5 Psychological Tricks Bullies Use (And How To Stop Them)

Amazon's the Boys is full of personalities that are fun to watch but would be terrible to encounter in real life.

I'm the Homelander, and I can do whatever the f I want.

Superpowers aside, we've all encountered this type tough guy bullies who try to push you around, make you feel uncomfortable, or get you to agree to something that you don't really want. So that's why in this video, we are going to cover five psychological tricks bullies use to control you and what you can do instead to avoid them and stop stop those bullies in their tracks. Now, since we're mainly using Billy Butcher and Homelander as examples of these tough guys, there are going to be some light spoilers through season one of the Boys. You've been warned. First off, one thing that you might encounter from a bully is mismatching friendly gestures with domineering physicality. So, on the surface, they may be greeting you with a friendly handshake, but really they're crushing your hand in a death vice. The same thing can occur when they get uncomfortably close to make a point or or touch you in a way that is fake friendly, as Homelander often does.

And I trust we never have to have this conversation again.

Now, Homelander and Billy Butcher are clearly imposing individuals, but in real life, this kind of touch is usually more ambiguous. Perhaps it's a bully tactic, or maybe it's not intended that way. So rather than calling out these types of touches or shrinking away, the best response in real life is to mirror with positive, positive intentions. So someone throws their arm on your shoulder. Throw your arm on their shoulder with as much warmth as you can muster. The friendliness that you display makes it hard for someone to continue touching you in an uncomfortable way, especially since you're doing everything that they do back. Now, the second bullying tactic is one that you see in sales situations quite often, and it has two elements that often come as a one, two punch. First, someone will put you in a highly emotional state before asking you to make a big decision. Butcher is a huge fan of this when it comes to getting Huey to do what he wants, stoking his anger, anger and his fears.

You're laughing. She's a joke. So what are you gonna do about it? So unless you want to explain why you got America's favorite invisible wanker dead on the floor, give us a hand, will ya?

Now, in your life, people will play to these same emotions as well as dreams for the future, as you've probably seen in a million ads. Now, there's nothing wrong with an emotional appeal in an itself. But this enters into manipulative territory when emotional appeals are combined with extreme scarcity. Like when someone gives you only seconds to make an important decision. And Buscher knows the power of this to get people to make RAS decisions. As you can see here. Listen, I think this is good. I'm good.

This is your one and only mate. Once I go, I'm gone.

This technique of using high emotional stakes combined with only a few moments to decide is a favorite of salespeople all over the world. And if you fall for it, you will make many purchases that you regret over the course of your life. So the simple rule is 24 hours. Said another way, never make a big decision without having a night to sleep on it. If you're at a presentation and there is a table rush scenario with limited copies of a book or a course to buy, do not join in the stampede if you receive an exploding job offer. But they need to know this second if you're going to take it pass unless they'll wait until tomorrow. And if you're pushed further, you can just say, sorry, I have a policy to never make a big decision without at least a night to sleep on it. And to be crystal clear, any decision that won't matter in a week should still be made as quickly as possible with no second guessing. You want to save that deliberation for those big decisions now. The third bully tactic is one of the most common. It's one of Butcher's favorites and it can leave you stammering, locked in your head, wondering how to respond. And I'm talking about the insult.

This is like as seen in the Matrix. Now you could take the red pill, right? Spend the rest of your life jacking off crying into your chai tea green latte. What the. Take the other pill and quit being a. Which pill do you want me to take? Just quit being a. That's what I'm saying now.

