Not bullied in school since I could usually hold my own, but bullied by my father throughout my life. Being in a country where parental corporal punishment is normal, even encouraged, I was hit for minor to major (getting bad marks, staying out late to play with friends) events all throughout my life till I could save up enough to move out when I was 18.
It took me my entire college life to get over the feeling of dread of an incoming kick or slap to my face when I said something that would be confrontational, it made it incredibly difficult for me to say no to things because any sort of response that wasn't in line with what an authority figure wanted would give me major fight-or-flight rendering me useless. Even at this point I avoid conflict but have done much better to face my fears and build the ability to speak my mind confidently.
The PTSD made me leave my consultancy that I worked incredibly hard to build with a professor and a senior because they were working me to the ground and I didn't have the ability to say anything. Even at this moment the remnants of my past make me fearful of even applying for jobs even though I know I have a skillset that's industry standard.
Bullying in any shape or form is horrible and can have lifelong consequences on your psyche. To those who perpetrate it or stand by and do nothing, please reconsider that it may affect someone's life as negatively as it has affected mine.
Apologies for the rant, more power to those who feel they cannot stand up for themselves.
Yeah, my dad was my first bully too. First at my mom and then shifted towards me once I got old enough to have independent thoughts and interests (around 6-7). Led to me being a twitchy, withdrawn kid which garnered more negative attention at school.
i am sorry you had to go through this. my dad wasn't as bad. from todays perspective what i experienced looks more like loss of self-control than intentional action. in any case i probably would never have been able to stand up for myself. partly because the outbursts were always connected to something we did, so it was easy to see it like the reason or the trigger was caused by us, and not my dad just being in a bad mood. like what you experienced. we blamed ourselves and didn't have any way to defend ourselves.
however, once my dad was going at my one year younger brother, and for some reason i had enough. interestingly i can't even remember my brother being a target before that, so maybe that was why it was to much for me. it wasn't something i was used to seeing.
i got between the two and pushed my dad against the wall, and told him "that's enough". i was not strong by any means but strong enough to do that.
that was the end of it.
the key element of that experience is that while i never tried to defend myself, something in that situation triggered me to defend my brother. and we were not close as brothers go. and still are not, this brother in particular. so the desire to protect and stand up for others is what helped me to get out of this experience.
i can still sense something like what you feel when someone is going at me. but if anyone is going at someone that i am somehow responsible for or have the ability to support, be it people under me in my team, or children or my partner or even friends, then my reaction is different. at a minimum i will get the person out of harms way and have them going at me instead.
i don't know if this is helpful to anyone. i suppose that wanting to protect others helps me tolerate abuse better. but the other thing i learned from that is to simply walk away when the abuse gets to much. i have cut of contact with anyone who is in any way critical of any aspect of my life or my work. i just don't have the desire to defend myself, and i don't need that kind of unfounded criticism. (i love constructive criticism however, and find that very helpful, so it's not like i can't tolerate any criticism at all)
you became the person you would have needed as a kid
pretty much, yes. it took me decades to understand that myself.
i still sometimes loose my temper with my own kids, but once i noticed my kids copying my own behavior i started reflecting on that and try to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
the kids also helped me realize how much of what i do, both positive and negative is a reflection of my childhood. the same is true for my wife. and really, how could it be otherwise?
growing up is how we learn how to raise children. it's not school, or anywhere else.
this is a sort of different topic but i feel that this simple realization does not really reflect in public policy.
everyone seems to think that good education is enough to give people a better life. but little emphasis is placed on helping parents who are struggling. (and by helping i mean not taking the kids away, but provide services that lighten the parents load)
> Not bullied in school since I could usually hold my own, but bullied by my father throughout my life. Being in a country where parental corporal punishment is normal, even encouraged, I was hit for minor to major (getting bad marks, staying out late to play with friends) events all throughout my life till I could save up enough to move out when I was 18.
> It took me my entire college life to get over the feeling of dread of an incoming kick or slap to my face when I said something that would be confrontational, it made it incredibly difficult for me to say no to things because any sort of response that wasn't in line with what an authority figure wanted would give me major fight-or-flight rendering me useless. Even at this point I avoid conflict but have done much better to face my fears and build the ability to speak my mind confidently.
> The PTSD made me leave my consultancy that I worked incredibly hard to build with a professor and a senior because they were working me to the ground and I didn't have the ability to say anything. Even at this moment the remnants of my past make me fearful of even applying for jobs even though I know I have a skillset that's industry standard.
> Bullying in any shape or form is horrible and can have lifelong consequences on your psyche. To those who perpetrate it or stand by and do nothing, please reconsider that it may affect someone's life as negatively as it has affected mine.
> Apologies for the rant, more power to those who feel they cannot stand up for themselves.
Thank you for writing this, it helped me realize something about some issues I have.
i also experienced bullying from a parental figure and quickly enter fight or flight mode as a result, which for me almost always leans towards fight. unfortunately for me that does not work well at all in office environments where you're supposed to be excessively fake and friendly and rely on passive aggression.
in the past i've ended up snapping at coworkers and saying stuff like "either tell me what your problem is or keep your bitchy comments to yourself" which obviously makes me the aggressor in the eyes of management. of course by the time i go back to "normal mode" and think about whether it's better to bite my tongue rather than say anything, i've already said it.
Wow, try to change team. Is he working at the same level as you?
I only know 1 ex-coworker that was passive aggressive, and he was one of my managers, along with two other fake-friendly managers who were mostly inofensive. Luckily I wasn't the first target, and well, he targeted the most competent dev in the building, who also was a tad too honest. Didn't ended well, and by the time is axe went for my head, my product was mostly done and I was ready to go.
tbh two different people gain two different lessons being raised this way. your experience is unique. others have went to the military and/or had tough dads and it made them completely better as a person. "bullying" is a natural part of human life. its always up to the person to be courageous and get through. Your personal perspective is apart of current societies views on it...plus your own. there are kids who had no father with no discipline and ended up worse than you likely. choose your battles with parents because the hardest lessons come with the greatest rewards
i think you're getting discipline and bullying confused, they're very different things. discipline is of course necessary, but going through life walking on eggshells because you don't know exactly what is going to set your dad off but you know it's coming for one reason or another because he's clearly in a bad mood is not having a "tough dad", and does not make anybody better as a person.
in order to hold this opinion, you either have to not actually know what it's like to experience parental bullying, or you have to be in complete denial.
Very much agree. It is a very common way to justify one's bullying, by calling it discipline. But the truth is, if there aren't any clear rules and it's up to one's mood, then it's bullying.
Exactly. The only lesson my dad taught me is to be around him as little as possible, and to be as invisible as possible when I did have to be in the same room with him. I never knew what would make him explode.
Absence of bullying doesn't mean absence of discipline.
In no situation bullying is a good thing. Bullying is devastating and an unhealthy way of teaching things.
You comment is basically saying "bullying didn't work on you because you were too weak". That's borderline victim shaming and completely insensitive.
Courage has nothing to do with coping with bullying, and you should not need courage for daily interactions with your parents who ought to be your support instead.
