Making noise about bullying

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1:53Hey everyone, welcome along to another episode of the High Performance Podcast. and today we're talking about bullying because next week is anti-bullying week and I'm here with Professor Damien Hughes as always and Damien I remember really early on when me and you were together you you gave me this brilliant line about resilience and kindness and I've always remembered that I think maybe that's a nice way to start this conversation. Yeah I think it calls off companies that say we want to develop the resilience of our staff to be able to cope and my question is is it a resilience problem or a cultural problem because the point i make is that i've never met anyone that needs to be resilient in the face of being treated with kindness and dignity and respect i've met lots of people that need to be resilient in the face of people being judgmental or harsh or too scathing on them and i think that's an important point for us to remember for this that being bullied and feeling wounded or sensitive about it isn't a sign of weakness on the part of an individual.

2:51It's the sign that they're entirely human, that they have the access to the full spectrum of human emotions. And it's entirely normal to feel that way. So it's often that we're not lacking resilience. We're lacking being surrounded by kindness. We've had many guests on the podcast who've talked about the topic of bullying. Where should we begin? Well, one of the most powerful examples we had was when we sat down with Vex King. We did it in front of a live audience at the O2 Indigo. in London and Vex spoke to us about how these experiences can be seared in our memory. He recounted an example of bullying from the age of five.

3:28Let's listen to the power of that. So I think I was around five years old and it's weird when people say you remember that from, you know, such a young age but when there's so many, you know, high energy emotions there it's kind of hard to forget those those things and what I saw and I still remember it I mean it's quite blurry but I still remember it I saw a few guys taking fosters out one of the fridges because they were robbing the place um my two sisters so we've all got a two-year age gap so my eldest would have been nine and the middle sister would have been seven at the time and There was two guys pulling their hair, other guys pulling my mum's hair and my aunt's hair, and then my uncle with the nose full of blood and a gun to his head.

4:28I'm looking at this, and I'm angry, but I'm scared. And I think anger is our defense against pain. And I want to do something, but I don't know what I can do. So I head down towards the stairs with my fists clenched. I'm like I don't know what I'm going to do but I'm going to do something and then my mum sees me from the corner of my eye and mother's instinct is to protect her child so she runs across and she's just like stay there don't move and I go back up and I'm like I just don't know what I just I just witnessed and thankfully my uncle and my family were okay after that but I just felt like after that moment I was always on high alert let's be really clear right at the beginning i mean that story goes way beyond bullying you know that's a that's an assault and a robbery happening in vex's home but the reason why you know you felt that was relevant here is because actually whether it's something as horrific as vex's experience there or whether it's just that kind of low grade persistent constant mickey taking and name calling at school this does stay with people doesn't it they do carry this for the rest of their lives.

5:43Yeah, that old saying that sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me, isn't actually psychologically true. There's research from a psychologist called Naomi Esenberger in America that has proven that the impact on your brain is just as wounding when somebody is unkind to you, when somebody excludes you, when somebody makes you feel violated in any way. That's just as powerful as being punched in the mouth. And that's what Vex is describing been there almost like how horrific the scars that can often be left behind from bullying and as you say that's a very extreme example that he offers but I think we all need to be aware of sometimes that the impacts of our words that they can have on other people and start to just consider it yeah and I think you know not just assume that none of us are bullies I think everyone has this starting point well I'm not a bully but I really look at the way you talk and the things that you do and you know we've heard this theme numerous times on the podcast from guests haven't we yeah i mean let's listen to another example of it from again a live show that we were lucky enough to do with the brilliant comedian russell cain because sometimes we think that well bullying can only be happen outside the home but russell recounts a conversation with his dad that again was similarly wounding in its effect let's have a listen to him obviously i've moved out i'm living the high life, advertising and all that.

7:12I'd gone for Sunday lunch or something. I said, I've done something crazy. I'm going to do an amateur comedy night. It's in the diary for September. So yeah, my dad passed early September and this was late September. And my dad didn't look up. He went, I tried it once. Waste of fucking time. Did he? That's it. That was the only comment that was ever passed. He did try it. He did try it. I was a red coat for a season. I was covered in birds. I fucking loved it. That's what he said. I'm not saying it to be funny. I'm not spiritual. I wish I was. I'm jealous of those of you that have belief. I genuinely mean that.

