Why is holding a grudge = the bullies win? I don't get it.

[Harpuia]

This question has been bugging me for a while now, and someone had mentioned this on another site, but it seems all too cliche.

For those that have been seriously bullied in high school/college, like bullying beyond that of just normal playteasing on a regular basis, many of them go on to have emotional/mental issues later on in life. Like me, they suffer flashbacks, depression, etc., and the advice that's always given to them is that they shouldn't hold a grudge anymore because the bullies win.

Why is holding a grudge mean the bullies win? This makes no sense. Isn't it letting it go mean the bullies win, because they know they got off scot-free with all the torment they did to you, so they are free to do that to someone else, therefore they won because they tormented you and they didn't have any retaliation at them in return. In some ways, they are rewarded for their actions because their self-esteem goes up and usually the victim's drops. By trying to form some sort of revenge, you at least have a chance to get back at the bully, albeit someday a long time away, and give them a taste of what you felt.

So yeah, I don't really get this cliche line. Maybe someone can spell it out for me better.

 

[King_Oni]

I can see what this means if they're referring to you living in anxiety because of the bullies.

It's the same as terrorists nowadays. If people live in fear for bombings and all, the terrorists have already won.

And I think that the reason they give this advice towards trauma from bullies, is so people don't all live a life full of grudges to hurt other people each and every day. Letting go surely isn't the fun way, but it's a safe way to make the world a less dangerous place. However... I feel that however hurt someone should've thought that through when he/she acted like this.

 

[imagesbyholly]

Personal experience: I was bullied as a kid. But in my early twenties I was bullied by a member of the family I married into. It was extra cruel because I was dealing with my husband's deployments and having babies. Talk about vulnerable. But if I simmer in bitterness over what she did (and would still be doing if possible) to me, and relive it, and think about getting back at her, I suffer. I'm a heap of panic attacks, swollen belly, puking, heart racing, blood pressure drops, etc. etc. My children sufffer because I'm on edge, snappy, and my mind is far away and full of poison.

Besides that, there are so many things I need forgiveness for. It would be rediculous for me not to try to forgive. I can't live with the double standard of needing forgiveness and refusing to give it.

My friend who was sexually abused explained forgiveness to me this way (when I was horrified after she said she forgave them): Forgiveness doesn't mean you will trust them again. It doesn't make it all "OK." It means that you release them from any obligation to you- you will not wish for their harm or pursue revenge actually or mentally. You release it all- even wishing for their good (healing from their twisted ways, help to get on the right path) Of course, this doesn't mean that you obstruct justice when a crime has been committed. She and her family went to the police with what happened and pressed charges. It is hard to do, of course. When I feel I can't I ask God for help.

 

[RubenX]

Holding grudges is a big issue. At the center of it, this immense desire to get even. Problem is, this usually hurt the innocent people around you (family/friends). And if revenge is ever taken, innocents on the other side will be hurt too (family/friends). More hurt people would mean more people with grudges, more revenges, it's never gonna end.

Here's an example of how holding grudges can become a catch-22 situation:

Divorced? Yes
Love your kids? Yes
Hate your ex? Yes
Hating your ex hurt your kids? Yes
What's more important, hating the ex or loving the kids? Kids win hands down
The only winning move: Forgive ex.

This doesn't mean re-marry your ex, or trust your ex again. But letting go of the grudge is really the only winning move.

 

[Soup]

Virtually every person has experienced some form of bullying or abuse at some point in their life. The emotional/mental pain & trauma continue long after the original events. Much like the way an old injury can act up & become painful years later whenever the weather becomes damp & chilly.

Carrying a grudge allows the bullies or abusers to win because, while the bully has moved on & been able to enjoy his/her life while the victim (through carrying a grudge) has allowed the abuse to continue. The victim is reliving the events over & over. Feeling all the stress, powerlessness & rage anew. The bully doesn't HAVE to return & bully the victim again: the victim will do it for him! The victim may even develop depression, insomnia, PTSD, chronic digestive issues & physical aches & pains. The bully, meanwhile, is lying on the beach somewhere sipping a pina colada & enjoying his life NOT feeling any twinges of guilt, feeling self-satisfied & possibly enjoying a chuckle or two over his past escapades & the fun he had!

By carrying the grudge, the weight of it is literally pressing down on your mind & body. Your health & well-being diminishes. The bully gets to bully you without even making an effort!

The problem many have is with the word 'forgive'. That doesn't mean you 'forget' your life experiences, that doesn't mean befriending the bully, it doesn't mean that what s/he did was okay or that what he did was not so bad or that it didn't have a terrible impact on you as a person. I prefer a term like 'reconciling the events within myself' to forgiveness. I can acknowledge what happened, what the effects have been, how I felt etc. & focus instead on healing myself, looking at the ways I've overcome & moved on, what I've done with myself & my life since...These areas are ones in which I make the decisions & I have the power. I'm no longer focusing on that person's power but seizing my own with both hands. No bully will ever reside rent-free inside my head.