You need validation and constructive criticism to grow and bullying is kinda the opposite of this. This validation and constructive criticism will give you the chance to build up self confidence which, in turn, may also you to grow a "thick skin". No need for bullying, which usually takes away your self confidence.
> Absence of bullying doesn't mean absence of discipline.
If you're caught and punished immediately every single time you do X, you develop the internal discipline to avoid doing X almost instantly. A mild punishment is ample in this case - for many children saying "you know that isn't right" is sufficient.
If you're caught only 10% of the time you do X, whether the punishment is mild or severe, the lesson is "don't get caught". No severity of punishment is a deterrent to those who do not believe they will be caught.
Essentially, if kids aren't being called out for misbehavior reliably, it doesn't matter how severe the punishment is (because kids have poor judgement & don't think they'll be caught _this_ time). If they _are_ being called out for misbehavior reliably, they know they aren't going to get away with it - so the punishment only needs to be unpleasant enough to make a poor trade for whatever advantages the behavior has.
Further, parents occasionally mis-identify the situation and kids get falsely accused (when perhaps a sibling actually did it). A severe punishment undermines parental authority in a way that a "I'm disappointed that this happened" conversation does not.
I'd argue that this makes what's typically referred to as "parental bullying" the opposite of effective discipline training. Severe punishments handed out haphazardly teach you not to be identified as a culprit.
To make matters worse, it's a whole spectrum rather than some clear delineation between constructive discipline and psyche ruining abuse.
On the constructive end, you have feedback and learning that can improve someone. It reinforces healthy feelings encouraging positive and discouraging negative behavior, both for the individual and for their expectations of others.
On the destructive end, randomized punishment leads to neurosis. Without any proper correlation between actions and consequences, the recipient develops fear and agitation without any useful training on how to improve outcomes. As I recall, this is a textbook result even in lab rats. It doesn't require the complexity of the human psyche.
In between, you can still have things like PTSD or the "walking on egg shells" mentioned upthread. In this broad gray area, one might at best learn avoidance of abusers or toxic environments. Or one might infer that they are punished for their mere existence, which could channel into all sorts of detrimental coping strategies.
Another result can be generalized anxiety. One might learn that the world is just full of random threat, rather than taking the more personal view that the abuse is punishment focused on the self.
I was bullied, mainly when I was between 10 and 11. This was in the 80's. I recall being both verbally and physically attacked by large groups of other students. My teachers didn't believe me so I couldn't turn to them.
In one of the events 8 kids chased me several miles through neighborhoods and fields. Eventually they caught and surrounded me in a front yard. Luckily, an older woman opened her door and had me step inside her home. A few minutes later she drove me home. I'm sure she's passed by now but I will always be grateful to her.
To a degree, this abuse made me a mean person in later school years. I had my growth spurt between 11 and 12. When I started at a new school, in my new body, I was able to decide that I would no longer be a victim. At about the same time my Grandfather, a massive retired military dude, explained that nobody ever got in trouble for making the first strike in an inevitable conflict.
That advice became my strategy and I was engaged in half a dozen fights where my opponent approached and threatened me and I went all-in with my fists. That gave me a reputation that meant very few others ever bothered me. My fighting stopped shortly after I graduated and I haven't used my fists in 29 years.
I moved a lot as a kid and inevitably when I would get into a fight. Once it was established that I didn't bully well I'd be left alone.
Thing is, the world is like that past HS it's just not physical violence. Learning to deal with bullies is a life skill that will be employed throughout most of your life.
Looking at kids these days they lack that skill and suffer for it.
It's like we've decided that bikes with training wheels are too dangerous until you turn 18 and then we put you on a rocket powered motorcycle instead.
the problem is, how does a kid actually learn how to deal with bullies?
just being exposed to bullying does not work. at least it didn't work for me. while i learned to stand up for others, i never learned to stand up for myself. i found only two options: either i am able to turn the bully around by becoming friends with them or i completely remove myself from the situation. and that can mean quitting a job and moving to a different city. (it never was as bad for me, so maybe i am exaggerating)
btw i feel that fighting back is decidedly not the right response to bullies. GP is lucky that he managed to stop after graduation, because i don't believe that many others are able to do that.
that said, i don't actually have any experience with this level of bullying. what i experienced was more light teasing, being made fun of, which of course i didn't like, but also didn't know how to respond to.
i do remember teachers noticing and initiating discussions with me and the kids involved. i don't remember if that helped, only that in one case i had the opportunity to respond to the teasing in kind, so i felt that i got even, and said as such when the teachers brought up that situation.
thinking about this now makes me realize that the problem was that these were not my friends. i didn't have any friends in school, and so the issue for me was that i didn't have any support that would have helped me deal with the teasing. i am only guessing that the discussions with the teachers helped me realize that this other kid wasn't stubbornly mean, but more playful, which probably was why i was able to respond in kind later. (i am just making this up now, i have no idea what i was thinking at the time)
so to the question, how to actually learn how to deal with bullies, i think, the answer is to learn how to make friends. not only friends that help you against bullies, but even try to make friends with the bullies themselves.
now in school that needs help from adults who enable the kids to interact with each other in a friendly manner, by providing them with experiences where they can learn to get to know each other.
heh, I got to reminiscing and this got a lot longer than originally intended.
> so to the question, how to actually learn how to deal with bullies, i think, the answer is to learn how to make friends.
You can't be friends with everyone and legitimately malevolent forces exist.
I once had a VP tell my manager to write me up for sending an email asking a department how they used a piece of software. I sent the email because a junior developer was being asked to make an adjustment and he kept coming back from meetings saying "I still don't know what they want me to do" over several weeks and I felt it was my place to assist him. I knew what was happening because I had observed it myself. Their boss (the VP) and his boss would start talking and nothing useful was ever said.
The attempted writeup happened on a thursday, I had a job offer the next day (friday) and put in my 2 weeks the following monday (coincidentally, I was planning on spending that weekend at the lake and used it to calm myself down). I refused to sign anything.
That VP eventually got fired, what I was told is that she was very mean to those under her and on several instances made a few people cry.
You will never solve that problem by trying to make friends, that was a power issue.
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The real answer is a combination of your parents teaching you and experience. My mother taught me that I better not ever take the first swing but I damned sure better take the second. My mother's stance is that she'll protect me when I'm unable to do it myself but that I better protect myself too. I've had a few instances where the school themselves decided they were going to be unjust and she absolutely went to bat for me.
I once had a PE teacher that didn't like me and decided to let the other kids pick on me. The final day of this happening several of the kids had brought straws and were shooting spitballs into the back of my head. I couldn't quite figure out who it was but we were sitting in rows with the teacher facing us, he 100% saw it happening and said nothing. At the end of the class we'd line up at the door and wait for the bell and I had already decided if I get shoved again there was going to be a fight. Sure enough, the kid behind me shoved me and I turned around and beat his ass down.
That teacher thought he was going to bring the full-court press on me and he very quickly learned to dislike my mother too, I had been telling her about what was happening.
