Serious Bullying

[VisionofMilotic]

Have you ever been a victim of bullying? If you feel comfortable you can share your survival stories.

I was bullied from the moment I entered elementary school, and was never not bullied in a grade level until I was in college. I became quite shy, and didn't have any goal to be popular. I just wanted to not be picked on.

One of the most humiliating experiences I had was when another girl told the whole cafeteria that I had a crush on this guy. It was mortifying for me at 10 years old. She screamed my secret loudly over and over again so that the whole school heard, then took her milk carton and sprayed it all over my clothes. She did all sorts of things picked on my clothes, called me names, spread rumors about me. I have a million stories like this from an assortment of different bullies I encountered over the years. I still remember their names.

If you were bullied then how did you respond, and did you ever stand up to the bully?

I tended to be quiet, and try to act like it didn't bother me. Hold it in. If I cried it would only embolden the kids who had taken an interest in me. In retrospect I wish I had fought the bullies, especially when they would hit and threaten me, but I always just tried to ignore it because I felt like that would make the situation worse. The teachers didn't pay attention and didn't care, and I figured that I would just end up thrown out of school if I defended myself. So I just escaped to the world of my imagination.

Were you ever in the opposite end of it and a bully yourself? If so, why do you think you made the choice to bully another?

This last question is for everyone, whether you were bullied for a phase or went through a phase of bullying others.

What preventive measures and solutions do you think could help reduce bullying?

 

[CelloX]

I was bullied a lot in the earlier grades, and I must confess I grew to be a bit of a bully later on in school, probably due to my irritability and social anxiety. Didn't like it when kids I viewed as "abnormal" either tried to associate with me or looked like they were trying to. I was not a good person in high school... I was practically territorial of my lunch table and did not like sitting next to others besides my brother. It is a good thing times change!

 

[Starlight]

I was bullied every single day of school.

I was the lightning rod. Everyone bullied me, the popular kids, the geeky kids, everyone. It was so brutal, that I couldn't finish secondary school.

I don't have fond memories of my childhood for many reasons. School was a major factor in that.

The biggest problem, was that I blamed myself. They weren't the bad guys, I deserved it. All of it. I was a freak who had it coming.

I've made progress in that department in the last few years, mainly thanks to intensive therapy work for other trauma.

I was just a scared little autistic kid, although I didn't have a diagnosis back then, who ripped themselves apart, and tried everything to fit in, to stop the name calling, to stop the beatings. The more I tried, the worse it got.

I didn't deserve it. I tried to be nice to people, even ones that were hurting me, day in, day out. They were picking on me to have fun, or make themselves feel better, or bigger, or to fit in with what everyone else was doing.

That's why I wanted to post this. I know a lot of people who get bullied blame themselves, like I did for virtually my whole life.

It wasn't my fault and it isn't yours either. If people are hurting you, they're doing it because they choose to, not because you deserve it. Because nobody does.

*hugs for all of you*

 

[Fleurdelis]

I've been bullied for almost my entire childhood and there were points where I wanted to straight up die cause my entire life was full of pain.

From the way to school to the way home was nothing but picking on me and I straight up didn't do anything against it as I was just a silent kid being a bit different from the others and I never knew why everyone had it out for me for all those years.

Just wanted to be at home all the time, to escape life through video games, but parents never understood and kept forcing me to go, had many talks at school, but that ended up in nothing.

In the end I just endured it, as im clearly still around and its been ages since those times happened, but they are still a huge pain to think back of.

 

[XNaut]

I have been bullied in school. In elementary all of my classmates would call me names and at one point during lunch time I wanted to play with a ball, my classmates grabbed me taking the ball away from me and I managed to free one of my arms and scratched one of the girls on the neck and she got hurt really badly by my scratch and I regretted on scratching her.

In middle school mainly I was getting bullied in the bus. Some of the boys in the bus would call me names and they would also touch me which bothered me and I remember I scratched one of the boys. In high school I argued with some of my classmates and later on we would apologize to each other. One of the girls who I ride with in the school taxi that takes us to school and drops us off from school I did not get along with and we would argue with each other.

 

[User19sq]

Putting aside the one or two bullies I've had in school as a kid, nothing compares to having older siblings to fill the role. You can't exactly escape those bastards, especially if you share a bedroom. I think they were the reason I had such trouble talking to people and making friends. Hell, I still find myself unable to properly approach even a cashier to this day!

