HealthyGamerGG - Why Female Bullying Is So Hard to Recognize

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

In today's episode, Dr K addresses the intricacies of indirect and passive bullying, how to identify if it's even happening in the first place, and what action you can take if you find it happening to you. Check out more mental health resources here! https://bit.ly/3xsk6fE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes it can be a lot of like very communication-based stuff like eye rolling, you know, crossing your arms. We also have studies that show that these are very communication-based attacks. So since they don't engage in a directly disruptive behavior, there's not something that they can be found guilty of. I wasn't hitting on your boyfriend. I was just walking past them in a bikini. If your boyfriend wants to look, that's his problem. What's the matter? Do you feel not confident in it?

Do you feel like you're not attractive enough to keep your boyfriend? This is how they do. So the first thing that I have to say is this is one of the... the most important and also hardest lectures videos that I put together. And the reason is really simple. If you look at the internet today, misogyny is rampant. And so I'm afraid that anything that I say that talks about how women can be aggressive, women can be evil, women can be bad, will very quickly be taken as justification for further misogynistic behavior. But that's not why I'm making this video. In fact, it's something that I'm going to try very hard to avoid. So right now at the very

beginning, I'm going to say this is not a video about why women are bad. This is a video about the fact that some women are bad, that some women do bully, that some women are aggressive, and that some women are even sociopathic. And the problem in today's world is that if you are faced with one of these women, whether it be a mother, whether it be a sister, whether it be someone at school, that these women can be incredibly aggressive in a very subtle and indirect way. And that this aggression can be so devastating that it can even result in death. Now, when we look at male aggression, we look at things like, okay, violence, right? So if you look at the number of men who are in prison for murder, the number is very high. And we know that men can be violent.

There's this whole thing going on the internet about would you rather be alone in the forest with a man or a bear? And most women would choose a bear because men can be deceptive, men can be aggressive. And I know a lot of men get upset about that, but let's remember that women have their experiences. The problem is that when it comes to physical aggression, we have safeguards in place, right? So I'm not saying that physical aggression is easy to avoid. But you can go to, you know, a martial arts class and learn how to physically defend yourself. You can even get something like mace or pepper spray. If you are physically assaulted, there are places you can go.

You can go to the hospital. They'll document your injuries. You can go to the police. I'm not saying that they always do a great job, but there are systems in place to protect you from physical aggression. There are scanners at the airport to make sure someone doesn't bring a gun in. The problem is that when it comes to female aggression and bullying, there aren't safe. What do you do? What do you say when someone is bullying you? When someone is being aggressive with you in an indirect way. How do you defend yourself? And the science on female aggression

shows that the majority of victims don't even feel like they're victimized. They don't even realize that they're the victims of some form of aggressive behavior. So a couple of other quick disclaimers. So this is not a video just about female bullying. While this is the weapon of choice, let's say, for female bullies, which is why we're characterizing it that way, The first thing that I want to point out to y'all, just to be clear, is that men can be indirectly aggressive, absolutely, and women can also be directly aggressive. So this is a video about teaching y'all the principles of indirect aggression. Now, why do we talk about women if we're talking about indirect aggression? Because frankly, that's what most of the studies are on. For the same reason

that if you look at something like antisocial personality disorder or people who is sociopaths, these are much likely to be studies on men, because that is the way that their sociopathy manifests. So they manifest in a particular way that is violent, that is more likely, it's easier to study men. So if we're doing a study on sociopathy, we'll go to places like prisons and we'll study men. So today what we're going to do is teach you what the playbook of a female bully looks like. What are their patterns of aggression? How do women's sociopaths act? And I know these are all three different things, and we'll go into detail.

So let's talk a little bit about female bullying and aggression. The first thing is that it is indirect, which means it isn't about doing something. it is actually about the avoidance of doing something. So it is about ignoring, exclusion, leaving you out. Sometimes it can be a lot of like very communication-based stuff like eye-rolling, you know, crossing your arms. We also have studies that show that these are very communication-based attacks and not even communication towards you.

