When it comes to ghosts and the paranormal, I have occasionally been asked, “Do you believe this stuff?”

People are often surprised to hear that the answer is “no”. I don’t believe in ghosts. I’ve not had any experiences with hauntings – although I have scared myself silly at times over the course of my life. The reason for this, of course, is that I love horror.

Ghost stories and supernatural tales are probably my favorite. Giant monsters are cool. Zombies and vampires…meh. Slasher tales? No, those are tiring and boring. For me, gore and vivid portrayals of flying body parts are not frightening. The imagination is more intense.

What? Love horror but not believe it ghosts (or monsters or demons or…whatever)? Why not?

Basically, I’ve been trained as a scientist – a psychologist, but a scientist nonetheless. Empirical support is important to the field of psychology.  You will see this perspective in Eric, the graduate student character in my second novel Dead Works (releasing soon). Like him, I believe much of the supernatural experiences reported by people can be described by natural causes. My goal is not to alienate or anger people with this comment (heaven knows I love horror tales), but this reflects my world-view based on the reliance of scientific evidence. Things like hallucinations, dreams, sleep paralysis, confirmation biases, errors in logic, memory and perceptual errors – these account for just about everything that is considered “supernatural”. I haven’t seen compelling evidence to suggest otherwise.

A fair number of supernatural claims are also hoaxes. I love looking at photos of ghosts and reading reports of possession. One of my favorite photos is a picture of a head of a youth looking around a doorway in the Amityville Horror house. This was supposed to be a picture of one of the kids murdered in the residence. Many of you have seen it, and it is downright creepy. I love it. However, it is actually a photo of a college student who was serving as a research assistant for Ed and Lorraine Warren who were conducting a psychic “investigation” of the house.  Too bad. (I still loved the movie The Conjuring based on one of the Warren’s cases.)

By the way, the stories behind such “true” accounts as the Amityville Horror and The Exorcist have been disclosed as hoaxes – sad but true. However, they remain dynamite stories just the same. I can – and do - enjoy them on that basis.

Dead Works is a psychological ghost story is about a teenager in therapy because he is seeing ghosts. I realize this sentence makes it sound like the movie The Sixth Sense, but the plot is considerably different. The psychologist character is a graduate student in counseling psychology who was working on his PhD. The young therapist is doing his practicum placement at the university counseling center and he is assigned a teenage client who is seeing ‘things’. 

I mentioned in my previous blog that I tried to make the therapy sessions between Eric, the doctoral counseling psychology student, and Greg, his teenage client, authentic as possible. However, while I think the portrayal is authentic, I wasn’t necessarily factual as I had to edit some of the more mundane components of therapy for dramatic purposes.  In addition, Greg comes off as more verbal and insightful than the average adolescent male, who tends to respond with monosyllabic utterances in these situations until feeling comfortable.

A critical skill all therapists need to display is empathy - which helps establish a therapeutic alliance and helps the client explore his/her problems. Part of being empathic involves being genuine and non-judgmental, which means accepting what the client says and not making critical evaluations of the person. Therefore, in Dead Works, when Greg talks about seeing ghosts, Eric listens and reacts as if he was talking about everyday adolescent concerns like problems in school or conflicts with siblings. He works hard at not judging or ridiculing his client.

Since Dead Works is ostensibly a ghost story, much of the plot takes this “problem” and runs with it. It reality, Eric would have explored other issues or factors that might be playing a role in Greg’s life. With a little digging, Eric and Greg may begin to see the ghost issue as a byproduct of something else like trauma or abuse. The hauntings could actually “fall away” or become unimportant as other issues are addressed. In the case of Dead Works, though, I kept the ghosts front and center in the therapy process and had a blast doing it. For instance, I was able to weave in features of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as Eric helped Greg consider alternative explanations for the hauntings. Eric also considers Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a possible intervention for Greg. Finally, Eric’s discussion of Greg in his practicum class also demonstrates how student therapists can explore difficult cases in a supportive atmosphere

Ghosts have not been a frequent occurrence in therapy sessions in my professional experience. My love of horror has not been fed by professional circumstances. That comes from my own twisted enjoyment of things spooky. The heartbreaking, disturbing, and sad experiences related by kids with whom I’ve worked (or discussed by my practicum students in class) are all decidedly human and earthbound. Trauma, abuse, poverty, dysfunctional families, illness, stress, anxiety, anger, depression… the list goes on and on – these are the topics of therapy.

