Fear is the major factor in children & young people tolerating schoolyard bullies. They might physically hurt you, might do even worse verbal or emotional damage than they've already done.
Fear is the major factor adults tolerate bullies, either at home or at work. They might do worse damage to your self or your career.
Friendship is a major factor in why most older people living in an institutional setting - even the nicest "senior lifestyle residence" - tolerate being verbally, emotionally, even physically bullied by peers.
Is there an age where friendship & some semblance of a social safety net seem more important than older age? Friends matter to the elderly, to a depth I can't begin to understand.
As important as a strong circle of friends was in high school, it pales to its importance to the elderly, especially those living in some sort of senior residence. They don't need studies to know that having a strong social network where they live helps nurture not only a happier but also a longer & healthier life.
It is the blessed older who has a circle of good friends where he or she lives, people who enjoy their company, do things with them, share stories hopes fears. It's not easy. It is wonderful when someone has a longtime friendship with other residents, but it is not the norm. The friendships made in this moment are all-important & carry great weight.
And therein can lie the problem.
It's not just the obvious fact that just because someone is grown up doesn't mean they act like mature adults. If they were catty back-biters in their youth, chances are they still are in older age. It would be nice if age always brought wisdom, but it just as often brings fear regret disappointment. And that produces fertile ground for bullying, if only to feel some false sense of control, however negative.
From what I've observed, even in older age men tend to be open in their jabs, whether verbal or physical. Women tend to be subtler, which can make their handiwork even more devastating. Unlike men, they tend to keep their digs & jibes under the radar, are more apt to be critical behind someone's back. When they are open, are apt to shrug off tormenting as merely teasing.
The reasons for elderly bullying are far too many to put to paper, way too many for me to begin to grasp. But I can come up with one reason above all others for why their victims don't call them on it, don't lodge complaints or take other effective action to make it stop -- the pernicious power of friendship.
How could friendship be pernicious? Oh, so easily. It would be easy if the victim could just address the problem head on, if she or he could report it to the authorities & know that they would handle it effectively, if she or he had friends who could stand down the bully. Most of those options seem pipe dreams to olders suffering at the hands of a peer bully.
What holds most olders back from effectively handling a peer who is bullying them or their friends? It seems to me it would be the fear of loss of friendship, a tearing apart of their carefully woven social safety net, their fear that one tug at a loose thread & it will tatter into pieces.
How does an elderly being bullied - in whatever way - balance with maintaining their personal sense of self-esteem & their fear of ostracism? To many of them, these friendships - fragile, with shallow roots - are what stand between them & darkness. From what I've seen, it feels like too few consider their families bulwarks against such problems - too many olders are all too prone to be constantly scanning for the look or sound, the body movement, the tone that says they're chomping at the bit to hang up the phone or leave. Too many olders have lost confidence in themselves, no long able to do once mundane things - to dig a garden, to balance a checkbook, to drive a car. It's the people who live with them who understand their challenges, their dread, their fear.
One of my grannie clients fell in the hallway. Five of her friends banded together to help get her up, making sure no one reported it to staff.
Elders need other elders in ways I can't begin to comprehend.
These are the moments when I wish I had considerably better writing skills. I keep adding more, scrambling to come up with a more coherent expression of what is in my heart.
It just overwhelms me, this realization that olders aren't going to call out bullies for more reasons than I can list. Fear of the staff considering them a pot stirrer. Fear of being a bother to their family. Fear of making a fuss.
Above all, fearing the loss of friendship, of being ostracized, socially shunned. Who would sit with them at breakfast? Talk with them in the hallways? Share banter over afternoon tea?
Who would band together to lift them off the literal & figurative floor, protecting them from forces all too ready to limit their remaining freedoms?
Powerful stuff. And, yes - a pernicious power of friendship.
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