I barely remember this one but my first day of school after moving I'm walking by this kids desk and he accuses me of spitting on him. to this day I have no idea why and if it wasn't for the extreme level of shock and confusion I probably wouldn't even remember this. I remember wondering if I did it and just didn't remember, that's how adamant this kid was. Teacher took a disliking to me and started making me stand out in the hall behind the coats in the coat rack, not participating in class. The way my mother tells it, I had always loved school but I started coming out to the car crying. It took her several days to weasel it out of me but when she did that teacher got to know her too. They put me into a different homeroom and I'll never forget that new teacher. Her name was Mrs Parker and every day at the beginning of class we'd sing a song about Mrs Parker parking cars.
I once had a kid who was picking on me over several weeks. My mother told me to tell the teacher, I did and it didn't stop. This is dating myself but one particular class had a set of Apple II's, if we finished our work early we would get to go back to the computer and play Montezuma's Revenge on it. These were on the 5 1/4 floppy, non-random access so if you removed the disk before it was finished loading you had to start all over again.
This kid who had been picking on me walks up and pulls the disk out while it's loading. I remember this so clearly. I was sitting there and I said something to him as he's walking away. He turns around, walks back and slaps me in the back of the head then turns to walk back to his computer. I immediately jumped up so quickly the chair fell over. I stood there looking at him while the chair bounced. When it stopped bouncing I moved. When it was over I was chasing him around the room and refused to stop going after him until I was physically restrained.
It was that refusal that got me suspended. My mother argued with them over that one since I had reported the bullying and even the teacher was shocked by it because I was such a nice kid in her class. Every day of that suspension my mother took me somewhere fun, all day trips to the zoo, all day trips to various amusement parks, etc. They may have suspended me but she wasn't going to let them punish me.
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I have many more stories but this is already getting too long :)
There's another poster that said it doesn't seem like kids nowadays have that skill and that's the sense I get from your post.
I'll make 1 last observation. I make mid-6 figures but live like I'm poor (I grew up very poor, was homeless in HS). No company has any power over me because I could live for several years on the cash I currently have on-hand. Most people who allow lifestyle inflation do so at their own expense. They become powerless against their job.
The VP in my first story thought she had power she didn't.
Part of protecting yourself against bullies is positioning yourself so you can simple walk away at any point without fear.
i agree that you can't make friends with everyone, and it's not always a solution. it can help in some cases though, and i think it can especially help in school if the teachers are aware of it and create situations that allow the kids to work together and become friends.
there is also making friends with others to have as allies against the bullies.
the problem is that teachers do not get trained for this. that teacher that forced you to stay outside of the class should have been fired.
i disagree with fighting back though unless it is simply self-defense.
and for the rest, well, yes, walking away, that's what i usually end up doing. but it's not always an option. especially not when you have kids. so then it's good to have alternative strategies to try instead.
Given the reports of bullying's adverse effects of a society's productivity, I'm almost wondering if we should apply legal penalties to bullies and mitigate such externalities. For instance, South Korea enacted a policy in which records of bullying are reflected on college entrance.[1]
- Will childhood bullies continue to bully as adults?
Are childhood bullies likely to continue bullying as adults, e.g. verbal abuse at the workplace? Being at work sometimes remind me of the atmosphere at high school. Cramping in the same people in a confined space replicates the tribe-like social dynamics akin to high school.
Whenever someone makes a verbally abusive statement, I wonder if they have behaved similarly in school, and never faced behavioral correction.
- What kind of places are least likely to have bullies, for children and adults?
I would love to avoid bullies for the rest of my life. What kind of workplaces are least likely to have them?
I sympathise with the thought process, but more laws/rules can't/won't fix it. Many (most?) jurisdictions in the western world and elsewhere already have laws against workplace harassment, and the possibility of civil action against any conduct that leads to severe emotional distress. And schools have rules against it. But it still happens - determined/clever bullies will always find a way to make their mark in some kind of way.
Better to help people learn how stand up to bullies, and for companies to make it a priority to be emotionally healthy places and become an example of how to do that most effectively so others can follow (this is one of my great hopes for any companies I build).
I can understand your concerns regarding the difficulty of enforcing of these anti-bullying policies.
What are some resources you would recommend to help learn how to stand up to bullies?
I am also rather skeptical that companies will prioritize providing emotionally healthy places. Bullies can be people in a higher position (seniority, ranking, etc) than their victims, and companies are incentivized to rule in favor of the bullies.
Robert Greene’s books/videos/interviews are probably a good option.
They were inspired by his own experience of being bullied/exploited as a writer in Hollywood.
They are criticized for being harmful explanations of how to behave in manipulative and damaging ways: his response is that he doesn’t like that this is the way people behave - he’s suffered from it as much as anyone else - he is just writing about what he’s observed in human nature and society so people can learn how to not be victim to it.
South Korea enacted a policy in which records of bullying are reflected on college entrance
that is an extremely bad idea. this means that mistakes you make as a child, will affect you for the rest of your life.
we need to keep in mind that bullies aren't just mean spirited kids that will never amount to anything good, but they are often themselves victims of a rough situation at home and use bullying as a way to share the pain they are experiencing.
> Given the reports of bullying's adverse effects of a society's productivity, I'm almost wondering if we should apply legal penalties to bullies and mitigate such externalities.
A beautiful idea which will not work, any more than resort to adult authority ever does in such cases. Three reasons:
Shallowly, first, the authority is not absolute and cannot be. There will always be opportunities for a bully to bully; trying to forbid this only makes it more appealing. A sufficiently interested bully won't let themself be avoided, and they find the appearance of vulnerability interesting because they're out for a good time and not a fight.
Shallowly and secondly, bullies rarely act like they do for the sake of pure sadism. There is usually some prior damage back of it. Heaping punishment on top thus tends to make them worse and not better, because they blame their own victims and treat them worse in consequence.
Deeply, bullying leaves a longlasting mark on people who have been made to feel helpless. Resorting to someone else to protect you does not ameliorate this. Learning to defend yourself does, because in doing it you discover that you don't need to resort to outside authority.
A bully puts you in fear. You learn you can take yourself out of it. It usually doesn't take long, and requires consistency much more than the ability to take a punch; once someone gets the idea you're guaranteed to give them a fight rather than the good time they want, they desist. Most childhood bullies can't fight for shit anyway, or at least most of mine couldn't.
> I would love to avoid bullies for the rest of my life. What kind of workplaces are least likely to have them?
Those where there's no access to money or power worth having. As far as I can tell, those are the primary incentives in adult life to which people respond with bullying behavior that has to be taken seriously.
That said, it looks like the situation in South Korea may be far worse than what I've seen. If it's as apparently universally described, I'd tend to think of it as a cultural pathology. (That's not American condescension, I promise. If anything, given the state of America these days, it's half professional opinion and half commiseration...)
> Shallowly, first, the authority is not absolute and cannot be. There will always be opportunities for a bully to bully; trying to forbid this only makes it more appealing. A sufficiently interested bully won't let themself be avoided, and they find the appearance of vulnerability interesting because they're out for a good time and not a fight.
