Why I should feel empathy and remorse to my former bullies?

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I don't hold any negative opinions on people that caused the PTSD stuff. Just life stuff, which may or may not have made me a stronger person that can endure things. They caused some mental illness, but whatever. They didn't feel anything since they lack that empathy, so no real point feeling anything back, either good or bad. I moved on. Scars of the mind and body are just scars and reminders of life that we go through.

I hate betrayal, and that's something I have trouble forgiving and forgetting, along with people harming those close to me, because whilst I might not care too much about myself, I do care about said close people greatly.

Fair comment, often seeing something in real-life or TV can trigger the PTSD but that doesn't mean one has to carry a flame of hatred for the bullies who for the most part have long forgotten you exist.

It makes sense.

You dont need to feel empathy for those who bullied you ages ago. A certainly not remorse. You never did anything bad to them -so what is there for you to feel "remorse" about?

Okay maybe fantasizing doing bad things to them is something you feel guilty about later. But you didnt act on the fantasies so you never actually did anything to harm THEM.

The thing you should do is just get past it, move on, and stop thinking about having been bullied.

It's hard to move on, I feel very hurt. Being used as a tool to be made fun of for having atypical development is very painful. I am trying my best to move on, but those negative memories keeps coming back and the more angry I get.

I need some help and therapy. I hope you know what I mean.

Well, do that then. Get some professional help.

It is best not to obsess over it like the OP does, but I do understand how hard it is to just forget and move on. The bullying I faced ruined my whole teenage years and it has left me with scars that will never heal and it even comes back to haunt me. Like if random teenagers in the street make noises at me or something I feel angry inside, because it reminds me of my teenage years. Or if I feel excluded or rejected by my peers, it brings back my teenage days when other girls deliberately excluded me and treated me differently. Also I was so clueless on some things when I was a teenager, that I often embarrassed myself and had to learn the hard way that people do judge tou. So while I learnt from those experiences, I think I had learnt too much, and now I'm TOO conscious of myself and everyone around me and how I am treated, etc.

Your child/teen years can actually have an affect on who you are for the rest of your life, as those can be the years we remember the most.

I agree. Thank you!

I don’t need to feel remorse for something someone else did, but I am responsible for my actions and reactions. My brother used to use size and age advantage unfairly. I am still angry with him - but it was years ago and I am safe now. I have tried confronting him as an adult but (it appears to me) he is in denial. Once, as an adult, I saw two brothers having a shoving match. I was around 30 and they were teens. I yelled at the brothers I thought was the aggressor and shoved him into some nearby cardboard boxes.

This was over 20 years ago.

Problem? He wasn’t my brother. My trouble with the past coloured the present. I was an adult and should have refrained from getting physical with a teen. Now I was the one with a size advantage and age advantage. Now I was the one not using self-restraint and taking unfair advantage of my superiority. In this case remorse on my part is appropriate. If I had done more work on empathy for my brother I could have been part of the solution instead of part of the problem. It can be hard to forgive someone who has not acknowledged wrong doing. But empathy is about seeing someone as human. With good and bad in him, just like I am human with good and bad in me. If I am able to recognize the good and bad in a bully I might do a better job recognizing the good and bad in me.

Resentment is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Resentment is like setting myself on fire and trying to annoy someone else with the smoke.

Revenge is like trying to say 1 bad + 1 bad = 1 good instead of 2 bad. It is bad math. It doesn’t heal me to become what I hate. It just spreads the pain. It can also hurt innocent bystanders (and one of them may be me) and be out of proportion - I don’t make good decisions when I am hurting and angry.

If someone spits on me and I put that person in the hospital as “payback” (no, I have never done this) I would have reason for remorse. That doesn’t condone spitting. It means I can see when I am wrong.

Those are some reasons for remorse. It is about building a better me - not something the bully “deserves” or “doesn’t deserve”. Character and integrity. Not feeling remorse in such situations can really tear me down inside.

I agree! Thank you!

I'm 53. I suppose I'm lucky that I wasn't bullied horrendously at school, so I can't remember their names or what they did. Much less care.

Being bullied as an adult has been worse, because it's all the whispering behind my back, excluding from events, talking over me, just plain ignoring me. I wonder if it would be better to be physically bullied, then at least I could unleash my considerable pent up rage on a bully.

Trust me, you are better off in your current situation than in being physically abused.

Words and ostracism can be dealt with or ignored.  I have my own hobbies and interests, and it does not matter if no one else is interested.

Yet, when I go on a trip or attend some special event, and I hear from some of those 'frenemies' things like "You should have invited us to come along", I just smile and ask them how their latest party/reception/shindig went, knowing full well that I was not invited.

The dumb looks on their faces are priceless!

Sometimes emotions are subconscious, natural or involuntary

There are no emotions that someone "should" feel

"Should", "can", and "will" are all three different things

"There's a thin line between love and hate"