Was anyone else bullied in school and find it still affects you as an adult?

[skatykatie]

I was bullied back in secondary school and it left a pretty deep impact on my life. I'm in therapy and have come a long long way, but I feel my self esteem has always been pretty bad ever since. I know I'm a wonderful person capable of great things but I just dont give myself a chance or have the self belief I need.

Was anyone else bullied and find it left its mark on you?

Absolutely.

I still find it hard to trust people even now.

it’s affected my relationship with my parents as they knew what was happening yet refused to do anything to help me.

when my DD2 was cyber bullied and physically hurt the school refused to do anything so I raised merry hell and confronted the father of the main bully. It was like something snapped inside me and I knew I was not going to let anyone hurt my DD in the way I was hurt.

I still suffer from being bullied in secondary school. I was completely excluded and nobody spoke to me for five years except to say abusive things. Occasionally I was physically attacked but it was mostly just verbal abuse, telling me I’m an awful person, a weirdo, a freak, calling me names, saying I should kill myself, etc. My parents completely ignored my repeated requests for help, told me to shut up because it was upsetting THEM and forced me to go to school.

My therapist has helped me to understand that I developed what she calls “learned helplessness”. I knew there was no escape, no way to avoid school and no way to make the bullying stop. Ultimately I learned that when bad things happen to me I can’t make them stop, I just have to tolerate them. So this led me to be very helpless in my life and lack control, because when bad things happened to me later in life I still felt like I couldn’t make them stop and I just had to tolerate them. Abusive relationships etc, I was just totally helpless and followed my learned pattern of tolerating whatever anyone did to me.

Apart from that, I’m terrified of teenagers especially in school uniform. I have a panic attack if I hear a sound like my old alarm clock that used to wake me up for school. Theme songs from shows that were on tv on a Sunday night have the same effect. A while ago Facebook suggested an ex school bully as a friend and I had a panic attack in case he found me again. There are so many little PTSD triggers - and it is genuinely PTSD. Not to mention the long term difficulties with social skills because I was isolated in my formative years, plus the lack of self esteem and the bad situations that led to later on. There are still issues stemming from school bullying that come up in therapy even now.

Yes.

It's always going to affect me. It has limited my life.

I had no one I could tell, for help. So it went on. Really I think teachers turned a blind eye, a couple of them didn't exactly like me and let it show.

So I am stuck knowing I probably did something to deserve it, and I'm not a nice person.

Yes, more general peer rejection in the younger years and in the teenage years constant bullying for being generally ugly and repulsive. Turns out I was perfectly normal, but tended towards over-compensation once the bullies had left after GCSEs.

Have found my DSs teenage years more difficult I think because of the way teenage boys hated and rejected me at that age. Also, I think a general expectation of rejection in social situations that is hard to shake. Deep-seated lack of self respect causes a tendency to spiral into "of course they don't like you, of course you fucked up" patterns.

Once I identify spiralling I can reason with it, or try to. I know logically I'm as useful/likeable/important as everyone else, and this logical thinking helps me (I'm an engineer 🤷‍♀️)

I was bullied for having curly hair.

I remember being in a restaurant and had to walk by the said bully all those years later I was literally sick to my stomach and it ruined the meal.

Then I was 8 months pregnant, going in to a stay and play at my daughters nursery, and who is In there with his daughter and partner? Yup. Smiled at me. I just look at him then looked away.

I hope now he has a daughter he realises just how much of a nightmare he made alot of my childhood.

It absolutely has affected me I have very low self esteem and confidence. I still live in the same area as my bully and both of her daughters bullied both of my DDs . It's like they have a family business of hate and intimidation. I've had a lot of therapy to cope and I secretly hope something terrible happens to all 3 of them . My heart goes out to all of you that have experienced this 💐.

You did NOT do anything to deserve it!

Some insecurity in them made them act that way, it's on them, not you

Yes I'm damaged by my high school experience

Yes being bullied has affected my whole life, lived a very sheltered life and now in my 50's, alone, don't have friends.

I don't know how to be around people and always feel I'm the weird one. Been hurt and excluded my whole life, I do stuff but on my own, I don't trust anyone.

Yes it still affects me now.

Yes. I still find it hard to believe that people can like me. I'm in my 60s.

My late husband gave me a lot of confidence, but I've found it difficult to make friends. I find it hard to believe that people would want to know me. At one point (before I married) I was so convinced that I was fat and ugly that I was considering plastic surgery.

I look back at photos taken when I was a teenager and in my 20s and - by gum - I wish that I were that slim and pretty now.

Badly from year 9, by boys. It then caused me to have no friends because they all didn't want to be associated with me because of the bullying. It has stuck with me for life. I have no friends because I feel like they wouldn't want to meet up with me anyway so it's best not to try.

Yes. And yes.

Yes. I didn’t name it bullying then, I do now, a sort of group ignoring leaving me on the outside. When not ignored constant jokes about my appearance were far from funny. It’s left me very uncertain in social situations, I avoid as many as possible. Any group situation presents huge challenges, I always assume rejection.

I was never bullied at school and it was an all female dog rough sink one . Oddly i was bullied at work usually with men instigating it .

