Armchair Psychology ~ the bully's victim

 

Bullying victims often experience deep-rooted psychological and somatic distress, including chronic anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and social isolation. Bullies typically target individuals who exhibit submissiveness, lack a strong support system, or react intensely, as these visible signs reward the bully's need for dominance.

     The psychology of a bully's victim can be broken down into three key areas:

1. Risk Factors & Vulnerabilities

Children and adults who are targeted typically do not stand up for themselves aggressively, making them easy targets for perpetrators seeking submissive individuals. Common traits include:

Social isolation:
Victims often struggle to make close friends or lack a protective peer group.

Emotional reactivity:
Crying, retreating, or yielding to demands signals that the aggression is working, which reinforces the bully's behavior.

Perceived differences:
Standing out due to physical differences, learning difficulties, or different socio-economic backgrounds often makes victims stand out in a crowd.

2. Immediate Psychological & Physical Impact

The experience of being bullied creates an environment of constant insecurity, forcing victims to be constantly on guard.

Mental Health:
Victims frequently develop intense anxiety, chronic depression, and overwhelming feelings of shame or worthlessness.

Physical Symptoms:
High stress manifests somatically, leading to psychosomatic issues such as frequent headaches, stomachaches, fatigue, and sleep disturbances.

Avoidance Behaviors:
To escape the torment, victims may develop severe school or work avoidance, causing a sharp decline in performance and attendance.

3. Long-Term Effects

The trauma of being bullied doesn't end with childhood. It can impact adult personality, relationships, and mental well-being for decades.

Attachment issues:
Trusting others in romantic or professional relationships becomes difficult.

Perpetuation of trauma:
In some cases, prolonged victimization leads a target to become an aggressive "bully-victim," where they act out against others to regain a sense of control.

Chronic conditions:
Adults with a history of being bullied have higher baseline levels of anxiety and a greater propensity for depressive episodes.

To understand the psychology of a victim deeply, we must look at the cognitive shifts, neural changes, and behavioral coping mechanisms that occur when a person is systematically targeted.

1. The Cognitive Shift

 
Learned Helplessness

When a victim cannot escape or stop the bullying, their brain undergoes a profound psychological shift known as learned helplessness.

Loss of agency:
Victims stop attempting to avoid the abuse because they internalize that their actions have no impact on the outcome.

Internal attribution:
They develop an internal explanatory style, believing "I am being bullied because something is inherently wrong with me", rather than blaming the bully's behavior.

Cognitive distortion:
This leads to severe confirmation bias, where they hyper-focus on their perceived flaws and ignore positive feedback from others.

2. Neurological & Physiological Changes

Chronic bullying is not just a mental challenge; it alters physical brain structure and biological stress response systems.

Hyperactive amygdala:
The brain's threat-detection center becomes enlarged and hyper-responsive, keeping the victim in a permanent state of fight-or-flight.

Hippocampus atrophy:
Sustained high levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) can damage cells in the hippocampus, impairing memory, concentration, and emotional regulation.

Inflammatory response:
Studies show victims of chronic bullying have higher baseline levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of systemic inflammation linked to long-term physical illness.

3. Coping Mechanisms

Internalizing vs. Externalizing

Victims generally process the trauma through one of two distinct psychological pathways, which dictate their behavior and future relationships.

Internalizing:

The victim turns the trauma inward. This manifests as severe social withdrawal, self-harm, eating disorders, and somatic complaints (like unexplained chronic pain).

Externalizing (The Bully-Victim):
The victim turns the trauma outward. To regain a sense of power, they display reactive aggression, targeting weaker individuals. These "bully-victims" often suffer the most severe psychological impairment of all groups.

4. Relational Trauma & The "Victim Schema"

In adulthood, the primary lingering effect is a disrupted "relationship schema"—the subconscious blueprint a person uses to interact with the world.

Hyper-vigilance:
Adults who were bullied constantly scan social cues for signs of rejection, often misinterpreting neutral facial expressions or comments as hostile.

Submissive positioning:
In workplace settings, former victims may unconsciously adopt submissive postures, accept unfair treatment, or struggle to negotiate boundaries out of fear of conflict.

Sources & Recommended Reading:

Psychology Today

Better Help

National Institute of Health

Anti-Bullying 101:
A Quick Guide on How
to End, Overcome, and
Rise Above Bullying

by Christina Catalano

@ Amazon

The Physiology of Bullying:

How Bullying Hijacks the 

Nervous System and What
Leaders Must Do

by Liza K. Collins

@ Amazon

Our New World
of Adult Bullies:
How to Spot Them 
How to Stop Them

by Bill Eddy

@ Amazon

Cliques ~ You will never escape them

 

"A Clique is a small and exclusive group of people that share similar values and purposely exclude others that they feel don't meet their standards. This phenomenon is often seen in high schools where teenagers will form these close associations based on interests, activities, social position, etc." -- and let's not forget popularity.

