March Blog Post

For the month of March, the reading that stuck out to me the most was the article on family bullying by Berry & Adams. This specifically caught my attention because I have experience in this area. The specific quote I chose to focus on says, "Although Victoria and I (Tony) describe how we worked to defend ourselves from our family bullies over time, some of the ways in which we defended ourselves involved avoiding the family member, and avoiding conflict with those members as much as possible. Yet, although avoiding the bullying might have kept us safe and away from conflict in some ways, avoidance had its limits, and our suffering persisted." This quote is a little bit lengthy however, it has some real truth to it. What I like about this quote is that no matter how much we avoid the issue, it still affects us. Bullying is a serious matter and many people don't realize the effects it has on the individuals being bullied. I, myself am guilty of it at times and I don't even intentionally do it. I joke around a lot and like to clown on my teammates but it's all fun and games. I wouldn't mind if they did it back to me because I have tough skin from growing up. However, everyone is different.

In my interpersonal communication class, we actually just focused on the chapter about conflicts. And avoidance is a type of conflict style and it's expressed as a lose-lose situation meaning that both parties don't get what they want. Avoidance isn't always bad if the issue is minor or temporary, it's necessary to let it pass. But bullying is different, if it occurs consistently then obviously you can't avoid it. It needs to be addressed and come to a stop. 

As a kid, I was always bullied by my older cousins and my aunts/uncles because I was my mom's only child and she literally hovered over me everywhere and all the time. I was never allowed to go anywhere without her, I couldn't sleep over my cousins houses, I couldn't do the things everyone else did. And my family never failed to let me forget it. It was hard to deal with and I would run to my mom and cry about it often. She always told me to ignore it and just laugh because that's what she did when they teased her for not giving me freedom. As I got older, I became tougher and their comments didn't bother me as much. You could tell because I started to crack jokes back. As I think about it now, maybe my coping mechanism is to clown on my friends and be funny because that's how it was for me growing up. But I don't ever intentionally mean to hurt anybody's feelings and if I do, I never know so I guess it's safe to say that I should be more cautious about who I say things to and what I say because you never know what someone is coping with. And that's just me speaking from experience.