As someone bullied in high school, I would counter this by saying "how about we start by punishing adults that openly participate in the bullying?". Surely that isn't so much to ask? Because this was a definite problem. Sudden unexplainable extremely pedantic test corrections, teachers shouting at you when you get bullied. Teachers treating the bullied kid as a problem instead of the bullying, and, although that was often so badly done it almost helped, teachers attempting to bully you directly.
I learned to do tests absolutely correctly, leave absolutely no opportunity for the teacher to deduct points. A SINGLE spelling error in a verb in a history test? -20%. Use of "advanced" mathematics in a physics exam? -50% (I used a derivative because of a book on physics I got from the library, and the physics teacher (of 10th grade, in US terms) did not understand derivatives, or what they have to do with physics. After all, due to state legislation, we have a physics teacher that had a "license" (master's degree) in history ... and a history teacher that had a license in physics. Technically they could switch, but their tenure would reset to zero if they did, with consequences for pay and apparently if the school had to shrink they'd get fired sooner. Both chose against doing this). Asking physics questions in history class definitely led to bullying.
But can we start by actually punishing abuse of adult authority for bullying, and give some opportunity for kids to prove such bullying.
Well, I can't speak to any of that, for the reason with which I ended my prior comment: it is much worse than anything I've seen.
Had I sooner recognized the context in which I made that prior comment, I likely would not have; I only left it up after the edit for the sake of possible benefit to others familiar with the context in which I wrote it.
In retrospect, I lack confidence in that decision, but it's far too late to delete the comment now.
I will say that, given the opportunity in adult life to observe firsthand such behavior as you describe, I suspect I would incline in response to much the same methods which served me well in youth.
Is there a study that compares the difference in bullying between countries?
I have a feeling that bullying was/is particularly common and more violent in the UK compared to the rest of the world.
I am from France, and I always found the portraiture of bullying in English culture quite foreign to me. Repeated beatings, total humiliation, stalking, all these horrific behaviors did seem fairly established in the UK, while they were exceptional in my personal experience (not that it didn’t exist, but their frequency was much lower, and their intensity much milder).
It seems to me like the culture of both boarding schools, and “keep calm and carry on” (for lack of a better word) were a particularly fertile ground for such bad behaviors to spread.
Not from the UK, but such bullying stereotypes seem to be overblown in US media. I'm not saying they don't happen, but Hollywood seems to show some violent bullying happening to virtually every male teen protagonist.
During my childhood, most of the oddballs or introverted kids, myself included, were kind of ignored and had almost no interaction with the athletes and popular kids who were getting into fights with each other.
It's not overblown, I assure you, it's widespread and "normal". In the US I saw kids getting thrown into dumpsters, or bullied over months - nasty psychological type, as well as physical beatings. Fortunately I was friends with older kids who protected me, but I felt sorry for some of my peers, who I'm sure were affected for the rest of their lives.
From my observation, it seemed bullying is group dynamics - it always involved a cluster of kids beating on a single child they picked out. It also reminded me of animal behavior, as a way of asserting who is part of the pack, and who is an outsider. And I think somehow it's related to the structure of institutions, like schools, sports, and military.
> It's not overblown, I assure you, it's widespread and "normal"
I always wonder how it is in the US. Based on movies and such, bullying is horrible in the US. But how widespread is that? I didn't go to school in the US (other than graduate degree in university) so don't have any direct experience.
I was the prototypical nerd in school (and old enough that it was back when being the D&D/computer/math nerd was not cool at all).
But I never experienced or saw any bullying. I sure didn't get invited to the cool parties and such, but everyone was always nice enough, including the "jock/cheerleader" types. Many decades later now, our whole class is still in contact and in friendly terms.
UK is pretty special indeed. On a holiday I passed by 2 UK boys, maybe one 6 and the other 8. The 8 year old slapped the younger one (I guess brother). The younger boy was almost in tears, while the other asked "Are you crying? Haha you're crying!", while the younger one who just got slapped tried to hold back the tears and said "I'm not crying!".
I'm from Belgium, and this kind of stuff you wouldn't really see here. Getting slapped and then defending yourself that you're not crying.
Its seems milder in France. Also, it seems that 5 to 6% of students are bullied which I find quite weird. Maybe it's because I'm from a very rural area, but i'm pretty sure bullying wasn't a thing, at least physically, and harassment didn't last long ended up in physical fights between two people, or two groups of people (sometime not even by affinity, just because he was in my class and we didn't took shit from underclassmen).
I’m curious, what’s the basis for that claim? I’m surprised to learn that the constellation, incidence rate, and intensity of bullying behaviors don’t vary along sociocultural lines. Do you mean that there are no examples of areas or situations that have been more successful than others at addressing these kinds of youth behaviors?
Of course there is variance, but I'm not aware of any culture that doesn't have bullying in school. Many places generally applauded for being high-trust, harmonious adult societies (the Nordics, Japan, Australia etc) certainly have a problem with it.
Not to advance a position either way here but I will point out that Australia is not a counter example to the thesis that "bullying is ingrained in UK culture".
Canadian, Australian, and other Commonwealth colonies are heavily influenced in education practices by their UK roots.
Nordic countries and Japan make for better counter examples.
One of the best counter examples to the assertion that bullying and anger is ingrained in child rearing across the world might be:
How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger
LOL since when is Australia seen as "high-trust, harmonious adult society"? It is very USA-like in many ways. And the nordics are hardly any different to anywhere else in Europe in that regard.
Says who? I happens all over the world, but it's hardly very common everywhere, to the degree we hear about it in US and UK. I was very minor and uncommon in my experience.
We have a case locally where a high school boy assaulted a female classmate then tried a second time and was expelled. The boys parents were prominent county employees and they waged a campaign to have him reinstated and were successful.
The female student had a personal protection order against the boy. The school apparently feels that this doesn't apply when he is in school and it was the girls responsibility to avoid the boy.
Shit some kids pull would get them kicked out of even a very permissive and/or dysfunctional workplace. On the off chance it didn’t, adults can at least try to find another job, and likely can manage to if they really want to escape the most-unpleasant personalities. They’ve got options.
Kids are stuck with the same assholes and abusers for years.
Add an environment on par with the most infamous workplaces (“you have to ask me to go take a piss. I may say no and there’s little you can do about it”), expectations stricter than most workplaces (“here’s some stuff for you to do at home tonight. I expect it to be done tomorrow, regardless of life circumstances. Same the next day, and the next, all damn year”) and… man, no wonder many adults have nightmares about school for years and years afterward, even if they weren’t exactly bullied.
This right here is why I'd never send my kids to a traditional school. It's absolutely horrifying what we make our most vulnerable, impressionable, and emotionally immature members of society go through.
I used to be a school teacher and quit because I could not stand to see the institutional cruelty. The crazy part to me is when I try to talk about this to other adults they just look at me like I'm crazy. Because it's free childcare. And, "well, I turned out just fine", spoken by an anxious, unhealthy drone who hates their life of quiet desperation.
I was bullied at primary school (when I was 7-15). Mostly because I was very sickly, also because I was a nerd.