Dead Works is a psychological ghost story is about a teenager in therapy because he is seeing ghosts. My professional life as a professor and a psychologist contributed a chunk of the source material. The psychologist character is a graduate student in counseling psychology who was working on his PhD. The young therapist is doing his practicum placement at the university counseling center and he is assigned a teenage client who is seeing ‘things’.  I regularly teach a Practicum course where the students are being supervised while they provide therapy. Much of the context for the novel takes place within the counseling relationship between the teen and the student therapist, the story is told from the graduate student’s point of view.

Writing fictional accounts of therapy can be tricky for a number of reasons. First, therapy does not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion. That’s not to say there aren’t identifiable phases and predictable sequences. The sequences and phases that make up the therapy process, along with specific therapist behaviors and skills, can be objectively measured. It’s just that the process isn’t necessarily neat. Second, client gains occur incrementally over time. You don’t get those dramatic insightful “aha” moments that are portrayed in movies in which the client is cured in one theatrical session. Third, since change can be incremental, the process may not make for exciting reading. Thus, I had to sacrifice some factual preciseness when writing Dead Works to keep the pace at a dramatic clip.

The therapeutic process tends to proceed through certain phases. When clients begin therapy, they have the opportunity to tell their story. That is, talk about what is troubling them and what they are looking for in therapy. In the first session, the therapist may ask a lot of questions to help the client with this process – essentially the therapist does an intake. During this first session and with every session that follows, the therapist uses a series of active listening and empathy skills to display positive regard for the client and to enhance the therapeutic relationship. Let’s be clear, people may find the prospect of going into an office and telling a complete stranger about their most private thoughts and feelings quite unnerving. So, the therapist has to work hard to gain the client’s trust. He/she does this by listening, being non-judgmental, and being empathic.

As client concerns become clarified and the relationship develops, goals become clearer. The therapist often has a number of different strategies at his/her disposal to help the client make the necessary changes in order to meet those goals. There strategies are heavily tied to the therapist’s theoretical orientation. You’ve heard of these theoretical orientations before – they have readily slipped into everyday usage: cognitive therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, solution-focused therapy, and so on. My personal theoretical orientation is cognitive-behavioral – and this influences my training of students, my research, and my therapy when I have conducted it in the past.

All therapists, regardless of theoretical orientation, engage in empathy and active listening in order to develop a trusting relationship.  However, the speed through which they move through the phases of therapy or the factors that they focus on with the clients may differ based on the orientation.  Clients will have homework, though, regardless of orientation. The process moves a bit more quickly if clients are willing to do take what they learn in therapy and apply it in real life in between sessions.

When I started Dead Works, I knew I would have to give up a lot of the therapy process. Much of the work takes place “off-screen”. It may not be readily noticeable, but Eric’s theoretical orientation is cognitive-behavioral. You can “see” this by his focus on what Greg is thinking and doing as he is coping with his problems. At the same time, however, Eric is not ignoring Greg’s emotions. He uses active listening and empathy and reflects what Greg is feeling. I try to demonstrate this for the purpose of making their developing relationship appear authentic.

