This has been a lot in the news re­cent­ly. We all used to think of it as some­thing that hap­pened in pri­ma­ry schools, then maybe some in sec­ondary schools as well, but we all as­sumed it stopped there. Bad news: bul­ly­ing goes on all through life, and not just in school ei­ther. Bul­ly­ing hap­pens in fam­i­lies, in re­la­tion­ships, in the work­place and in many re­spect­ed ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions. In fact, bul­ly­ing is uni­ver­sal and con­stant. Hor­rif­ic as phys­i­cal bul­ly­ing is, there are oth­er kinds of bul­ly­ing which are even more dam­ag­ing. There's ver­bal bul­ly­ing - name-call­ing, gos­sip, ver­bal abuse. There's so­cial bul­ly­ing (girls and women are es­pe­cial­ly good at this) - cliques, ex­clu­sion, what we used to call 'send­ing to Coven­try' (not speak­ing to). And, for the new mil­len­ni­um, cy­ber-bul­ly­ing! Cy­ber-bul­ly­ing is bul­ly­ing via the In­ter­net and this is per­haps the worst of all, be­cause you can't hit back. Peo­ple can leave aw­ful mes­sages for you on Face­book, cir­cu­late vi­cious Tweets about you, ridicule you in video on YouTube - and you may nev­er know who they are. Worst of all, this kind of bul­ly­ing spreads so fast you can't con­trol it. Even when a video is banned from YouTube be­cause of con­tent, if it's on for five min­utes, that's long enough for it to spread world­wide. So you are now vul­ner­a­ble to any­one any­time for the rest of your life, be­cause there is no 'Delete' but­ton in cy­ber­space.

So much for the bul­ly­ing. The ques­tion is, 'What to do about it?' First­ly, un­der­stand that bul­ly­ing is about at­tack­ing your self-es­teem and mak­ing you feel small­er than the bul­ly. It's about con­trol. This is the com­mon el­e­ment, whether you're be­ing shoved around the play­ground or ha­rassed in the of­fice. A big part of that con­trol is find­ing a way to have pow­er over you, like out­num­ber­ing you. Bul­lies of­ten have a crowd of fol­low­ers, who wouldn't nec­es­sar­i­ly bul­ly on their own, but who will sup­port the lead bul­ly. The so­lu­tion for that is to have your own crowd. When you've got a group of friends who sup­port you, no mat­ter what, you're less vul­ner­a­ble to bul­lies. It's hard­er to bul­ly a whole group of peo­ple - the fight be­comes more equal, which bul­lies don't like. Some bul­lies de­rive their con­trol from hav­ing a po­si­tion of pow­er over you. This may be pow­er in the work­place or in the class­room or lec­ture room. Once again, a sup­port sys­tem is es­sen­tial.

In the work­place, hav­ing sup­port­ive col­leagues means you don't feel iso­lat­ed by the of­fice bul­ly. They may al­so sup­port you if you choose to take le­gal or in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. In the class­room or lec­ture room, you may not have the same re­course, but friends who are hav­ing the same ex­pe­ri­ence can help you keep a sense of per­spec­tive - be­cause a big part of be­ing bul­lied is start­ing to be­lieve that it's some­thing about you that's caus­ing it. In oth­er words, the bul­ly has achieved his/her goal of de­stroy­ing your self-es­teem. Fi­nal­ly, ask, re­quest, de­mand help. Bul­ly­ing stops when oth­er peo­ple get in­volved and when bul­lies are open­ly con­front­ed. Bul­lies of­ten don't both­er to hide be­cause they re­ly on every­one's silent com­pli­ance. Peo­ple of­ten don't know what to do, so they be­come un­com­fort­able and try to pre­tend it isn't hap­pen­ing. Bul­lies re­ly on in­tim­i­da­tion so they're not used to as­sertive con­fronta­tion and re­sis­tance, let alone counter-pres­sure. Of­ten when you speak up, oth­er peo­ple come for­ward to talk about al­so be­ing vic­timised and to form a bloc with you.

So for bul­ly­ing, the rules are:

1. Don't let your­self be iso­lat­ed.

2. Don't be­lieve any­thing the bul­ly tries to tell you.

3. Find help.

4. Stand up and shout about it! It's not OK and it's time it stopped.