Bullying and Body Language

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A couple of studies show that the effects of bullying on children are both long-term and significant. Significant because bullying leads teens to develop distrust, which hinders their ability to form healthy relationships. Long-term, because the effects of bullying were tracked over 40 years in a study that found that bullied children showed a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, poorer cognitive functioning, lower quality of life, and lower life satisfaction, and were less likely to be in a relationship than non-bullied peers.

As someone who was bullied as a child, I naturally pay attention to these studies and am suitably impressed (and depressed) by the seriousness of the effects. As a coach, I have seen the cost of bullying show up in speakers and executives I have worked with. Typically, what happens is that the child develops a protective response to the bullying, which is the best that they can do under the circumstances to keep themselves as safe as possible. But that behavior then comes back to bite them later in life when it is no longer useful. For example, one executive learned how to shut down and hide his feelings in response to bullying over most of his teenage years. Many years later, he had to learn how to open up and show his employees that he cared about them. Shutting down was not effective in his new role.

What’s even more disturbing about these long-term effects is that they represent a missed opportunity from when the bullying originally took place. I say that because our body language is always an expression of the emotions we are carrying in the moment and our history. Our bodies react instantly to threats, pain, and danger. That moment of reaction is an opportunity to change the body language so that it doesn’t store the hurt but rather transforms the feeling into something less scary—or scarring.

For example, a recent study on handling anger found that if you write down what’s making you angry on a piece of paper and then crumple up the paper and throw it away, you may release the anger. It doesn’t store itself somewhere in your body to trouble you later on.

Another study found that turning up the lighting in a room intensifies your feelings while turning the lights down has the opposite effect. So turn down the lights, write down your anger at being bullied on a piece of paper, crumple up the paper, and throw it away.

On the other hand, according to yet another study, getting more light during the day (but not at night) reduces your risk of depression by 20 percent. Thus, you might want to move to Florida first, then turn down the lights (at night) and do the anger-paper thing.

If we’ve been told as children that we are beautiful or the opposite, that we are strong or weak, or that we are winners or losers, we carry ourselves accordingly, often for many years. If we are unable to transform the body language of our reaction at the moment, then the healing will remain to be done, sometimes a lifetime later, or never at all.

Don’t wait, if it’s at all possible. If you witness bullying, work with the bullied person to transform their feelings in the moment and help them repair the damaged sense of trust. Those feelings are traumatizing, but they can be transformed. It is best to get to work speedily rather than wait for years to pass and for pain to be buried deep. They will show up in the body language, successful or damaging, now or later.