Mean Girls….and How To Be One. Or Not.

How to be a Mean Girl

• Exclude people - in person, in chats, in photos, on social media
  
• Create a clique (excused as your tight-knit group)
  
• Gossip
  
• Deliberately turn people against someone
  
• Weaponise or control friendships
  
• Cut people off as soon as they don’t agree with your world view
  
• Consciously and obviously ignore someone
  
• Betray someone’s trust
  
• Be two-faced
  
• Judge and criticise a targeted person
  
• Set people up to humiliate them
  

We all know this behaviour. If we haven’t done it, we’ve participated in it at some point. Until we learn to develop emotional intelligence and behave differently.

How to enable the Mean Girl

• Participate in the mean girl behaviour
  
• Be glad it isn’t you… and participate
  
• Know what is happening is not OK….and participate
  
• Laugh uncomfortably at the mean thing said….and participate
  
• Say nothing to avoid being the target
  
• Pretend it’s not happening
  
• Especially as a parent, make excuses and justifications for the behaviour
  
• Not listen to that gut feeling that this is not ok….and participate
  
• Not call the behaviour out
  

These people are also called bystanders. I’m going to be blunt here. If you behave in these ways – YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. Not the bully, ringleader, alpha, or whatever you want to call the Mean Girl. YOU. A bully needs an audience. Otherwise there is no point to what they are doing. The behaviour needs to be seen and validated in order to make it worthwhile. And every time you allow this to happen without saying “This is wrong” or “I’m not OK with what you are doing”, you are validating the behaviour, saying it is perfectly acceptable to behave like this, and enabling it to continue. And you justify it in your head with a variety of excuses about at least it’s not me, they deserved it, I didn’t realise it was a problem, and for parents, my child wouldn’t do that. Be honest with yourself – you know this, I don’t need to tell you this.

It is not OK to enable Mean Girl behaviour. It is not OK to enable Mean Girl behaviour. It is not OK to enable Mean Girl behaviour. I hope that is clear enough.

The effects of Mean Girls

• Closing off emotionally
  
• People-pleasing
  
• Poor self-worth
  
• Turning to drugs and alcohol
  
• Risky behaviours
  
• Aggressive or reactive behaviours
  
• Trust issues
  
• Never feeling safe
  
• Not able to relax
  
• Becoming the Mean Girl themselves
  
• Eating disorders
  
• Gastrointestinal conditions
  
• Increased anxiety symptoms
  
• School can’t
  
• Sleeplessness
  
• Nervous system stress – wired or on all the time
  
• Long lasting guilt and shame
  
• Difficulty making and maintaining friendships and relationships
  
• Diagnosed mental health conditions, especially depression and anxiety
  
• Self harm
  
• Suicide
  

This is not a complete list by any means. As you can see, the effects can be lifelong, life changing or life ending. Many of these effects can be explained for a while with other conditions and challenges. More often than not, when I ask a person, or their body with kinesiology, their problems started when they felt one of these effects as a result of the behaviour of the alpha Mean Girl or their merry gang of enablers. Someone they thought was their friend.

Do you want to be the person responsible for these effects?

Some of my experiences

I haven’t been bullied since I was in Year 7 in 1989. The girl in Year 10 that bullied me and many of my Year 7 friends got a dose from me of what she was giving me, and strangely enough, the behaviour stopped. Nobody ever picked on me again at school. As an adult and a therapist, this is not my first recommended option!

As a parent of a school aged child, I had a situation where one of my kids was constantly excluded, left out, made fun of, humiliated in front of the other kids and then it escalated to being pushed over, having their locker broken into and prawn shells stuffed in there on a Friday afternoon, having their head slammed into the lockers, a banana mashed into their head on the bus, and assaulted repeatedly. They started displaying many of the effects listed above. It wasn’t the physical issues, it was the emotional scars left behind.

Another issue faced repeatedly by one of my children was the social exclusion. Being the one child left out of an invitation, a chat group, a party, a day out, an event. I remember them bringing a girl home in Year 7, and after they left, I said “You do know you’ve made friends with Regina George, don’t you?” (this is a Mean Girls movie reference – if you haven’t watched it, you should! It’s an excellent guide in how not to behave) As a kinesologist, I observe beahviour and body language for a living, and this girl was exacltly like Regina George. My child said “No, they’re nice to me this week”. Predictably, the situation played out just like Mean Girls. Again, the issue was the emotional scars left behing, and they started displaying many of the above effects.

I have many stories and could write a book on them alone. As I shared at the beginning, this behaviour isn’t just at school, it continues on well into adulthood.

Why Do Kids Have Such Trouble These Days At School?

In short, it is most often the example that is set by the adults around them. All children are a product of their environment – parents, school, extra-curricular activities, their peers and their parents.

If the parents or other influential adults are Mean Girls, then the children are likely to display the same behaviour. If the parents or other influential adults around them are Mean Girl Enablers, then the children are likely to display the same behaviour. If the parents or other influential adults are suffering the effects of the Mean Girl behaviour and are still wearing the wounds, then the children are likely to display the same behaviour. This becomes a snowball effect, and we can see then how this problem grows year on year, generation by generation.

You even see the Mean Girls behaviour in the groups of parents at school – look out for this next time you are at school pickup or are at a school event! You see it in the workplace – you know what I am talking about, you’ve seen in. When you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The problem is, the kids grow up to become adults, and their behaviour matches their internal world and the life lessons they have been taught. And so it continues.

What Do We Do Differently To Overcome The Mean Girl Effect?

• Don’t be the Mean Girl – all the behaviours are above, don’t do that as a start
  
• Don’t be the Mean Girl Enabler – all the behaviours are above, don’t do that as a start
  
• Don’t carry the baggage of emotional wounds for years and decades – come and see me or another therapist to put this baggage down. You can’t suppress it forever, your body will let you know all about that.
  
• Learn emotional intelligence, healthy conflict, emotional regulation and accountability, and effective communication skills.
  
• Be the change you want to see. Include people. Invite them to join you. Be kind – not nice, kind. Nice is often part of the problem, because it is easy to dip into enabling in order to be “nice”.
  
• Find your own way to call out the behaviour – my method won’t work for everyone, even my current very direct method. I have been known to publicly share screenshots of very nasty DM’s sent to me and publicly call out poor behaviour when I see it, and I will resort to this when other less public methods do not work.
  
• Have your friends’ backs – in front of them, and behind them. This is called personal integrity and shows your character. If you’re doing the wrong thing by one person, you’re doing it to others.
  
• End toxic friendships or friendships that have run their course. It’s OK. Sometimes risking being alone is exactly the door that will open to find your real people.
  
• Learn about the feeling senses in your body and what they mean – these are your guide. If you look back in hindsight, you’ll see how your body showed you at some point that what you were doing, or what you were experiencing was not ok.
  
• Choose to make people feel safe in your presence. Not just physically, emotionally.
  
• Teach your children how to do the same. Pull them up on their Mean Girl behaviour and have effective consequences. Model the behaviour you want to see.
  
• Work on yourself. This life journey is one of personal development and evolution. Evolve.
  

I don’t often see the Mean Girl in clinic. I do see the Mean Girl Enabler. If you recognise the traits of either in yourself, perhaps it’s time to come and see me, and learn a new way of being.

What If I Am Suffering The Effects Of Mean Girls?

It is definitely time to come and see me. Let’s offload the emotional wounds and the physical effects. These happen in your body more so than your head. I hold a safe space for you to share your story, the effects and how you feel. Then I help you shift those feelings in your body, help you feel safe, find your personal power, and redefine how to interact in your life and truly find peace, calm and contentment.