Harassment at My Front Door

I never thought that I would be writing about being harassed and bullied—especially after writing the various articles I have for the past few weeks on bullying.  It just goes to show that it can happen to anyone.  Instead of holding it all in, which is something I would never suggest doing, I’m going to tell you all about what’s happened and how I’ve decided to handle it.  Hopefully you all will be able to learn from my experiences.

For those of you that may not know, I’m a moderator on a couple of different forums and as a moderator I have a variety of duties and responsibilities to uphold.  I found a topic that had veered off-topic and asked those who had caused it to go off-topic to please go back on topic.  I felt that I was very polite about asking them to get back on-topic, but instead of doing so, one of the people involved decided to insult me.  Now, I won’t quote exactly what they said—though I do have screen-shots of the conversation—but I will say that they insulted my intelligence and claimed that I was offering advice as a non-certified psychologist.  Instead of getting involved, I pulled myself away from the situation and passed it onto an admin of the forum who removed the comment.  What came next was a surprise.

I received a Private Message (PM) from the member entitled “Fake” in which the member decided that it was okay to continue to bash me and try to hurt me just because I was doing my job as a moderator.  They went as far as saying the following to me:  “Maybe we should turn you site over to officials for offering false advice how many have committed suicide as a result of advice you gave, I know of one, and you have now idea.”  Pretty heavy stuff, right?  Accusing someone of causing someone’s death is not an easy thing to deal with to say the least, but the last thing I wanted to do was to allow this persons’ words to get to me, let alone destroy me.  So, what did I do in this situation and how will my situation help you?  Keep reading!

Ask for Help:

If you don’t think that you can handle the situation on your own, ask for help.  Being bullied is not easy to deal with especially when you’re alone, so don’t do it alone.  As I said above, when the person started at me, I went for help.  Not only because my temper was already reeling, but because it wasn’t something I wanted t handle on my own, nor do I think I could handle it alone.  Like I stated previously, I went straight to an admin to let them know what was going on.  If you’re dealing with someone on an online forum, make sure to also contact an administrator or moderator right away to let them know what’s going on.  What I didn’t mention above was that I also went to my husband, which brings me to my next suggestion.

Talk it Out:

Instead of keeping all your feelings (you’re fear, your anger, your frustration, etc) inside and do yourself, talk to someone else about it.  Don’t allow it to fester and eat at you, let it out.  I know it may be uncomfortable for you to let it out, but I honestly believe it’s better to let your feelings out than to hold them.  So talk to someone about what’s going on because not only will it help you get these feelings out, the other person may also know what to do to help you.

Ignore Them:

This won’t work in all situations, but more so this is something you can do when you’re dealing with an online bully.  If you’re on a forum or it’s happening over an instant messenger, you can easily ignore the bully.  Put them on your block list and you’ll never have to see or hear from them again.  If they persistently get through after you block them, you can also consider changing your e-mail address or what have you.

Don’t Let Them Get to You:

This is probably the most important part of this entire post.  Don’t let whatever they say or do get to you.  They want to get a rise out of you, they want to upset and hurt you, but don’t let them.  If they’re set out to hurt you they will throw every single insult they can think of even if it isn’t true, such as the statement I quoted above from the person who was trying to get at me.  They know nothing about me aside from what I post.  They say I give false advice here, which I know is far from the truth considering most of my advice probably came from something I’ve read over the six years I’ve been studying psychology.  They also try to get to me by saying people have committed suicide due to my advice, but again, how would they know?  Do they know all of my readers?  No, not at all.  None of it makes sense and in the end they were just trying to get to me, which is probably what’s going on with you.  So, don’t let them get to you because at the end of the day, they probably have nothing better to do with their time.

Please understand that the above don’t necessarily always work and it really depends on the situation at hand.  For example, ignoring someone online is easier to do online because all you have to do is hit the ignore or block button.  In real life, I would more so suggest getting help handling the situation and depending on how bad the bullying is, you’ll want to go to your local authorities to get them involved.  In the end, however, you don’t want to allow the bullying to continue as it will wear you down.  It’s better to seek out help and stop the bullying.  Good luck and keep your head up!

Let’s Chat:

Have you ever been bullied?  If so, how did you go about dealing with it?