7:43But what a strange coincidence, because I obviously was in the process of organising my dad's funeral. My brother by now had started to, as I describe it, descend into darkness, was getting very ill. He'd been sectioned twice. So I was trying to deal with my brother, who obviously went completely crazy when my dad went like that suddenly. so I was dealing with that dealing with my brother's mental health sitting on the steps of Enfield council trying to get my brother housed trying to deal with my mum my dad died while they were on holiday I had to organize that get the body back and then my first gig came up right in the middle of all that and I went through with it so that's a really powerful example of how sometimes bullying can often be just a casual dismissal of somebody Russell recounts there how he shared that he's taken a great leap into the unknown he's going after his dream and even his dad whether it was said with the best of intentions can sometimes it can be just that casual dismissal like he did there that can wound us or deflate us and again it's a reminder to all of us that words have the power to lift people but equally they have the power to deflate them too who would you like to hear from next well let's listen to courtney black the brilliant fitness influencer so couldn't is a great example of that quote that hurt people hurt people i couldn't understand why someone couldn't think the way that i thought about food and i just remember i made her cry and that was such a turning point in my career because i thought i never want anyone to feel like that and i just thought why am i being so ununderstanding and i could never understand how people didn't think the way that i thought and it was quite it's quite an upsetting thing but now i can look back and that made me like the business person I am today.

9:28And that made me help so many people today because I've learned from their mistakes. Interesting. I mean, it's worth actually just tackling this subject for a moment about the impact of bullying, positive, negative on someone's life. You know, me and you've worked together now for the last three years, and you'll know when we do stuff on stage, I often ask people in the audience to think about their collaborators. And they'll often think about the great boss or the brilliant parents or those wonderful friends and I then remind them you know everyone's a collaborator in your life including you know people who've brought stress and anger and disappointment and sadness into your world and you know I was bullied at school as you know and had to change schools in the end it was like pretty horrific to be honest um but I see those people now as as my collaborators I see they lit a fire in me I see they built my resilience I I mean, I remember so vividly watching my mom's car pull off each day and thinking, I can't do this for another eight hours, but then turning around and walking in.

10:28And I'm not saying I want, you know, I abhor bullying. I don't want anyone to go through it, but I do now from a personal level, I see the value to me of just having to keep going, just having to walk in, just having to get through another day. I wouldn't say I wish I'm sort of glad it happened. I'm not at that point, but I can see the value in what I love learn from it. So what would you say was the biggest thing that you took away from it, Jake? I think, uh, there's a couple of things. The first one is that you're stronger than you think. Like every day when you think, I just can't do this again.

11:00And then you get to the end of another day and you think, okay, that's, that's gone, that's gone. All right. Um, the, the sort of human resolve. Like I remember there was these two big buses parked in the car park at the school, this is a high school. And I used to just go between them every lunch and break time and just to eat my sandwiches between these two buses and I remember that feeling of safety when I was in there like no one could know where I was or whatever and it's ridiculous that's no way to live when you're at school but I now look back and I think bloody hell man like you did that every day found your place went there you kept yourself safe and whatever so that I like the resolve that I managed to find and I think the final thing is the power of like forgiveness like sometimes I see pictures of those early years at high school we're talking year seven year eight and I look at the kids and i'm like they bullied me like they're tiny because of course they're tiny they're 11 yeah 12 years old and i've told i've no hang-ups about them at all they were little kids they weren't especially um horrible or nasty kids they probably had some bad messaging at home or they were a bit unhappy about various things or they just kind of got carried away with it and caught up with it but there's no anger now from me i just sort of it's a good reminder at an early age that human beings can be a bit rough yeah and you've spoken as well about how when you first went in the pit lane and formula one and you broadcast into millions that your mind went back to those school days yeah did you think about those collaborators even then yeah absolutely you know i think that i've always thought about fate as like life goes by so fast that i've kind of really develop this mindset that every single thing that happens is all part of what's going to happen.

12:44So you shouldn't discard any experience. You know, I don't think we can just think that the good stuff that happens to us is useful and the bad stuff is not very useful. If anything, it's arguably the other way around. And I think the final thing that bullying gave me is an ability to like to connect with people because that become like, I didn't, I never punched anyone back. so your only escape becomes almost to like charm them or to chat your way through it or to sort of banter your way through it and find some common ground with someone really fast so i think that's something that i've probably taken from that time you know you can throw me into any room anywhere with anyone and i'll try and connect to them and i think i that was at one time that was like a like a survival or a safety thing but it's now really really valuable actually in uh in adult life you know i think what you've described there jake is what we've heard from other guests is just the ability to reframe a situation and try and take the positives or see something valuable out of it and that reminds me of the chat we had with ashley cain where he pulled me up short for a phrase that i used let's have a listen to it and we'll talk a bit more detail about it what were the people around you in your inner circle your family that had been there and seen the kid that was being bullied and the lad that had gone through these difficulties don't say bullied but yeah gone through a lot, carry on sorry I'm only messing yeah it's an important distinction but the lad that what do my family say?

14:10I'm used to fighting and I'm used to being in uncomfortable positions and I've been used to it since being a kid so I didn't want to go in and tell my nan and grandad they're old, you know I didn't want to put them under that kind of pressure, they wouldn't be ready for it, I was you know and I don't look back at that, I think that was bullying I don't look back at it and wish it never happened but the life that I've had to live that was necessary See that to me was a really good way of somebody refusing to allow a label to define them so what Ashley described to us in the episode was people waiting outside his school gates to beat him up for his sporting prowess that he was displaying and he often had to run away from them or dodge or sometimes he'd stay and fight and that to me was what I would categorize as bullying and yet he refused to allow himself to ever be seen as being bullied I think that's really powerful and I hope that this is especially useful for maybe parents who are listening to this who've got a child who's currently struggling with it or even an adult you know is suffering with with bullying I think the other thing is that I think we label people straight away and it would have been so easy for Ashley Cain to label those people as nasty and people who don't bully them as nice, right?

