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

[Cathyhon]

I was bullied pretty much throughout the whole of secondary school because of the way I looked. Now as an adult, I have serious body/facial dysmorphia, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of what I was subjected to in secondary school. I’m constantly looking in the mirror all day at my flaws; some days I can’t even look in the mirror as it will just upset me too much.I’ve had quite a bit of plastic surgery but still feel the same way. I can’t look people in the eyes for too long as I’m worried they will start noticing things on my face. It affects my relationships with my friends as I’m scared to meet new people. I never had a boyfriend because I’m not happy with myself and wouldn’t want to put that burden on anybody else. I’m thinking about getting therapy but feel a little bit embarrassed as an adult that this is still affecting me in the way it is. If you were bullied growing up, does it still affect you now? I’d like to hear your stories.

And I know looks aren’t everything and people are beautiful in their own way, but it’s pretty hard to snap out of this mindset when your looks were the reason you got bullied.

Have a good day🩷

I'm really sorry to hear that op. I was bullied, often called names which were derogatory about my appearance, was also physically attacked on multiple occassions by different people. The thing was by the time I did my gcse's I had found my people, gained confidence and realised the bullies were just arseholes. As a result I don't think I ever took it to heart. I went off to Uni and met some amazing people including my dh....who constantly tells me I am beautiful and he loves me. I was also constantly told (and still am) how wonderful I am by my dm. I think all of this means I have managed to keep good self esteem. It sounds like your self esteem never recovered. I think you would benefit massively from some sort of therapy to help you move past this.

Sorry to hear about you too and I’m so happy that you found the positives in life and didn’t let it affect you too much:)

@Cathyhon please don't feel embarrassed about it affecting you as an adult. Lots of people are impacted by negative experiences growing up and need support with them. Good luck on your healing journey.

Yes, it still does, although I am learning to not let it.

In middle school, I was bullied from.within my own friendship group. Odd no of kids in the group, Inc one queen bee.

They'd be my friends, then the next week they'd be cutting me off, the next week I'd be ostracised, the week after I'd be accepted back. I would never jnow when i went to school how they would be with me. Went on till we went to high school. Never realised for years it was bullying.

I had a great set of mum friends when the kids were little, but wheb we met up, I would never speak first, I would always let someone else speak. It's almost as if I was testing the water to see what the mood of the group was - exactly how I did 25 years previously.

And of course they were always fine

Yes definitely. I grew up with dyspraxia that wasn’t diagnosed until I was 17. It made a lot of things difficult for me from sports to completing class work. I was mildly bullied by other children for being obviously different. But honestly most of the bullying was from teachers who made me feel like I was struggling because I was lazy and stupid. I developed a huge inferiority complex and social anxiety in primary school that has always stuck with me. To this day I’m afraid to try and make friends because I assume everyone is better than me and couldn’t possibly want to talk to me. The sad thing is I was a very sociable little girl once and would chat to anyone until all of the confidence was knocked out of me in school.

Yes, but I try not to let it affect my daily life.

i was at boarding school and for two years I was in a dorm with two girls, who were total bitches!

The worst part was that I felt nobody really cared. There were many times when I just wanted my Mum or Dad to hug me and make it better, but I only saw them in the holidays. Teachers could not care less either.

There wasn't any escape, so the only way to deal with it was to grow balls of steel and pretend it didn't bother me. That was difficult and not advice I would give today to anyone being bullied.

I would often climb into my bed at night and silently cry myself to sleep.

Yes 😔
I think about it most days. To be honest I overthink everything right now. I was bullied from age 4 right up to leaving school. There was a physical reason but now as I get older I am starting to wonder if it's me... I'm a bit weird, quirky... anyway instagram seems to think I have ADHD...

It's made me really struggle if there's things that go wrong at work.

I just wish I could stop thinking about it.

I wish you could too OP. I'm sorry you feel like this too.

Yes. I was traumatised and socially awkward. I think I'm also autistic although didn't know it then. I was bullied throughout secondary school. I ate my lunch in a toilet cubicle so no one would see I had no friends. No one wanted to be my partner when we had to find one. It was years of incredible loneliness and I escaped into books.