They'll do things like spread hostile rumors, try to do things like seduce your romantic partner, hit on your romantic partner. These are all forms of female aggression. There's another important issue here, which is that girls who do this will often not engage in disruptive behavior, which is much more common in men who are bullies or boys who are bullies. So since they don't engage in a directly disruptive behavior, there's not something that they can be found guilty of, right? So if you go to your friend, your friend of me, and you say, hey, can you please stop hitting on my boyfriend? What they're going to say is, I wasn't hitting on your boyfriend.

I was just walking past them in a bikini. If your boyfriend wants to look, that's his problem. And what's the matter? Do you feel not confident in it? Do you feel like you're not attractive enough to keep your boyfriend? This is how they do. So the process starts with something called moving into the gray zone. Normally what happens is you have a circle of people who are all connected in some way. And the first step of the female bully is to isolate to ostracize. So start engaging in different activities that move you into the gray zone. And this is what's so devastating about it. You can feel it happen. But it's so hard to blame them. Are you? crazy? Is this really happening? Some studies show that the victims of female bullying aren't even aware that they are victims. They're made to feel stupid. They're made to feel at fault because there's no direct form of aggression. So it starts by pushing you into the gray zone. The second thing about female bullying is that it's oftentimes very group based. So the person won't do something to you. They will say, oh, it is the group that is doing this to you. It's not me. It is all of us. And sometimes

what happens is you don't have a single bully. You have two or three girls in a group of girls that dislike you. And they will work in concert. And since one of them doesn't invite you to this, you know, it would be hilarious if we didn't invite this person to both of our parties. Wouldn't that be hilarious? Oh my God, that's such a great idea for a joke. So you don't get invited to one party. You don't get invited to another party. And then a third girl, someone in the group is like, hey, maybe we should invite this person. They're like, oh my God, this is so much fun. We're getting such great bonding time. So they create a situation where there is a diffusion of responsibility.

It's not me that's bullying you. It's the group. It's not my fault that you're not getting invited to parties. Maybe you should work on being a better guest at a party. And once that person gets pushed to the gray zone, they will comment. They will try to defend themselves. And this is a term that's actually been, you know, quoted in the scientific literature. This creates a retaliatory action by the bully group.

Once you say, hey, why aren't you all inviting me? The bullying group responds. Maybe because you're this way or this way or this way. We didn't do anything wrong. It's all in your head. So once they push you to the edge and you decide you want to defend yourself, you call them out on their behavior. And this triggers something that's well documented in the literature called retaliatory humiliation. They've debated you.

You called them out on, oh, no, it's not my fault. Why are you so crazy? Why can't you see the way that I'm being nice to you? Why can't you value my friendship? Why do you view the world so negatively? They blame you for attacking them. This is how it works. So if we want to defend ourselves against the cycle, we have to understand what triggers a bully, what makes it safe for a bully, as well as the sequences.

There are subtle things that the literature shows that you can do to protect yourself, and we have to share those with you. So first, let's talk a little bit about the neuroscience of female aggression. So the first thing to understand is if you look at why women are less overtly aggressive than men, women are much more sensitive to the possibility of retaliation. So if you ask men, like, you know, what would make you, you know, attack or not attack someone else, men are okay being punished in return. So, you know, one of the very classic things that we see in various, like, TV shows and things like that, right? Is you see a man who's got a black eye and a bruised face and stuff like that.

And you're like, wow, bro, did you get into a fight? Their response, you should see the other guy. Yeah, the other guy's way worse. men are fundamentally more comfortable with dishing out damage and receiving damage. Getting hit back is not a very good deterrent from aggression. The consequences of their aggression men, generally speaking, care less about. The number one reason why women are less likely to be aggressive is because they are concerned about the fallout from their aggression.

They're concerned about getting hit back. And we can even see like some versions of this in the animal kingdom. I think you've got to be super careful when you talk about animals. and extrapolating it out to human behavior. But if we look at things like prides of lions, right? So the female lions will do the hunting because the thing that you're attacking doesn't fight back. It's about catching it, not fighting it.

