[Z]

I find it a bit of a ridiculous assumption that bullies are bullying someone because they're insecure - if anything bullying behaviour happens because people want to gain the approval of someone else. A variety of examples: guys being confrontational towards guys they see as threats to the relationship they're trying to build with a woman they want to impress; an inherent intolerance for a specific aspect of a person's personality - whether it be an aspect of their appearance, gender, sexual preference, race, religion et cetera; one work colleague demeaning another because they're trying to look like a better employee in the eyes of a manager...

I could go on inventing hypothetical (but very real) examples.

I think, unfortunately, bullying is something that most of us have to go through. The severity of bullying is subject to the bully, the victim and the observer's perspective as well - a bully might beat a victim to a pulp and justify it in their mind because they "deserved it"; on the other hand a bully might say something derogatory about a victim's appearance in a passing remark and not think any more of it - but the victim is absolutely in pieces over the comment and sees it as bullying.

I was bullied to an extent during my early school years for my appearance (glasses, fat) but, luckily for me, it was only the occasional comment which I managed to rise above by not taking them seriously, playing along to some extent and generally making it impossible for them to find a flaw in my response to pick away at. The worst that happened to me was somebody hid my P.E. bag once, found it a few days later after searching the school with my year head. I got accused of bullying a girl in my year who was, to put it politely, extremely sensitive and craved attention - she accused a lot of people of bullying her and eventually stopped getting taken seriously because of her constant complaining.

I don't think there's any easy way to overcome bullying. People will be cruel if they want to be cruel. A lot of people are mean in their early teens but grow out of it and tend to feel bad for what they did in their younger years, but some people never grow out of that mentality and will always be bullies...