It took years of therapy to recover from that and other stuff. Two decades later I'm much more confident although still struggle in groups and with loud extroverted women.

@Cathyhon I'm a therapist. You don't have to have a reason to feel the way you do. You feel however you feel. However many people might feel the way you do after experiencing that. If you go want to explore it and heal from it in a supportive and accepting atmosphere please do consider therapy - it is just the sort of thing that therapy is for!

For me the main thing was being unable to thrive whilst living where I grew up. I spent several years there after university and it was dreadful. In hindsight I was always looking over my shoulder, couldn't make new friends, felt really uncomfortable around pretty much everyone there.

Put a good few hundred miles between myself and that place and found that I was able to relax and make friends. I like visiting my parents but wish they'd move.

Yep also got bullied all through high school. Skived school at times cause I hated it and failed my exams cause of it. I suffer from lack of self esteem and social anxiety because of it. I also hate how I look. I have improved a bit as I've got older cause I have learned to care less what people think but it's taken 2 decades plus and even then now ive still got.my issues.

My parents continually told me I was fat, ugly, thick, worthless. I believed them. I have a lovely husband and he taught me different. I look at photos now of when I was younger and I was none of these. My parents are old now and have no idea how little I love them.

I’m thinking about getting therapy but feel a little bit embarrassed as an adult that this is still affecting me in the way it is.

It's completely normal to be affected by such horrible experiences. Therapy would hopefully really help, but take time to find the right person and don't expect instant results. Also make sure they are well-qualified.

What the bullies did sounds awful. You've nothing to be embarrassed about.

I was bullied for three years. But I was also raised in abusive home and married an abusive man. So I definitely have esteem/confidence issues but nothing that i specifically relate back to bullying. It was awful at the time tho and definitely impacted on me through fear of friends falling out with me . (I've managed to shake this over the years)

yes, I’m mid 50’s and my experience shaped me and continues to do so. I literally have no friends, I have fantastic work colleagues who are my friends but outside of work I have no one due to trust issues.
I was bullied and betrayed so i suppose I now protect myself by not letting anyone close to me. I did go through a period of feeling sad about it and thinking there was something wrong with me, compared myself to others who talked about going out with friends etc but now accept it for what it is and just crack on with life.

Bullied through school and when I started work, some of the girls I'd been to school with worked alongside me.
I became introverted and had no friends. At school I had braces on my teeth which I suspect was a trigger for them.
Met my husband through my brother and he built up my confidence telling me I was beautiful and intelligent and could be whatever i wanted to be. Helped me change career paths and I was so much happier.

I was bullied in yr13 and virtually sent to Coventry by what had been my friendship group. The result was that I looked outside of that circle for a social life and met my husband. We have been together over 50 years. So yes, it did affect my life! However, I am still trying to work out what happened and why.

I was bullied at school (including inappropriate touching by one boy) and unfortunately at home too, so no one ever cared or did anything to build my self-confidence.

A lot of the bullying had to do with my appearance and the fact that I was very quiet and shy due to how I was being raised at home.

It really affected me then and in adulthood. In my case my parents did nothing to deal with my awful overbite (I could not even close my lips) and my lower jaw that never grew properly. All of this could have been corrected in childhood/teenage years bit my mother ignored doctors's advice. I also was given really think glasses and was sent to school without proper bathing. So you can imagine how awful I looked....

I have always been self conscious about my appearance and also grew into a withdrawn and depressed adult. I am better now that I am older in term of confidence but it let me with real mental scars and also anger that my parents behaved in that way and left me to deal with all that anguish on my own...

I was physically and mentally abused at home so while school was my 'safe' place, I must have been giving off some sort of vibe and I was mostly ignored. I also smelt bad due to not having deodorant, toothpaste or period products. I was glad as the alternative was bullying. I didn't have a best friend as my mother drove them away and groups have always been too much for me. I echo pp when they mentioned they can't cope with loud and extroverted women. I don't trust them not to do something hurtful.