Signs of a Clique:

• Consists of an exclusive group of people
• Focus on status, popularity, or climbing the social ladder
• Ostracize other people
• Use their power to hurt or humiliate others
• Insult people by trying to "improve" them
• Restrict people in the group from socializing with others
• Experience lots of pressures or rules as a member of the group
• Gossips or spreads rumors
• Have members who are bossy or demanding
  
  

But the truth is, you will never escape from the world of cliques, never.  I thought that this eccentric novelty would disappear once life raced past the halls of junior high and high school; but no, this strange phenomenon will follow you to college and on into the workplace.  It has also surprisingly followed me into the world of publishing, as well as the world of tarot.  Everywhere -- everywhere -- you will find a group of ramshackle people drawing mysterious boundaries, forming unnamed clubs, clinging to each other like Neanderthals in the midst of a dangerous stone age world.

Following are some questions I had about the phenomenon of cliques, as well as some answers.  You will find the sources for this information listed at the bottom of this blog post, with links to the complete articles for your reading experience, as well as acknowledgment to the authors when this info is available. 

Grab a cup of coffee (or something stronger), sit back, and let's explore the frickin' world of cliques.  And note that, so often, the focus of this information may be on adolescents, but we all know that this phenomenon applies to adults of every age as well, perhaps some would label it "arrested development".

Why do people stay in clicks? [1]

For some [people], being popular or cool is most important, and cliques give them a place where they can get this social status. Other [people] want to join because they don't want to feel left out. 

Cliques give [people] who like to take control a chance to be in charge (for good or bad).  They’re usually tightly controlled by leaders who decide who’s "in" and who’s "out." For [people] who feel more comfortable following, cliques offer a place where rules are clearly defined.

Why should you avoid cliques? [2]

Because cliques promote judgmental and bullying behaviors, members don't feel safe revealing their own feelings. The beliefs of the clique come before the beliefs of each individual member.

Some ways of identifying a clique:

• Cliques usually have one or two “leaders” who decide who can join the in-group.
• Cliques focus on maintaining their popularity or status. They accomplish this by excluding, ostracizing, and leaving out others on purpose.
• Cliques generally don’t socialize outside of their group. It’s rare that they will allow an outsider into the group.
• Members of a clique tend to be more concerned with keeping a good relationship within the clique, rather than making friends outside of the clique.
• As a result, members of a clique are pressured to conform to certain standards to be part of the group. Individuality is not encouraged or rewarded.
• Cliques are mean, even to members within the cliques. This can include giving unwanted backhanded advice or compliments, dictating specific behaviors and choices, and giving rules for how to act outside of the clique.
• Cliques may pressure their members to make poor choices, or to follow along on things they don’t actually want to do.

How to break into an adult clique: [3]

• Don't take it personally if you are not included
• Get to know one person at a time
• Ask, don't hint to make friends as an adult
• Give finding friends as an adult time
• Consider your motivation

Why are cliques unhealthy? [4]

If someone in the group does stray from the group, they are quickly ostracized. "When cliques become exclusionary, it can quickly turn into bullying," says Dr. Patel-Dunn. "Cliques can be cruel to the people they are not including."

What are the negative effects of cliques in the workplace? [5]

Workplace cliques can harm employee morale and lead to bullying. A company's success depends on teamwork, but cliques promote “otherness.” Employees who aren't in the group may feel like they're less valued.

When cliques occur between management and employees, outsiders can begin to feel disinterested in their work, believing that only those within the clique receive positive feedback, recognition or promotions. When employees feel that the quality of their work doesn't matter due to favoritism, it can cause diminished employee engagement and productivity.

Cliques in the publishing world: [6]

The clique is one of the most alluring and deceptive shortcuts of all. In the writing world, cliques are formed by groups of creators and their supporters – editors, publishers, reviewers and general fans. Creators crave recognition, and the clique offers it. Members of the clique support each other’s work, offering congratulations (and expecting them) when new work is published.

The downside is easy to observe. Writers who join a clique get stuck in it, often for the rest of their career. The clique, by its nature, enforces inward looking behaviour. It will have a “house style” that writers will need to match, but the style is rarely if ever engaging to readers who aren’t part of the clique. Working your way into the clique means training your creativity on a very narrow set of criteria, to impress a very small number of people, who are ultimately only ever talking to each other.

The clique mind set: [7]

Cliques are really little tribes, and we form them to make ourselves feel comfortable and strengthen or protect our position; often all they do is reinforce our own beliefs and biases.

What is the psychology behind cliques in adulthood? 

It feels social to form cliques and we are social beings, so they give us common ground for having fun and an immediate understanding, but cliques also form because it is an easy way of feeling powerful. People (wrongfully) believe that just because the group believes something, this makes them right.

Sources:

[1] Understanding Cliques
Jessica Pierce PHD

[2] Six Golden Rules for Dealing with Cliques

[3] How to Break Into an Adult Clique

Dr. Julie Hanks

[4] How to Tell the Difference Between Cliques and Friends

Sherry Gordon

[5] How to Handle Cliques at Work

[6] Avoid Cliques at All Costs, They are a Shortcut to Creative Death

Damien Walter

[7] Cliques Mindset & Creativity

Shekhar Varma