But when there is fighting that needs to be done, when hyenas are attacking a lion pack, it's the male lion who fights. Right? So we see versions of this even within the animal kingdom. But we also know from neuroscience studies that this is probably correct. That is, it is the inhibition of retaliation that really causes women to not be. aggressive. And how do we know this? Because we can look at studies of alcohol. So women are much more likely to be physically aggressive when they're drunk, just like men. But the mechanism is different.

So specifically what alcohol does is when a woman is drunk, fear-based circuits that warn them, that inhibit behaviors because they say, hey, if you hit someone, that person will hit back. This is a fundamental inhibition to female aggression. And alcohol disinhibits us. So what it does is disables the fear of the consequences. There's also something really fascinating. Oxytocin increases female aggression. And you may say to yourself, well, hold on a second, Dr. K. I thought oxytocin was a bonding hormone. I thought oxytocin is the hormone that causes bonding between a mother and child. Oxytocin is the milk let down hormone. So when women are breastfeeding, right, they have a lot of, you know, they have a lot of milk production in their breasts. But how does the milk, how does the breast know when to release the milk? It is oxytocin

that triggers breast milk release. And so you may say to yourself, but hold on a second. Oxytocin is also the cuddling hormone. When people have sex and they cuddle afterward, both of their brains release oxytocin. This forms emotional bonds. So let me ask you, the one archetype that you should avoid at all costs is the mama bear, right? Anytime we know if there's a wild animal that has babies, they will be incredibly aggressive. And that's absolutely correct, right?

So when we have a child, a baby, can be a mama bear, can be like a mom a dog, like whatever. mom a cat. Anytime they're kittens away, there are cubs at play, there are children at play, women can be incredibly aggressive. So when a woman has a child, the oxytocin level is through the roof. And if you threaten the child, the mom doesn't care. Normally, female mammals, women, are inhibited by the possibility of getting hurt. But when oxytocin is floating around, it actually increases maternal aggression. And that's evolutionary. So we have to understand that if we want to stop a female bully, we have to remember that the biggest thing that inhibits aggression is the fear of the consequences. And so once we understand that, what we really need to

focus on is not calling them out on their behavior, but creating and shaping an environment where there are going to be consequences for them. So we're going to talk about a couple of other triggers for female bullying. So one of them is very unusual. So one way to trigger a female bully is by you making another friend. So right now you're part of a social circle. So right now you're part of a social circle, right? So you're in the social circle. Your bully is in the social circle. One of the things that will trigger your bully is if you start stepping outside of the social circle. If you create a network that excludes her, she is much more likely to trigger a bullying response, right? So this is kind of the social dynamic. They're super concerned about

their place within the social circle and hierarchy. We can also see this. I've seen this in my patients when, you know, mothers have such a great, I have a great relationship. with my daughter. My daughter and I are besties. And then the daughter starts making friends, starts going on trips, triggers this weird bullying response from mom where mom's like, yeah, I don't you to hang out with them. Like, you never spend time when they start guilt tripping you. They start up, you know, complaining to your other family members. Yeah, she's making the wrong friends. They start to use all of these other things around you. They don't tell you, hey, I feel excluded from your life. I feel like I've invested my whole life in you. You're the primary source of my social

support. And if you start making friends outside of me, I feel alone. They don't say that. Right? They will start to rally allies. Try to get you from not hanging out. Oh, yeah, this boyfriend isn't right for you. Why? Because he's helping you be independent. Fuck that. So one thing to, and this is what's the reason I share this is because it's so confusing for so many people. Because you're like, I don't understand. I thought we were friends. I don't understand why. It feels like this person is excluding me. They're insulting me all the time. Like they're saying slight things. Oh, yeah. Like that dress. What do you think about the? What do I think about this dress? I think the dress would look way better on you if you lost some weight. They say shit like this. It's insane. And you're like, I don't understand what did I do. Is something wrong? Did I do something to piss you off? Plausible deniability?

No, of course. Of course not. Why would you say that? I'm being your friend. And friends are honest with each other and you look like shit in that in that dress. I've heard it in my office doing psychotherapy. It's insane. Okay?

