****Tessa is a seventh grader who is taller and bigger than most of her peers. Since grade school she has been teased and harassed about her size, but now she tells me she isn’t “allowed” to eat lunch in the regular cafeteria because other kids make fun of her. Instead, she eats in the gym with the other “rejects.” “I don’t mind,” she says, with a brave smile.

****One day after school, Cassandra is spotted leaning close and talking to Lynae’s ex-boyfriend. Although she and Cassandra have been VBFs (Very Best Friends) since third grade, Lynae is incensed when she hears about this betrayal. As soon as she gets home, she begins a flame mail campaign on the Internet, calling Cassandra “Ass-andra” and “Ho of the Year.”

****Mickey is well liked but not popular. One day a new girl arrives at her school, wearing clothes that look like something from the Goodwill reject bin. In the hallway, Wanda, an extremely popular girl, points at the new girl and says, “Eww, is it a person, or is it a walking garbage bag?” Wanda and her friends proceed to hold their noses as if the new girl smells bad, when she does not. Mickey is extremely uncomfortable, especially when Wanda looks at her and invites her to join in.

What do these girls share? Each is involved in a situation with a relationally aggressive dynamic, whether as the targeted victim (Tessa), the bully (Lynae), or the bystanding girl in the middle (Mickey.) The scenarios are variations on those I’ve heard about over and over, and ones which teachers and parents tell me are frustrating, every-day occurences.

Do all girls go through the RA wringer of adolescence? Of course not–it would be stereotyping to say they do. I’ve met girls who shrug these kinds of challenges off, and go on to interact with their peers in healthy, happy ways. Other girls occasionally fall into the “RA Way,” playing the aggressor in one situation and the bystander or target in another.

The girls I worry about most, though, are the ones who are stuck in one role and can’t shift out. These are the girls who enter any situation aggressing, or the others who assume the victim role in romantic as well as peer relationships.

All too often, girls who only have one set of responses in their skill set grow up to be women who consistently act like the teens described above. The bully mom dominates the PTA and ridicules others who challenge her, the victim marries into a family where all her in-laws constantly put her down, and the woman in the middle gets caught again and again in uncomfortable situations at work.

Let me once more stress that not all women (young or adult) get stuck in these traps! However, my research shows that the majority of young and adult woman understand what RA is and have confronted it in some way. And it’s no secret that every woman and man on this earth has the potential to be aggressive.

The blessing is that change is always possible: I’ve seen so many examples of lives turned around and heard hundreds of stories from women young and old who transformed their hurtful behaviors. Whether you have harmed others or yourself in the past, make a committment to take the time to learn, understand, and strategize your way out of the RA rut.