Embarrassed that this still affects me so much

[NoMorePawPatrolPlease]

I can’t talk to anyone about this in RL because I’m too embarrassed, and I’ve name changed.
I also just want to acknowledge that I’m aware there are more important things going on in the world, people have much much worse problems than this, but I’m feeling quite unsettled so please be kind.

Does anyone still feel quite affected by bullying at school? And have you had any help for it?

I was bullied at secondary school by girls who I had been close friends with for years. I was devastated to lose my friends and the bullying was embarrassing and upsetting. It has affected my ability to make, and keep, healthy female friendships ever since.

I think DS starting school last month has triggered the memories to start coming back, and then this weekend I saw on social media that DS wasn’t invited to a party. The party itself is of no consequence whatsoever, it looked to be a handful of boys, and DS won’t be inviting everyone in his class to his birthday party either. But these awful feelings of shame, embarrassment and anger washed over me and I cried about it for the first time in about 20 years.
Just the thought of DS or DD experiencing what I did at school makes me go cold, and we’re just at the start of their school journeys.

Has anyone experienced this and managed to get over it so you don’t think about it anymore? I feel so stupid and embarrassed at my age, but also really sad, and I’d love to be able to close the door on it all.

Feeling very emotional about it all. Hugs to all that continue to suffer

Have you had counselling? I was bullied at primary school, which still gets me, but I was very troubled by a situation where my best friend at secondary made a new friend and basically dumped me for her- they both ghosted me after about a year.
When I saw a counsellor (about another thing) this situation came up and I talked it through to her... and she said 'well it's not normal or kind to just disappear and not explain why' and for the first time I realised it wasn't my fault- it was their behaviour that was strange. I really can't explain how much this lifted it off my shoulders, and I would recommend counselling for anything like this.

I have been bullied in a workplace, and for a time in school.

But the school upsets me more.

It must be because the younger we are - the more impact things have. Does anyone else agree

I wouod have counselling.
Your feelings are totally understandable and you have found a way to sort of deal with it for yourself.
But as your dc are starting school, maybe it would be worth talking about it so you aren’t triggered again and again by things that aren’t the same at all (like nit being invited to a b’day party)

Lots of good advise above.
I'm going to come at it from a different angle.
Buy some 'building resilience in children books'.
Help your kids and help yourself whilst reading/using them.
It's ok to be sad about your past experiences. Go back to your younger self and give her a big cuddle.

Thank you to all the others who have posted. Lots of what has been said makes perfect sense to me, sadly.

My parents were great but I hid a lot from them, not wanting to worry them. They both had stressful jobs and parents with health issues to look after.

I do wonder if, being so young, it impacted me more. I think what I’m struggling with is how they just get to go about their lives now completely normally. They won’t have thought about me in years and years. And yet this is still having an impact on me, on my ability to have successful and long-lasting friendships, my social awkwardness, and my self esteem. At thirty fucking four.

To answer a previous poster - I had DC because I wanted them badly, and because I wasn’t going to let my awful experience take motherhood away from me. I will watch my DC like a hawk at school, and encourage them to talk to me always. They both have red hair, and a few people close to me have mentioned how I’ll have to teach them to be resilient, as if I should just expect bullying. I act fine about it but deep down I do worry massively. But there’s not a chance in hell I wouldn’t put a stop to it.

@angell84
I have never heard anyone say that they were not bullied at school.
Re your comment above - my friend was never bullied. She always breezily says she just didn't react to bully's so they always eventually left her alone. I KNOW THIS ISNT ALWAYS POSSIBLE. But it does relate to my comment above about building resilience in children. Only relates to low level bullying but hopefully will prevent some of it. Yes it is 100% the bully in the wrong BUT I was a sensitive kid and anything would have upset me. I sometimes just wish I could have turned around and punched shouted back at my bullies. I am so confident now that wouldn't get past their first negative comment/action.

Yes. Bullied badly by so called friends in Year 5 and part of Year 6 and then an easy target because of my then physical appearance and sensitive nature for 'jokes' through high school. Now 32 and still can't trust a compliment and have zero confidence or self esteem about my appearance ☹️

Please do seek out counselling. Counselling is for anyone and everyone - if something is affecting you, you deserve to have help. I think you'd find it really beneficial - just having someone listen and empathise with you and take a bit of care of you can be so healing. You do need to click with someone so it's worth trying one or two out if needs be but it can make such a huge difference. I'm saying this as someone who has experienced quite severe trauma - you and your feelings matter and all that is relevant here is you're struggling with something. And of course you are, bullying destroys lives.

