How can I cope with emotional bullying?

Emotional bullying is hard to cope with, especially if the bully is present in your everyday life. I personally struggle with my mom because she can be an emotional bully. Realizing that what she said was a reflection of herself and /not/ of myself helped me out, big time. After I started realizing that the only person that her actions (and words) represent is herself, coping became easier. Next, I learned to not reinforce emotional bullying by letting her get away with saying mean things without having to apologize before we spoke again. I came to terms with that, if someone loves you in a healthy way, they will want to not hurt you and apologize if they did. I thought that our relationship was normal - it's not! Emotional abusers often want you to think that it's normal, and they'll /demand/ love, affection, and a relationship, and will often guilt you into thinking that all of those things are their right to have. People who practice healthy love do not demand that you trust them, respect them, or love them. This logic is absurd. You can't demand feelings of others; they have to be earned. After this realization, I began avoiding situations where emotional bullying could occur and replaced a toxic relationship with a few healthy ones. There are many ways to cope, but the end goal is to avoid completely if the person is toxic.

I dont think anyone can or should cope with emotional bullying. If you can take this to any superiors please do. The bullies should be removed, if that is not possible, change work or school or home enviorment.

There are two things that you can do to help cope or rise above emotional bullies and bullying: ignore it or stand up to it. Ignoring a bully might sound like a stupid thing to do especially when they are right in your face with a whole lot of nasty things to say, but it works. Bullies feed off of a persons reactions—reacting to their snide remarks and emotional abuse will only encourage them and make them want to continue. Ignoring them, on the other hand, will discourage them and eventually cause them to lose interest and thus move on. The other option is to stand up for yourself which includes telling the bully that what they are doing is not ok and that they need to stop—this doesn't always work, but it doesn't hurt to try. Does it?