An acquaintance said to me the other day (in a moment of frustration I am sure) “I think we need a support group for Victims of Adult Bullies”.
My first thought was “well the acronym V.O.A.B. works for the support group, you know…..’Our VOAB meetings will be on Thursday nights’” but I could see she was serious and I asked her why she thought it was necessary. She said she was tired of being “looked down on, gossiped about, and generally snubbed” by some of the elite crowd of AV Women.
Hmmm. Interesting. Having had some similar experiences I had to ponder her request.
It would be nice to think that as a person ages chronologically so does their level of maturity. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Observation. There is a clique of middle-aged women who are well known citizens of the AV who generally sit together and hang together and critique everyone else around them. Given half a chance they like to prove their superiority (not by their constant reference to designer labels or by their association to other socialites) but by bullying someone of their choice.
This was a behavior seen in grade school and by some in high school, but the assumption is that it is outgrown in adulthood. No “bullying” is alive and well. We all know the gals who like to brag about the number of shoes, bags or closets in their house they have commandeered. That’s ok. That’s just ego. It is the destructive nature of the picking and gossip that is not ok. And singling someone out, to try to “bring them down” is just downright evil, low-vibing and nauseating.
I had never thought about these women as “bullies”, I preferred to use the term “energy vampires”. People who delighted in demeaning you in any way possible because of their own insecurities hoping to deplete or suck out your joyous energy, to capture it to replace their empty pit of insecurity. I guess it’s all the same thing. It is a vicious cycle. We just can not buy into it.
It is time for us to let them know it is not ok. We don’t need to listen or participate in any way. Another friend had a great idea which was to have some extra copies of the DVD “Mean Girls” in our purse to hand out at the at the appropriate time…but then, I guess that would be stooping to their level not too mention cost prohibitive albeit egoically satisfying. One thing to keep in mind is that while their focus is on us, someone else is getting a break. Grandma had the best advice, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”.
