Teens Who Get Bullied Every Day? - Q&A with Dr. Aziz, Confidence Coach

Hey, Dr. Aziz here. And today I'm going to be answering a question from a viewer that says, would you make a video about how to grow confidence for teens who get bullied every day for no reason? Thanks. It would really help. So I thought I would answer that one first. Yeah, that sucks. I know that that occurs a lot and is extremely common and is extremely hard to know how to influence it or stop or protect everyone in the situation. And a lot of the time the kids, whether they're young, even younger than that, or teenagers, feel extremely alone. And it's a lot of, like, emotional and sometimes even physical torment that comes from being bullied. And it's sort of minimized and ignored. I mean, I think not so much now. There's a lot more of a movement now to bring awareness to it, but it's still pretty intense and goes on. It's pretty rampant. So, you know, in terms of getting help from school administrators and stuff, maybe, but probably not. There's some stuff that this teen and anyone can do to help take care of themselves. And I have sat down and brainstormed six ideas that I'll share on how to deal with getting bullied. One, first and foremost, make sure, like, that they have a safe place somewhere. Now, maybe going to school is not safe for them. They're getting bullied there, but they have somewhere that they go that they feel good. So hopefully the home is a safe place. Hopefully they can talk with their family about it, their parents, their siblings, and get support. And the parents don't shame them. Like, well, you should just get into a fight and beat them or freak out like, oh, yeah, we're gonna call the school. And like, just a hasty, ineffective action that actually makes things worse. So that actually can support emotionally, let's help you handle this. Maybe there's some problem solving in there, but a lot of, like, this is really hard and just being with that person. So a safe place. And if it's not the home, maybe it's a friend from another school or a teacher or sports team that they're on where they can talk with someone else there or the coach or some other human where they can feel supported. That's one that's essential. That's an extremely helpful protective factor to prevent there from being, like, you know, lasting major effects from that kind of bullying. Two is mentors. So you can do this in addition to the safe place, but if you, for some reason don't have that, get yourself some mentors. I don't talk about people that you can actually Talk to. That would fall into your safe place category. I'm talking about this. Have them watch my videos on YouTube or someone else's videos on YouTube or audiobooks. I spend a lot of time hanging out with authors in their audiobooks. That's like one of my circles of people that I hang out with. Now I'm just listening to their ideas, I'm not talking back to them. But you're surrounding yourself with those people. So positive, inspiring books, empowering books, Tony Robbins stuff, anything that helps that person, like listen to someone who helps them get through that and then you're actually rapidly maturing. In this case, then the bullying is helping them accelerate their growth, which is ultimately good for them and serving them, although it's coming from a painful experience. Third tip is minimize engagement as much as possible. Minimize engagement with the bullies, with the bullying group. Because there can be this, if it's a small school or cliques or whatever. Sometimes people actively hang out with the bullies. Like it's like, oh, they're still my friends or it's better than nothing, even though they're sort of the butt of every joke and they're picked on and that sort of thing. And obviously if you're not in that group at all, then minimize contact and realize that you don't have to engage. They start talking to you, you just like don't respond. Minimal engagement. Now I understand some instances involve like, well, cornering you and hurt, hurting you and physical violence. And in those instances, whatever you can do to involve some authority or power to help you do so, whether it's a school administrator or your parents or something, because that's where it's really, that's a little easier to intervene on. But even then you want to minimize contact as much as possible and questioning. Are there alternative groups? Are there other groups of people I can hang out with even if I don't know them very well? You, even if they're not necessarily my friends yet, can I just move towards those other groups? And here's the thing, if you're getting bullied consistently, it's not just once in a while, but it's like daily. It's better to be alone than to be in that with that. Even if it feels hard to be alone, it's better be alone. Read your books. Just don't spend time as much as you can in proximity with that. Another thing that can be really helpful is just a little longer term perspective. Is like this is a phase, this is a period of time. This might seem like forever. This might seem like it's never going to end, but it is just a phase in time. And you will get through this. You will