Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

The Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Welcome to Bullying Prevention Podcast number eight. We’re looking forward to talking today about, what you can do, if you’re being bullied. This is not for kids. This is for parents, for educators, for any kind of instructors, or people that work with kids. It also could be for kids. If you’re a kid, and you’re watching this, that’s great. Parents, you could have your kids watch this, and we can talk about exactly what they can do. I really want to encourage this to be for the adults, or caregivers, or people that work with kids, or educate kids, so that you can have some ideas and things to do, and not really just ideas, but give you a step by step method, so that you can help kids work on what they need to do, to help them when they get bullied.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Now, bullying is a complicated thing. Let me start out by introducing myself, in case somebody hasn’t watched some of the other podcasts, and this is the first time that you’ve seen us. Maybe you skip right to this one, because you wanted to know, “Oh, I don’t care about all that other stuff. I want to know what to do.”

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Well, I’m going to summarize a little bit of what we talked about so far, so that you can do that. My name’s Greg Moody, I’m Dr. Greg Moody. I’m an eighth degree black belt, Chief Master Instructor. I’ve been working on bullying prevention for, geez, probably 15 years now. I’ve been doing it for about 30 years, really, in the work I’ve done with kids, and in the work I’ve done in psychology, and in martial arts, and in working with kids directly.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

My background is, I’ve got a PhD in education, a Master’s degree in counseling psych, and my PhD in education is also in counseling psychology. Specialty is working with kids, and that’s all my doctoral work has been in that. It’s important to know that, that’s my space to come from. That’s what I really am passionate about, and love. What I am passionate about, is two things, is preventing bullying, but also understanding bullying in a way that you can make concrete, so that if you don’t understand bullying, then you won’t be very good at preventing it. You’ll make a lot of mistakes, because you’ll miss some of the common myths. You’ll miss M-I-S-S some of the common myths, M-Y-T-H, that are out there about bullying. What people think is common sense, is almost all wrong about bullying.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Watch the other podcasts, and as we go through here, I’ll summarize a few things that’ll be part of our training that we do. We’ve done a lot of this training with hundreds, and hundreds of kids, if not thousands of kids, I think across the country. The people that I’ve trained, have done a lot of this work in various ways. Some of this will be new for them, but it’s going to be a little bit different for maybe them, even if they’re watching this podcast. A few things about me. You can see some of my podcasts also on Dr. Greg Moody.com, and see my books at amazon.com/author/gregmoody.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

All right, I don’t have Dr. Laura, or Senior Master Laura Sandborn here today, but we’ll muddle through, and we’ll invite her to be at one of our next things. So bullying is something that is intentional. This is a couple things with the definition, and when we do work with kids, we have to make sure that when we’re asking them about bullying, we understand the difference between conflict, which is another thing that I am passionate about, and specialize in. Conflict resolution, bullying, and violence. These are three separate things that need three separate solutions. If something is violent, this means by our definition that we’re going to go by today, is you’re in danger of serious injury, or death.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Okay? If something’s violent, it’s not the other two things. It’s not conflict resolution. It’s not bullying, you’re in trouble, and you then need to do some self defense.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

This may mean escaping, fighting back. There’s a whole range of things. Since I’m an eight degree black belt, we teach a lot of martial arts, but there’s other forms of self defense that you can use. I like escaping. There’s a first rule, but there’s lots of other things you can do. If you’re in danger of serious injury, or death, I want to emphasize that’s not bullying. That’s not conflict resolution. It’s not what we’re going to cover today.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

You’ve got to know the difference between these things, because you can’t use the same tools. These are three separate tool sets. There are three separate toolboxes that we’re going to use. In the violent situation, when bullying becomes violent, or when conflict becomes violent, you’ve got to change. You’ve got to shift into violence prevention, violence recognition, and self-defense. This is very different. All the way to an active shooter event, all the way to other types of defenses, and we have a great company that I do work with, which is form a strategy, that does wonderful work with active shooter, workplace violence, and other areas of violence that we recommend, and we do some training with that.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

