Was anyone else bullied at school?

[theamazonstar]

Sorry for such a miserable topic on a Friday night but I have to get this off my chest.

I had a miserable time at high school. I was horribly bullied and ended up with bulimia and severe depression. I contemplated suicide too. As soon as I could I left for uni and I was much happier there but still very slow to trust people. I've recently moved back to my home town for family and work reasons, and I've run into a few of my classmates. I can't talk to them, even of they didn't bully me. I start shivering and gibbering and I bloody hate it- I'm not the person I was back then but seeing someone brings it all back. Is this normal?

Help :(

[thisisyesterday]

omg you are me! seriously

everything in that post applies to me

i guess i am not as over it as i thought i was

[theamazonstar]

Magneto- yes to make up and clothes. I also felt so self conscious with boys and dating- I never could believe someone was interested in me, I always felt that they were stringing me along to humiliate me later.

[theamazonstar]

I hope I'm not bringing you down thisisyesterday. Sorry :(

[HokeyCokeyPigInaPokey]

Children can be cruel and horrid. DD was bullied in year 2 and was so stressed she pulled out her eyelashes and parts of her eyebrows, it broke my heart.

Things are better for her now but i find myself doing anything i can to make sure she fits in, buying latest clothes, new pencils, pens, bags ect. I don't want her to be singled out for anything. I never want her to feel that dread.

I think maybe you should try counselling, you have nothing to lose and it might help.

Good luck

[thisisyesterday]

no no amazon, i guess there are a lot of things that I don't really think of as being an effect of bullying, but when i think about it i guess they are.

am feeling positive tonight though, so i know these things can be overcome!

[hellhasnofurylikeahungrywoman]

I was because my mum was mentally ill. She was in a local hospital and on a locked ward for quite a lot of my childhood. Slowly, at the age of 48, I am learning that I am an OK kind of person and that I am much stronger than I ever realised.

[HokeyCokeyPigInaPokey]

Magneto my confidence is the same as yours. I never do anything to get noticed and am a bundle of nerves in unfamilar surroundings.

[theamazonstar]

Oh your poor DD, Hokey. She's got a good mum behind her though. Thank you for the luck, I hope things work out well for you too.

They can be, thisisyesterday. I do actually feel very calm and quite relieved myself.

[Magneto]

I only left school in 2007. I moved school halfway through sixth form and finally escaped it during school hours at least.

I have no faith in schools to protect ds and he will attend self defence classes until he leaves school I am making it mandatory whether he likes it or not. I know others disagree but the confidence they give a child is worth more than anything.

[snax84]

I was bullied all through school from primary up untill year 10 when my dad took me out school I never sat my gcse's
& have a massive phobia of educational establishments.
The bullying ranged from mental/emotional to physical all because I came from a poor family & could not afford new uniform/bags etc
I work nights in a care home on my own to avoid people of my age group or younger.
I have been in & out of counciling since I was 13 & tried to kill myself twice during high school I also developed a drug problem during this time
I have problems being in social group situations, I have very little confidence & self esteem & find it very difficult to trust people.

It's only in the last 5 years I have managed to start turning my life around.
I'm also dreading dd starting school properly
People don't relies how much damage bullying can do to people

[theamazonstar]

They really don't snax. :(

[MaisieM]

I was bullied by a group of girls for three years (year 9 - 11). Not only did they ostracise me but they made sure that no one in my school year spoke to me or interacted with me. For three years they made sure that I spent every break and lunch time on my own, usually hiding in one of the cloakrooms. They did try beating me up a couple of times but I managed to defend myself so they resorted to making sure that I was completely isolated from my peer group instead.

I managed to hide all this from my parents until half way through the fourth year (now year 10) when I had to tell them as i had been attacked on the way home and was covered in mud. Sadly there was little my parents could do to help and I definitely downplayed everything in an attempt to lessen their distress. It was a smallish town (albeit a very posh one!) with no other secondary school for me to attend. I never told anyone at the school but I sill struggle to understand how none of the teachers noticed anything!

Things became slightly better when they left after O Levels and I moved up to the Lower 6th. These girls are, without exception, still living in the same town and are either unemployed or in dead end jobs. I have seen some of them on FB and even the sight of them on there makes me feel sick.

25 years on I am still uncomfortable in groups of women, frequently paranoid and can take a long time to become really friendly with anyone.

My 13 year old niece has been bullied at her all girl's grammar but it seems to have been identified and dealt with very swiftly.

[HokeyCokeyPigInaPokey]

Snax glad you are turning things around.

[Mercapto]

I was bullied at highschool and I know it still affects me more than fifteen years later.

I have never talked about it with someone professionally, except this one time I had to make an appointment with the university counsellor as part of the procedure for leaving halls of residence.

I shared a kitchen with about 15 folk who were all foreign. They formed cliques within the halls and fought and argued with each other. I found this intimidating and uncomfortable even though their beef wasn't with me.

So the counsellor asked me what's happened in my life that makes me feel this way and it dawned on me then. He said I'd be affected by this for the rest of my life.

So it was first year in high school where I was put into a class with none of my classmates from primary school. I was quiet, wanted to get on with work, and didn't stick up for myself so therfore was easy prey.

I formed a friendship with a girl in the class which resulted in accusations of us both being lesbians. So that was the end of that.