 

[Spinning Compass]

There's been a lot of good points made here on both sides of the issue, but I think part of the problem is the way society looks upon bullying and other forms of causing harm to individuals. I think the topic makes a lot of people uncomfortable so they tell the person who has been harmed to forgive and move on. They don't want to deal with their role in encouraging or looking the other way. They want to forget. In that context I think there has been a lot of BS written about forgiveness. In my opinion that is not something that you can demand others do when it involves something that has been done to them and not to you.

Take for example the ongoing Penn State scandal. Even though it has been pretty well established that the Penn State authorities including Paterno all looked the other way when they knew what was happening there are still people (NOT the ones who were sexually abused) that think that the university is being unfairly penalized. A few months ago my pastor who never talks about current events from the pulpit devoted an entire Sunday sermon to "not judging" Paterno or Herman Cain. I notice he hasn't said anything since on the matter. More recently we had a "get to know the new assistant pastor" meeting in which we asked questions. I specifically brought up bullying since he will be working with youth and instead of an unequivocal "no tolerance" answer I got a "we have channels in which we deal with that sort of thing." Yeah right. I'm Catholic and I know all about those kinds of channels. Even earlier than that there was a sexual bullying scandal in one of the local youth organizations where it was decided to slap the offenders on the wrists rather than expel them from the organization even though at least one person testified that the ringleader was the kind of person you could not trust not to do this again. The rationale was that they were concerned that this group of kids might even go further down the path to "bad". What about the victims? Well they will just have to suck it up and learn to live with it. The latest report I heard (2 years later) is that everyone is living happily ever after. I don't believe it. I think that both offenders and victims have learned to keep quiet.

So if "not carrying a grudge" means shut up and go away, don't bring this subject up then I certainly do agree with the original poster that the bullies have won. It seems they have won no matter what.

 

[Jewely]

Holding a grudge is like drinking poison hoping the other person will die.

A grudge eats away at you like a poison, but it doesn't hurt the bully. They have no idea what's going on in your head or in your life even, so it doesn't even remotely effect them. It only hurts you. I was bullied heaps in school, and was also abused all of my life. I found I have to forgive, otherwise it will end up killing me. And forgiveness is not a feeling, it is a choice. Not an easy one, but a choice we can freely make. And it certainly makes you feel free! Sometimes you have to do it everyday, until it becomes second nature. It never 'feels' right when you first do it. It's more about you than the other person.

 

[total-recoil]

You could consider taking up the martial arts for two main reasons. First of all, sad as it may sound there is a need these days to be able to deal with aggression or victimisation. Nor specifically dealing with a situation through physical confrontation but using it as a last resort.
Also, a big part of the martial arts is philosophy and Zen. This teaches you how not to hold a grudge and about Karma. Karma teaches that those who victimise and bully others hurt themselves more than anyone else.
The most fascinating character to date who taught correct martial arts was without a doubt Bruce Lee. Bruce was, in fact, a very educated philosophy student and a talented movie director. He studied the martial arts as if it were a science so if anyone ever does consider taking it up, check out some of Bruce's interviews.
Martial arts you may consider are:
Karate (good for basic fitness and co-ordination)
Tae Kwon Do (Korean modern martial art)
Tang Soo Do (studied by Chuck Norris and also Korean form)
Judo (good for throws)
Kung Fu (very ancient styles such as White Crane, Mantis and Wing Chun
Jeet Kune Do (way of the intercepting fist (created by Bruce Lee)
As a must, see the original Karate Kid with Ralph Maccio, Pat Morita and Martin Cove. This deals with the issue of bullying and how martial arts teaches us to deal with bullying in the context of ethics and Eastern values.

This question has been bugging me for a while now, and someone had mentioned this on another site, but it seems all too cliche.

For those that have been seriously bullied in high school/college, like bullying beyond that of just normal playteasing on a regular basis, many of them go on to have emotional/mental issues later on in life. Like me, they suffer flashbacks, depression, etc., and the advice that's always given to them is that they shouldn't hold a grudge anymore because the bullies win.

Why is holding a grudge mean the bullies win? This makes no sense. Isn't it letting it go mean the bullies win, because they know they got off scot-free with all the torment they did to you, so they are free to do that to someone else, therefore they won because they tormented you and they didn't have any retaliation at them in return. In some ways, they are rewarded for their actions because their self-esteem goes up and usually the victim's drops. By trying to form some sort of revenge, you at least have a chance to get back at the bully, albeit someday a long time away, and give them a taste of what you felt.

So yeah, I don't really get this cliche line. Maybe someone can spell it out for me better.