I’ll talk about the content of their sessions in an upcoming blog… 

Once the demands of caretaking for my wife began to take their toll, I knew that I needed professional help. I won’t go through the details of my therapy. I saw a psychologist for a year for psychotherapy, and a psychiatrist for medication. To be honest, I wondered if the psychologist could do anything for someone who “knew all the tricks”, but she was great – she took therapy in directions that I didn’t see coming. We developed strategies to deal with the immediate stressors (including the constant vomiting) and then addressed the long term personal and existential issues. She was close to retirement age when we started, and she retired after a year. But by that time, I felt like I was in pretty decent shape. I have kept seeing my psychiatrist, though. She picked up the slack of the therapy as crises came and went over the past few years, but we also decided staying on the medication would be a good course of action as anxiety has always been a part of my life.

Since that time, my wife’s recovery has proceeded well, although she will always have fairly extensive stroke-related disabilities. Our lives have been irrevocably changed, but in many ways our relationship has improved. We take things in stride considerably better that we used to. Things are not as stressful or upsetting. We have more fun together. How all this happened is hard to describe. But it has. Even when she was hospitalized again for a perforated bowel that involved surgery, more complications, and six months with a colostomy bag, the feelings of dread and anguish never returned to the levels they were. By the way, just like my inability to handle vomit, I never was one for handling shit. I had to look away when changing diapers, for instance. But, I was able to handle daily colostomy bag changes like a pro. Actually, that procedure is astounding. It’s amazing what physicians can do.

So, there it is. This is the end (at least for now) of my multiple blogs covering our own personal horror story. How we made it through that first year is beyond me. Yet, making it through has taught me (and us) much. The most obvious outcomes have been an increased sense of inner calmness and patience. While we were in the midst of it all, I was never able to see the end. I felt swallowed into a black morass, and I was so afraid all of the time. Hence the horror. Maybe this deepened my fondness for horror stories. Who knows? 

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, while I was a full time caretaker, basically a single parent, and also the chair of my department at the university, I realized that my emotional state was not the best. Being a caretaker is something for which you are not prepared. You have your life planned out and moving merrily along – you have goals, vacation plans, retirement plans, ideas for how to spend the next weekend, and so on. Out of the blue the planets realign, or fate catches up or God says, “oops, your turn for a crisis”, and everything flies out the window. I was devastated, hurt, anxious, and depressed. I realized the latter one day when I was sitting in my office staring at my computer monitor – I had been staring for nearly an hour. I was numb and exhausted. Here I was a psychologist and I didn’t even realize that depression had snuck up on me.

Anxiety disorders run in my family, and the heritable trail seems to run backwards through my mother’s side of the family. Looking back from my professional adult perspective, I could recall examples of generalized anxiety and OCD in adult relatives. Also, there were a fair number of heavy drinkers, which probably served as a form of self-medication for these folks as a way to cope with the anxiety. Various forms of tic disorders were present in the same group, including my mild form of Tourette syndrome, but the latter seem to be associated with OCD and not depression. Depression, though, wasn’t immediately obvious.

I remember an onslaught of OCD when I was in middle school, and I always had a heightened form of generalized anxiety. The Tourette syndrome was more or less in the mix, and that may have had its origins before the OCD. Ironically, I “treated” my own OCD by using a technique called response prevention. I was only around 15 when I started working the process – so I can confidently claim that was probably one of the initial precursors to my interest in psychology. I started devising my own cognitive-behavioral therapy before I even knew there was such a thing. Anyhow, I was able to get the OCD under control, but the generalized anxiety was a stable part of me. Over the years it would rise and fall, but never be debilitating.

Now, though, added to the generalized anxiety (which was also escalating to record levels), came the depression related to my wife’s health. And, to complete the trifecta, a resurgence of tics was occurring. Time for professional help.

A few more final thoughts (for now at least) on the creepy-kid genre.

While I focus on fictional accounts, there are unfortunately numerous examples of real-life prominent cases of violence and terror perpetrated by children and adolescents. One of the Boston Marathon bombers was merely nineteen. Vicious crimes are committed by teenage males (usually), sometimes individually and sometimes in packs. School shootings are now a fairly regular event, and their occurrence leaves us shaking out heads in confusion looking for reasons why these things happen.

