Anti-bullying Awareness Month: Understanding Bullying

I’ve been physically, emotionally and mentally, and verbally bullied. I have been bullied for many different things some that are for the fact I’m disabled. I want to put a stop to bullying so much because it really impacted me.

@ASilentObserver

Thank you for sharing this. I did not know it was anti-bullying awareness month.

I was bullied through 3rd til I graduated high school. It was truly difficult and eventually impacted my mental health/well-being. 

@ASilentObserver

This is a great topic. I wish we could also discuss how bullies feel and what brings them to bully others?

@ASilentObserver my owners were bullys 😞 and they made me disabled and saves every where, missing limbs. bad people made me this way and now people laugh and stare at the way I look. It's not fair, or nice

I was bullied throughout middle school, the worst 3 years of my life. I lost the only friends that I had because they began hanging out with new people. I started getting bad marks because I didn't know how to adapt to the new environment, and having been "gifted" in primary school I needed to find a good method of studying new things. And also, during the age of body changes, I had no idea of how to properly take care of myself. But no one seemed to realize how bad I was feeling. Most teachers couldn't care less, and one of them actually contributed to the bullying. I kept sending signals to the adults in charge, both my teachers and my parents, but they all turned a blind eye, or told me that my classmates were right to bully me because I sucked at sports and made my team lose a volleyball match. And the worst thing is that I was attending a private school run by nuns, where we would pray every day and sing hymns that said things like, "I'll walk towards God together with my brother, who feels like nobody loves him", but five minutes later someone would call me awful names. I kept wondering how God could allow all that. And I kept praying, "Hey God, if you're there, either you change my life for the better, or you take it back. I can't live like this."

I thought things would be better in high school, but apparently some of the same problems I had had in middle school showed up again. And my classmates, instead of helping me, kept talking behind my back for 5 years. I asked them for help because my parents kept comparing me to the smartest girl in my class, and I was suffering because of that, and I was told to shut up because my mere existence had made my classmates' lives *** for the past 5 years.

Now I have almost no contact with those people. I moved abroad and I have a full time job. My life is so much better now. But sometimes I still panic whenever I have to meet new people because I keep thinking that secretly they hate me. I shower every single day before work, and if I don't I panic. I almost broke down once because I got out of work late and I needed to stay at my aunt's house, but I didn't have a change of clothes, so I kept thinking about how my colleagues would have thought I was disgusting if they had seen me with the same clothes two days in a row. I appreciate every single compliment that people say to me, but deep inside I don't believe a word they say. Whenever I meet someone, I can't stop wondering when they will realize that I'm actually an awful person, and they'll leave just like everyone else. I hate taking selfies, and I can't look at myself in the mirror without thinking "ew, that sucks". It's been almost 20 years, and I still suffer the consequences of what has been done to me. I tried to forget that period as much as I could, but the weight of those words and actions is still engraved in my mind.

@ASilentObserver  Thanks for this post on a very important topic.

One of the things that we are taught about bullies is that often they do not realize they are actually a bully!

They may actually not realize that their actions are unacceptable. Depending on their upbringing some forms of bullying can be commonplace in their home and as they have to endure they just assume others will.

They may use excuses such as ‘Oh it’s just a bit of fun’, ‘Oh I thought you liked it’, ‘I didn’t mean any harm, no-one was hurt’ and lots more.

- Often making a bully aware is the hardest thing to do, but it can really change the situation, especially if we don’t use the word ‘bully’  when we speak out.

- Simply saying firmly ‘I do not like that, so stop doing it please’ can help to shed light on their actions being unacceptable.

- Telling a teacher or trusted adult can sometimes make things worse unless they are correctly trained in anti-bullying tactics. Often they may try and approach the bully and tell them off. They may try and shame the bully, and worse bring you up to them and ask the bully to apologize which only raises the anger and frustration levels and can lead to even worse bullying once the adult has left.

So what to do?

1. Stay calm - Try and breathe calmly and focus on yourself

2. Stay Safe - Try and plan ahead so that you are as safe as possible.
3. Avoidance - so that you are not in the same contact, choose another route, stay with friends, turn off your phone, don't check social media

We all want to STAMP OUT BULLYING and together we can do so!

Listening - One Step At A Time!

Sometimes ganging up on other people I’ve been told about but others have went through it the right way by submitting reports, also favouring one side can make some feel like they are being picked on. I’ve also experienced that when you make others try to be mindful of other peoples potential triggers they can fire back even if you do validate exp. ❤️So really mixed exp - there is good and bad

Thank you Obs for opening this topic, it's really important that we work on it as a society to prevent bulying as much as possible.

I was bullied the second half of my elementary school and the whole high school. I the elementary I was also beaten and had to change the school twice in the last two years as a result. I sometimes get cyberbullied but I learned to deal with it and set healthy boundaries.

The bullying at school caused me significant stress and anxiety and lowered my self esteem and significantly added to my self-hate. I had and still experience fear of people and making a contact (I am 38). I learned to deal with it through the years and I am able to talk with unknown people and look cool doing it but it is not natural for me. It is a learned skill and I had to work very hard to learn it. And it still requires a lot of energy to practice.

As a mom I can't help thinking about how will my two daughters be able to deal with bullying when it comes. How could I help them to overcome it, how would I support them and prevent it from happening? I def don't want the same happen to them

I was around 6-7 years old when I saved a girl from bullying. She was bullied due to her speech related problems. The whole class stopped talking to me. I struggled with making friends in my school life because I cared about people a bit too much as I didn't have friends in early years. So, a lot of people used me.

But guess what? I met that girl in college again and she was completely okay and felt really happy meeting me and she thanked me.

For the first time, I felt like I did something that made a difference in someone's life. ❤️

I don't regret standing up for her at all even though it took a lot from me and kind of shaped my entire life differently as I was very young when people left me.

I’m strongly against bullying. I feel like so many people don’t understand what it looks like. For example, they will say they are just teasing or joking around. Luckily I have never had to go through that. I wish others didn’t have to deal with this. I hope you all are okay 💕