How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood

Pocket ^ | June 20, 2016 | Kate Baggaly, Slate

[TalBlack]

“You can’t just close the door on these experiences, says Ellen Walser deLara,“

Bull. People do exactly that all the time. It’s called “getting on with it”.

[cuz1961]

I was bullied.

Now days the only ones trying to bully me are

dems, progs, perves,commies,

but I repeat myself.

[irishjuggler]

“The simple answer to bullying is to fight back, and there are many ways to do that.”

That’s true. I was hassled for a while by a guy in high school. He was significantly bigger and heavier that me, so I likely couldn’t have taken him in any kind of physical fight. But I was able to get him off my back with a sort of blackmail.

A gossipy gay kid who had gone to the same elementary school as the bully mentioned to me that the bully had pretty severe psychiatric issues and had done some visits to mental hospitals for some crazy things that gay went into detail about. It all made sense, so the next time the bully hassled me, I dropped an oblique (but unmistakable to him) reference to something he had allegedly done in the past. At that moment, he knew that I knew about his past that he was undoubtedly quite ashamed of. And I was mouthy enough to be dangerous with that knowledge. The bullying came to complete halt. And from that moment forward, you’d have that this guy was a good friend of mine.

[ought-six]

Yes. Fighting back does not always have to be physical. In fact, I’d say you fought back in such a way that hurt him far more than you could have hurt him physically.

[VTenigma]

Ditto, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Being bullied in my younger years made me a tough SOB in my adulthood. It also made me use creativity to avoid or minimize the bullying at the time.

[nicollo]

This is a well-known phenomenon. They become FIB agents.

[joethedrummer]

“The Left doesn’t give a flip about bullying..”

No, they don’t - they just want to do the bullying unhindered.

[joethedrummer]

“The simple answer to bullying is to fight back, and there are many ways to do that.“

This is truth.

I was “bullied” all through elementary and most of Jr. High. I was smaller, wore glasses, followed the rules and had little self-confidence…

By 9th grade, I found that I had grown taller than most of the bullies and realized that I was better at a lot of stuff than they were. And I’d just had enough.

I’ll never forget the first time a bully tried to intimidate me and I stood up over him and threatened HIM. He cowered and chuckled nervously, saying - “Woah dude, I was just kidding!…”.

Never EVER got bullied by other kids again. Supervisors at work? - well, that’s another story… but there ARE ways to deal with them too..

[jocon307]

I was terribly bullied in elementary school, here’s my story.

First off, I agree 100% with the person(s) who said that nobody cared about this until the Gays started to use it as a wedge issue. That is totally true.

I’m in my mid 60s, and I was just made miserable every day as a child by the girls who bullied me. (I am also a girl.)

The thing is, this was not an issue of “othering”. These girls were just like me. We were ALL white, Roman Catholic girls, most, if not all, of our fathers had served in WWII. My recollection is that the father of the girl who was by far the meanest to me had won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I went to a Catholic school, and every day (or so it seemed) I was relentlessly targeted at lunchtime. No adult did a thing about it.

I feel like I complained to my parents, but who knows? My parents had 3 kids born in 3 consecutive years. My father had diabetes. They had a lot on their plates as the saying goes.

My luck changed when, due to a conflict with the parochial school over my youngest brother, we were taken out of that school and enrolled in our local public school.

In that school were also many white RCs, but also Jews and some Black and (a very few) Hispanic kids.

Now, I knew some of these kids from the neighborhood, so we weren’t complete strangers.

But, nobody bullied me there. Even though I was really a big weirdo for a long time. In the Catholic school you had to stand when you gave an answer to a question in class, so of course I still did that. But nobody laughed at me for it. Not even one time that I remember.

So, yes, kids do bully and it’s not nothing. I certainly was damaged by those experiences. I think about them all the time. I would say I’ve gotten beyond them, but I haven’t gotten over them. Adults do need to step in and stop it. But the motivations are not what we are told they are.

Thanks for letting me vent!