Basically when you are told constantly on a day to day basis you are a piece of shit, you start to believe it. I wanted to die. I begged my mum not to send me to school.

After a year of parents meeting with teachers i was moved into a class with old classmates. The damage was already done. I couldn't look at anyone in the eye when I spoke to the because I was so fat and ugly (fucking far from either when I look back ).

I didn't do well in highschool. I think I just drifted along in my own bubble. So self conscious, zero confidence.

However I went to college, uni, got a great job relevant to degree. My own wee family, I'm lucky.

I too am dreading when DD goes to highschool but I keep telling myself she will be fine. She's the opposite from me. First born, fiesty, confident, clever, (she's only 20mo but I can tell ).

I can't help but wonder how different I might be if it wasn't for those bastard headbangers in my class.

[theamazonstar]

Lunchtimes were torture for me too Maisie. I still can't sit alone in a cafe with a coffee and read the paper or MN, it brings it all back.

[theamazonstar]

I think I would be different too Mercapto. I had the grades for Oxbridge but not the confidence to even apply, and too scared of being rejected. But I did meet my wonderful DH at uni.

[technoduck]

I got bullied by one girl all the way through school, made my life hell...

6 years after school she can into a cafe I used to run for a family member asking for a job, her face dropped when see saw me, I took great pleasure in tellling her to fuck off back to the hole she crawled out of and never to set foot in my familys cafe ever again.
The last time I saw her she couldn't even look me in the eyes.
Ive never belived in revenge but oh that made me so happy!

[Sonaive]

I was ostracised too, I spoke quite posh and wasn't the least bit fashionable.

Ironically the girls who did it had parents who were loaded and I grew up in a flat over a shop.

I never have had any real female friends when I stop and think about it.

I would imagine some bullies are much better people now, I wonder if they know just how much hurt they caused?.

[HokeyCokeyPigInaPokey]

My dh who is black recently went to a school reunion. The school racist who was vile to my dh and his friends was there.

Dh was ready for him to still be the same and to punch him tbh. But they spoke and he was upset to realise that they all thought he was a racist, he said he thought they "had just been messing about". Dh said the guy was close to tears and said he would be devastated and ashamsed if his dw and dcs knew what people thought of him.

I don't think people realise the impact they have.

[Sonaive]

No, I don't think they do realise that it affects us so much.

I stammer saying my name because a girl at uni took the piss out of me saying it one day. Again she thought I was posh, she went skiing ffs I haven't been abroad ever!
There are some really sad stories Herr.

[Sonaive]

Here.

[leguminous]

I think most of them are clueless about the effect it has. Some of mine have to know what they were doing - shoving me into walls, destroying my stuff, hitting me with hockey sticks - but most of the teasing I think is just utterly thoughtless.

And for me, if it had just been one or two people teasing then I think I'd have been OK, but there were days when it seemed to be everyone. Whole days when I couldn't find a friendly face. I did have a tight little group of friends to spend time with at lunch, but they were in none of my classes, and the constant feeling of being unwanted did a real number on my self-esteem. In hindsight, most of them were just keeping their heads down, not wanting to become targets themselves by acting friendly towards me. But I felt like the lowest worm to crawl the face of the earth. It's taken me over a decade to hold my head up in social situations and not assume that people will dislike me on sight.

[R2PeePoo]

I was bullied at primary school but I have complete blank in my memory there, I have very few memories of primary school at all. My mum said I started school as a happy confident child and left quiet and introverted. I suspect if I really sat and thought about it the vague images and perceptions I have would become clearer, but I don't want to deal with it.

At secondary school I was fat, uncool, unfashionable, geeky and inarticulate. Unfortunately I remember some of what happened to me. As an adult it has taken me years (and a very supportive husband and some very positive experiences) to make a dent in my low self-esteem and complete lack of self-confidence. I don't trust people and the idea of a 'best friend' still makes me laugh as my 'best friend' was the one feeding information to the cool kids.

Sometimes I think of them and hate them all, although the times I do are getting fewer and further between - but I have no doubt that they probably don't even remember me, I was very good at being invisible by the time I got to sixth form.

[Empusa]

"For example, I do not wear make up because I feel it draws attention to me obvioulsy was the last thing I wanted with the bullies."

That's funny, I went the opposite way. I started wearing Goth makeup as a kind of defence against the world. I referred to it as my war paint! Wearing it made me feel stronger, and more people treated me like I was a force to be reckoned with.

"Am now shitting myself about the day I have to send my daughter to school"

Totally understand that. DH was bullied even worse than I was, and left school at 13 because of it. We're so tempted to home school DS in the future, but know it's only because we fear he'll go through what we did.

[jubilucket]

I think I've just found my spiritual home...
So many posters talking about the same experiences I went through back in the 80's. Have been choking up a bit as I read.
One of the peripheral gang - not actually bullying but not doing anything to stop it either - turned up at a 40th birthday bash. He apologised for not having said anything at the time -this was out of the blue, we happened to both be outside for a cigarette at the same time. I just burst into tears on the spot, I'd covered the whole thing up to myself as much as anyone else for so long, and I wasn't even (particularly) drunk.
Two of the bastard boys from that gang have also apologised (!!) since then - the other three are in different towns now.
But none of the bitch girls have ever said a word. OTH the two of them I ever see are both shelf stacking in Tesco