I managed to "overcome" my social anxiety at high school and both high school and university were pretty good experiences with good friends, no bullying, I even started dating by the end of university (which was horrifying to me earlier). I thought back then that bullying won't have any bad effects, I was pretty religious and considered it a trial that I passed that made me stronger and more empathic to people being victimized.
Problems started at work and in relationships. I realized after decades that I consistently let other people walk all over me by default and it caused A LOT of issues. I rejected all the women who seemed "too good for me" becuse they were normal healthy people, and I have been in a series of co-abusive toxic relationships (somehow the girls ALL have turned out to be bullied as well later).
I stayed at my first IT job for over 5 years not asking for rises while the IT salaries grew quickly here, and by the end I was underpaid by more than 50% compared to people with similar experience and skill. I had problems with procrastination and I always felt I'm about to be fired, but by now I worked for several companies and managed to get to normal senior-level income and all of the companies were always saying they are happy with my performance. I was a teamlead for a while and they were OK with my performance too. I realized consciously they wouldn't keep me if they were lying, but deep down I thought they are lying for some reason and they are about to fire me. Sometimes it was so strong a feeling I couldn't deal with it and have left the job on my own.
Remember it’s never too late to change in life. Sounds like a cliche to say but it’s good advice that’s true and important to repeat because it’s easy to forget. I forget it all the time and wish I would take that advice myself. Never too late to change.
I was bullied as a child, and it is something I remember vividly to this day. As a result I was kept in at recess, found a computer, played a game on it, figured out how to make little modifications to it, and… a couple stints each at VPE and CTO haven’t been so bad.
I really don’t think it did, but in keeping with the greatest of human truths I only know what’s in my mind and not how others perceive me (in theirs).
I was bullied at school as a kid, it was shit… but sometimes when I look at what my bullies are up to these days thanks to social media, I can see quite clearly that despite being bullied, I fared better in terms of achieving a better education, higher income, and even being overall physically healthier. None of my bullies could run a half marathon now, most dropped out of university or never even attempted to go to university, and many of them are actually unemployed.
There’s no doubt in my mind that being bullied has significant consequences, but this post made me wonder… what’s the consequences later on for those who bully? Surely that kind of anti-social behaviour leads to poor outcomes for them too??
> thanks to social media, I can see quite clearly that despite being bullied, I fared better
Last time I did this I discovered one of the more sadistic bullies I remember from grade school became an executive at Uber. So I'd rather not know. Though in the end it seemed like a rather fitting conclusion.
I think it's not the bullying itself that leads to those consequences. Usually, bullies act out on their fellow classmates because they themselves are bullied or not well treated at home. Some have abusive parents, siblings. Some may not have strong paternal figures or maternal figures in their lives. Some may have been neglected.
These things are what can cause bullying AND bad outcomes later in life.
As an adult now, I realize that many people who were bullies in school came from troubled homes. I don't blame them. I blame more the circumstances that caused them to become who they were.
> I fared better in terms of achieving a better education, higher income, and even being overall physically healthier.
That's a funny observation, which I'm pretty sure is true for me too. I never looked up to many people though. at the same time, i also lucked into software, most people didn't do as well.
I guess it depends. Bullies with little self-control probably find it difficult to keep a good job. But there are also bullies with good self-control, who know perfectly well in each situation what they can or can't afford doing; those will probably succeed.
Before bullying was eliminated from schools, bullying was pervasive, and I know several friends who were bullied throughout their schooling. The emotional scars and struggles with self-esteem they faced lasted long after the bullying itself stopped.
You can't force a social group to be accepting of people.
'Bullied' or not, these people will be scarred by being rejected from the social group in any context that they have interactions with their peers. There will always be people who are rejected by their social group for various reasons.
It's extremely jarring because in ancient times it generally foretold literal death. I remember it feeling like that sometimes.
You definitely cannot teach people to be accepting of others. However, a school should force them to be civil and even pleasant toward all people during school hours.
really? on what basis do you make that claim? being accepting of others is the basis of our society. (we can't have a society if we don't learn how to accept others in that society)
claiming that this can't be learned is defeatist, and decidedly not helpful.
on the other hand, i don't believe you can force behavior on people against their will. they need to learn the behavior so that they actually want to behave like that.
Maybe they just have kids who go to a nicer school than they did. I think this may have happened with me and my mother.
She went to high school in a poor area of the US south during the 1970s, so her school probably wasn't good. She's told me stories of how she was bullied physically (mainly by boys, but girls bullied her physically too), and how she's glad it's not like that "nowadays"/"anymore." Even kids who weren't bullied still got into fistfights. It probably didn't help that corporal punishment was routine at her school.
I went to a magnet high school in a high income county in the US. I graduated in 2021, and I personally didn't see or experience any bullying. Students were generally pretty nice and left you alone if they didn't like you.
From reading this thread, I realize the difference probably comes more from the areas we grew up in, but I had attributed it to bullying being mostly eliminated without thinking much about it.
Many have given anecdotes, but we need statistics in order to get an accurate view of the whole country. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 22% of US students ages 12-18 reported being bullied, while 5% reported specifically being pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on.
Maybe the bullying was happening at your school and you were just lucky not to see it.
I went to an excellent high school and it was filled with many friendly intelligent hard working people. I was still bullied. I’m sure many of the other friendly nice kids in my grade probably assumed no bullying was going on because they personally didn’t see it but I can assure you that even in the best schools it can and does happen.
Yes, it's highly possible that it happened and I just didn't witness it. Though I had a couple friends, I wasn't very sociable, and mostly kept to myself when I wasn't eating with my friends. I was on the track team, but had no friends there either.
Some students spoke English as a second language and had trouble with it. I know because I was friends with someone like this for a short while. They could have been easy targets for bullies.
Some students were openly transgender. Maybe some people talked bad about them behind their backs and/or disbelieved them, or harassed them without me seeing it. I couldn't know without having asked them about it. I know that at least one other student knew a transgender student from middle school and wouldn't stop calling them by their old name and pronouns.
I was also one of the few who didn't use social media, besides Reddit; maybe there was cyberbullying that I missed. I feel like I'm out of touch with most people my age because of this.
Yea I recognize it's probably been greatly reduced generation over generation, it was already being addressed systematically when I was a kid ~20 years ago... but saying "eliminated" seems like it must be an exaggeration. Though ironically, the bullying that does occur probably has been largely relocated from the physical realm to the digital, so in that sense it may have been all but eliminated.
Success stories on HN of people doing great despite being bullied coming in ...
Which undermines the vast majority and should not even be considered.
I've been bullied pretty much continously as a child and I'm 100% sure it made me a worse and more paranoid person with all disadvantages to that attached.
I was bullied pretty incessantly 12 - 16. It wasn't the worst, but it went on a long time. It had two effects on my life. My self confidence and self image were both very low for a long time - for example I was asked about by a girl and my response was just "why would you want anything to do with me". It also made me a bit of a bully myself during and afterwards. I'm glad I was able to think that through and stop it happening. I'm in my 40s now, these kind of thoughts still catch me out.