I only got rid of them by waiting until they grew up and left the house. And even then, those bastards still show up every other weekend. I deal with them by not dealing with them: locking myself in my room until they finally leave.

 

[Corrin]

All throughout school, from when I was 5 to 18, and then in college as well.
I've also been the subject of targeted harassment online, but this was also back when I was 19/20.

I had peers and adults alike who harassed me, of course, I was an adult in college so naturally two professors I had made my life hell.
Everyone says I should be over it, but it's hard when all you knew most of the time was hatred toward you you didn't understand. I later was diagnosed with Autism.

I've been beaten up, thrown up on, stabbed, set on fire, head held under water, a hit hired on me, my life overall threatened, my college education compromised, and adults spreading rumors about me when I was 12. There was also many insults and verbal bullying, of course. If you can think it, I've been called it.

 

[Figure]

I was bullied at home (it was full on abuse but I think bullying is an appropriate term to use as well), physically and verbally, which led to me bullying people at school. It's funny looking back too because I was always mean to the "nerdy" (ironic too because I do plenty of stuff that would be considered "nerdy", i.e. Pokemon forums) kids at school but you never stop to ask yourself why when you're younger but looking back now it is clear that I was projecting because I had shitty parents and this is how I dealt with it.

I became self aware in my early 20s and, go figure, it is a lot easier to keep healthy relationships now. Getting into a serious relationship, I think, was the best thing for this too because you want to become better for the other person and treat them well.

 

[Roni]

Have you ever been a victim of bullying? If you feel comfortable you can share your survival stories.

yup, but weirdly enough. i was sort of oblivious to it until i looked back a couple years later.

from 1st to 3rd grade i was in an all boys' private school. it was the mid 2000s and toxic machismo culture was still super common. especially in the Philippines? total nightmare. everyone was bulling everyone i think, and i sorta got used to the environment. it wasn't out of the blue for guys to come up to me and force me to give them my snacks, or force me to hand over a toy i brought with me, else they beat me up. name calling was the norm, we got so used to verbal abuse i think it became part of my regular lingo for a bit. ooh did mom have a field day with that. that school really was a toxic wasteland, and i have no doubt in my mind if i realized what was happening, or if i had a weaker state of mind, i'd have been completely eaten alive.

so glad mom decided to move me to a different school to finish elementary. it was a lot healthier going forward.

If you were bullied then how did you respond, and did you ever stand up to the bully?

pretty much never acknowledged it at all. i don't know what was up with me, but i geniunely did not realize that everything that was going on in that school was a form of bullying. i cried every now and then and ofc they'd make fun of me, but for some weird reason everything would suddenly just be ok the next day. all set for another repeat.

Were you ever in the opposite end of it and a bully yourself? If so, why do you think you made the choice to bully another?

like i said, everyone was bullying everyone, and i actually did have my fair share of dishing it out to some other guys. again, i never realized it was bullying when i was namecalling and kicking others because i genuinely thought it was normal human behaviour.

you know what? looking back, i'm amazed i came out of that school without so much as a few scratches. it's ridiculous when i read back what i've typed out.

 

[Allen303]

Me to when i was in elementary school I was a really fat and they call me from fatty animals like elephant🐘, rhino 🦏 , but I always ignored them and when I was on higher classes I was like a dried twig they also teased me for my eating habits call me a sumo wrestler and sometimes even tried to hit me generally I have saved many juniors from bullies and college was like paradise for bullies but still ignored them "here's a general advise if someone is teasing you thank him for telling your weakness for free " And ignore them maximum time don't go there if they are calling you " Always tell your elders or teachers "

 

[Corrin]

I was bullied at home (it was full on abuse but I think bullying is an appropriate term to use as well), physically and verbally, which led to me bullying people at school. It's funny looking back too because I was always mean to the "nerdy" (ironic too because I do plenty of stuff that would be considered "nerdy", i.e. Pokemon forums) kids at school but you never stop to ask yourself why when you're younger but looking back now it is clear that I was projecting because I had shitty parents and this is how I dealt with it.

I became self aware in my early 20s and, go figure, it is a lot easier to keep healthy relationships now. Getting into a serious relationship, I think, was the best thing for this too because you want to become better for the other person and treat them well.

I found out one of my biggest bullies had a bad home life soon after I moved away. In her case, her mother was very promiscuous and always brought strange men home. She was much kinder and we became friends after she gained independence. I do wish people would look into this more, a lot of those with trauma project. I have found myself doing it before too.