We are destined to be confused after each and every occurrence because there are multiple reasons for each one, and these reasons differ across events. In addition, there will always be unknowns in each occurrence which we simply cannot identify. This missing data is frustrating because we cannot fill the gaps and we want to know – we want to be assured that this situation cannot happen to us. We want to think, well it’s no wonder this terrible thing happened, look at how he lived…or look at his parents – their lives are a mess, or it’s drugs, I tell ya…

Chances are, many of these variables or other related factors play a role in the disturbing acts of youth - or none of them do. More likely, though, the etiology is an unpredictable combination of genetics, biology, parenting skills, family dysfunction, abuse, alcoholism, mentally ill parents, individual child factors like poor social skills or coping skills or reasoning skills, neurological issues, violent TV preferences, living in a violent neighborhood, an absent father, the proliferation of automatic weapons… we can go on and on. And, this interacting combination of factors will vary from kid to kid. The same risk factors might produce drug abuse in one teenager and an eating disorder in another. Likewise, there can be multiple risk factors that vary across kids which promote the same problem.

For many parents, you don’t need supernatural events to watch your beloved child struggle on a day to day basis. The emotional distress in a child is enough to ravage parental hopes and dreams. The sense of panic doesn’t relent as parents watch their children grow despondent or become fearful or descend into a nightmare of self-destructive behavior.

When I went to college, I had it in my head that I would major in something like political science and then go to law school and become a lawyer. My freshman year I took an Introduction to Psychology class as an elective. I fell in love with the topic. I found myself really interested in developmental issues – the stages that kids go through as they mature, the skills they learn to navigate their world, how they mature in their cognitive or reasoning abilities – you name it, I found it fascinating. This class changed my life trajectory. I was intrigued with how kids develop and became drawn to examine factors that might play a role when things go wrong. I started studying and researching the moral and social reasoning in delinquent adolescents. This lead to working with adolescents to improve self-control skills and anger-management skills. Somewhere along the way, my professional interests shifted to kids who seemed to function okay on the outside but who struggle internally with anxiety and stress. From there, it was only a short jump to focusing on youth with chronic health conditions and any related adjustment problems or adherence problems. While some of this work was conducted in a clinical setting, the vast majority of my work occurred in academic settings. That is, as a university professor, most of my professional work emphasized the training of graduate students and conducting research on these very topics.

You’re probably wondering, what’s the point of all this?

Well, here goes.

There is one thing I can say about my life with absolute certainty: I am sure glad I didn’t become a lawyer.

This career has been very fulfilling. It has been an honor to work with graduate students in order to train them as counselors and psychologists. My work with teenagers and their families has also been very rewarding. I’ve seen kids learn new skills and make sense of their experiences. Sometimes, I’ve seen the impact of therapy through the eyes of my students – when they are excited in their reports of client improvement. These are truly remarkable moments.

Since I have been writing horror novels on the side, so to speak, I have tried very much to incorporate these observations. In Birth Offering, I wanted Ryan to experience a lack of certainty about what is going on with him. I wanted his mother’s concern that he is developing a mental illness to feel palpable to the reader. My incorporation of these notions into a horror story worked pretty well, I think.  Incidentally, I will have a novella published next year by Damnation Books, entitled Dead Works (this is the first unofficial/official announcement, I guess), and the story line addresses this topic more directly. The entire novel takes place within the context of a therapy session between a doctoral psychology student and his 13-year old client. The focal point of the story is essentially this: is the client being haunted or is he developing a mental illness?

Well, I apologize for a certain lack of cohesion in this entry. There is a certain connection with the topic of the past two posts, mainly in terms of how “it all fits”. Now, if I can just figure out what it all means…

I have another possible explanation for why some people can’t find a decent scary read – at least not like the scares they report having when they read certain novels 10, 20, or 30 years ago. I think it is due to an extinction process – and I mean “extinction” from a psychological sense. Let me put my psychologist hat on to explain.