I've got my own kids now and we homeschool. Which is not really because of my own experience at school but still, friends with kids tell of the antics at school and I'm glad mine aren't involved in either side of those stories.
For people here still struggling with their bullying (past), I’d highly recommend Cognitive Behavior Therapy together with EMDR. The same professional applied both techniques in my case. It has worked wonders for me and the painful past is much less painful now. Having being bullied no longer define my sentiments and outlook in life.
Asking because it's something I've looked at for unrelated reasons, and while the couple of providers I've interviewed thus far I disqualified for other reasons, if there's more to look out for here it'd be good to know about.
Yep, age 7 and 11 were peak bullying ages. Verbal and physical abuse, scapegoating. Ignored and blamed by administration. Parents from an era where “boys will be boys”.
Now: Homeless and broke. Out of work for a long time. I let people shit all over me, even in adulthood.
I was told that adulthood would be different. In fact, it was the same as childhood, but more insidious.
I pray for death being unable to commit suicide. Failed attempts. I don’t want any help. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up.
Related: is it weird that the identity of my childhood bully ostensibly exists on some dossier in possession by a big tech company, and has been used as part of a demoralization campaign? How would I even know if this had occurred intentionally? Seems to me that the information secrecy and closed source nature of social media big tech firms is ripe for abusing data as part of malicious psychological warfare: bullying on algorithmic steroids. I am quite sure that this has happened to me repeatedly (google, twitter), yet there’s no pathway to inquire, etc. no accountability, no transparency. Unlike other hn users, I don’t have insider friends at those orgs to inquire.
I have felt the same way at times. Just not waking up, so nobody can say that I quit.
My advice is to focus on healing your self with therapy sessions. Assuming this might sound like bad advice to someone who is broke try to figure out which free resources are available. Maybe subreddits or users willing to help pro bono.
Just the fact that you want to inquire about social media being weaponized against you is something that I would say just log off, don't let it even get to you. There's a reason why people deactivate their social accounts. Maybe it has happened but that shouldn't concern you. Your well being is and that involves difficult conversations challenging your thoughts and expectations.
Adulthood is more insidious in this respect, yes. Because our country lacks basic things like a national health care system that can help us. We have an infinite budget for wars but the notion of helping one another is blasphemous. So you're on your own in that sense, unfortunately.
The mind is funny, it can be our best friend or own worst enemy. Do everything in your power to love and care for yourself. Everything flows from there. Your situation is not unusual or embarrassing. You're not the first and won't be the last person to experience it. Build yourself up, don't break yourself down.
That's a drastic response and I'd like to say - as a person that is in good mental health - that I've observed exactly the same type of unpleasant psychological manipulation by way of the big social platforms.
I made the mistake of discussing potential relationship issues using FB messenger, over the course of a couple of weeks my feed became almost entirely toxic memetic content; infidelity memes, cuckoldry memes, 'man up bro' type of content, incel content and a lot of gradual 'pushing out'; videos of men in the woods alone hunting, people living 'happily' in vans with dogs, alone, always alone, and with a vague hint of 'you can get your revenge' thrown in there - no specific 'calls to action' but a general destabilising push. Some of it was really really awful and bleak; the man alone in the woods hunting realising the only person he can trust ever is his ever-faithful dog, it was really toxic. Also 'homeless' - I think one day I must have seen the word 'homeless' in literally every single comment I opened. I've never seen a word so many times in my life. It was incredibly strange.
I could see a person who was already quite unhappy and isolated being driven to do something really stupid if they didn't protect themselves by pulling the plug, which I did.
In addition just about every single comment section everywhere has people stirring up drama. Reddit has had to ban 'crime' posts from local city subreddits because people flood the subs with endless 'CRIME EPIDEMIC STAY INSIDE IT'S SAFE INSIDE' type posts that serve only to create tons of anxiety. It's not accidental, it's something that's being done.
I do think that a lot of the issues with homelessness, migratory behaviour and isolation within society are caused by these platforms pushing this sort of 'ah just give up on society, be an island' mentality on people.
I'd say that it's now very very hard to maintain a normal state of mental health if you make extensive use of these platforms; very hard but doable if you confine yourself to a desktop, almost impossible if you have the apps on your phone.
I think plenty of people have suicidal ideation, especially in moments of despair. I don't really believe it needs a drastic response and checking yourself in - especially if you believe you're being persecuted - is likely to get you nothing helpful and is way over the top. Because it isn't like you're going to receive expert and specialised treatment at a public health facility (which is where you'll go if you're on a hold) - they'll peg you as having some sort of paranoia issue, shoot you full of thorazine and stick you on a bed for 72h because that works 95% of the time and frankly that's all they have the resources for.
Your response is very ignorant and you're clearly in no position to be dispensing advice. What you're doing is dangerous. Please stop. This is my last reply to you.
I'd like to remind you that you initiated the conversation by using the phrase 'looney bin' which is inherently disrespectful, disparaging and conveys the impression that a person who exhibits suicidal ideation is a 'looney' when, in fact, it is quite common according to modern psychiatric literature.
People do despair and do think of ending their lives, however inpatient treatment - which usually entails an immediate loss of income because most people in that state are in precarious day-to-day jobs where they'll be fired for not showing up unexpectedly - can very often make things worse.
In addition it's quite true that public health facilities are under-resourced and can't really do anything with someone that's saying 'I want to kill myself because my life sucks' apart from throw them a metaphorical shrug, some mild sedatives (I know they don't use thorazine any more, I was being hyperbolic) and keep them under observation. Maybe there's time to fit one meeting with a counsellor in there. There are thousands of 'I was involuntarily committed and they just let me watch TV for four days, when I came out I'd lost my job and my house' stories on social media that corroborate what I'm saying.
Counselling and therapy help but those are generally reliant on having an income and the time to find those resources. Generally a trip to the 'looney bin' immediately eliminates both of those.
I think what _you're doing_ is dangerous. Please stop.
I did not initiate a conversation with you. You're self-important, under-informed, and over-confident in your "analysis," and worst of all unable to communicate without drawn out pontification about things you clearly have zero experience with.
Solutions are available. Use them. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. You can do it. Don’t give up hope in your ability to heal and grow. If we give up hope we are lost.
Read my other comment. I've observed very clearly before the social platforms throwing toxic content at you when you're discussing life troubles using their messenger applications. It's very unpleasant.
Facebook published research years ago showing the ability to manipulate users’ moods by changing the content on their feed and measuring engagement / sentiment of their subsequent posts.
Yes, for instance if a big tech company knows that a person is demoralized already (for example, out of work and isolated), and if a major life trauma event occurs for that person, create a satirical and insulting depiction of that trauma event for the person unannounced on their personalized feed. They will never know for sure whether it was intentional, which will add to the stress and demoralization effect. The big tech parter could conceivably then measure their response to help refine the psychological warfare weapon.
Another technique is to use past trauma events such a divorce or childhood abuse as part of customized content on one’s feed.
Without transparency, how could one know if this was being done intentionally or not? Big tech valuations are largely tied to information asymmetry and secrecy as such. What power could they enjoy over a user if the user was able to see all of the data they hoard and how it’s being used in full transparent detail?