I'm sorry you experienced what you did btw. No one deserves to go through that.

Cuddling yes DS is quite sensitive and that, coupled with his red hair, has put me on high alert since he started preschool. So far he seems to love it, but we’re just at the start of a long school journey. As an ex-teacher, I have no qualms about pulling him out and homeschooling, but I’d rather he enjoyed school and was able to have a good experience. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve been googling things like “Will my child’s red hair go dark with age?” because my heart breaks at the thought of someone bullying him for it.

I will take on board your advice about reading some books about resilience. I’m also thinking of booking him into some self defence classes. I realise I’m jumping the gun massively here, but I just want to protect him - and DD - from the pain I suffered.

Things that happen to us as children have an impact on the way our brain is wired since parts of it are very much still forming throughout childhood and even up to our early 20's.

This. Please don’t be embarrassed about how you feel, OP, or minimise your experiences at school and the effect they’ve had on you. Traumas that children and teenagers go through will inevitably affect aspects of their adult life and several people close to me have been deeply scarred by their own childhood experiences.

One friend only managed to put his demons to rest in his thirties, when he stepped off a packed tube train straight into the path of one of the people who’d bullied him relentlessly throughout secondary school, made his life an absolute misery and given him chronic anxiety. The guy smiled and started to say hello, but got a smack in the mouth that put him on his back on the platform - nothing premeditated, obviously, but the result of years of pent-up rage and shame.

(And a related point: the bully clearly hadn’t processed the catastrophic effect of his teenage behaviour, or maybe even remembered it; kids can be absolute fucking arseholes, and as adults these people could well be genuinely remorseful if they ever get the opportunity to understand the damage they’ve done.)

We carry these things inside us, and as others have said, therapy can be a huge help and may be a good option for you?

I’m so sorry for the way you were treated at school - be kind to yourself, you’re certainly not alone and have absolutely NOTHING to be ashamed of

You're not jumping the gun! It's good to think of what 'armour' you can protect them with. Everything and anything will help them. Self defence classes and a positive resilient attitude will set them up with a good armour. It will never be 100% because that's not what life is. Both from the bully and the victim side. Both sides are human nature. This doesn't make it acceptable but helps to understand it.
There are two sides of every situation and to address the bully side only misses a whole half of an opportunity to build the other person up in a positive way and give them 'power'.
Can you tell I'm passionate about this

Some very supportive and good advice on this thread. Yes, when you've been bullied, there'll be triggers like your kids going to school, seeing groups of teens, or even walking into a school.
I was bullied in secondary school, mercilessly by one particular teacher and by various boys and girls. I was targeted because I had delayed puberty and was a blusher. The insults and jeers were unbearable, I just wanted to hide away and die, I was so ashamed of being tiny.
It caused me immense anxiety and even though I'm in my fifties I can remember vividly the names and faces of the bullies. The teacher will forever be a terrifying memory. I'm so sorry you went through this. Although my children are adults now, I was determined they would always stand up for themselves and champion the weak and vulnerable.
Op I don't think as victims of bullying we ever really get over it, but we can learn to live with it and it's part of our life's story. If you're suffering from the aftermath, then as others have said go for counselling. Good luck.

School bullying still affects my life too. You're not alone.

Not quite the same but I was bullied in my late teens early 20s by a young man I was in love with and sleeping with and it has hugely affected my life in really detrimental ways. It’s not you - this pain dies not go away. Sometimes it’s worse than more recent experiences.

I’m hoping mine will take an interest in kickboxing like I did @ILoveAllRainbowsx it certainly helped me

@CooCooAchew I don’t think it means you are more or less affected, just that you chose a different path? I’m with the OP, no way was something I experienced years ago going to stop me taking the chance on having my own DC and whilst they may face torment as I did, they might not, but at least I can guide them as a person who went through it pretty badly myself - if that makes sense?

I wasn't bullied but I was married to a bully who tried to destroy me, paint me black and turn as many people as he could against me with his pure lies. It has left me feeling very much the same as you . I assume people will hate me, I assume everyone talks about me, and I assume if I put a foot wrong that my name will be mud. It's a hard way to live. I've had lots of therapy/EMDR which has taken away the massive trauma but it can't remove the emotional scars I have.

