Dealing With the Family Bully
By: Stef Hill
Tags: Relationships, Happiness, Bullying, Self Improvement, Family

A bully can dominate an entire family and they can do a lot of damage while they’re at it.

Maybe you have a bully in your family. Maybe you dread seeing this person.

Maybe they make you angry or miserable and their cutting remarks sting long after you’re out of their presence.

There’s good news and bad news.

The bad news is that when it comes to a bully, who they are is not going to change. Them thinking they are right is not going to change. What they think is acceptable is not going to change.

The good news is that the bully may change their behaviour, even if deep down they don’t think they should have to.

Also, there are things you can do to control and improve the situation.

Bullying behavior can be mildly irritating or it can ruin and even end people’s lives. It goes without saying that your approach to your own situation is going to be dictated by it’s severity. I don’t know how bad your family bully is; they could be a little bit tiresome or they could pose an actual risk to other people.

These tips are about managing and potentially improving a situation with a bullying family member. If your situation has gone beyond the point where management and improvement is possible or helpful then this article won’t be for you.

Their motivation.

One of the main problems when dealing with a bully in a family setting is, well, your family. People will pander to a bully and tiptoe around their moods. They may also ignore their bad behaviour and pretend it isn’t happening.

As frustrating as this can be, it’s a survival technique for anyone who spends a lot of time with a bullying person. It’s too exhausting to fight someone every hour of every day, so people just do what they can for a quieter life.

If you spend any significant amount of time around a family bully, you too will undoubtedly have altered your behaviour around the person. In order to deal with a bully effectively you need to be able to assess how you change around them.

What role does the bully assign to you? Are you expected to always agree with them or pander to blatant delusions and falsehoods? Maybe you have an unspoken list of things you would say to anyone else you know but that are taboo for the bully. Maybe you are given a scapegoat role and the bully uses your words and actions to justify behaving however they want to. The more you conform to your role, the more power this person has over you.

This is not to say that we don’t adjust our behaviour from person to person. It’s social common sense to be sensitive in what you say around a recently bereaved friend, for example. Your empathy for the other person prompts you to adjust how you behave. The bully, on the other hand, demands this extreme level of sensitivity over things which are very minor to most people.

They might get angry because they imagine someone looks disinterested when they speak.

They might take offense at a really minor aspect of etiquette while ignoring all such guidelines themselves.

There are topics of conversation they shut down but if they sense someone else is uncomfortable about something they start pushing in that direction.

Essentially they want to be treated with extreme empathy and care but want to bulldoze and trample other people at the same time.

Depending on the kind of person (can’t stress enough that this is dependent on individual situations) you are dealing with you might be willing to play to this sometimes. A bully loves a compliment or some positive attention. This is evident because they go out of their way to rewire the world around them so they get more than their fair share and then start digging into everyone else’s.

You may even be able to contain their bad behaviour with praise.

Essentially, if you feel inclined to, you can play their game and give them what they want. (This is probably how you get to experience their good points if they have any.) If you don’t want to do that or you don’t want to do that anymore beyond a certain point then you need to get tactical.

Breaking roles.

You confront a bully by breaking out of the role they feel comfortable giving you. In a family setting you need to consider everyone else’s roles as well.

Let’s take an example.

John is the family bully. He insults you during dinner and Molly immediately changes the subject. As she speaks she forces an upbeat tone into her speech. She’s not just trying to change the topic but the mood produced by John’s remark.

If you try to tackle what John said, Molly asks why you’re ruining the otherwise happy mood.

Molly wants to pretend that John hasn’t already done this.

John knows that when Molly fulfills her role of covering for him, you in turn fulfill your role of backing down for Molly’s sake.

People play roles in dysfunctional families. Dysfunction gains ground when it becomes normalized. A family bully assigns the roles (or tries to) and conditions people to play along over time. Eventually people think of this as “just how it is”, but on closer inspection all the strange behaviors only benefit one person.

Intervention is what works against bullies, but it’s emotionally wearing and stressful. When the bully gets other family members to protect them they make themselves that much harder to confront. The longer this status quo survives the harder it will be to confront it.

For the best chance of success you should counteract your bully as if your response is normal; not the challenge they will actually see it as. You can use humor to further this. Avoiding a confrontational approach also has the benefit of encouraging your other family members to push back too.

There are also some other things you can do:

Build one on one relationships.

If a family member spends time with you alone this resets your relationship in the family setting. They won’t be as quick to return to dysfunctional roles when they’ve established this kind of one on one connection.

For example, the family bully may want family members to stay quiet so they can rant and pontificate. Everyone may go along with this but if they then get used to talking freely when they see you this will help.

Manage your emotions.