 

[gimmepie]

Have you ever been a victim of bullying? If you feel comfortable you can share your survival stories.
Yes, but also no?

There were definitely patches where I was bullied, and by-and-large people weren't nice to me through my schooling, but I was never consistently bullied. I didn't have that experience we're people would consistently go out of their way to give me shit. For the most part, I was left alone. Especially once I got into the upper year levels of high school.

The patches that I feel actually count were usually instigated by people within my friend group, some of whom were massive assholes. Those times they'd start with light-hearted, normal teasing and just keep escalating. That sort of thing I didn't even mind honestly, I can give as good as I can get. It was when they started crossing lines not only with me but directing the insults at people I cared about that things started getting messy.

If you were bullied then how did you respond, and did you ever stand up to the bully?
Those few occasions I mentioned before generally ended a lot worse for the "bully" than they did for me. I was a pretty violent kid, I struggled to process and manage my emotions in healthy ways and eventually I'd boil over, snap and just beat the crap out of whoever pushed me too far. I regret it a lot now, but I can't say it wasn't effective in teaching people not to fuck with me too much.

Honestly, as I got older and mellowed out more, I did a massive 180. I became a pacifist by my mid-teens and reacted to that sort of thing with apathy. I legitimately cannot remember being treated in a way I'd consider real bullying after 14. Part of that is probably my friend group starting to shift slightly and the toxic people getting filtered out, part of that was probably people having a desire for self-preservation but a lot of it, I think, was just that you couldn't get a rise out of me because I just didn't value the opinions of the majority of my schoolmates enough to actually care if they said anything negative to me.

So yeah, violence is effective but it feels awful. Apathy is more effective and feels like nothing. Win/win.

What preventive measures and solutions do you think could help reduce bullying?
From a personal standpoint? Don't react. The whole point is to get a rise out of you. So don't give them that.
Also, surround yourself with people who you like and who like you. It's easier to bully people when they're isolated and easier to let yourself be bullied if you feel like you deserve it.

From a wider perspective, stop normalising treating people badly over stupid minor differences. Phase out offensive language - stuff like that.

 

[pkmin3033]

I've always seemed to attract bullies. I'm either a very easy target, or I just deserve it because of the kind of person I am/have been...maybe a bit of both, I'm not going to pretend that I don't and haven't provoke people into things, intentionally or otherwise. I mean, growing up with an abusive parent generally makes the things that kids do or say to you pretty insignificant, really - almost laughably so. My general disdain for people trying to bully me probably made it worse - the less it affected me, the harder they seemed to try until they pushed the right buttons. When people want a reaction, they'll go out of their way to get it. It's not very easy to stand up to a group of five or six people - because it was never just one - so I generally just opted for silence, avoidance, and flat-out ignoring them. Weirdly, they never lost interest in doing it...not until we'd all grown up a bit in College, but by then we barely saw one another anyway.

People used to bully me for my hair colour, because I was intelligent (academically speaking I always had high marks), for my interests (in Secondary School that was Pokemon), because I didn't have the newest technology and they did, because I wasn't athletic...the list goes on. I always used to think it was just nature - there's often one baby that gets attacked and abused by the others unless it toughens up or more often than not dies. I was just the one that had been singled out for abuse, so I either had to endure it until I was older or die...oddly, the second option never really occured to me. At least not over that. Usually the abuse was verbal and not physical - in Primary School at least, if I got into a fight I would usually win it, because I was quite a bit taller and bigger than other kids - but my father made up for that with physical abuse, so I got the best of both worlds. Lucky me.

These days...well, I was harrassed online on a forum I used to be on a few years ago for not wanting to reveal my biological sex, then I decided to trust a couple of people I was comfortable with by having a voice chat with them...and one of them recorded me and decided to share it with everyone else. That was nice. I'm often targeted with verbal abuse by people because I have opinions and refuse to moderate my language to accomodate their sensitivities - because god knows nobody else does on the internet, and I don't engage in toxic positivity - but it's been a long time since someone decided to make it their life's mission to call me out on literally everything I say. It's why I don't talk very much on places like Discord. You always get one person who is determined to make everything into an argument and will thereafter stalk you obsessively to continue the argument. I've lost count of the number of people I've had do that to me, and it has the desired effect each time - I stop talking and leave.