I did a whole video on how to handle insults, which I think you should check out since they come in all kinds of flavors and varieties, several of which are covered there. But Butcher tends towards unambiguously disrespectful name calling. That's favorite. In the event someone is this directly insulting to you, Plan A is normally to remove them from your life. But if you want or need to continue to interact with this person, the most powerful response is actually not to try to one up them or be clever. And I know you've probably sat in your car and it can feel really good to imagine what you would have said. But saying that clever thing just encourages an arms race of ever more clever insults. If you really want to end the insults once and for all, instead say this. Where I come from, that is really disrespectful. Don't ever call me that again and then say nothing. If the other person makes excuses, don't address them. If they say that you're overreacting, take it easy. Again, just don't address it. Wait until they apologize, then you can forgive them and move on. And by the way, if it's a friend who's doing this and you think that they might have positive intentions, they're just being sarcastic. It's bad. Best to do this more softly and privately so that they can save face. Now, fourth, for the fourth bully tactic, I want to move into mindset. Since there is no exact set of words that's going to be sufficient for every situation. And for this one, I'm talking about people who make demands with personal threats attached. Butcher, for instance, likes to pair these with threats of physical intimidation.

Like here, look, I didn't want to come here, but I need your help and you're gonna f help.

In Butcher's case, the threat is often implied to be physical, but some demands in the real world are less explicit. For instance, in social circles, common threats are that if you don't comply, you'll be kicked out of the group. In the workplace, it's that you'll lose your job if you don't do what the boss says.

I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, okay?

And of course, the truth is, some of those threats will be real at different points in your life. If you ignore your boss's demands for long enough, you will be out of a job. So if you feel like you're being pushed around either by a physical bully in a friend group or at work and you want it to stop, the only long term strategy is to find a way to accept the consequences of saying no. Which means that you might benefit from starting to learn jiu jitsu now to defend yourself, or diversifying your friend group so that you feel less reliant on ones who might be mean to you.

Or.

Or of course, you could develop financial options like a side hustle so that you can risk saying no to a pushy boss if you do this. The paradox is that you will rarely need to fall back on these options once you have them. Bullies generally sense those people that don't feel comfortable saying no and are hardest on them. They find them to pick on the most. I've seen this to be the case everywhere from the schoolyard to the workplace, and there is one subtle variation of this that can make certain demands easier, even harder to resist even if you do have options and it's demands where someone that you care about is threatening you with their own harm or their own sadness. You can see this here in the scene with Starlight's mom who manipulates her emotionally throughout the series.

Please all my friends are going to.

Be watching on TV it again here with Butcher when he feels like he's out of options, he truly tries every tough guy trick in the book.

Did I mention this is life or death?

If you have a loved one who consistently makes demands with their own well being hanging in the balance, recognize that no one is made whole or happy when they outsource emotional control of their life. So playing into that pattern doesn't even help them in the long run. Additionally, caring about someone does not mean that you must say yes all the time. So to break out of this pattern, practice saying things like I love you but I'm not going to do that. You might even add here's what I can do instead. If there is something that you're truly willing and capable of giving now this will definitely create discomfort, but in the long run those boundaries are what make for healthy relationships. Now all of these tips work excellently, but they are hugely enhanced by having deep authentic confidence. And if you want to learn more about developing authentic confidence for yourself so that these tips become more second nature to you, you might be interested in our course Emotional Mastery. Emotional Mastery is a 24 day program that is designed to help you master your emotions and your subconscious beliefs so that you're consistently feeling better than you might think is possible right now. The goal of the course is to ra the baseline level of joy that you experience on a day to day basis which naturally spills over into boosted confidence. The way that it works is by focusing first and foremost on your relationship with yourself. That means exercises that get you in touch with feelings that you may have been repressing for a long time so that you can actually get to the root cause of those times where you're controlled by the fear of rejection or failure or conflict and then put an end to them. Now if you're a fan of the self esteem or the deeper level confidence topics that I cover on the channel, I would definitely recommend checking out Emotional Mastery because it is the most foundational thing that I have to get those areas of your life locked down. So if you are intrigued and you want to know more, the best way you can do that is to check out the course directly with the link below. And you can do that knowing that it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee. There's no hoops to jump through. If you're not totally satisfied with the course, you just let us know and we'll give you your full money back. But I do hope that you check it out, because this course addresses how to live with more joy and how to be less controlled by some of the negative emotions that limit so many of us. So if you're interested and you think you might like to join, go ahead, click the link below. I hope to see you on the inside. But either way, I hope that you enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one.