mind as you had before.

If you first think it through, analyze it, change your perception of a given thing, and then act, the action can be truly effective.

So, this is the understanding of the matter. Understanding is consciousness, perception. You don’t just react to impulse, you understand what’s actually happening.

We see in children how they are when they are impulsive and want something quickly. Emotions burst out in the form of anger or crying. The same is with adults, but on a different scale.

They (in a better case) might be able to handle those very sudden behaviors. However, you need to go even "deeper", look further into what we assume, what is our underlying, "elongated" impulse.

So, how should you react to bullying?

First, I would want to understand what is happening. We seemingly understand things, but in reality, we don’t - and we can’t even comprehend the most objective reality, however, we can understand a micro version of it, within the limits of our own mind and accordingly.

Understand the whys, the reasons.

• Why is this person writing this to me?

• What emotions are they going through?

• What do they want to communicate apparently, and what subconsciously?

• What do I feel?

• Why do I feel this?

• Where do these emotions stem from?

Philosophy is actually a kind of psychology that is practical, accessible to everyone, and immediate without requiring prior knowledge.

When you hurt others, what do you feel? Safety, calmness, peace? If you felt that, you wouldn’t hurt them. Nobody hurts another in peace. The one who will be defensive or offensive is the one who feels an adversary, a threat.

The one who does not feel safe feels vulnerable. So, the bully does not feel well in some form or another.

The one who bullies wants to feel on top, in dominance, in control. They feel this when they hurt and elicit emotions from you. Then they had an effect on you, and they controlled you - that is, you handed over control to them.

Thus, in reality, the bully is the one who is down and wants to be up.

Reality is quite deceptive, especially when it seems that for example a big strong person is injuring a weaker one. In reality, the bigger one is much weaker than it appears to be strong.

Weak because it hurts another, and even weaker because it exploits its power to hurt another, and even weaker still because it does not handle its emotions in a healthy way but rather lets others suffer its pain.

Therefore, the dominant, aggressive man who hurts another is actually a hysterical, impulsive, irresponsible child who should not be given power.

Prison also serves to take away power, though it works incredibly poorly. They do not talk to you, do not try to make you understand what is right and what is not, do not give you tools to think and change.

Instead, they lock you up in a place where you are in danger, and you may pick up even more trauma and pain. After they release you, you either do no more harm out of fear, or you continue to harm people out of the traumas and the desire for revenge.

So, society doesn't really know how to handle these people, doesn't understand how the mind works. That if someone is mentally unhealthy and abusive, terrorizing, then they should not be punished, should not be given suffering, but taught. The one who hurts others is screaming for help.

I led to this because it's important to understand the big picture and why this bullying phenomenon exists.

So, let’s say, you thoroughly went through why the other is as they are, simply logically derived. Of course, you will never know the full picture, and you may find out something new later, maybe even opposite to what you thought, but that's okay because this is a continuous development and discovery.

Now analyze yourself.

What does the person who hurts you bring out in you? What do you feel? Why do you feel this?

It's best if you write these down on paper in order and answer them as fully as you can.

Why does it hurt? A stranger who experiences something from you, through the mirror of their own mind.

If I throw you into a prison with mafiosos, they might hate and look down on you so much they could kill you. Why, perhaps, because you are such a bad person? No. But through their own mirrors.

They have bathed in hatred and want control in uncertainty. To control, violence is the path.

So, the commentator sees a distorted form of you, which they are talking to. Not to you. Society is quite schizophrenic, but I won't go into that now, perhaps in a next letter.

It feels like they are speaking to you, and you are what they see - but those are their assumptions about you, arising from their past, from their subconscious.

Why do you give another person the opportunity to modify the image you have of yourself? Because you decide about your emotions, and what you accept and what you do not. You set the truth for yourself.

Here's a tip that I understood in my teenage years, and it gives an objective anchor.

Anyone who is negative with you and insults you at a vulgar level is sick. Someone who is sick, and does not provide constructive criticism, is clearly not close to reality.

Those who are close do not hurl insults at the top of their lungs. Why would you accept the words of someone who is more lost than you?

If someone is in a deeper part of the pit, would you listen to them if they lecture you? They are not credible, and they are not knowledgeable. They lack training in life, in managing themselves.

Of course, all of this is much more complex. There are times when you are the one who has gone seriously astray, and your environment harms and burns you because you have totally derailed. Sometimes their part may be justified, and sometimes it may be distorted.

I write this because there are some gurus who market themselves in such a way that they totally ignore any feedback, and they set up that the outside world is distorted, and does not understand them, they only understand themselves.

This is an extreme. Even if the other person's perspective is distorted, there may be a piece of truth in it that you can use to build yourself, even if the signal came to you in a strange, distorted, vulgar form.

But, this is the essence of self-improvement. To understand as accurately as possible the many different signals that come to you, and to change for the better based on them.

There are many levels and many techniques, but I will write about what is easy to follow, which does not require you to become a philosopher, and by applying it you can understand things.

A little taste: the basis is that you yourself strive to follow the good, with your whole soul, as much as you can. Then you will automatically heal and develop. Hatred is poison and disease, which degrades.