CooCooAchew

People have kids knowing they may get ill or be disabled or become drug addicts, may be orphaned, may be bullied, may be killed in a hit and run, may have their hearts broken by their first love. All sorts of negative stuff may happen. Lots of it is unlikely, or very unlikely. Lots of it can be recovered from, and outweighed by the positive aspects of being alive. Lots of it can be prevented or mitigated by good, intelligent, involved parenting.

Bullied kids are often (not always) the ones whose parents are inadequate or not very close to them. Those kids are vulnerable to start with. They may have low self-esteem and little support. The bullies often know how to pick a target.

Having a concerned, watchful, clued-up parent who teaches resilience and confidence (and is prepared to take action, liaising with the school and even moving the kid if necessary) massively lessens the chances of bullying impacting on their lives.

I would also say that the culture in schools now is not the culture of 30 years ago. Schools are expected to be proactive against bullying and have better pastoral care. Students are more aware of this attitude as well. Of course it's not perfect, but in general it's much better.

My kids have been bullied... a little bit, for a week or two, until they recognised the pattern and told me and I got the teachers to sort it out. If it hadn't been sorted pronto, I would have escalated it very quickly to the Head and Governors, and moved schools or homeschooled if necessary. This was years ago and my kids have forgotten about it now. But I still keep checking in. My kids will not have the childhood I had, because I can prevent that.

It's all still a problem for me. I can go a while without thinking about it in depth, then out of the blue I can get a nightmare where I'm back there again, with the same girls and the same situations.

What hasn't helped, is one of my kids is now attending the same primary school I attended, where I was bullied badly. It's taken me months to get to a point where I don't automatically get that adrenaline rush when I'm there. We've also had problems with the acting head, which made it all miles worse.

I was undiagnosed at school age, but now have a diagnosis of ADHD and ASD. Which explains a lot. But that doesn't mean I deserved to be bullied or that it in any way lessens the effects or the level of the bullying etc.

I often think about the way we interact with others (a preoccupation because I'm socially inept) and I think it's obvious that a lot of the precursors to, and lesser actions of bullying itself at school age, is because of the development of the self, our place in our society and with our peers, and you have to actively learn what is OK and what isn't. We also seem to get a rise out of the drama which fallings out can cause, as teens.

This is without taking into consideration the bullying which occurs because of the bullies having issues themselves, ie at home.

So I don't think bullying is something which could ever be erased.

I do wish I had the ability to leave it all square in the past though.

Such a sad post

Bullying causes so much damage. It goes on to shape how you see yourself.

I am in my mid 40's and was bullied by male and female peers at high school. I will never forget the shame, humiliation and isolation. I felt alone as my friends at the time were not being bullied. I was quiet, not overly confident and an obvious target. My grades dropped and I left school with crap GCSEs.

I used to dread going in in the mornings. I told no-one as I felt ashamed it was happening to me.

For years afterwards I crossed the road when I saw a group of schoolchildren. If someone laughed near me I assumed it was about me.

To this day I have a deep sense of not being liked, I deliverately stay on the outside of groups. I put myself last in everything for example, if my friends and I have ordered identical desserts and only a few have been brought out by the waiter, I let them take first. I struggle to spend money on myself and look for the cheaper alternatives. Aside from celebrations I meet friends one on one.

My reactions to my family and friends stem from bullying. I am negative and believe the worst of people.

I was bullied at primary, secondary and at university - which lead to me having a nervous breakdown and dropping out. I think because the method of bullying was so insidious as an older teen and as a young adult, it was very like an abusive relationship, one minute best friends the next encouraging everyone to give me the silent treatment. No surprise that I've also been in two abusive relationships. I had a very normal upbringing, parents are very much in love, treat each other well and have been married 30 years - I think it was my tumultuous friendships that meant I have very poor boundaries and let myself be treated appallingly in romantic relationships. Collectively it has led to me having very poor self esteem, no degree despite being very successful academically at school and shitty minimum wage work for the last 7 years. I can be very confident and outgoing around strangers or acquaintances, but I don't allow anyone to get close now.

I worry relentlessly about DD, she is only 3 but I dread to think of her life turning out as crap as mine because of bullying. I'd honestly rather she was the bully than end up like me. All of the girls who were horrible to me have interesting, well paid jobs, while my life is at a standstill due to poor mental health, which I cannot afford to address.