 

[rolo]

If some find forgiveness a difficult concept to reconcile , try replacing forgiveness with letting go.

 

[Soup]

You said it best, Rolo. Letting go is liberating & empowering & it gives you permission to move on. I don't have the emotional depth to hold a grudge. I can get mad or frustrated but then something weird happens: the feeling just vanishes! I'll clearly remember the offending words or event, but any feelings associated with it just go somewhere. Just as well: I don't need to feel enraged or embittered or depressed.

I never noticed this in myself but my kids did when they were teens. I remember my daughter flipping out & going nuts because she couldn't enrage me: you know how teens like to test parents & push their buttons. She screamed & balled her hands into fists... it was quite the spectacle: should've made popcorn!

"You never get p!$$ed off!!! You never get mad or lose your temper! You have no feelings because you're a robot! You have no emotions!" she ranted & raved.

True to Aspie cultural conventions, I responded to the wrong thing (from an NT perspective).

"Why would you want me to become enraged at you? What benefit would you derive from me losing my temper?"

UH-OH! That triggered a Mount Vesuvius eruption of freaking out. I was utterly baffled! She got my very best Aspie-eyed stare accompanied by no facial expression whatsoever.

"What's the matter with you?!?" she raved. "Why won't you lose it just once?!?"

"I'm fine but you appear to be in some sort of distress. Why would I want to lose anything? Then, I'd have to waste time replacing it."

This continued for some time until she stormed off & slammed her door. I returned to the internet & dismissed the entire illogical matter.

 

[imdwonb4u]

I don't think that the bullies win by holding a grudge...in fact I have to admit that the grudges I hold tend to take care of themselves as those who have done so much to me that I hold a grudge in the first place, I kid you not, they suffer grievous injury...and sometimes loss of life...It has happened so many times....The key poin tis that someone has to mess with me so much and for so long before I hold a grudge...and even then its a very think line between popping them in the nose or letting it go and that's what becomes a grudge. I feel Aspies don't like or creat conflict and therefore its in our nature to just let the bully go away and hold a grudge instead. So no the bully does not win...the Aspergers inside of us wins. The bully then gets pummeled by the next person he tries to mess with hee hee ! P.S. I have no idea what I wsa thinking when I made that Avatar ! :rolleyes2:

 

[Perry Holia Kerrith]

I personally feel that holding a grudge or actively thinking about retribution builds stress in unprecedented consequences, which not only has the possibility of physically affecting your life, but also emotionally affecting those around you. It breeds a very destructive environment if left unchecked, which obviously does not help at all with the prevention of bullying.

A lot of it is just in the animalistic tendancies prevalent in human nature, so while I might disagree with holding grudges, I do not condemn it.

 

[Craig]

Funny story, I was the bully at my school along side my fellow Aspies and Autistics, who were also bullies, well sort of... People with low functioning Autism couldn't really do a whole lot of anything, but we looked after our own, everyone knew that if they messed with a low functioning Aspie, then there would be three high functioning Aspies delivering laser guided retribution in short order. I honestly have no idea what the school was thinking, you stick 30 people in one classroom and tell them their different from the children in other classes and that everyone in this class is your friend. It was as though they were setting us up for some kind of test, I mean even the goths only had 12 members to their group, and I think half of them were emo hanger ons, all other large group were between 5 and 8 members strong. With numbers and firm day one (we're all the same) affirmative to alliance, it's no wonder that we systematically put everyone in their place by the end of the first.

Holding Grudges? As if we could. Every slight, no matter how small, was punished with disproportionate retribution. About mid-way through our second year we were already bullying most of the 4th years and a few of the 5th years. Like some cruelly efficient army, we ran ourselves more like a prison gang than a student body. I look back and oh what an evil child I was, I used to force people to play all manner of games for my amusement, and as horrible as those games were, I was still least vile out of all the other Aspie children (with the exception of LF). For one thing, I was the only High Functioning Aspie to not make claim that I had raped a neural typical. Though while others had made the claim I know that only a hand full were actually capable of it. Of course it was the mid-range functioning Aspies that were the worst, they could fight up a storm of a aggression that I haven't seen matched anywhere else since. Not surprising that the High functioning aspies riled them up simply to throw them onto haughty NT's that thought they challenge our power that late in the game. Those were simpler times.

You try talking to anyone from school nowadays and suddenly everyone has amnesia or gives the same old boring cardboard cutout story, remind them of the facts and they glare at you with anger, fear, hate, sadness, regret and oh so much more.

The gift of Autism can change your life, alone you're weak, but stand together among your brethren and you become a force to be reckoned with. The NT's are divided by things like culture and race, but we know not such pettiness, we are the future, the next step in genetic evolution, we are the gifted ones, the chosen ones.