So be careful what triggers them. One of the triggers is a fear of ostracization, exclusion, making new friends, forming tighter bonds with people in your shared friend group. A couple of other interesting statistics about aggression and female bullying. There's a stereotype that female bullies are attractive. And this is probably true. So when a woman is attractive, they are more likely to engage in bullying. The really interesting thing what the movies don't tell us is that if you're an attractive

woman, you are also more likely to be bullied. So you're about 35% more likely to be bullied. to be bullied if you are an attractive woman. And once again, remember, what's going on here? It's about pack tactics, right? It's if you're the prettiest girl in the group, something that can happen is a couple of other girls in the group can be jealous of you. There's a lot of stuff about mating, which we'll talk about in a second.

I hate to say this stuff, but somewhat true, right? Where if you're the pretty person, and this is what's so interesting. So why are you more likely to be victimized if you're a pretty woman? Not just by male aggressors, by female aggressors, too, because that increases the plausible to liability. Oh, pretty women, you have pretty privilege. You get all of the advantages in life. You're so lucky. And by the way, haven't you seen mean girls? All the girls who are bullies are hot. You're the bully. I'm not the bully. Ah, it's that retaliative humiliation. Hey, why don't you all invite me to things? We're not doing anything wrong. Maybe you should be a better friend. You know, oh, you think just because you're

attractive that makes you entitled to come to all of our parties and all of our social events, they're more likely to be victimized and more likely to be bullies. So even if you're an attractive woman who's listening to this and you're thinking to yourself, I don't understand why people treat me this poorly. And here's the other problem, right, is if you are an attractive person and you have pretty privilege and you go to someone and you say, hey, I'm a victim too. Something bad is happening to me. Do people listen to you?

Of course not. And that's why they pick you as a victim. Because remember, their primary fear is fear of retaliation. So if they can get away with it, they're more likely to be aggressive. Another thing that is very commonly a source of bullying is the fear of like sexual threat. So if you look at the data, women who are sexually threatening to their friends' partners, like women will look at each other. And I realize this is not all women. This is just literally what some of the studies show is that one of the things that triggers female bullying is like some degree of belief of like mating competition.

Right. This is somewhat primitive. Depends on the person. Not all women are like this. I would even say the majority of women are not like this. This video is actually about the minority of women who I believe are aggressive. That's what I've seen in my clinical practice. So if you suddenly lose a lot of weight, if you have a makeover, if you start dressing better and taking care of yourself, if your self-esteem starts to rise, this can make you a target.

Because that's very threatening. I used to be the prettiest girl in the group and now you are competing. So if this stuff resonates with you, right? The good news is that there are actually a lot of studies that look at how can we protect people from this. What are the interventions that we need to do? A lot of these studies actually come from schools. So how can we prevent female bullying? And we're going to give you all a couple of key things that you can do if you're in this situation. The first is that bullying is much more severe in small groups. For whatever reason, if your friend group is between one and five people, bullying is much more common. It is less prevalent in groups of people between five and 15. So if you can, you can be a friend group is between one and five and five.

So if you kind of think about it, like, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but in groups of one to five, there's a very, like, fixed amount of resources. There's a very important kind of tier list, right? Because these are the five people involved and we want to make sure that, like, I'm at the top and you're at the bottom. But when we get to levels of 15 people, it's really hard to manipulate 15 people. Oh, the four of us are going to get together and we're going to go boating on Saturday. And then there's still like 11 of us that are not going, so you can go hang out with those other 11 people. So the two, of the bully don't work nearly as well when we're talking about like numbers greater than five up to 15. So one solution that you can do is if you're someone who's a serial victim of bullying, especially if you're talking, we're talking about the female style of bullying. Once again, men can do it too. One of the things to look out for is small groups. And the really scary thing is that if you've been a victim of female bullying and there's social isolation, you are so much more anxious in larger groups. So you end up gravitating towards smaller places that you feel more safe and are actually at a greater risk of being exploited.

So larger groups are actually protective. The next thing that's really interesting is that a lot of female bullying propagates based on the bystander effect. Everyone else is going to be kind of like, I'm not going to get involved in this. There's some kind of power struggle going on. I don't want to get hurt. So one of the things that you can do to stop female bullying if you see it is stand with the victim.

