Whether it's the worst kind where you're being physically abused to brutal degree's, or the subtle kind with verbal taunts and jibes, the nature of bullying is the same; One person is inflicting harm upon a 2nd person that goes beyond the 2nd person's ability to adequately deal with and prevent this harm.
If the 2nd person feels comfortable in dealing with the 1st, then even though the 1st person's behaviour may still be considered bullying, there is no harm caused to the 2nd person. For example, online abuse. One person may post abusive comments, but the 2nd person may have developed a thick enough skin to be able to just ignore and dismiss the comments without a second thought.
It's also possible that one person can cause harm to a second person beyond their ability to deal with it, without being a bully. For example, one person may want to be friends with a 2nd person and constantly follow them around, asking them questions while the 2nd person wants to be left alone, but feels inadequately skilled to convey this to the 1st person. The 1st person's intentions are innocent, but the 2nd person may still feel bullied.
So the sting of bullying seems to lie in the 2nd person's feeling that they are inadequately skilled to deal with the person causing them harm and make it stop. This doesn't mean I blame the 2nd person. In most bullying situations, the aggressor is the one who has committed the moral violation. But if the 2nd person knew how to deal with the 1st person, the problem would be solved for the 2nd person.
So how should the 2nd person deal with the 1st? Firstly I think you need to figure out whether the 1st person is doing something wrong or not. If the 1st person is taunting and mocking you, insulting you, physically harming you, stealing from you, etc, then obviously they're in the wrong. But it's also possible to cause harm to another person without doing anything wrong. For example, a superior who disciplines you, an infant who cries incessantly, a depressed friend who keeps asking for help. A person could feel powerless and bullied in all these situations, without it being the perpetrator's fault. The tricky part is the grey area in the middle where perhaps a person is teasing you to a degree that's uncomfortable to you, but is not uncomfortable to most others, but I'll come back to that.
If you conclude that the 1st person is not doing anything wrong, then it may change the way you respond to them, from a less aggressive response to a more sympathetic one. But none the less, you're still left with the problem of how to deal with them and make the harm you're experiencing come to an end. So how do you deal with them? Well, seems to me that there's a scale of responses available, from ignoring them to outright violence, and we should work our way up the scale until the harm has gone.
Ignoring is my favourite method, because it doesn't require me to have to think of anything to say and I can still feel justified that I've responded in a mature and uncowardly fashion. I've seen video's of people being physically and verbally abused, but they don't fight back, they just stand their ground and take it, and I always find that there's something so heroic and noble about this response. Often the abuser is looking for a reaction and when you blow up and get angry and violent, they laugh all the harder and you end up feeling even more guilty that you stooped to their level, or you may even get yourself into trouble. Ignoring can often take huge amounts of self control and will power because you may be worried that people will think you're a coward for not responding, or your pride might be hurt because you've just been belittled and your reputation has been attacked or tarnished, and you may also be seething with anger. But I still believe that ignoring a bully is often the most effective response. The philosopher John Locke believed this too, and so did Martin Luther King Jr and Ghandi. It's the most peaceful response. If you can stay strong in your mind, focus on the truth, don't care what others are thinking and dismiss their insults like water off a ducks back, then you can often make it through an abusive encounter with your head held high.
I think it's possible to develop a thick skin to verbal attacks. If you imagine an extreme example, where your entire school or workplace or community are all insulting you and laughing at you. They're winding you up and saying horrible things to get a reaction. It's a game to them. They all hate you because they think very lowly of you. They think you're worthless. Then, if you imagine yourself, standing absolutely zen like in the middle of all this. They hurl abuse and it makes no contact on you. It means nothing to you, because not one of them has access or control of your mind. Only you are the gatekeeper and no-one else. They say you're ugly, but you've already answered that question for yourself. You know you're about average and you're fine with that. So they're wrong, dismiss it. They say you're a coward. Well, yes, sometimes you are, and other times you're brave, but you're doing your best and that's your own issue to deal with in your own time. You don't have to address it right now. So dismiss it. They say it's rude not to answer their questions, but you could stay silent for the rest of your life if you chose, and you wouldn't be hurting anybody else. The power to choose when to talk is a gift given wholly to you; as the police say, you have the right to remain silent. So dismiss it again. You could play this game all day. Just dismiss everything that's hurled at you and remain totally unchanged and unfazed in the centre of it all. You could even treat it as practice for thickening your skin further. So that's a nice thought exercise.
One of the problems with the ignoring method is that the 1st person may never even realise that they're causing you harm, unless you actively communicate your displeasure to them in some form, so this is where you may have to use other responses. The next response is subtle hints and usually, in my experience, a subtle hint is enough to show another person that you don't like a behaviour of theirs, and they'll usually stop. But what if the person doesn't get the hint and carries on?
Well, somewhere along the line you're gonna have to voice your displeasure, and this is the part I find hard cause it can get so awkward and make things worse if you're not careful. If you can voice your displeasure in light, subtle, joking ways, then that might be enough for the 1st person to get the hint. But if that doesn't work you might have to get serious and confront them and this can really damage a relationship. Sometimes if you reveal to a bully that they're causing you harm, it might make their day and spur them on even more. If you "voice" your displeasure in a serious but silent way by storming off or rudely blanking the person this might let the bully know they've gotten under your skin too. But just standing there and letting a bully abuse you as they please when you don't have to, seems dis-empowering so you should try to walk away as soon as you can. But I think you have to ignore them but keep it within the realms of social acceptability, and maybe only voice your displeasure in a serious way if you feel that the 1st person will respond well and it won't just spur them on. If you can find the social confidence to be forceful with them then great, but not all of us have that gift.
Now, further down the scale, are more aggressive responses like telling the person to go f*** themselves, or, if they're being violent to you, being violent back, and some people swear by these responses, and I'm not totally against it. I think there may be circumstances when an aggressive response is required, but personally, I think this is usually the wrong response, cause it just perpetuates the hate. Even though I would absolutely LOVE to use these methods, I sense that a more measured and controlled method would be wiser.
I feel like I have more thoughts to vent on the matter, but one final thing I'll say is that I think it's good to be bendable like a willow branch and realise that you can't know for sure what will happen in the future; you can't prepare for every eventuality, so I think it's good to relax, and let go a bit, and try to be bendable and go with the flow. A tree with rigid branches breaks under pressure, but a tree with bendable branches absorbs the pressure and bounces back.