About the Author:
Pardeshi is an Asian author who was born in Lu Saka, Zambia and then moved to South Africa during the system of Apartheid. Kalyani Pardeshi has CPA Alberta designation and CGMA designation from CIMA UK. She holds a degree in Accounting and also a Post Grad degree in Financial Management and worked for companies like Tsogo Sun, H&R Block, Price Waterhouse Coopers, and MNP (Meyers Norris Penny). She came from a conservative film. She felt online fitness business was one of her main ventures and worth full effort.
Introduction:
In this book, Author Kalyani Pardeshi shares experiences of her personal life battling bullying as a teenager. The knowledge which makes her learn valuable life lessons while including a task and techniques to develop the skills in each chapter she used to overcome the emotional scars they inflicted on her and to deal with bullies.
Pardeshi adds a template of a letter to tell readers how to communicate effectively with those who have the authority to help them. Additionally, to help readers hone their strategies along the way, exercises are accompanied in each chapter.
The techniques included in this book help in overcoming all types of bullying like physical, verbal, social and cyber bullying. It proved to be a handy guide for teens, parents and educators.
Detailed Review:
Bullying! The word means “seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone perceived as vulnerable)” and has enough power to trigger anxiety.
This book discovers effective and simple techniques to overcome the effects of bullying, which are debilitating and helps in ending the fear of suffering and feeling powerless that too in silence where no one can believe you.
Pardeshi has shared effective and easy to use tactics developed from years of being bullied her. There are various techniques like:
The “somersault” technique:
It is used to turn the name-calling to her head.
The “sure pumpkin” technique:
It tells about taking the actions against bullying instantly and not hours later.
The “flip the switch” technique:
It helps in learning how to overcome negative thoughts and self- talks.
The “3 I’s and a T” technique:
It teaches you to let go of the things which hurt and suffocate you and leads to anger.
The “loudspeaker” technique:
It is a technique which helps you to make audible to those who have the power to help you and take you seriously.
Similarly, there are 14 techniques in this book which tells how to tackle the various problems related to bullying and ways to overcome emotional scars caused by the same.
Kalyani wrote this book to help the victims of bullying, empowering them to stand up fearlessly and enable them to break the silence. She was frustrated and emotionally broken due to the lack of actions taken even after the complaint she made. Bulling followed her wherever she went. She builds her self-confidence and overcomes the fear of no one believing her, fears of retaliation breaking her silence on bullying.
How can someone rebuild their self-confidence if they have been bullied?
The book Unbullied in a section called “How do you move on” includes this in detail. Describing briefly on this, the first step is recognizing that none of the bullying faced by the victim was by any way or means the victim’s fault. It is very reasonable to doubt and question yourself when something so traumatic has happened to you. The next step is to stop asking yourself – why did this happen to me? We want to rationalize the things happened so try to find logics behind the suffering and pain and blame the karma. One has to believe there are no faults of ours and no rationale.
Recognize yourself as a hero: You should recognize you as a hero because you chose to keep trudging forward, and it takes lots of guts to face and survive to bully. You always are and will remain a hero. One should never forget that happy people don’t hurt others and the person bullied you is an unhappy person, so this is none of your faults.
Forgive yourself: It is normal to blame yourself for what happened to you, as a victim of bullying. Take a deep breath and release it – Every day Look at yourself in the mirror, look into your own eyes in the reflection and say, “I forgive you”.
Surround yourself: Surround yourself with family members, friends, and educators, coaches who make you feel happy and vital. Spend time with them, laugh and get positive energy from them, which will provide confidence and tell you how beautiful you are.
Seek out activities that make you happy: Engage yourself into activities which make you feel satisfied like painting, pottery, sports, singing, dancing, anything that is into the creative side of your mind, it helps in flushing out the negativity in you.
Conclusion:
In a nutshell, unbullied can be described as a step-by-step guide to build self-confidence and to put an end to bullying and to overcome the emotional trauma from bullying.”
For those who suffer at the hands of bullies, “UNBULLIED” goals are to recognize that being targeted by bullies isn’t their fault and they should not be blamed. They have the power and the techniques (from the book) to change their tomorrow. They didn’t bring this behaviour upon themselves and did nothing for this.
Rating:
It is a 4-star rating book which encourages the victims of Bullying and let them live a happy, joyful life with various techniques discussed deeply in book boosting their level of self- confidence.