To ask how you feel now if you were bullied at school? (Potentially sensitive)

[moutonfou]

I was picked on for being quiet and clever, which only made me quieter. By end of school I was shy to mute depending on situation, with extreme social anxiety and general lack of any confidence/resilience.

Although I have now put a lot of hard work into becoming a functioning adult with a good job, able to talk to different people, pretty calm and resilient, I still think I have an underlying expectation of rejection that will never go away. I automatically think anybody new I meet is cooler/better/has it more together than me and don't really expect them to like me. I think that comes across to people as a lack of warmth, simply because I'm still quite guarded.

Just curious to hear others' stories - how does it affect you years or decades later?

I've often thought that one thing about social media is, all this poison is there in black and white. Pre-internet, it was all still there but it was spoken. Snide whispers, sly glances, saving places for anyone but you, scribbling nasty things on notes or the blackboard but rubbing it away before Miss came back to the classroom. We haven't got nastier, it was always there. The amazing thing is what you manage to forget. Unfortunately I still remember how the rejection felt. All those pop quiz tests designed to expose my ignorance of the Top 40. Being forced to play Chinese Whispers when I have a hearing impairment. Being asked intrusive and humiliating questions about periods, sex and (non-existent) boyfriends. I'm not particularly proud of slapping an 11-year-old in the face when she asked innocently if I was deaf but I was driven nearly insane by what came before it.

Chinese whispers is difficult even without hearing difficulties. I remember it now, clearly. I had forgotten (or so I thought). We did Chinese whispers in kindergarten so I'm talking about something that happened to me 47 years ago.

My family moved from East Anglia to Warwickshire when I was 7. Only new kid in yr3 and so 3 yr4 girls decided to bully me - made that first year very hard - never told anyone. I NEVER reacted to them and did make friends in yr 3 and by the time I went into yr4 it had stopped. I was and still am shy - but put on a front. Couple of years later a boy started to pick on me outside of school -
I told my older bro - he sorted it out! However it has left me distrusting people and I loath new social occasions as feel I am being judged and talked out - I know I am not but those bloody girls and their horrible comments! My ds was bulled in yr7 and I contacted the school all guns blazing and it stopped. Ds now at Uni and very confident. Perhaps if I'd told my parents.......As an aside the little saying 'sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me' is so UNTRUE I sometimes wish they had hit me because I know I would have hit back and then maybe it would have been over so much faster. Sorry didn't realise how this thread would affect me.

I got a bit of name calling for being clever (I was) and posh (I wasn't, I just didn't constantly drop aitches and said something rather than sumfin, etc) but I could cope with that. I was always a bit of a square peg in a round hole, always have been. It's the curse of being very bright, working class but not common, and then not turning your back on your roots. Means I've never really fitted in anywhere.

What affected me far more was the sexual harassment and groping I suffered from 11-16, from boys who also called me fat and stuck up. I don't know why they singled me out, but I hated it. It made me afraid of males, and fucked me up for years, I didn't have any kind of relationship or lose my virginity until I was well into my 20s.

I was bullied in high school for being fat, square and a bit weird. By quite a few boys and girls. It hammered my self esteem.

It doesn't affect me now but I think I was depressed as a teenager and overate a lot. Moving away to university and living abroad after that boosted my confidence. Now I'm 41 and self esteem is not a problem.

I'm just going to leave this here for you all :-)

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cool-kids-can-go-on-to-become-losers-in-later-life-study-finds-10432348.html

"Let me tell you about another study that was done by Joe Allen. He was particularly interested in those really cool kids. The kids who in the transition into adolescence at around age 13 are engaged in those behaviors we see among the highly popular kids with high status, those high social reputation kids. What he called these kids is being pseudo-mature. Kids that even at the age of 13 were already engaging in a few deviant acts. They were already involved in early romantic relationships, and they tended to select friends specifically based on how attractive those friends were. So in a way, this a rough way of getting at those mean girls and boys, those kinds of really cool, popular kids at age 13. And what he was able to find was in fact, his measure of these pseudo-mature kids, this cool behavior, was in fact strongly related to that form of popularity at age 13. But here's what's interesting. What he found was while all of those behaviors led someone to be really cool and popular at age 13, the kids who continued to engage in those behaviors became a little bit less cool and less popular by age 15. So that's something that defined the cool kids early. But as they grew up, those that got stuck in doing the pseudo-mature behavior, they started to fall out of favor with their peers. Well perhaps most interestingly, what they found was that when these kids grew up, by the age of 22, these pseudo-mature kids were more likely to engage in problematic alcohol use. More likely to engage in marijuana use. More likely to experience problems in their lives because of their use of substances. They were also more likely to engage in criminal behavior. They had worse romantic relationships as they grew up, and not just reported by them, but reported by their best friends when they were adults. Their adult friends said that they were not, that the cool 13 year olds grow up to be not as good at maintaining close relationships. And interestingly, when these kids grew up, and they were 22. And they broke up with a romantic partner or a romantic partner broke up with them, they were more likely to attribute to that breakup to the fact that they thought their romantic partner thought they weren't cool enough. They didn't have high perceived status. So, it really suggested there's something about, in this very recent study by Joe Allen, and it's really new research. There's something about being cool too soon, too early. Some of these kids get stuck, and they continue engaging in these same behaviors for at least until early adulthood. And it leads to problems."

Definitely found my tribe - I am 41 now, and only feel in the last few years that I'm starting to claw my way back to where I would have been had I not had such a shit time at high school.

Still feel angry about a couple of people, but still have an overwhelming desire to be accepted by the people I went to school with (some of them, anyway). I find school reunions massively triggering, because I can't go in case my abuser attends like he did last year, the bastard - he sexually assaulted me (forced me to give him a blow job and other stuff) then slandered me for a year and basically pushed me out of school. Can't even bear to say or hear his name.

The other bullies I feel slightly less angry about, mostly because they either turned out to be fairly average, or incredibly nice and I know they probably feel remorse.

I'm a very determined person though, and am channeling that anger into creative stuff that should hopefully pay off for me one day. I refuse to let the buggers win.