When individuals suffer from anxiety disorders and phobias, they have a number of behavioral, affective, and physiological processes operating. For instance, chances are they have acquired a core belief that the world is somehow a dangerous place. They see threat in certain circumstances or situations. Alternatively, people start associating stimuli (places, objects or situations) that were previously positive or neutral with fearful or even terrifying stimuli. As a result, the previously “safe” stimuli become conditioned by this association to produce an extreme fear response in these people. Once a stimulus is capable of eliciting this intense fear, individuals do what they can to avoid or escape the stimulus. This avoidance or escape works in the short term because it reduces fear, but in the long run these folks do not have an opportunity to experience that these events or places cannot really harm them. Their belief that the world is a threatening place becomes entrenched even further. The cycle of beliefs, learned fear, and avoidance patterns seems to take on a life of its own.

When individuals with anxiety come for psychotherapy, they learn to manage their fears through a therapy process which involves gradually approaching (instead of avoiding) the feared situations. This process of exposure and desensitization starts with “easier” versions of the fear and then gradually moves up to the most troubling examples. The person is essentially working their way up a hierarchy of anxious stimuli until they can approach all aspects of their fears.

Okay, can this “exposure” process be happening to horror fans? I think it does. For those of us who have been living on this stuff for years, if not decades, we are gradually becoming habituated to the horror genre. There is not much that can shake us anymore. We have been exposed to all forms of the “scary” hierarchy so many times that there is not much left that can make us frightened. So, I think we need to change our perspective on what is scary. The shocks may not occur very frequently anymore (sigh), but maybe the creepy plot or a different twist or an unusual character reaction to a narrative event may be the “new fear” for us. I have tried to embrace this notion with some success. And when the hairs on the back of my neck rise just a little, I am pleased.

The other night I was evaluated at a sleep clinic. My snoring has been driving my wife crazy, and she reports that I often snort and gasp myself awake – indicative of sleep apnea, I suppose. So after some considerable foot dragging that went on for years, I succumbed and made an appointment with the help of my primary care physician.

I enjoy a certain amount of fascination regarding medical and health procedures. I am comfortable with visits to my doctor, and I make sure that I get my money’s worth by asking all kinds of questions – some of which have little if anything to do with me or my health. The MD perspective is rather unique and I enjoy picking his or her brain. This sleep clinic experience was going to be uncharted territory for me, and I anticipated storing up nuggets of information.

As luck would have it, I was the only patient that night. The technician was a young guy named Eric, and he was friendly and eager to talk about the process and his work. I knew a fair amount about sleep disorders from my own work, but I quizzed Eric on his experience with sleep walking (I did that a lot in my twenties), sleep terrors (not my experience), sleep paralysis (ditto, and evidently quite terrifying for those who experience it), people who act out their dreams (e.g., start hitting their sleeping partners or try jumping out windows) and the other mundane sleep problems. Turns out that the sleep clinic serves children to people in the 90s. The “average” patient is in his or her 40s or 50s, although anecdotally Eric has been noticing an increase in folks in their 60s and 70s.

I wish I kept track of the number of electrodes attached to me. There had to be twenty of them, and they were attached to my scalp, forehead, near my eyes, on my jaw, neck, behind the ears, and even my legs (to monitor restless leg syndrome). I also had two straps around my chest for measuring heartbeat and breathing. With the exception of these straps that were attached by Velcro, the electrodes involved this gooey paste-like substance. When Eric was done attaching everything to me – and the process took twenty minutes – I looked like something from a science fiction movie.