You don't have to, and this is really important, you don't want to accuse the bully because then that'll trigger the retaliatory humiliation. All you want to do is signal to the bully that this ostracization is not working, right? So this is where, like, it's subtle, but I remember, like, working with some of my patients and what we would do is we kind of like talk about it, right? So instead of saying, like, oh, like, we're excluding this person. You're excluding this person. That's not good. You're bullying them. You can't say that because they'll say, oh, I just forgot about it, plausible deniability.

Instead, what you want to say is something like this. Hey, I just noticed that we're not inviting this person. I know we were thinking about this, but I was just thinking, like, how would y'all feel if we, if you got left out? That's not really cool. Maybe we should invite her anyway. So you're not accusing anyone. This is really important.

You have to let them get away with it. And you want to stand with the person who's bullying. You want to advocate for them. This is the other really interesting thing. We move on to number three, which is kind of baked in there, which is a no blame intervention is very effective. So when you kind of point out the bullying behavior, you, actually don't want to blame the bully. This is actually step two of their jabat combo, right,

where you blame them. You don't blame them at all. A no blame intervention, which what that means is like sort of focusing a little bit about on feelings. Like, oh, like this is unfortunate. No one's to blame here. And it's bad. This person is being excluded. Let's be kind to this person. Let's advocate for this person. Let's include this person. You don't blame them. That'll trigger the defensive response. Our goal is to raise awareness. Right? Because remember that female bullying happens in the shadows. It happens subtly. It happens in private conversations. It's eye rolling and things like that. So all we really need to do, not all, but one of the most effective things that we can do is make sure it doesn't happen in the shadows. Just, oh, by the way, hey, did you all notice this is happening? I'm not blaming anyone in particular. So what we're trying to shoot for is, I see you. If you are the person who is the victim in this situation, you don't want to call them out on it. What you want to signal to them is I see you. This is not happening in the gray zone. I am not a blue.

livious to what is happening. You know, so you don't want to say, hey, you're excluding me from all of these parties. Instead, what you want to say is, hey, if y'all don't want me to come, you have a group text or whatever. Hey, I heard y'all are getting together at so-and-so's house. If y'all are, like, interested in talking about particular private stuff, like, I totally get it, right? If y'all don't want me to come, totally fine. I know that so-and-so is going through a tough time.

If she doesn't want me there, I totally get it. I hope to catch up with y'all later. Raise awareness of it. And then if you say, hey, you guys don't need to invite me, but I am left out. by the way, hey, I'm left out. So what that does is recruits all of the other people. The way to stop a female bully is not by stopping the female bully. It's actually to recruit everyone else. It is an indirect form of combat. And then what happens is those people start to think, well, I don't want to be left in this situation, right? We should include other people. And by the way,

this person seems pretty decent if they're pointing out these dynamics, because everyone on some level knows what's going on. And if they want to gravitate towards a healthy community, they will actually end up supporting you much more likely, much more effective than calling the person out and triggering the retaliatory humiliation. Another really important thing to do is to avoid emotional overreaction. So anytime you emotionally overreact, remember everything is happening in the shadows and happening in the gray zone. So if you get very, very emotion, you're like, you did this and I can't believe that you're not a good friend. Oh, wow, this girl. Oh, yeah, I'm so sorry we didn't include you. Can you believe her? She's crazy.

So emotional overreaction only plays into the female bully's hands. So instead, what you want to do is be aware and witty. Be like, oh yeah, this is the third time you guys are forgetting to invite me. Look, I don't know what's going on here, but like, you know, if you guys are enjoying doing this, I'd love to join y'all. But at the same time, like, if you guys don't want me there, that's totally fine. Just let me know. Like, I'm just confused more than anything else. Data suggests that snappy and humorous comments can go a long way.

that's highly like situation specific. The last thing to consider is that the goal of a lot of female bullying is social isolation. The best way to protect yourself is not to fight the bully, but to be impervious to their attacks. So one of the best antidotes to being bullied is to actually develop social skills and learn how to make friends. So what happens is the bully is more likely to be aggressive if they know that their actions are going to isolate you. That's the goal. They push you to the edge of the social circle and then they cut you off. But if pushing you to the edge of the social circle doesn't work because you're able to form bonds or even form bonds with other people, and then you can play their game too.