15:22The truth is human beings are more complex than that. Like you are one of the nicest, kindest, calmest people I've ever met, right? But maybe we should tell people a story about what you did when you were young, because it would be easy for the person on the receiving end of what went on to go, oh yeah, that Damien Hughes, I've heard him on a podcast, he's a bully. But that's the truth is you're not. But I think when we share the story, we can explain further that human beings are more complex than being one thing or another yeah so the example that you reference shake is so i've i grew up in a boxing gym and so i i was around sort of what you'd regard as quite an alpha sport for all my life and when i boxed i remember being in the ring one day with a guy that i was overmatched with which means that i was i was stronger faster and better than him and in that situation the convention in the boxing gym was you go down to the level of your opponent and you help them you coach them and teach them but I was 14 and an idiot and chose not to do that so I chose to exert my power over the guy was fighting so I knocked him around a bit I sort of embarrassed him and essentially did what they were calling boxing I took some liberties with him and when I'd finished I felt pretty pleased with myself and as I went to climb out the ring my dad stopped me and suggested that I stay in the ring because I hadn't done much of a workout and then he put in a young professional boxer with me who spent the next 15 minutes just teaching me the biggest lesson I've ever received so he didn't physically hurt me but emotionally he just taught me a lesson he missed that he slipped every punch of fear at him he'd sort of jabbed my own head off and he just served me this big slice of humble pie and what I was aware of even when this was happening was everybody in the gym stopped to enjoy watching me get taught a lesson and as I climbed out of the ring I thought I thought I was going to cry I was that embarrassed and my dad came up to me and said how do you feel and I couldn't speak properly and he said how you feel now is exactly what you just did to somebody 15 minutes earlier and he said don't ever ever behave like that in life again now I can tell that story 30 plus years later and it still gives me the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and goosebumps because it was a really important lesson that sometimes we all can get a little bit carried away and can't see the world beyond the end of our own nose we can be unkind and think that it's not about the person we're treating unkindly it's sometimes it's our own ego getting in the way and that's something that I often reflect on myself that I hate injustice I hate somebody using their power to to put somebody down as opposed to try to lift them up and you're right and I think that's what brings us to the final clip that is worth sharing here because it's often a reminder that bullies are hurt people themselves let's listen to a conversation with the billion psychologist dr pippa grange on this very topic how would you encourage anyone listening to this then to challenge that kind of culture where uniformity or stripping people of their sense of uniqueness is endemic.

18:35It's such a great point to bring up. I agree with you about banter. There's a real difference between wit and fun, you know, but banter is quite often used at somebody else's cost. To exclude rather than to include. To exclude rather than to include, exactly. It's got a barbed edge, as you say. and you know it you describe it's a defense of the dickhead and i would say it's a defense of the fearful so pippa's description is far better than mine yeah they're both accurate they're both accurate but i uh i think the point she makes is a very interesting one isn't it yeah it's often it's a defense mechanism when people are feeling insecure or lost or lonely we lash out at people to make ourselves feel better at the expense of somebody else.

19:24And I think for anyone that maybe see themselves as a victim of some of this unkind behavior that we've covered earlier, sometimes just remember that it's hurt people hurting people. It's often people that are wounded themselves that are trying to wound others. And I think when you can view the perpetrators in that light, it gives you the capacity, as you said, to forgive them rather than to carry that anger and resentment towards them around. And it's difficult, especially at a young age, to do that. But it's one of those ones that if we can just remember, like lean into people and understand that they're just sharing their own pain through their actions, right?

20:02If you can live with that, then as you grow and you get older, I think on reflection, it takes the pain away because you go, do you know what? I understand actually what that was about. I don't think it makes it less painful in the moment. But I think with hindsight, it actually does give you the opportunity to reflect in a much more healthy way. Thank you, mate. Thank you, mate. I've enjoyed this conversation and hopefully it helps anybody that maybe sees themselves as being on the receiving end of some of this unkindness that gives them the tools to understand that what's hard for you isn't necessarily bad for you.

20:35Absolutely. And if you're struggling with bullying or anything else in your life, we always recommend here on High Performance that you take a look at the resources available on jack.org, J-A-A-Q. It actually stands for Just Ask a Question, jaaq.org there's loads of great resources there whatever it is that you're struggling with bullying among them and for more information about anti-bullying week just search on the internet anti-bullying week and you can get all the information right there thanks a lot damien thanks jake loved it and thank you for listening and continuing to listen to the high performance podcast