I don't think I've ever been accused of bullying, but we all say and do stupid things when we're growing up, and I expect I did my share. I really don't care what the reasons people might have had were though - just because your life is shit doesn't make it any more acceptable to make someone else's shit as well. But then I suppose misery loves company, and the only thing that will make some people happy is if someone is more miserable than they are. People only talk to me if they want something or if they have a use for me, and I guess being the target of harrassment is just one of my few, more enduring uses. So I guess it wasn't bullying as much as it was finding a use for someone who is otherwise completely and utterly worthless.

 

[Megan]

I was bullied from 1st to 8th grade on varying degrees. It's just easy to get bullied when you're the one who likes to stand alone in a corner during breaks, I suppose. Unfortunately bullies have this ability to notice whom they can pick on and things like this tend to give it away.

Peak bullying I experienced during 6th grade. The year started not only by making two bullies join my class, people that were already hard enough to deal with. In the second half I had another one of them join my class. He was somewhat tolerable until he teamed up with a younger student. I still remember that one time when the two of them assaulted me after school. The older one pinned me to the ground and let the younger one kick me all he wanted.

Standing up to bullies always was somewhat of an issue because being such a pushover like I was (and still am) it usually just resulted in me getting a beating. So I basically had to rely on my parents many times. That only had a limited effect, however.

Not been a bully in the traditional sense. I have been, however, very rude on the internet and that may well have come off as bullying.

 

[YellowTemperment]

I was a social outcast from Kindergarten to about the 8th grade. My lack of social skills and being extremely hyper made kids not want to be around me, and frankly, I don't blame them. The "bouncing off the walls" saying very much applied to me, and I hated every second of it. I repeatedly got made fun of for all the weird stuff that happened to slip out of my mouth just at random (which a lot of it I'm still deeply embarrassed by to this day) , even by the teachers in some cases, though they were more of a "keep your mouth shut it's class time" sort of deal. (And, no, I don't have Tourette's. it's ADHD.) I even had one case in the 4th grade where a kid named Jeremy was really friendly to me and invited me over to his house. His mom was very nice, and she and my mother got along well. A couple days later, I went up to him on the playground and he said something along the lines of "That was supposed to be a temporary thing, so you could get more friends." This broke my heart, and my mother had a very angry phone call with someone regarding their son.
This isn't all the stories I have to tell, but as I'm writing this I'm getting emotional so I'm gonna take a break for a few minutes.

 

[Aslan]

Was rarely bullied when I was younger - at times there was a bit of teasing/harassment but I can't remember ever being too upset. It just made me go ??? that 4 year olds knew how to be mean at the time. I had a smooth experience during primary school as I found friends early and that definitely protected me from ever getting properly picked on.

High school was also smooth except for this one person who made it super difficult. I don't really know why they had it out for me but ever since the 1st day, they would try to harass me when they got the chance. They picked on everything they could get at (tried to call me useless, swear at me, pick on the fact that I had "wrists like African children" which is just ????????? and ESPECIALLY bad at the time when I was still in the early stages of recovering from an ED). I never reacted openly but they would always try to harass me at any chance they got (which thankfully was few past 7th grade since we barely had classes together and I stuck with my friends). Looking back, I think they were just projecting all of their insecurities and anger from their poor home life somewhere else. It doesn't excuse what they did as that did put a dent in my confidence when I was younger but now I realise I shouldn't have let those words get to me. Thankfully have never had to see them since college and I overall still had a lot of fun in high school despite that one person. :)

 

[colours]

been bullied my whole life online and offline. screwed over my mental health for a long time but who gives a shit about that.

 

[Taemin]

I was bullied when I was growing up during school, because of things related to gender and sexuality issues, it made kids pick on me. So I got pretty quiet, and then of course they still bully you just for being quiet. lmao

I'm doing a lot better since I've been outta school, and if I were to go back into a classroom setting I would definitely be unapologetically me.

been bullied my whole life online and offline. screwed over my mental health for a long time but who gives a shit about that.

angie i would personally beat all those people up if i knew who they were

 

[ThatStuff!!]

I wasn't bullied per se, but was disrespected on a consistent basis.. I was a school weirdo so I guess I was an easy target. I always thought it was because I never treated myself with respect. High school it was a little better.. But who knows.

I was never physically bullied though, I made damn sure I wasn't... Kids would've been in the hospital if I was on they ass. Luckily (for them) it never happened.