Yes. I assume everyone hates me on meeting me. I am always convinced my colleagues especially hate me, and I’m genuinely surprised if anyone pays me a compliment. I keep my head down, don’t get involved in any of the office bitching, I also don’t really bond with anyone. I’m now in a situation where I think my colleagues are actually regularly bitching about me (they talk to me in the same way they talk to others they slag off) but I can’t do anything about it because the main instigator is HR head and is right in with the directors. So I’m stuck back where I was at 14 now nearly 50. I wish I could afford not to work to be honest.

Yes most definitely. you are not alone if that helps.

Yes.

Too much to go into detail wrt other students. Wrt teachers, the pig-ignorant, bullying PE teacher managed to put me off exercise classes of any sort until this year. I'm sixty. I only started because I'm in regular contact with my mum's physio-exercise trainers and they're all lovely people, so I'm doing workouts at their clinic.

I was bullied severely about my appearance. But when I look at old photos I don't think I looked significantly different from the other girls really. I didn't know why a particular group decided to make my life so miserable. I can identify so much with others on here - I don't like social situations, assume people won't like me or just put up with me because they have to. I worry about how I look, whether I said something weird/stupid/unlikeable etc. Did I mismanage a social interaction? Not say/do the expected things? I still feel like a little girl trying to fake being a grown up sometimes. I'd go as far as to say being bullied led to me being in an abusive relationship (he's been my ex for years though) - you take anyone who will have you if you really believe you're repulsive, ugly and weird. Now I kind of know I'm not those things but I'm not confident in my appearance at all. My DS on the other hand has not been bullied. He's found his people to be weird with and they all have each other's backs. Its lovely to see and his confidence is amazing even in secondary school. Interestingly the ring leader of the bullying I experienced apologised a few years ago. We'd not spoken since school and she found me on social media. She says she was going through some difficult times at home and putting others down was her way to elevate herself. She wishes she could undo the harm she caused to a few people but it's too late. I have forgiven her I guess and it's healing for me to do so but I haven't forgotten and never will really.

Yes. I was bullied in primary school for being shy. In secondary it was better. But a group of girls I was friends with excluded me from our group when i was 16 and told no one to talk to me. So I was left friendless. I acted out as a cry for help. My mum just told me I was a horrible selfish girl. Never asked me if I was ok. Still to this day reminds me how horrible I was.

It's had a profound effect. I don't trust anyone. Assume I'm not likeable. Find social situations hard. My 20s were a disaster. Wild behaviour. Messed up uni. Got back on track in my 30s. But my life isn't what it should be. I lack self esteem. I know I could do or be more but I lack the confidence to do it. Tbh I feel like I've wasted a lot of time.

Yes. Still find it hard to walk past groups of men because I assume they will laugh at my appearance. Will generally hide/ sit at the end of a table/in a corner as being visible always meant being called ugly and humiliated in front of the class. Just really uncomfortable around men I don’t know. It affects my relationships because on some level some part of me still thinks I’m ugly and can’t believe anyone would think otherwise, even though at the same time I know I look attractive.

The girls at my school were nice to me and so I have always felt more comfortable around women.

I’ve said this before on here but aside from the odd bit of teasing the worst bullying I experienced was from the PE teachers. Who would make life hell for anyone who wasn’t super sporty or into competing. The total humiliation those of us experienced who weren’t naturally fit was horrific. The fact its physically painful to be pushed beyond your limits just encouraged them to push more. And the same teachers would suck up to the sporty kids - who were the worst pupil bullies, some of whom went on to be PE teachers themselves. Having worked in a school I sadly can confirm that a certain type of person gets drawn to be a PE teacher. I’ve never met one who wasn’t slightly sadistic.

It affected me because I didn’t set foot in a gym or go for a run until I was in my 30’s. I always associated fitness and working out with humiliation and being pushed to the point of being in extreme pain. I started to go to the gym because, quite frankly, I really needed to after DC2. I’ve found a lovely, non-judgmental community there and the lack of competition suits me. I wish schools would give more holistic options of exercise to kids rather than it all being about competitive sports - who the fuck goes on to play professional hockey anyway. The way female PE teachers are obsessed with it you’d think it was on par with a footballers wages.

Anyway, DD is now in year 6 and last month we looked round schools - well, didn’t I see an old PE teacher in one of them! I asked if she remembered me and she said she didn’t. I emailed the head of PE after and said we loved the tour and were really sold but Miss Jones was a bully when I was in school and I have no desire to put my DD through the same so we won’t be applying.

I just read your post after I posted mine - I wonder how many of us don’t take up exercise because of psycho PE teachers

A good many, I would think! Yours sounds exactly like mine - if you weren't sporty and good at it, you deserved punishment. (Asthmatic kid? Run around the oval.)

It didn't surprise me to learn she knew jack shit about anything else. Came as a shock to learn other teachers' general knowledge was woeful, but not hers.

Yep - there’s something weird about adults who get a kick out of seeing kids in pain. I actually thought all exercise was painful until a few years ago when I found a routine that I could manage. I remember the feeling in school like my chest was gonna explode and I couldn’t regulate breathing - all whilst 3 sadistic cows bellowed at me to not stop and go faster. I made the mistake of appearing sporty (I was tall) and I think they were annoyed that I have two left feet and no hand-eye coordination