I’ve been told to never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. I’ve never found that to be convincing, because there are a lot of malicious people in the world. Then I realized the more salient point that malicious actors generally do no more harm than the incompetent folks.
You're not wrong. I get where you're coming from, but it's easier said than done especially if you didn't grow up with parents who teach that.
I used to be quite the doormat growing up. I wasn't bullied as much as just non-confrontational. I didn't grow up with much so didn't want to rock the boat. I didn't want my adult life to be like the broke and dumb people around me. That strategy worked okay for a while, but I was never happy.
It wasn't until I felt like I had accomplished something with my life that I could relax and trust my capabilities. The confidence came slowly and I still struggle with this. What keeps me working on it is realizing when I defend myself I'm usually also defending others around me. We should do more to help each other and stand up to bullies at every stage of life.
It sure hasn't done me any favors. I have often wondered who I would have been without all of that. Would I have been a better person? Someone at peace?
I wonder do bullies know they are bullies (like crazies realizing they are crazy)? Judging by this thread no bullies exist among IT people and all of them are victims of bullying.
Luckily I was not really bullied thanks to my height being always tallest in class and besides being kinda shy nerd I hang out with popular kids not being completely out of touch.
I was bullied between 6 and 16. I got hit, mocked, ignored, etc. I felt like I did not exist apart in my head.
My father was also very violent and I was scared shitless when he was angry. And he was always angry at something or someone. He tried to strangle my mom multiple times, hit me, broke windows, yelled like a madman...
It turned me into a ghost, trying to be invisible while I hated not being "seen".
I was crazy shy, couldn't look at people for long, felt bad whenever I saw they saw me. My safe place was the Web. It saved my life, and helped me find (or created??) my passion.
It took me a good 20-25 years to evolve and start daring to live more the way I wanted. Now I'm 40, it's all far behind, but I still get sad from time to time, thinking about all that crap. Yet, I'm thankful, because it turned me into someone with a lot of inner calm, patience, empathy, and willingness to make people around me happier. I have very few deep relationships, but I value those a lot, and I don't need any more.
Empathy, calm and patience are powerful and valuable skills to have in many life situations.
Sounds like maybe they mixed up cause and effect. If you have awful characteristics that would affect you otherwise in life, you might be made fun of in school for those characteristics. But that bullying didn't cause you to have the characteristics. It's just something that comes with it. Obviously nobody should be bullied. But is it really the main reason why these kids struggled in life?
I know it says these outcomes are independent of other adverse childhood experiences, but I wonder if it really is as much worse as it feels when the parent responsible for your other ACEs is your childhood bully.
To say we didn't get a long well in my family is a massive understatement. As a result I think I became what at least some would consider a bully. I carry tremendous guilt as a result for the way I treated others but in a perverse way I'm sort of glad because the flak my peers were able to hurl my way was literal childsplay compared with the professional-grade emotional manipulation and torture I endured at home.
I wonder what mindset has to do with some of this? I'm speaking as someone who was bullied badly when I was younger, still am I guess, but obviously I have no idea how representative I am individually.
When I was first bullied in school it was scary and I was made to feel a victim by my parents and teachers – bullying is bad and therefore me being bullied made me a victim.
This got worse the more I tried to get other people to do something about it. I'd tell my parents and teachers and the more I asked for help the more they'd take sympathy and try to help, but as those who have been bullied are likely aware rarely does telling the teacher actually put an end to the bullying.
A few years later I change schools and made a friend who was a bit of a weirdo. People didn't like either of us so we got on. He had a completely different view on bullying to me though. When he got bullied he'd always fight back. He wouldn't always come out on top, but he always fought back. And then he started doing the same for me when I was bullied. And seeing him do this I started to fight back with him.
First the first time in years I felt like I was no longer powerless to bullies. Now it was something I could fix. Obviously I still didn't like being bullied but it became way easier to do with once I realised it was my problem to solve. The shame and helplessness was no longer there and I started to stand up for myself. Obviously sometimes there was nothing we could do. If a group of kids want to beat you up, they'll do it. But we'd always find a way to get them back later when they were on their own.
When I look back on my bullying now I view it as the single best thing that ever happened to me because it gave me the self confidence to take action and solve my own problems.
To this day people will say mean things to me from time to time, but I have a ridiculously thick to the point that I rarely ever react unless people start getting physically abusive. While I might still get nervous when someone is physically aggressive towards, I don't feel powerless or a victim anymore. The only thing that goes through my mind is, 1: how do I ensure my safety, and two: how do I get this person back for what they've done.
What I've seen among many of my friends who were also bullied though is a kinda low self esteem and low self worth which holds them back. They avoid social interaction. They avoid conflict. They struggle to deal with their emotions. Etc.. And honestly I think that's partly because they were taught that they were victims from a young age and they're subconsciously embraced that as they've grown up where I was lucky enough to break out of that cycle.
The other thing I'd say here is that I don't understand why we treat crimes committed by children so differently. If a child is physically abusing another individual they should be arrested. Not punishing bullying in my opinion is why it's so common. The teacher saying, "please stop punching James in the face or I'll call your mum" obviously isn't going to do anything. It's utterly absurd the level of abuse we allow kids to get away with.
I guess to summarise what I'm saying, I think the reason bullying is such a big issue is because kids are taught they're powerless victims whilst nothing is ever done to actually stop the bullying from continuing. My school used to tell me if someone is being physically abusive to me I should say, "please don't do that, I don't like it". What we should actually do is tell children they must either physically defend themselves (if they can) or get out of the situation. Then once they're safe they should immediately call the police to report the crime. If we want to stop bullying this is how we'd do it.
There's the issue of correlation vs causation here. There is no controlled experiment where children are randomly assigned to control or test group and those in the test group are bullied (that would be unethical).
It's plausible there are many root factors that contribute both to negative life outcomes, and also increase the chance of being bullied. E.g. being disabled, or autistic, or even just ugly. That would cause the correlation mentioned, even if the school bullying itself didn't worsen outcomes.
It's reasonable to assume that kids whom are bullied have socially undesirable qualities vis-a-vis kids who are not bullied. Kids with socially undesirable qualities are obviously more likely to become adults with socially undesirable qualities.
There's no reason to think those people wouldn't perform worse when they are literally selected for negative qualities.
Yes, socially undesirable qualities like being smaller than other children because they were pushed forward a year for being bright. Or because they wear a discount brand of clothing. Or because they were called a mocking name that rhymed and therefore stuck for years. Or because of jealously. Or because their father had to fire another child's father from their job.
In my experience bullying comes after humiliating public experience. Say something stupid in front of the whole school and made everyone laugh? Good, now you are first candidate for bullying
Yep. I got my share of bruises and ruined clothing for being praised in front of the class for top marks. To this day, I'm very uncomfortable in the spotlight.
LGBQT was considered socially unacceptable a decade ago, I would think someone like that who was in a tolerant society probably would have better outcomes than an intolerant one.
My view is that people who bully others in childhood are actually training for bullying adults later in life. Where the absolute maximum is becoming a dictator with the ability to genocide entire nations. Such is human nature, I suppose.