We’re not going to cover that today, but it’s important to know the definitions. Violence is when it progresses, and you’re in fear of serious injury, or death. Conflict resolution, is when two people are having conflict, and it’s peer to peer, or it doesn’t meet the definition of bullying. Let’s just say for now, for our definition, it’s not bullying.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Bullying is three things, and conflict is when it’s not bullying. We’re going to use that definition. I don’t like to use a not definition, but let’s use that, because it’ll make some sense in a second. It’s intentional to hurt. It has intention to hurt. Let’s just say intention to hurt. There’s intention to hurt. So conflict, I might hurt you. I might hurt your feelings. I might make you mad. I could even injure you, because if we’re in conflict, and we got in a scuffle, again, I’m not in danger of serious injury, or death, we might have been wrestling over something. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just wanted, if I was a kid, I wanted that toy. Or, we were trying to get on the elevator, and we were really mad at each other, for adults. As that happened, somebody got scratched, or somebody got a small injury.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

It’s not really serious injury, or death. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but I was too emotional, and things just got out of hand. It’s not bullying. It didn’t meet the intention to hurt criteria. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but maybe I was being a jerk, but I wasn’t intending to hurt. This is very important. The second thing, is it’s repeated over time, and I’m going to put in, usually. This could be something that would be small, it’s intended to hurt, and I do it regularly. I’m doing something mean every day, I’m doing it mean every day. I’m doing something small, but mean every day. Now, if it was something severe, one time, that would qualify under bullying.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

The third thing that’s very important in our definition, is there’s an imbalance of power. Let’s talk about that, in an adult environment, it would be your boss, or somebody that might write a report on you, or it could be even, in a work environment. It could be somebody that’s bidding on a contract. You’re trying to bid on a contract, and the person that’s making the decision on the contract could be bullying you. That would be an imbalance of power. Maybe they want some favors, or maybe they’re being very mean to you, and rude, and abusive on the phone.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

They’re using their imbalance of power to get some leverage on you. Imbalance of power, and in our other podcast, we’ve talked in some more detail about how this all matters. Conflict wouldn’t include… Now, you could have imbalance of power. You could have conflict between you, and your boss. If your boss isn’t intending to hurt you, it’s just a miscommunication. We use conflict resolution tools. It could even be, let’s use husband, wife relations. There could be an imbalance of power there, because one person may be a little stronger than the other. Shouldn’t be that way, we should have balanced relationships. But in reality, there may be a situation where there’s an imbalance of power for one reason, or another. But, there may not be an intention to hurt. Doesn’t mean there couldn’t be bullying in a personal relationship, in an adult relationship.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

There could be, but it’s different tools we use. Conflict resolution, also isn’t our topic today. You can look at some of our conflict resolution podcasts. You can look at Dr. Greg Moody.com for them. Through form of strategy, and we do some work with people on that. Bullying is different. Bullying is going to need different rules. If there’s an imbalance of power, well, why do we need different rules first of all? If there’s an imbalance of power, we may not have the capability to just negotiate. We may not be able to use certain tools that we would have, if it’s peer to peer. We may not be able to be reasonable with the other person, that we have a conflict with. It’s not the same. If the intention is to hurt, not just to get resources, or not just to win an argument, or some sort of other thing, then it’s an emotional difference.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Bullying has a lot of different components, than these other two pieces. Conflict resolution, and violence use different methods to get through. Okay. First, we have to establish, before we deal with bullying, is it bullying? I’ve been in lots of environments, especially when I teach bullying prevention, where the first thing that happens, is some event happens, and somebody calls it bullying, and usually it’s not. I was teaching as a school in Tucson, Arizona, and the principal walked in, the principal should have been in our training. The principal said, “Hey, there’s a bullying situation. I’ve got somebody stealing posters off the wall that another kid put up.” Was that bullying? It sounded like one kid was just vandalizing, and the other kid didn’t like it. I don’t know that the first kid had anything to do with the second kid.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