Oh, yeah. I noticed, like, you guys had three parties and y'all didn't invite me. I totally get it. You know, it's so interesting. At first, I was upset about that. And then I realized, like, you know, I'm not sure if this is intentional or it's callous. I don't know if this particular person really wants this to happen. Sometimes I get some aggression from her.

But I really found, like, I'm hanging out with this new group of people. They're so chill. they're very inclusive, they're very kind. And if you ever kind of feel excluded, by the way, like you can come and join us. That's like a headshot to the female bully. You go to this other person, you say, hey, I have this other group of friends. That's better. Because if the female bully is bullying you, they're going to bully other people too.

The last thing that you can do that sometimes is quite effective is share feelings that other people, including the bully, can resonate with. So this isn't blaming them. This is really important to understand. But when you share with a bully in a non-emotional way, what effect this is having on you, sometimes the bullies will actually stop. There are studies at schools that show that this can be helpful. Right. Hey, when you forget to invite me, I still feel isolated and alone.

I feel like I don't have friends that care about me. Because oftentimes female bullies are not sociopaths, right? They actually do care about other people. A lot of this stuff is kind of subconscious. And then you do something really interesting. you give them the opportunity to extend the hand of friendship. And then they can feel good about including you. So it's kind of weird, but something about sharing your experience in a way that can trigger empathic concern can be effective at disarming a bully.

Now, we're giving you all of these options because not all of this stuff will necessarily work, right? So that's why we have to think about all these different options. So do I want to strengthen my social skills? Do I want to share my experience of this? Do I want to be witty? do I want to form bonds with other people? And make sure you don't fall into the missteps, blaming the bully for what they're doing

because it's all gray. So if you blame them, then you've fallen into their trap. Female bullying is absolutely a real problem. It's a problem that I don't think we talk about enough. I think since we don't talk about it enough, it's actually getting worse. Because female bullying and indirect aggression are so outweighed male aggression,

physical violence and things like that that it doesn't get enough time in the spotlight. And what this means is that the people who use these abusive behaviors are like running free because no one is talking about it. Right. So if you look at statistics on intimate partner violence, the likelihood for a woman over the course of her lifetime to be abused by a man is about 37.3%. The likelihood for a man to be abused by a woman is about 30.9%. So things are worse for women than they are for men. And at the same time, just because breast cancer is more common than testicular cancer doesn't mean that we should take all the people of testicular cancer and say, hey, screw you, right? So we want to educate everyone about bullying. We want to protect

ourselves against male aggression. We want to protect ourselves against physical aggression. And we want to protect ourselves against female bullying. And we want to protect ourselves against indirect aggression, which, by the way, men can employ as well. So my hope is that this video is helpful to y'all. What actually inspired this video was a woman on our subreddit saying, hey, I'm being bullied by women, I don't know what to do. It's an exceedingly common experience. And so my hope today is that we've given y'all some insight into understanding how female bullying works.

Men can do it too. We can also call it indirect aggression. Once you have the roadmap of it, first thing to realize is that, yes, it's really happening. Right. So half of the armament of the female bully is gaslighting you into believing it's not real. And once you realize, yes, it is happening, understand this three. hit combo. Isolation moving you into the gray zone, triggering an emotional response, followed by the knockout punch, which is retaliatory humiliation. Oh my God, can't you see how

crazy she is? We forget to invite her once. She's so unstable. I don't want to hang out with people like that because now you've given them license. So for those of you that are struggling with female bullying, I really hope this helps you. Remember that this form of indirect aggression can also be done by a man. And please let us know, like, how you all feel? about this right is this helpful are there more things that y'all want to go into do you want to share your experiences in the comments all that stuff is good so thank you all very much for listening today and I hope it helps and remember not all women are evil