Were you Bullied? Tell stories

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It worked for me. I went through 12 years of public school with undiagnosed autism, I had limited friends, didn't socialize much, and had plenty of experience with being bullied. All things considered, I think I handled it pretty well. I don't have any PTSD over it. Which apparently many here do.

I don't mean to be unsympathetic to anyone who feels that being bullied is the worst thing that ever happened to you. But I don't know what to say. It happens to everyone. Deal with it and move on. There are more important things in life to be focusing on.

I don't think he was defending antisocial behavior. I think he was trying to relate an experience from a bullies perspective, to help better understand it, and give people knowledge on how to deal with bullies.

Uh, neither did the bully.
Saying ''oops, I offended a bully'' is defeating the object.

I agree with this. It might work on some bully situations, but not all. It depends on the type of people that are bullying you and how they are bullying you.
I can't say I got bullied a lot at school and not intensely at all, but I did have a few hiccups with some kids at secondary school, and in all situations I tried ignoring them and it didn't do any good. Like I remember when I was about 11 or 12, these girls who walked home my way kept yelling out, ''run!'' to me nearly the whole way home (because of my fast walking), and calling me names like ''b***h'' as well. I ignored them and just carried on walking, but they still did it and just enjoyed shouting out names at me more than trying to get a reaction. Some bullies are like that, they just enjoy doing it, they don't all do it just to get a reaction. It did make me feel silly though, as if they liked doing it to me because they know I won't react, so it gives them a little kick out of doing it, and it was obvious that I couldn't stand up for myself.


I agree. Setting upon an innocent person and showing them up because of one little difference, is just wrong and needless. There really is no excuse. OK we can all tease and muck around, but actual bullying, where it gets to the point where a person feels a victim, is totally disgusting. I HATE bullies. It has never been in my nature to bully anyone. I hate hurting people's feelings.

I picked "moderately severe".

I was bullied from about third grade on up to the end of high school. The worst phase was from year five through eight or nine -- with the system here, I was stuck in the same class of ~20-25 people all day, every day, for four years.

It wasn't just classmates though. Some upperclassmen bullied me, too, and right from the first week on. From year six on, I even got bullied by some kids who were in year five -- younger than me, or about my age (I was moved up in primary school). I still don't know how or why I got off on the wrong foot, I just know I did.

I've tried to come up with reasons why I was picked on so much, so easily, and by so many different people. Friends from uni who know me reasonably well said they thought it was the 'know-it-all' thing I still can't switch off completely. Fair enough in regard to my classmates, though that wouldn't explain why the bullying started from the first or second day on, or why people whom I'd never even talked to thought it was funny to stop me in the hall and ask me pointless questions. Or just pronounce my name (rare for my age group, and I still don't know how they knew my name in the first place) in funny voices.

Things I came up with over the years as to why I was bullied:
- I may just have been unlucky; we had desks that seated two people each, an odd number of kids in my class, and I just ... happened to end up at a desk alone.
- I wore a dress (nothing super-fancy, but still a dress) that I loved to the enrollment ceremony, everyone else pretty much turned up in slightly-more-dressy-than-regular clothes.
- didn't care much about clothes in general as long as they were clean and comfy.
- didn't really share any topics of interest with other kids from my class.
- apparently I smelled bad? At least that's something that came up when they taunted me. My hygiene was a lot laxer back then, but I did wash 'strategic' places every day, used deodorant, and changed clothes regularly, so I still don't see how it could've been that bad.
- didn't "get" that it was uncool to have different interests until it was too late (e.g. I was forever the kid who preferred classical music to pop/rock, even though my taste in music broadened considerably over the years).
- I may have taken things too literally? e.g. when asked how often I showered, I told them never -- because I didn't, I took full baths and washed with soap and a washcloth, but when I added that on to explain myself, they'd already decided that full baths were disgusting and *clearly* insufficient etc.

I tried to just snap back the first few times, but that didn't work, so I fled to the lab (we had an aquatic lab in the basement that was open to students during breaktime and constantly supervised, which was really, really helpful -- having teachers/ adults around helped, though not as much as most adults tended to assume) or the library (supervised by either a teacher or students in their last two years of HS) or, in cases neither was open, wandered the halls as far away from my homeroom class as possible. I made a rule that I mustn't cry "in public" (in front of my bullies, really, but everyone was potentially in that group) and tried to learn how to hide in plain sight. Kept my head down, rarely if ever participated in class, was late to nearly every single class (because having teachers mad at me wasn't as bad as being exposed to people my age.

I'm getting really worked up thinking about this, and the post is getting long, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Not in my experiance, when I've tried ignoring it in the past they tried even harder...and unfortunately physical pain is not the only kind, at times I wish it where since I find it much easier to deal with than the emotional crap.

And just dealing with it works great, when you have a way to do that but for many people it does a lot of damage especially when it occurs chronically over the years. My attempts at just dealing with it probably made the damage worse since I mostly kept it all inside trying to push it away so it didn't effect me. Then I attempted suicide since it was my problem and therefore mine to deal with.

Maybe everyone has been bullied once or twice but I really doubt everyone has suffered chronic bullying resulting in problems later on.

^this

I was severely bullied, but to change the roles of the guys bullying guy all the time, i will talk about my experience with one girl.