> We conclude that being bullied in childhood creates a lifetime of misery.
Playing devil's advocate here in case someone has a clearer causation-not-correlation story: what could we look at to determine whether bullying causes a lifetime of misery, or whether 7 and 11 year old bullies are deliberately picking on those they think are just beginning their lifetimes of misery?
(reading Orwell's Such, Such Were the Joys about his english private school days gave me great insight into his "the cruelty is the point" world of 1984)
I think back about the bullying i got at school, and shrug. The main culprits are dead, or stuck in a drug loop that isn't going to end well or are not doing very well.
What those adult consequences are does depend on what one being bullied does about it and how.
I was bullied to the point of near complete ostracision in high school.
After a few months, I had a talk with some adults I knew outside my usual circle. These were mentors, some tech people teaching me assembly language and radio. Others were farmers, military, one business owner.
The advice and knowledge I was given varied dramatically! The official circle of people I was supposed to listen to were kind of weak and a lot of their focus was avoidance and coping until adulthood. Parents and school.
Pardon me, but fuck that!
These other people were far more real in what they told me and I felt empowered to not be a victim.
Let's just say I spent a year making sure some bullies paid extremely high prices for bullying me. Some ended up with cars that would not work anymore without very expensive repairs. Some had accidents on stairs and other advantageous places. Still others lost relationships with people they valued highly.
Put simply, in those years I learned the true meaning of "do what it takes."
I got whomped on a few times and that was about it. And when that happened I made damn sure to make sure it cost them. Usually they won, but also usually they did not do it again.
A lot of what happened could never be associated with me. Funny thing about bullies. When they are impacted to the point of real loss, material goods, status, etc... they often find they lack what it takes to bully.
And I turned out just fine. Left my small town with a bunch of skills and a small circle of friends I know to this day.
Since that time, I have rarely felt the need to do those sorts of things. It is nice to know I can. It sucks to know I may have to.
Not sorry. No regrets.
In ny post childhood life away from the hate churches and pools of well meaning but very toxic people, I was able to rid my life of personal judgements and fear, blame and shame.
I amplify the good in my circles. The people on my teams are encouraged to take no shit. Don't be mean. In fact, be nice to the point of helping enemies while making it clear far worse could be happening.
People do change.
Some change because they want to. That's me. I want to be a good human and got no time for low quality ones and their painful and often expensive general fuckery.
Some change out of fear, or cost too. I know I have a few of those under my belt. A few of those people are friends now. People who I would help at great personal cost and risk. I reached them. It was expensive and painful to do.
This world is pretty damn harsh. Our government is lackluster on a good day and people range all over the map. It can be hard to make a buck too.
Fact is, we need to take damn good care of our own and make sure they are empowered to give every bit of what they get, but not even a small measure more. Equally empowered to extend a hand in help. And above all, feel no shame for who they were born as. Nope. None of that shit makes sense.
Looking at me you would never know. Good. That means I got fully past whatever it is, which leaves me free to amplify good where and with whom I can.
And in that sense, we live in the world we create.
Mine does not have tolerance of bullying in it. Mine says you get to live your truth with no fear, blame or shame. None of us picked being straight, queen, gay, trans, whatever.
Mine says you are smart enough to do whatever it is and there is no shame asking for help either.
And how lucky did I get?
Found a woman who was also bullied, and who also did much of what I write here! She is the best and was better than me in some much needed ways. Great! We are who we hang with and who we value.
Choose carefully and the benefits are life long. Ignore that reality and the pain and suffering, struggle is also life long.
At any given time we have the rest of our lives to get these things right and benefit from having done so. Why doddle?
We are passing these things along. Here is an example:
Son in primary school has peer saying "nigger", "nigger" to my son non stop. Yes, he is black and I am not. No, it does not matter.
He went with all the conflict resolution strategies the school and other professionals insisted on.
One day he came home and said he has had quite enough. Nothing worked.
Ok fine. Fact is nothing worked because none of that stuff actually reached the other peer where it matters!
I told him to make it hurt. But nothing life changing. No biting off of things, no poking out, ripping, breaking bones... just make it hurt and when the authority calls you off, comply and have them give me a call.
I got the call and arrived in a room with a principal, the parents of the kid who just got hurt, the kid who got hurt, my son and me.
I walked in, made polite greetings all around and then nicely, but firmly put a stop to the conversation starting about how my son needs to... nope. Full stop.
I said the cost of racism just went up. Kid does it again, they can expect the same response. I asked him directly if he would please find something, anything else to entertain himself.
Told him the hurt he is feeling is the same hurt my son felt fro a few months!
Made sure he knew it just does not have to be this way too. His call.
They suspended my son, who I immediately handed one $20 for each day to spend at his grandparents house doing keep up work which we expected to leave home with that day.
Needless to say they were shocked!
I got called a lot of things which I ignored completely.
We packed up, wished them well and left.
Kid never said nigger to my son again.
Years later they ended up on the same ball team I was coaching. That kid comes up and asks if we have a problem.
Of course not! I give him that shoulder touch of encouragement a coach will sometimes do for a player they feel will benefit from and said, "Let's go have a great season playing ball!"
Turns out it was that kids father instigated that shit. Kid told me after a time and man was I pissed! The very same parents expressing righteous indignation so many years ago, as if! (I am feeling a bit of that anger still. Good grief!)
My son and that kid remain good friends.
Like others here, my own Dad bullied me too. That is what drove me to seek others outside my circle for help. IMHO, having a parent do that is the worst!
It does real harm that endures. Healing that harm is hard. It is real, ugly, messy, human work.
I had to put my own father in jail for bullying my mother who never did anything but be good to others and try hard to make sure we always had food to eat. I had a gun pointed at me once too. Talked him down, got it and tossed it in a pond while waiting for police to arrive. (That was tough and quite possibly the most difficult thing I have ever done.)
Had I not received the wisdom and empowerment I did, I have no doubt I would have not married the fine woman I did and would be a very different person today. Likely a fearful, weaker, sad one.
I might be dead. I wonder if that other possible me would stay cool at gunpoint...
I got lucky and I know it. So many of us are unlucky.
When we see that, we can help. I think we should, and I personally do.
It took me my entire college life to get over the feeling of dread of an incoming kick or slap to my face when I said something that would be confrontational, it made it incredibly difficult for me to say no to things because any sort of response that wasn't in line with what an authority figure wanted would give me major fight-or-flight rendering me useless. Even at this point I avoid conflict but have done much better to face my fears and build the ability to speak my mind confidently.
The PTSD made me leave my consultancy that I worked incredibly hard to build with a professor and a senior because they were working me to the ground and I didn't have the ability to say anything. Even at this moment the remnants of my past make me fearful of even applying for jobs even though I know I have a skillset that's industry standard.
Bullying in any shape or form is horrible and can have lifelong consequences on your psyche. To those who perpetrate it or stand by and do nothing, please reconsider that it may affect someone's life as negatively as it has affected mine.
Apologies for the rant, more power to those who feel they cannot stand up for themselves.