The Blurred Lines Between Bullying and Stalking Behavior

Is there Really a Difference Between Bullying and Stalking? Yes there is… And not really. Not all bullies are stalkers but all stalkers are bullies. With lines being blurred everywhere you turn, keeping your focus and wits about you is important through this struggle. The distinction between a bully and a stalker, certainly in our case may be unique compared to other people’s experience but it is worth writing about. The language we use to describe people acting out certain types of behaviors only serves to isolate and fragment each type of behavior. If it is one thing I have learned about dealing with a stalker, especially a persistent one it is that at some point the bully and the stalker are one in the same.

Which Came first? The Bully or the Stalker?

If I look back at my experience with bullies they were usually quite proud, confident and very public about their behavior. Bullies had a posse. They had loyal groupies that were fearful of them and would do their bidding. These people made both the perfect accomplices and ‘fall guys’, or ‘fall girls’ in the case of mean girl bullies. They would join in on all the bullying, do the bidding of the bully and then take the hit when things went sideways, as they usually do at some point. Once you get any of the groupies alone, there was usually all kinds of awkwardness because a great deal of their persona went into that bully dependent relationship. The groupies did not know how to be or who to be if they had to have a conversation with the target of the bullying. Since up to this experience I did not have much if any experience with stalkers and I did have friends who went through bad break ups which came with a ‘stalker package’ but things worked out as people moved on. This experience however is all wrong in so many ways… With this experience you have someone working so very hard (even though we know who they are) to remain in the shadows but is either addicted to the bullying part or is so obsessed they can’t stop… Either way, I think they transitioned from the stalker to the bully as they learned what they could get away with. When you have a bully who now uses stalking as the main methods to bully you have the problems of both on your hands. Just try not to think about that reality too much… This means you have all the benefits of the bully who loves to hurt people in that wonderful public way plus all the sneaky, hidden methodologies of the stalker who wants to harm, but watch everything and yet keep their privacy intact. Awesome…

Pretense is King

Ahh… the pretense. Call it whatever you want but pretending to be something you are not is still a pretense. You are pretending and showing one face to some people, another face to yet more people, and being yet something else to others. As a bonus you collect all this information from all of these points of view and can use it as currency with all of these people in a myriad of ways as you go about your stalker bullying.

Acting… And Acting Out to Work Out Your Issues.

This is a topic that has been touched on in several different ways. You have to be very careful in empathizing the wrong way with these folks. Something about stalkers feeds on pity… self pity… pity from others. It has to have something to do with passive aggressive behavior and getting others to be complicit via passive aggressive behavior. From what I can see and have learned maybe they are working out their issues… in a very illegal way. In any event, if you are dealing with one of these or a variation of one of these, no matter how tired or worn out you are never forget they are acting at all times and you are just one more stage prop.