Before you retaliate with anger... think first.
Yes, this is a tarot blog, and I will always incorporate the tarot into any content found here. But I cannot let October pass without addressing the bullying problem. After all, October is National Bullying Prevention Month. I cannot think of a better time to address this issue.
Oftentimes, bullying is considered a childhood problem, and brushed away by generalities like, “boys will be boys”, “kids are so cruel”, “it’s a phase”, and comments from adults that reminiscence about their own problems growing up getting picked on and how they can laugh about these experiences now, knowing they are behind them. Yes, bullying is a serious problem for children, especially when children aren’t built for long-term thinking and could turn to short-term solutions to remedy their bullying problem. I am not belittling the cause. But we cannot neatly place bullying in the “childhood only” category. There are some adults out there that have a thirteen-year-old girl’s mentality and capacity for cruelness. Unfortunately, bullies are at our jobs, within our professional field, online, and even our own family members.
How can we change this situation? What solutions are there when you are confronted with a bully? What support can you offer those that are being bullied?
A few suggestions:
- Be compassionate to all involved. This is a hard step, but one that is absolutely necessary. Humans are selfish creatures, and self-preservation is a strong motivation for us. Bullying often starts from a place of hurt and surprisingly, lack of confidence within the bully. A bully usually tears someone else down to make themselves feel better.
- Divide and conquer. By this I mean to separate the bully from their supporters. A mob mentality usually aggravates a bullying situation. You’d be surprised at how many people you see as “supporters” are actually pawns and victims within the bullying cycle, too. They are just fearful of being turned into more fodder for the bully.
- Unmask the anonymous. I have often said that anonymity breeds bad behavior. This is especially true for public bathrooms and online bullies. Some online bullies go by pseudonyms, and some sleuthing will deduce who this person is. Other times, the bully will use their real name, but have a completely different personality online. The internet is the Wild Wild West of this era, and the cold glare of a computer monitor is enough to turn a reasonable human being into a bullying cyborg. By bringing the human element back to the person, you might remind them that their actions online resonate as strongly as if they were actually speaking these words to the other person’s face.
- Ask yourself, Is this worth my energy? AKA Pick your battles. Fighting the good fight is well and good, but sometimes no amount of the above suggestions will solve the problem. In those cases, disengaging from this person might be the most viable option.
Let’s bring it back to tarot (as usual). I’ve come up with a very simple three-card spread to use in a bullying situation.
Card 1: The Victim Card 3: Healing the rift Card 2: The Bully
Shuffle the cards while picturing the bullying situation in your mind. When you are ready, separate the deck into two piles. Pull the top card from the two piles and turn them over. The first card is the victim. The second card is the bully. Lay them out with room in the middle to provide space for upcoming third card. Combine the two piles back into one pile and shuffle. While shuffling, imagine the victim and the bully co-existing peacefully with the situation resolved. When you are ready, stop shuffling and pick the card from the top and turn it over between cards 1 and 2. This card represents what can be done to heal the rift.
Also keep in mind that I have used the labels as “Victim” and “Bully”, but some situations are more fluid and simplistic labels don’t do them justice. Play around with the idea of the bully being the victim, and the victim being the bully. Does this change the reading? Does it change how you feel towards these characters in your own life story? How?
I hope this brings greater understanding to these issues. If you try out this spread, let me know what you think!
‘Til next time,
Hilary
www.tarotbyhilary.com
Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Feel free to share your techniques on dealing with a bullying situation or what you learned from the spread I shared in the Comments section.
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