The two main incidents that stand out 25 years later was being spat upon from windows and when I tried to be part of a group and we were standing in a corridor (as groups did at school). I needed the loo so I thought if I left my jumper with them that they'd not run away from me. They didn't. I came back and my jumper was on the floor. It told me all I needed to know at 13. I find I am hyper sensitive to the way people act around me and always analyse their behaviour, looking for any hint of malice when in reality, they're just living life.

I don't know whether to be happy I'm not alone or deeply sad so many of us went through this. School for me was like the 3 Minute hate session- except all through the day. Undiagnosed AuADHD it felt like even most of the teachers found me deeply annoying and thought i was squandering my intelligence on purpose.
They'd be my friends, then the next week they'd be cutting me off, the next week I'd be ostracised, the week after I'd be accepted back. I would never jnow when i went to school how they would be with me. Went on till we went to high school. Never realised for years it was bullying.
This was my 'friend group' as well- I clung onto them as it was all I had or so it felt.
Not only was I marked out as a Victim because I was obviously weird- but my dad taught at the school so my parents wouldn't 'interfere'. Oh and I turned down one of the most popular boys in Yr1 because he was a racist. So he made sure all the boys hated me as well.
I carried on the pattern of clinging onto inconsistent people for so many years into adulthood. And I always assume people will bully me.

Yep, the effect for me was that I never showed that I was upset. I didn't realise that it had become a habit until someone said that I was like a robot years later and that did upset me. I have worked on that now!

I was bullied and I still don't know quite why. I became physically unwell due to it and had half a term off school. Then I changed schools, which was better but I never felt I fitted in properly even though I had a little friendship group and was socially active (but never the social butterfly!)
As an adult, I have difficulty maintaining friendships. I suppose I'm always waiting for them to turn on me. I have a couple of mates who just ignore my 'coolness' but I sometimes envy other women who form friendships easily.

Yes. Queen Bee situation here too. Appearance was mocked and I was ostracised. Obviously the queen bee and all her friends have done really well in life. Far better than me.

I'm so sorry you've been through this and that it's still affecting you. I was bullied and it completely destroyed my self esteem. I had no confidence at secondary school. It wasn't about looks but more about how I was. I really thought I must be some weird freak to be targeted that way. Despite all this, I always had a lot of friends and I think that's what stopped me being completely ruined by it.
Once I left school and started doing part time work, went to university etc I found that no one bullied me. No one seemed to think I was weird. Most importantly, everyone acted like I was a normal person!! What a revelation this was! For several years I still had terribly low self esteem. I was always embarrassed by myself and apologising for myself but as the years passed, the effects of the bullying faded away and I grew in confidence. It was the realisation that people seemed to think I was normal plus the fact that many people liked me, that helped.
I'd say by the time I was 30 I was a million times better. I accepted myself for who I am and became comfortable in my own skin.
Looking back I can see how tribal kids are. I'm really not that strange (no more than anyone else!) but I was targeted because I was shy. It was a viscous cycle - the more I was bullied the quieter I became, then I was bullied more for being even more quiet than before. Leaving school broke that cycle and allowed me to regain my confidence.
I'm now 49 and I'd say since my 30s, the bullying has no longer affected me.

Yes
I was badly bullied at Primary and it was especially shocking for me as I had always been one of the cool and popular kids but when I decided to object to bullying the usual target I ended up on the recieving end - karma I suppose!
When I started Secondary I had a very shitty attitude and saw everyone as an adversary, no trust at all even in people who were supposedly my friend. I also had a fear of associating with anyone who could be seen as "not cool enough" and probably missed out on some really nice friendships with nice people instead of the constant battle to stay at the top. I carried this on to Uni as well and had an almost pathalogical fear of "nerds" - which is funny now because I actually married one!!
I am now in my 50's and still don't trust most people, I think they are likely to turn on me so I don't give them the chance. I do have friends but I watch them carefully for signs that they are about to betray me