By Eric finished, the time was approaching 11:00 PM and I was getting pretty tired. Eric asked me to start the night sleeping on my back. Snoring and issues with sleep apnea are more likely to occur when someone is sleeping on his or her back. When you fall asleep, everything relaxes, including your throat and tongue, so there is a tendency for these things (including that thing that hangs down the back of your throat) to collapse. For those individuals who are prone to sleep apnea, the throat collapses entirely – and you stop breathing. At that point, your brain has to make a decision, either remain sleeping or wake up and breathe. The resumption of breathing is the default option, so the sleeper is jolted awake, often with a (loud) snort. The most common patient with sleep apnea is obese with poor health habits, but I don’t fit that description. I’m 6’2” and 170 pounds, and I work out 4-plus days a week. However, my problems seem to be structural… I don’t have much of a chin so stuff is rather tight in that area to begin with. When I doze off, it doesn’t take much for the inner structures to relax and close.

Anyway, I digress. Sleeping on my back, as per Eric’s request, was not going to be a problem. I often start out in that position anyway, so this was no big deal. So, lights out.

I couldn’t fall asleep.

Surprising as it sounds, the wires were not a problem. Rather, I kept thinking I’ve got to fall asleep. If I don’t I’ll screw up the data. So, I talked myself into a mini-frenzy. I wanted to “do well”. I wanted answers. The only way to get answers would be to fall asleep.

The other factor adding to the pressure was that if I met criteria for sleep apnea, Eric would try out a CPAP unit on me. CPAP stands for continuous positive airway pressure. The unit keeps a relaxed airway open by providing a constant flow of air pressure. And, I wanted to see if that would be beneficial for me.

Finally, I feel asleep, but only after turning slightly to my side. Sometime later, Eric asked me via an intercom to turn to my back. I complied, but couldn’t fall asleep again.

This was getting crazy.

Finally, I said the hell with it, and turned to my side, and fell asleep.

There was no clock in the room, so I couldn’t tell the time, but sometime later I vaguely remember Eric appearing and putting a CPAP unit on me. I was thankful, because this meant my breathing data suggested something. I could sense the slightest pressure opening my airway, and I recall thinking the experience was remarkable.

Morning came, and more staff was on duty, including a woman with blue hair. People started giving me feedback about my results, which was surprising given that Eric told me the night before that he couldn’t provide any information. The doctor would be doing that next week.

Suddenly, I hear Eric say, “Okay, Tony, time to wake up.”

I did when he pulled the drapes open slightly to let some light in. He told me it was 6:15 AM. No one else was in the room. No young woman with blue hair. I had been dreaming that part of the whole thing. It was just Eric and me.

I asked him when he came in to put the CPAP on me. He stopped and stared.

“I didn’t.”

I brought my hand to my face. Sure enough, there was nothing there beyond the numerous wires from the night before. I was stunned. I thought I was getting a great CPAP experience.

“You had a very difficult time sleeping on your back.”

I was disappointed. That meant that the results might be inconclusive. My breathing didn’t justify putting on a CPAP. But maybe that was because I didn’t sleep well on my back, and I really had sleep apnea – but they won’t know because I wasn’t a “good” subject. Would they have any answers for me? I don’t know. I won’t meet with the physician later next week.

My poor wife may have to live with a loudly snoring, non-sleep apnea husband. Sigh.

Bullying and The Cold Spot, Part 3

I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

Some practitioners are troubled with the proliferation of bullying programs in our schools (for instance, see Bully Nation by Susan Eva Porter). Their argument is interesting: we’ve adopted a bully-victim mindset that makes the problem worse and not better. According to this viewpoint, labeling one kid a bully and the other a victim has unfortunate consequences. First, the “bully language” is overly simplified and doesn’t address the nuance of the situation and the kids involved. Second, by being labeled, the kids are assigned and seen as fitting the role – which is very hard to escape. As a result, they are either demonized or pitied, and they cannot learn from experiences and grow from the experiences. For the “victim”, this produces victimhood and does not promote resilience. For the “bully”, there is no chance to reinvent him or herself. Third, labels make all kids the enemy – they are pitted against one another (when really, this is an adult problem in terms of how we should structure environments and deal with problematic behavior). Finally, developing anti-bullying programs, which often have zero-tolerance policies, sets up kids to fail – because kids, being kids, are bound to make mistakes in the future.