I don’t know that there was any intention, or now there might have been, there might have been a long term conflict, the second kid. But, it could have been that the first kid, and the second kid just had a big fight with each other. We don’t know what the situation is, so we don’t know. I didn’t notice that there was necessarily an imbalance of power, so that would’ve probably been, likely my guess is, that would’ve been more in the conflict resolution stage. They needed to have those kids sit down, or they need just deal with the kid that was stealing the posters, who sounded like the problem. And there needed to be some consequence for that kid. Probably didn’t even involve the first kid, the first kid got the bad end of the situation, because his posters got taken down.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Yes, he was the one that was the recipient of the bad situation, but there wasn’t really any relationship between him, as far as I could tell. There didn’t need to be the same kind of interaction. We need to understand this first, if we’re going to be good at helping kids. Remember, about a third of kids are involved in bullying. We don’t understand this, we’re missing out on a lot of situations. If you remember our last podcast, 4% of parents think their kids are being bullied from our data. For the martial arts group, 27% of kids were getting bullied. In the general population, about 14% are getting bullied, but about one third of kids are bullying in one way, or the other.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

This is a big deal, and most people don’t understand it. That’s why it doesn’t get identified. For teachers, remember our other data, only about 10% of bullying gets recognized. This is the reason why. All right, so let’s talk about what to do. That’s what we’re here for today.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

The first stage. I’m going to give you some categories that you can work with your students on, kids on, or if kids, you can work on these things too. I’m going to put this in terms of what you can do as a parent, and what you can do as an educator, to work with your kids. One of the first things that you would do, is work with them on how they think. Now, some of this comes a little bit from… By the way, do a little bit of work. We may end up doing a little bit of work on cognitive behavioral therapy here, when we were talking about this with kids. The first piece of it, is how they think.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Chapter one, or part one of this, is how kids think. The first piece of this, when we talk about how they think, is make sure that they know what kind of areas… By the way, all this training is for kids, whether they’re being bullied or not. But if the kids being bullied, what do you do? And how do you help? Ideally, you’re talking to your kid about this, or your kids if you’re an educator. I’m going to use the educator framework for this, for the most part. Parents, you’re going to adapt this for your individual kid. You talk to your kids about, what kind of places, and what kind of areas they should be thinking about, that bullying happens. Number one, is what scenarios?

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

First thing, in the think category is, what scenarios might happen, what things are bullying, what things aren’t bullying, and that way you can help them with the definition. What’s bullying, and what’s not. Where do you think bullying should happen? Where do you think bullying should not? Sally, where do you think bullying is at school? They may, or may not know, and you can help them, but ideally you’ll get them to tell you. Scenarios, come up with lots of scenarios, and we can give you some examples in, when we write this up in a book for you, but there’s lots of scenarios that may happen.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

I’ll give you some examples. I’ll give you some examples of locations in a second, but one of them is swirlies, that would be a scenario. You guys know what that is. In some schools, they get dirty swirlies. You can imagine what that is, that’s when there’s poop still in the toilet. Other scenarios where kids are getting pushed, or hit, or yelled at, we’ve covered a lot of these in our prior podcasts of relationship scenarios, where kids get left out, kids get excluded, kids don’t get included in games.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

There’s cyber bullying that can happen. What types of different scenarios can happen there. Without spending a lot of time on that, right now, preframing scenarios is one step, so that kids get to think about it. Another thing to do, is what are different spots? So scenarios, and spots. What are spots that might be more likely to get bullied? Where are places on the playground where kids get bullied? You can just ask the kids, where do other kids bully kids on the playground? Oh, it’s behind the big tree, where the teachers aren’t. Or, it’s in the bathroom where there’s no cameras. Or, it’s over here, in this part of the playground, or maybe the teachers are not really, they’re congregating in a different place. When we do training for teachers, we talk about how they can be distributed around the playground, so they make sure they can identify where bullying can happen, and where discipline issues would happen as well.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