survive, you will thrive, and you will make it to the other side. And you'll never have to see those people again. You'll never have to deal with this again. And it'll just be a thing of the past. Another tip is going to be journaling. Journaling is a great way to process emotions, talk through things, let yourself journal freely and openly. Make it entirely 100% private. If there's only way that you know that you can do that, especially as a teenager. Sometimes privacy is hard to have in families, depending on what your family is like. So put it in a locked file, in your notes or on your phone or in your computer. Someone has to have a password to open it. You want to journal in there and you want to write about your experience. Write about the difficulty. Give yourself compassion in the journaling as if you're talking to yourself or you're talking to someone. Write out the anger and the frustration. Write all the shit that you want to say and do back to those bullies. Let yourself tap into anger, rage, frustration. Let yourself feel all those emotions and let them move through you. Also in your journaling, though, remind yourself of who you are. Say, listen and use your name. Listen, Aziz, I know who you are. What so and so is saying is not true. It doesn't matter if they say it one time or 500 times. The truth is, and you want to reassert what's true about you, find your strengths, claim those. Because the last thing you want, like you don't want them to get to you, like that's how they really win, is if they like poison your self image. So as much as you can expunge that, say, look, this is about them. This is about their pain. They're in so much pain that they need to feel temporarily better by making putting me in pain. And that's what they got to do, apparently. But I don't need to take that on. I'm not going to be complicit in this. I might have to sit there and take it when if I'm at school they're going to beat me up, I just have to take it. But I don't. In here, they don't control that. I reclaim my mind, I reclaim my identity. I know who I am and here's what's good about me. And that's where journaling that again and again and again, or doing incantations around it which means saying it with force and passion and energy again and again and again can help strengthen this in you so it doesn't poison your self image. The last thing I would say this is a fun one would be do some creative imagery around it. So creative imagery would be, you could do this at home, you know, laying in bed or whatever, meditating. Just close your eyes and imagine a scene that was unpleasant from the day before with the bullies, them saying something to you or doing something to you. And I want you to, in your mind, imagine that scene playing out, but then start to imagine, like, ridiculous or strange things occurring. So imagine that bully. Instead of looking tough and scary, imagine him with like one of those little tiny, I don't know, St. Patrick's Day, kind of like plastic hats, those little green hats, or a pink boa or something. Especially if it's like a tough, sort of aggressive, immature, masculine presence. Imagine that he's got like a feather pink boa on. Imagine he has no pants on. I mean, this is stuff that's like. It's ridiculous and it's absurd. And that's what you want. You want to kind of mess with your encoding of these experiences so they don't have so much severity to them and make it silly, make it absurd. You can even play in your mind, you could play absurd music in the background as it's happening that totally doesn't fit the scene. If you've ever done that, you've seen that in a movie. Sometimes they'll have music that. That doesn't fit the scene, and it kind of pulls you out of the trance of the movie. You're like, what's going on? And we can do that with ourselves. Like, the memory is so entrancing. The pain is like, ugh. And we can put on some weird music in our mind playing it, and it starts to again pull us out. And then if you do this enough, you might even in the moment, start just imagining them being ridiculous as they're bullying you. And it might really prevent you from taking again, taking that energy in. Because at the end of the day, that's what you want to do is, you know, they can say what they want to me, but I will not be broken. I will not take this in. And that way you reclaim that sense of confidence, that sense of power, even in the midst of really challenging circumstances. So my heart goes out to you. You know, there's so many people that I work with, and myself too, just, you know, a chunk of our social anxiety and challenges come from. From some toxic messages and bullying. So I hope you get through this. I know you'll get through this, but I want to wish you the best as you do that on your journey. And, you know, if you're watching this and you're no longer a teenager, you know, maybe you relate to this. Maybe this helps you see some ways you can deal with some ongoing challenges or bullying that's happening now, or you can have more compassion for yourself for when you were a teenager. All right, thanks for being with me. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.