The folks who see anti-bullying programs as problematic would like to see the bully-victim language discarded. Instead, the emphasis should be on helping kids who are on the receiving end (I’m trying to avoid the “v-word”) develop resilience. Teaching and developing resilience would involve helping kids learn how to deal with unpleasant situations, develop coping skills, assertiveness skills, social support and communication skills, etc. – anything that would lead to personal growth. For the kids who perpetrate the unwanted behavior (avoiding the “b-word”), a pattern of responding should be set up which insures safety first (for all kids) and includes swift consequences for misbehavior – and consequences which “fit the crime” (this includes clarity of expectations – kids need to know ahead of time what is expected of them, and they need to know that consequences will be applied consistently).  In all cases, adults are there to support the kids, remain calm, and model and demonstrate appropriate problem solving behavior.

The advocates to eliminate or move away from anti-bullying programs raise some interesting points. The methods for dealing with the behavior seem on target to me. I don’t know how well their approach would work in a truly dangerous or intimidating environment, especially with older teenagers. I can report on a case with which I am familiar where a therapist took such an approach in helping a child who was bullied unmercifully. The therapist worked with the child to develop coping skills and resilience skills to address the painful distress and isolation of being a target. The results were phenomenal. This kid came out of the counseling with a stronger sense of self, an awareness of personal strength, an awareness of how to deal with unpleasant people, and a renewed sense of assertiveness. This is not to say that the experience became a “piece of cake”. The kid had to deal with some very difficult things – but that kid dealt with them and matured as a result.  While this success was remarkable, I am not convinced that we should move away from anti-bullying programs. For me, the jury is still out.

All of these thoughts as a result of a horror novella called The Cold Spot… I hope Mr. Faherty is pleased that his work generated these thoughts. Bullying is a very sad and frustrating problem, and he captures the issue in a unique way – within a ghost story and then some.  Whatever the form of the narrative, we need to be constantly reminded of how kids are hurt – and in some cases very deeply – on a daily basis from peers while right under the noses of adults.

Okay, I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

A number of factors related to bullying often come as a surprise to people. First, kids who do the bullying are not the stereotypical antisocial hoodlums. Very often these kids can move among various roles: bully, popular kid, smart kid, jock, etc. They can be members of multiple groups. Second, they do not bully all of the time, so they have friends and social groups – and, this is interesting, they often report having been bullied as well. Third, while boys tend to engage in more physical bullying than girls, girls are masters at relational aggression (e.g., spreading rumors, excluding a girl from the group, withdrawing friendship).  The intent of this social manipulation is to cause damage to another kid’s social standing or self esteem. When you include both physical and relational aggression into the mix, gender differences between bullying in boys and girls disappears. Regardless, bullying of both forms indicates forms of aggressive behavior that occur within a context of an imbalance of power, are intentionally harmful, and occur repetitively.

The consequences of bullying are tremendous for victims: higher rates of depression, stress, isolation, anxiety, and in some cases suicidal ideation. Peer relationships are disrupted, and the disruption can persist into adulthood with these individuals having difficulty developing and maintaining relationships and trusting others.

Interventions to decrease bullying in school settings generally involve: arranging or altering the environment to minimize the circumstances which allow bullying to occur (this could be as simple as having teachers standing at their classroom doors during class transitions to monitor the hallways), training teachers and other school personnel how to identify and respond quickly if they observe bullying, establishing rules and specific consequences for certain forms of misbehavior or problem behavior which are consistently applied,  and developing a solution-oriented mindset where teachers and staff can share solutions that they have found successful in reducing the problem behavior.

I will continue with how The Cold Spot got me thinking about bullying in the next blog…