Read this:

[jennythereader]

A wonderful essay by cbpotts on how bullying damages and sometimes destroys people's lives.

Comments

[seawasp]

And the other point is that different people, in that analogy, are different animals. The coydogs trying that tactic on a moose will likely die. They won't chase it down. They won't even TRY it on an elephant. And if they try it on a turtle, the turtle will just hunker down in its shell and wait for them to go away. It can wait. They can't.

I was a turtle. They could hit me, push me, beat me, I'd pop my head out, say the same thing that pissed them off the first time. They never got to me in the sense of making me depressed about life in general. They didn't MATTER. They were IRRELEVANT.

But other people don't think that way. They don't have that armor. They're deer, not turtles or moose or elephants.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

If you read through the comments there are a couple of people who expand the analogy in similar ways.