It’s not just about bullying. A lot of times we survey, and test data before we work with the school, so we know where the bullyings happen as well. Hallways, bullying can happen, and mainly where there’s not as much adult supervision. You would think, and if you heard from our prior podcast, you would think that bullying often happens to, and from school, if they walk to school, a lot of kids don’t walk to school now, but very frequently bullying happens in the classroom with the teacher present. Knowing when that’s happening, knowing where that’s happening, you might find out that your kids being bullied, or that some of your kids, for educators are getting bullied. The third thing, is, so scenario, spots, and the third thing is focus.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Awareness, and focus is how they can keep, as they think, their eyes up, and look for some of these things. If you know what bullying is, and you know where it’s going to be, then you can focus on it. Scenarios, spots, and focus. This is the first step to being able to prevent bullying. That’s the first part of thinking. One of the things with focus, and spots is, also focus on kids, maybe that have a bad reputation, or that you know, which kids are also, which kids are bullying other kids. You know the kids that are bullying other kids, who does it. Now, if you’re an educator that may be a little awkward in the classroom, because it may be one of those kids. You may have to figure out a way to ask that question in a way, that’s not going to call out other kids, because the kids may not want to talk about it. The second piece of thinking, so this is, this is your cognitive.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

The second piece, is going to be your physical part of thinking. Now, what’s physical part of thinking? Is going to be breathing. In, and hold your breath, and out. In, hold your breath, and we’re just going to call this four by. This comes from a lot of things. You could in the military, they call it tactical breathing. In counseling, and psychological work, they’ll just call it four by breathing. If you breathe in, hold your breath, and breathe out in order to control it, it does a lot of things for your body. It helps calm you down, it lowers your heart rate, and it helps you make a decision more clearly. Breathe in for four, hold for four, and out for four. This is helpful for lots of things. It’s helpful for sports, it’s helpful for test taking, it’s helpful for lots of other things.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

You can get away with helping your kids do four by breathing for many different scenarios. You don’t have to paint it, as a way to do this for bullying, but when you do, when you are talking about bullying, if somebody’s upsetting you, if somebody’s pushing you, if somebody’s doing something that you don’t like, breathe in, hold, and breathe out, and I just did it, and I modeled it for you, and that’s how you would do it. You could also prompt breathing, by role playing bullying situations. You could have kids stand up, and somebody could say something to them. We like to use, “You’re purple.” Because, that’s not a mean word, but you can tell them, imagine the worst thing somebody would say to you, but don’t say it, and when they imagine that, you can say, “Well, okay, we’re not going to say those words, but imagine somebody saying it of saying that, they’re going to say, you’re purple.” The kids usually laugh when they hear that.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

I’m not going to say that. Imagine when they say you’re purple, it’s really one of those bad words, and then, they can pair up, and say, “You’re purple.” And they’ve got to breathe. They’ve got to do the four by breathing. Or, they can do, in a classroom setting. I wouldn’t have them push each other, in other settings, they could. If you’re a parent of a kid, you could push your kid, and just gently, just slightly, just really touching them, and they can breathe. Kids could lead that drill, and they could walk around, leading the drill. This is a way to thinking. You’ve got cognitive, and physical, and then the last one is choice.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

What would their decision be? They’re last thing, is decision. That’s the last part of think, is they have scenario spots focused, they breathe, and these are all drills you can do with them. Obviously, you’re not training them to remember all these, like a pneumonic, or anything of that nature, because I’ll come back to this. These are just different drills, and you’d read through these as you, or make some notes on these, and practice them. The decision, what would they do? They’ve got different decisions they could make. One would be, to walk away.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

