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Inside The Mind of A Bully

An Interview

By Donna Smith

Wouldn't you love to get inside a bully's head and see what makes him tick? What is he thinking when he picks on your child? Where does his anger come from? If you met Troy today, you might not suspect that he was once a bully, but he'll tell you here how bullying changed his life.

Q. What kind of kids did you single out to bully?

Troy: I guess I bullied the usual people. I bullied the smelly people, the "weird" people, and the people who were different.

Q. Why these particular people?

Troy: Looking back, I think I bullied the people who let themselves be bullied. People without self-respect or people whom I didn't respect for whatever reasons. For this reason (more likely because I was one of them), I never bullied the "nerds" or the "geeks."

Q. Why do you think you were a bully?

Troy: I was a bully because it was the cool thing to do. A good portion of it wasn't physical bullying -- though much of that did occur. More often than not, I bullied people psychologically and emotionally. When it became more than they could handle, I ended up being the physical bully as well. I started out as what was probably the jester, or class clown.

Q. When did it evolve into physical bullying?

Troy: I think it evolved into physical bullying when people would have just about enough of me and want to fight. It was only then would I realize I could be, and eventually became, a physical bully. It was unfortunate, though, because peers as well as faculty associated me with pseudo-leadership, physical violence and such. It became a burden with people wanting to "school yard" brawl to take me from my "throne."

Q. Did you end up fighting?

Troy: I had to fight when I didn't want to and when you're a young adult you don't understand the whole "it takes a real man to walk away from a fight" bit. The girls liked me because of this control. Unfortunately, it got to the point where I was set up for fights by friends or girls -- as if I was some prize fighter -- but everyone was either afraid of me and didn't stand up for themselves or hated me thinking I was the coolest guy in the world.

Want to see more?

• How to Handle Bullies, Teasers and Other Meanies A Book that Takes the Nuisance out of Name Calling and Other Nonsense -- excerpts from the book by Kate Cohen-Posey
• Read parts two of our bullying series.
• Read parts one of our bullying series
• We also have a review of the book for dealing with bullies.
• We also have a discussion forum for dealing with bullies.