This girl was the queen of the class, you know, the pretty one, the one everyone wanted, i dont know why she felt attracted to me, but i didnt liked her, she was always saying she wanted to be with me and that she was in love with me, i was 14 and she was 17, i told her in the best way possible that i wasnt attracted to her, she then went rage mode, and started saying that i was gay, because no straight man could reject her, the rumors spread out, everyone thought i was gay, she was constatly saying this and that everywhere, even my parents asked me if i was gay, she then stole some picture of my profile in the current social network in that time, Myspace or Hi5, and started to create profiles in gay forums and social networks with my pictures.

When i told her 2-3 months after the incident started that i was going to talk with the director about the bullying, she told me that if i did that, she would tell the director i tried to rape her, i then have to suck it up until graduation, because i have seen soo many histories in the internet of man falsely accused of rape, but still going to jail for some time.

For the most part, it doesn't work. Also, whether or not you have PTSD is not determined by how well you handle it, because you don't actually have absolute control over how your brain develops. PTSD is something that is done to you, due to an instance of severe trauma or a long-term pattern of trauma that ultimately alters how your brain works. Some people are more vulnerable to it than others, but this isn't a matter of how well one handles it.



I don't think bullying was the worst thing to ever happen to me. However, I do not believe that the bullying I experienced is something that happens to "everyone," nor is the bullying that other people have described. When someone says something that is not true, I do not see any point in just letting it go. "Just ignore them" is terrible advice and for the most part simply does not work.

This is a thread about bullying, so focusing on bullying is in fact appropriate here, and not an indication of anyone focusing on bullying at all times.



Except for the part where she is trying to make bullying behavior seem like nothing more than harmless pranks, which it is not. Or that the only bullying that is dangerous is physical bullying, which it is not.

She did make one thing clear from a bully's perspective: That she blames the targets of bullying for being bullied, and doesn't seem to take any responsibility for choosing to bully.

For some reason, some people seem to focus on how people who are bullied are somehow causing the bullying and can stop the bullying by behaving differently. The fact is that those who choose to bully are at fault, and as long as people keep pushing responsibility onto the targets and blaming them, such abuse will continue.

I have no sympathy for anyone who chooses to bully. I have no sympathy for attempts to avoid responsibility for their choice to bully. I have no sympathy for how much fun it may be to set others off because they are perceived as easy to set off. Those aren't "normal human behaviors." They're antisocial and disruptive, and making excuses for it doesn't somehow make it acceptable.

I've had my head smashed into cinder block walls and lockers, had my guts squished to the point of having damage to my bowels, stuck in a barn loft for hours after the ladder was removed and hidden, locked in various rooms for long periods of time, had a cinder block thrown at my face, been pelted with glass bottles and rocks, been tortured in church by other kids, been kicked with steel toed boots, was put in detention 3 times due to bully lies, and far worse things I don't care to talk about and that doesn't count non-physical pain or destruction of property. The only time anything was ever done, a kid was put in a three day suspension after picking a fight with me and I restrained him till a teacher came to stop him, and then he continued to bully me even more. The buses were the worst though... I kind of want to watch the documentary "Bully", but I'm hesitant for obvious reasons.

Oops.

Last edited by redrobin62 on 11 Jun 2013, 3:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I don't know if this is a joke, but while "the bullied kid lashing out violently" stereotype is popular, it's not really how this stuff works.

Okay. My bad.

Most of my early schooling, I was always the new kid and was pretty much ignored, while i remained oblivious to the other kids.High school was torment, though. Plenty of teasing, which I did my best to ignore. There was only one incident of physical bullying, early in freshman year. It was in the cafeteria at lunchtime, with the whole school present. The antagonist was a senior and the worst of the worst, though I didn't know that at the time. I spazzed out in response and attacked him. After that, only teasing, no more physical altercations.

Obviously, I can't recommend this approach to anyone else. The outcome could have been far different. I was fortunate there were adults nearby able to intervene.

Yes, I was bullied.

Some kids didn't like that I raised my hand a lot in class. When there was a bell curve grading system in a class, some kids didn't like that I did well.

I got punched in the nose, punched in the jaw, jumped on the way home from the school bus, spitballs thrown at me, pornography put on my locker door...and I'm a girl! (There was also name calling of course, with some kids they called me Brainiac and with some kids they called me Princess because I tried to dress nicely. There were also denigrations of my given names.)

This lasted from about 5th grade through 10th grade when finally we moved so I could change school systems. I did tell Mom at some point but the punch in the jaw happened during school hours so that bully did get detention so I guess that was considered good enough, I don't know. And later when I told Mom of the constant harassment in high school I got "oh they are just jealous." I told that school's counselor about it as well and she laughed in my face. (We had moved into a very small town and a lot of the staff were related to the kids. Or she thought "kids will be kids" and it was a funny story, I have no idea. All she did was laugh and dismiss me from her office.)

If you want to call shunning bullying then that happened from about K through 5th grade.

I fantasise that I attend a school re-union, as the one in a hockey mask with a large sharp / pointy thing. There`s NO excuse for bullying. My differences made me a target and a victim from day 1 to day last. My differences weren`t my fault. In the NT world, doing nasty s**t to people is de rigeur, acceptable, and "part of life" that we "have to deal with". 2 years ago I was able to stand up for myself physically, intentionally and without guilt. it took me 39 years to "deal with it".

Bullies should be made to experience the emotions they induce. Let`s see some medical research for that sh*t. Spoilt, scumbag kids raised by ignorant, entitled middle class morons actually experiencing the sensations of their victims....mmmmmmmmmmmmm

Those of you out there who are contemplating that perhaps sensory issues made the effects worse than I remember them and are considering saying so, I have only this to say. You weren`t there. I was. There`s nothing fanciful about Lord Of The Flies.