They could change what they think, and we’ll come back to that. Then, that’s our main category here, is change what they think. The last one, is get support. The support could be from their friends, or from their teachers. Now, if you’re an educator, you’ve got to have the right idea here. It’s easy for you to say, come to me if anybody bothers you, but that may be counterproductive for them. If somebody’s getting bullied, and they come to you as a teacher, that may end up putting them in the crosshairs. We’ve got to figure out a situation where, they know that if they do come to you, that the process in the school is not going to keep the kid that comes to you safe. That’s when we develop a whole big program, and I do recommend the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, when they develop a whole big program, to make sure that the procedures in the school are correct.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Then, when a kid comes to the teacher, and says, “Hey, this is happening.” Then, the process is set up, such that, that kid doesn’t get in trouble with the other kids later. We want to make sure that the kids know, and if you’re a parent, and you tell your kid to get support, tell you, or tell the teacher, we have to make sure that we know what to do. In a later chapter, we’re going to tell you as parents, what to do when your kid says, “Hey, something’s happening in school, what do I do?” You running into the school, and lighting some fires under everybody, may, or may not be the right thing to do. We’ll talk about how to do that in a way that you will get good results from it.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Okay, so get support. Now, let’s talk a little bit about the thought part. The thought part, usually when we think stuff, when we feel really bad, because somebody’s bothering us, and your kid feels sad, or upset, or they get really anxious, because they’re getting bullied. It’s pretty hard to change that, and what we really want them to do, is get support, or get help. That’s what we want them to choose to do. When they’re scared, or they’re upset, or something’s happening, it’s pretty tough. I want to give you a little tool here to use, and you may, at the end, just have to give them support. What you do need to do, is give them support either way. In the middle of this, you can help them with this a little bit, but what happens in life, for anybody, is you have events like bullying, and they turn into some emotion, or some resultant feeling that you have about it.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

In this case, you’re getting bullied, and you feel scared, anxious, sad, upset, and maybe you’re not telling anybody. Remember, in our last podcast, we talked about 4% of parents are noticing that their kids are getting bullied. When in our sample group, 27% were. That’s pretty telling. In here, there’s a thought that goes on. Now, the thought might be for your kid, I better not say anything, or I’m going to get in trouble. I better not say anything, or the kid’s going to bully me more, or I’m not good enough, or I’m not strong enough, that’s why the kids bully me. There’s lots, and lots of thoughts that happen.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

It’s something to ask your kid, and be okay with, and be careful about this. Counselors can help with this a lot. I recommend that. What may happen, is your kid could have a thought like, “Well, he’s telling me this, because he’s right, because I’m not good enough.” We see this a lot with kids, that they end up feeling really bad about what’s going on. They end up having continued negative thoughts about things. Ask your kid what they’re thinking when they’re feeling emotion. This is pretty hard to dig out, so be patient. When your kid says something like, “Well, I feel that way, because he’s right. I’m not good enough.” Resist the feeling, and saying, “Oh, of course you’re good enough. I don’t know why anybody would say that. Why would you think that?”

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

Cause when I say that to somebody, now they’re being told that they’re being stupid as well, cause they shouldn’t think that. Be gentle, and patient with them, and help them. Another option is, you could replace that thought with something else. You might think that maybe the bully is having a bad day, or maybe you replace that with, if I get help, maybe I won’t feel so bad.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

There’s other options you could replace that with. Of course, we can help you with one of those if you contact us, or what to put in there, what to help your kid replace that with. Instead of telling them, “Hey, that’s terrible, I can’t believe you think that.” It’s pretty normal for people, and kids, for all of us to have some thoughts that end up causing some of these negative emotions. Okay? This is a little outtake from cognitive behavioral therapy. I just encourage you when these thoughts come in for our kids, and they’re getting bullied, and they have some negative emotions, a lot of times this stuff goes on in their head, and it’s real, and it’s valid emotions. Doesn’t mean it’s right, is correct. The emotions are valid, because of what’s happening in their head.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC:

We need to help them with some other replacement thoughts, and not judge the thought that they have. That’s pretty hard as a parent, because we love our kid, and we think they’re perfect. When they have thoughts that don’t feel perfect, it’s very difficult to not just tell them, “Hey, that’s not right. You’re perfect, and I love you. I want you to know that you’re the best thing ever.” Sometimes that gets in, but if they’re having these kind of thoughts, they may not. Well, let’s stop with that today. That’s our topic of how to think, we’re going to talk next time, in our process about what to do next, of how to act. I hope that was helpful for everybody today. You have a great day, and we’ll see you next time.

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Dr. Moody is also a licensed psychotherapist and maintains a practice at Integrated Mental Health Associates (IntegratedMHA.com) where he specializes in couples therapy and mens issues.