Childhood Bullying

@Former-Member

I was bullied severly pretty much all through school. I was hit and kicked most days. My final day at school one of my bullies knocking me out and into the wall behind me. I still remember this vividly. I was recently diagnosed with Complex PTSD as a result of the bullying, though family dont believe it was that bad, how they would know I dont know. I tried to get the school and my parents to help but got no where with either so I stopped talking about each attack. Ive got a few other disorders etc. but I do think that my anxiety and social phobia stuff is tied to being bullied like I was. I didnt really make any friends at school, I wasnt accepted in general. It was a small school R-12 by yeah 12 there was 5 kids left. I tried to get moved to a different school well away from home but Mum and Dad wouldnt have it.

Im not in touch with a single person from that school or the town I lived in. To this day I dont understand the hatered for me. I dont understand why no one did anything about it, especially my parents. How they didnt see how miserable and alone I was.

@Former-Member

I have long believed there is a trauma relationship with most mental illness, (except maybe dementia) altho some people do not accept that.

I hope more people respond to this thread, as I also believe as we tell our story we process it better and can then move on from the parts that are holding us back.

I had many bullying experiences in childhood, with a high ACE (Adverse childhood events) score. Yes often the bullying is not within the nuclear family, and so not always the parents fault. My understanding of 2 generations of trauma history bear this out. Parents should be allowed to be human, but the broader circumstance of the family and the child make a difference. Eg bullies can be neighbours, at school, in sports or churches, or in a country at war ...

Glad to see you around the forums ...

Apple

I had classmate bullies while I was in school. But, IMHO, the worst bullies aren't the kids; the worst ones are the teachers and the parents. If anyone's gonna mess you up for life, it's gonna be those two groups.

BTW, I'm talking from an only-child perspective. I've heard that brothers and sisters can be monsters, but I have no personal experiance of that.

@Former-Member I was bullied by an older brother but then in turn bullied younger siblings at times. I usually withdrew as I also experienced abuse and neglect but remember some outbursts of anger. I always felt unheard and unloved.

I'm sad for you @Former-Member @chibam @Appleblossom @ClockFace , there's probably quite a few of us hoping for healing.

No question I was bullied in childhood, from kindergarten to year nine.

It was pretty comprehensive, and I have permanent effects from it.

Not sure how it stopped. I mean there’s a story, but I have never been able to verify it. Apparently I was in class one day and my teacher heard something. She asked me to get some cardboard from a nearby storeroom, to get me out of class. When I was out of the room, she asked people not to make fun of me and told the kids about her own experience with being bullied and started crying during this speech, and that scared the kids into stopping the behaviour.

I knew something was up. A girl went with me to get the cardboard, and she was being very nice to me. I could tell she was delaying me going back to the classroom. I don’t know how she could have known what was going on, though. Maybe someone in the classroom texted her and warned her not to let me back in the room? Was texting a thing in 2009? In 2012, one of my classmates told me what happened. I asked someone else and they said “you weren’t supposed to know that”, but didn’t go into more detail.

It’s pretty painful, especially knowing that not having friends and being abused in childhood makes it harder to make friends as an adult. My priority, though, is making sure I recognise bullying as an adult and stamp it out before it becomes another scar.

@Former-Member

I was bullied by a teacher when I was in year 1 (6 years old). I always knew about it, and could remember the situations. It only really came to light as the root cause of my anxiety and maladaptive behaviour in terms of achema therapy, when I started seeing a psychologist. I had a manager at work whose actions triggered my anxiety to become very prevalent. Before then, I was undiagnosed. This manager did not bully me, but their lack of support, clarity and continuously ‘moving the goal posts’ made my life at work so hard. That’s when I started seeing a psychologist. That helped, and the manager moved elsewhere, which made a big difference.

@L12 @Former-Member @florencefifty @Dimity @chibam @ClockFace @Appleblossom

Bit unrelated but L12 mentioned workplace bulling, I just want to share with you this resource that I found incredibly helpful. It applies to any abusive situation. Unfortunately you can only find it in the web archive. Here it is:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170612062638/http://www.workplacebullying.org/torture/

I hope it provides some clarity. Take care everyone.

I hated high school as a result of being severely bullied.

there was one girl that was a couple of years older then me who just had it in for me and I to this day have no idea why. I had nothing to do with her, no classes together, we didn’t live near each other. She just targeted me. She would shove me in the school corridors, trip me over, call me names.
we lived in a small country town. I ended up being rushed to the larger town over an hour away one night cause the local doctor thought I had meningitis. Turns out I was just suffering from really chronic stress from being bullied.

a teacher witnessed some name calling once and stepped in.

then there was the boy in year 10 who bullied me. He teased me cause of the shape of my thumbs of all things. Turned all my friends against me. I reported him. But turns out reporting bullies just makes it all worse. Year 10 was a very lonely year.

I experienced work place bullying too. That was horrible. You’d think grown adults would known better. It’s not your typical bullying though. It’s making your life difficult. Giving you all the hard cases. I remember walking out of work in tears once after being given all the hard cases again. Got called into the managers office some time later and was given a warning. It was that workplace culture that made me not return after having my daughter.

I think all types of bullying can have significant impacts on our mental health. Especially childhood bullying in those formative years. It’s come up in some of the schema therapy I have done.

That sounds really hard @Bow