Do bullies ever feel remorse?

[MotherOfOlafs]

Sorry if I’ve posted this in the wrong place as it is not lighthearted.
After reading today about yet another bright beautiful young teen having taken their life after relentless bullying I wondered if at any point the children who have bullied someone to the point of no return ever feel regret or remorse? Do they even realise that their actions may have potentially caused another child’s death? Are they taking some sort of sick pleasure from it? What do their parents think? Are they ashamed?
Apologies for the stream of consciousness, I just feel such sadness about it.

I would imagine some do. In children there is always a ring leader. They are normally already disturbed though their own trauma. The hangers on only do it to appease the ring leader. They probably do feel remorse. The ring leader will most likely think they wasn't that bad...

This would be my worst nightmare

The girl who made my life a misery at Secondary school has grown up to be a wellness/yoga teacher. I’ve met her once and she seemed oblivious to it.

Interesting.
I'm following the coronation street story line on this topic.

I'm 45 and there's a woman I went to school with who managed to bully the entire year group (waves to Daniela if she's here 👋)

She's popped up many times as a suggested friend on fb until I blocked her to stop it happening.

I did look at her page and it was full of profile pics with 'be kind' slogans, so I'd say it's not even that she has no remorse, she has no recollection of her behaviour.

No.

I doubt some even think about how they fucked you up. Funnily enough I happened to come across the utter cow who bullied me at school on FB today. Just by chance on a FB school group. I doubt she gives me a second thought.

I’ve encountered workplace bullies and my sense is that they don’t think they are doing anything wrong in the first place.

They don't care I think, and the people they bully tend not to figure in their life unless.its the right here and now.
They ruin peoples life and make their victim think about them all the time, but they never even consider their victim unless they're bullying them right then.

I agree they don’t think they are doing anything wrong and the victim deserves to be treated appallingly.

I would love to see this properly research.

Sadly I think most bullies get that from their parents - it’s their home culture - and they just treat everyone badly.

What about in these incredibly sad situations where a person would rather end it all than face the abuse? There must be some realisation then surely?

Some might, but others, no.

You could be right there, if you’re not taught at home that bullying is wrong, or a child is witnessing it at home in the first place, are they going to do anything differently?

Maybe young people who bully have such a fragile sense of their own worth that they can't ever realise they may have done something wrong. They need to tell themselves they have done nothing wrong because they can't face up to the truth.

I think, given how many people say they were bullied at school, as adults - there is a disconnect between being on the receiving end of bullying behaviour and being the deliverer of it.

So no, I am not sure that bullies are necessarily sorry, unless it is very obvious in the form it takes, the person may not recognise that what they said/did had that impact on the person on the receiving end.

I was bullied quite horribly at school to my memory, but I also had a sharp tongue so there is every chance that there’s someone out there who might remember me as being their bully. I couldn’t tell you a single time I recall actively setting out to be spiteful, let alone repeatedly but perhaps I did come across that way to someone. I don’t know.

A girl in my school year committed suicide at 13 due to bullying. I think of her often and how unspeakably sad it is that she lost her life. I didn’t know her well at all, just to say hello to in passing, it’s been over 20 years but I think of her often.

@SemperIdem That's tragic about the girl who committed suicide. Bullying at school is so often not dealt with and victims deal with it alone, until sometimes it's too much.

I still vividly recall a new girl at my school when I was 7. I'd never been a bully before, infact the complete opposite, and put up with bullying about my uncommon name many times. The new girl had a cleft lip repair scar and lisp. Another girl cornered the new girl, pointing and mocking her. To this day, I'm ashamed to say I joined in. I have no idea why, but I still recall it- despite it being nearly 40yrs ago.
As an adult, I tried finding her to apologise, but haven't been able to find her. I think your name was Alyssa or Alicia and I'm so sorry 😞

How incredibly sad

@stormy4319trevor

I do believe she was let down terribly. The school denied there being a bullying issue even after her death. There was a belief in the 00’s I think, that if you “gave as good as you got” aka trying to fight back, then you weren’t being bullied. Ridiculous of course.

She should be in her mid 30’s now, living a normal life.

When I was at school, bullying wasn’t actually acknowledged as such. It was just presumed that children have either ordinary fallings out with each other or a ‘bit of harmless banter’. Children who didn’t cope with what was actually pretty relentless abuse (me) were the ones regarded as having the problem. I once bumped into a girl who’d been one of the bullies and, without directly saying so, I think she was uncomfortable. Two other girls tried to pick up where they’d left off - quite bizarre behaviour given we were by then adults who’d randomly encountered each other. I doubt very much the people who made my days hellish give me a second thought or, if they do, they almost certainly sugar coat and rationalise their actions.

I was bullied at school. Exactly the sort of bullying that wasn’t seen as such at the time: the snide comments, the name-calling, the interrogations on your fashion sense, your music taste, your use of language, your sex life, real or imagined (!), all of which was ‘wrong’ until they wanted to copy your homework. I knew this wasn’t right.

But the worst and most insidious form of bullying came via my so-called ‘best friend’ who flip-flopped between controlling mind-games, ignoring me and allowing deep conversations on her own terms. She wound me up so effectively that I slapped her hard a couple of times and would no doubt have been labelled a bully myself. It took me a while to forgive myself and even longer to realise how toxic her behaviour was. Obviously, nobody remembers this sort of stuff; I was last very briefly in touch about 20-odd years ago, in the Friends Reunited days, and when I shared some of the non-controversial stuff she was all ‘oh, you have a good memory…’

On balance, I suspect teenagers are not meant to be herded together and educated en masse, factory-style. They need proper supervision and support, to prevent pack dominance behaviour getting out of control.

When I look back at our secondary school days, I don’t think any of us covered ourselves in glory. We were all at our worst and behaved badly at times. I was more of a victim than a bully, but I still had my moments of being unkind, tactless or a stirrer.

I was picked on by a group of about five boys who spent years finding new and creative ways to tell me how unattractive I was. But from about Year 10 onwards, I think two of the boys regretted their behaviour as they started being much kinder to me.

There was also a girl in the year above who I was a bit scared of - she was loud, rebellious and sharp-tongued, and threw out unprovoked insults which could sting. I didn’t see her again until DD started school, and it turned out she’s the mum of a boy in DD’s class. She has been nothing but nice to me and was surprised to find out that I once found her scary. She said anxiously, “but I was all right, wasn’t I? I was a good girl”. I wouldn’t have called her a “good girl”, but she seems to have grown up into a nice woman.

I genuinely don't think teenagers really realise what they are doing.

A girl really badly bullied me at school. I said it to her as adults. And she had no memory of it.

Similarly a woman said to me as adults tha ti had bullied her at school. I had no absolutely no memory of it

It's sad.

When we are teens ourselves, we think the people who bulky us are really bad people

But when you grow up to be an adult, you look back and see that young teenagers are just children.

I don't think most of us as adults, remember what we did as young teenagers

The woman who bullied me for years as an adult is now a “mental health first aider” who wangs on about mental health on her LinkedIn profile. Stupid bitch.