Emotional vulnerability and consequential mutual support is a healthy part of good relationships. This is not possible when dealing with a bully.

Bullies say and do things purely to upset you. Once you’re upset they mock you or take advantage of your emotional state. They may try to suggest you are crazy because you’re emotional.

When upset we usually don’t speak with as much accuracy and balance as when we aren’t. Most normal people understand this. A bully will pounce on what you say when you’re upset and try to use it against you.

How often in an argument in an otherwise happy relationship do you apologize for something you said? You may also explain how you didn’t mean what you said or the words came out wrong because you were upset.

A bully will seize on anything you said awkwardly or emotionally. If they know you didn’t mean what you said you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll never let you forget it. They may hold onto things you’ve said for years or even decades.

It’s vital to remember, it’s not that the bully assumes you meant what you said or did in an emotional state. They know full well you didn’t mean it. That’s why they won’t let it go. Funny how every sincere thing you’ve ever said to them doesn’t make it to this status of being carved in stone. This is frustrating but you need to remember it’s very deliberate.

To a bully emotional expression just represents an opportunity to attack and you should always try and keep your emotions in check when around them.

Rudeness as truth.

Bullies love to disguise rudeness, social ineptitude and a lack of tact as a truth.

They love to pretend that they are on a sacred mission to “tell it like it is” when no one else dares to. This takes their hurtful, mean and petty behaviour and turns it into something noble and moral.

It’s the family Easter dinner. Sarah has recently lost a job she loved and is worried about getting a new one quickly. She’s asked people not to bring the subject up so she can relax and enjoy a break.

You can be 100% sure that the bully will mention Sarah being unemployed.

They might do it in a way that appears nice, they may fake concern. They may act like it just slipped out. But the fact is they’ve been told that mentioning the job loss will hurt Sarah, so, they just can’t help but do that.

And what about when Sarah gets upset at the mention of her job?

You can be 100% sure the bully will be very critical of her entirely predicable response.

“It’s true, you can’t cry about everything that's true…. No wonder she got fired if you can’t even have a normal conversation with her.”

You often hear bullies describe their point of view when they've caused upset in their family:

“Sarah lost her job and it’s supposed to be this big secret because she can’t handle anything, especially not the truth. So it slipped out and now shes being a nutcase, crying and blaming me. I’m in the dog house because I talk real life not playing pretend.”

This defensive rationale makes out that Sarah is the bully and the bully is the victim.

John is trying to say that Sarah controls what people can say in order to create a fake reality that she finds acceptable. If people don’t play along she causes a scene.

Remind you of anyone?

In order to counteract this kind of behaviour the bully has to be frozen out of as much information as possible. When that isn’t possible the emotional side of the information must be played down.

If they bring up something that they shouldn’t you can try and distract them with their favorite topics. This usually includes themselves.

What do they care about?

Bullies delight in mocking and misbehaving when they aren’t bothered about the consequences. It’s a different story when the consequences do bother them.

Be on the lookout for their best and worst behaviour and use it to your advantage.

A bully might make a point of being rude to waiting staff in a restaurant. At the same time their behaviour might drastically improve in front of old friends or their pastor.

Try to arrange get togethers that play to the bully’s self control; because they probably have a lot more self control than you think. Even just mentioning their control points is very powerful.

“So, you lost that job then? That’s three in three years isn’t it? What a disaster.”

“Yes, that’s the third. I might ask your friend Bob about it, his daughter Jessica just changed jobs, she didn’t mention it was a disaster so it would be good to know what they both think.”

When a bully behaves well around people it’s a clear sign they don’t want their “other side” to be known to those people. John probably wants Bob and Jessica to think he is marvelous. Not that he picks at Sarah’s self esteem when she is down on her luck.

Bullies box themselves in with their attitude that what they say is fine, even good. Well if that’s the case, it must be fine to repeat it and let others know what they said.

This approach might well make John angry, more so because he can’t explain why without admitting that he’s ashamed of his own behavior. He will however be much more careful in future. By bringing his good behaviour prompt to him, you force a change.

This is not a guide to living with a bully through choice. This is not a guide to having a romantic relationship with a bully by locking down your emotions. As I’ve stressed already, in some situations you may need or want to simply walk away and never look back.

Life is sometimes more complicated than that. Relationships and especially families are often more complex than that.

Dealing with a family bully will never be easy nor is there the promise of a perfect resolution in the distance. Working on the situation is only worth doing if the person involved is important in your life in some way and you want to keep your involvement with them. You may also have to occasionally tolerate them for some reason.

By pushing normal behavior and controlling dysfunction the situation can be improved. Family bullies will never stop trying to get everyone dancing to their tune. All the same these measures can keep the destructive effects of their actions to a minimum.