The Social Harmony project looks so useful. I must say though, that the examples you give seam to be out of touch with reality and in the minority with regards to why kids bully. I believe that the majority have been taught to bully by their fathers and perhaps to a lesser extent even by their mothers. They have a tough guy mentality because of their parents insecurities. Also, rarely do bullies think they are “just playing” like they do with their brothers. I believe that most of the time kids who bully clearly know what they are doing – harming others because they can. I have witnessed bullying that was aggressive, unprovoked, and clearly had the intention to do harm. So, I believe, a holistic approach would embrace both social harmony issues and anti-bullying policy.

Hi Elana. I’m glad to hear of your work on Social Harmony and in relation to bullying. And, I want to bring to your, and others’ attention, the work of Canadian psychologist Gordon Neufeld, who has spent many years studying bullying first hand, and who has developed understandings that seem potentially very valuable to anyone wanting to transform the phenomenon of bullying. I’m still trying to figure out how to integrate his ideas with the insights offered by Nonviolent Communication. And, his understandings are even harder to integrate with punitive approaches to bullying. Neufeld says that bullying inevitably arises when two complexes of behavior are present in a person and are not addressed in a way that matches the underlying dynamics: (1) a desire to “win” or “dominate”/be the “alpha” in all situations, and (2) a profound insensitivity to emotional stimuli in themselves and in others. Neufeld says that in isolation either of these complexes or syndromes doesn’t necessarily lead to harming others, but that when they come together, a person will tend to act in ways that involve dominating others by exploiting their vulnerability. (Which suggests that some behavior meant to encourage empathy may be tricky to get right when bullying is present.) The part of this story that is about the second point very much aligns with what I hear you saying about healing rather than punishment being the answer. Neufeld believes that those who bully have become numb because at some point their experienced a level of vulnerability in themselves that was too painful to bear, and their system took emergency measures to protect them, shutting down many of the capacities that others have easy access to. One implication of this is that punishing bullies is completely ineffective. Their protective numbing means that punishments are not experienced in a way that provides any incentives to change; and punishment reproduces the conditions that lead to emotional numbness in the first place, potentially making that condition, and any associate bullying, even worse. The issues around social dominance are the part of Neufeld’s analysis that I’ve found the most challenging to assimilate, though I believe there is something important in what he is saying. Part of his analysis, and his experience, is that those who bully are typically in setting where they can be socially dominant–be in charge of others well-being (which they don’t do in a positive way) rather than have others care for them (which those who bully experience a tragic deficit of). Children who act as bullies typically do so when there are no adults around or when adults allow themselves to play a secondary role to the the child. In this analysis, the failure of adults to be dominant in a healthy mature way is part of the problem that creates the conditions that foster bullying. Yet, what Neufeld wants adults to do has a huge component of nurturance to it, so it’s not what talk of “being the adult” or “being the alpha” may evoke for some people. Anyway, Neufeld’s framework is a way of supporting insight into the dynamics around bullying that seems to me very rich and deep (beyond what even a long comment like this can convey) and significant, and I commend it to your attention. Neufeld’s work is just one example of work showing that those who “cause trouble” typically have had their lives shaped by deep trauma, and ultimately respond much better to the right sort of nurturance, and the creation of safe “containers”, than they do to punitive approaches. (You might also Google Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, if you’re not already familiar with how shockingly effective their turn away from punishment and towards nurturance has been.)

Based on my experience being bullied in High School, I just can’t help but feel that the person bullying knows, most of the time, that he/she is doing something wrong. And they do it anyway, because they can. I’m totally in favor of treating the bully with a social harmony style of treatment. But I can’t see not administering a punitive approach and punishment as well when a person does something that they clearly know shouldn’t be done. Especially when it involves hurting others. If people break the rules and hurt others than they should be punished. This is a simple social contract. To not punish the bully would be like blaming the victim.

What a wonderful conversation! These questions are so important, not just in our schools but in our families, our businesses, and our general culture. Bob, thank you for mentioning Gordon Neufeld’s work. Once, after I did a large workshop for Social Harmony, I was contacted by a state organization of social workers to come talk about bullying. From this therapeutic perspective the question moves from “how do we stop these ‘bullies’ (I don’t like to label children who are bullying this way)” to “how do we HEAL these very traumatized children? Neufeld’s stance is important to me because my field of psychology often gives up on these children – probably because we don’t have the tools, or the field in general doesn’t yet accept the tools (I think bodypsychotherapy tools do work), that can heal as deeply as this situation requires. Once during my internship, I sat in on the intake of a young latino man, who had just come from jail for beating up his girlfriend. The young man stared at the floor during the whole interview. When he left, I asked the psychiatrist, “what can I do to help this young man to heal?” She replied, “He is a psychopath. You can’t help him. Just give him drugs and pray.” When I then met with him, I sat for awhile, trying to feel how it was for him to have his whole world – the psychiatrist, the clinic we were in, his family, potential employers – all see him as ‘bad.’ The shame was like a heavy cloud suffocating him. I felt such sadness inside him. After awhile I just said, “She didn’t see you, did she?” He finally looked up, deeply into my eyes, and he began to sob. He desperately needed to be truly seen, without judgment.
Yes, healing children/people who have lost the ability to connect to their own emotions because of needing to create a defense of disconnection in order to not fall apart, and therefore, they loose the ability to connect to other people’s emotions (mirror neurons), is a very hard task. It is hard enough to do when we can release judgment towards them, but if we, like the psychiatrist, can only see them as ‘bad bullies’ then the task does become quite impossible. Neufeld’s nonjudgmental stance is a prerequisite to finding a way to truly help these people feel safe enough to let down their guard, feel their pain, find self acceptance, and then finally move from the hardened stance to one of openhearted empathy for others.
At ReTribe, which Elana mentioned above, http://www.ReTribe.org we do Rites of Passages for teens, using a very deep modality called Breathwork, which is much stronger at healing than talk therapy. To give you a sense – I did Breathwork with a teen recently, who was the bully of his school. His experience, which was a vision, was of an egg, who lost his shell. (great symbolism!) At first when I asked him how he felt towards the egg, he said “He’s a dick.” But by the end of the Breathwork, he was sitting on the couch putting his arm around the egg. He subsequently decided to find a new friend group at school because he didn’t like how his friends were so mean to people.
Punishing him would have hardened him more. Healing him saves many many others from the pain of his actions.