Share your bullying story.....if you have any

Bullies are complete scum.

Blank them, shun them, abandon them. Zero tolerance.

Society tolerates them and enables them to an extent. You don't have to.

 

Yeah I've had a bunch actually. There was this one kid who sometimes pretended to be my friend, mostly when we were alone and gave me a lot of crap when he was in front of others. He would always brag about how rich his family was and how he always had the newest PSone games while I had my fucking SEGA. A sad story, indeed but years later his father abandoned them and they were so poor to the point where his mother supposedly had to resort to prostitution to feed her two sons.

There was also this one kid that had a similar relationship with me as the previous one. He's also not doing so well these days. Dropped out of college, had a lot of trouble with drugs.

And I don't feel at all sorry for neither of them. The second guy was basically the reason why I had to change schools. Hearing stories how their lives are going to shit unironically put a smile on my face. I'm not religious at all but I just can't help but feel a sense of karmic balance when such shit happens.

 

I had been bullied on and off when I was a youngster in school. but once I punched a bully right in the face infront of my teacher bullies thought twice about messing with me and I didn't even get into much trouble for it .

 

I was a jock in school, so I wasn’t bullied by any students. In fact, I hung with some bullies but I was too naive to speak up to them against it (in hindsight, I definitely would now). But I was also hated by my teachers (I was rowdy and restless at times) who outright called me an imbecile. This one teacher of mine even said my writing was atrocious and that I should just give up on trying it. No constructive criticism or anything.

After that experience and others with the teachers, I didn’t try quite that hard in school. I wasn’t planning on doing university either. But throughout the 3 years after graduation, I figured I would.

That’s where I am now. I’ll be done next November and my marks are much better.

I wasn’t pushed or shoved into lockers, but getting verbal abuse from teachers (the ones who are supposed to believe in you) was horrible enough.

 

I was a bully and a victim of bullying as well.

Life as a bully: I was bored and picked on kids because of their looks or quirks. It was addictive. Many others joined in, at the time I thought they wanted to kill time like me but looking back I now think they wanted to be accepted.
I damaged property (jackets, school bags, books) and said hurtful words. I deeply regret my behavior. At least I kind of stopped at one point and most of my victims seemed to forgive me. All of them finished school succesfully and one of the kids I bullied shook my hand at grad night! I hope they all win the lottery.

Life as a victim: It started slowly. I got into arguments with a couple of old friends. Pretty silly stuff: "You don't like the music I like. You are gay!" - "No, you are gay! Go away!"
I was also having a half serious relationship with a girl who would become the most popular person in in our school in a few years.
At the same time many guys I knew moved away or were transferred to another school (the school I attended was rather strict and appealed to more gifted children, so a lot of students could not meet the high demands)

The people I was going to class with all knew each other since they were babies and they did not like welcoming other guys into their cliques. When we were teens it was all about cliques.
I didn't really noticed how and why but there was hatred directed at me and it grew and grew. Some people - including an old friend of mine I had had an argument with and the girl I was in a short relationship with - were spreading rumors about me. Even though they were obviously false, the other students believed them - ot at least acted as if to gain some social advantage.

I was totally confused and overwhelmed with the situation. Without my doing anything their antipathy towards me grew and soon I found myself excluded from everything. I didn't bother trying to talk sense to them. Violence was not appropriate in my opinion since I thought these guys were just confused and would change their minds.

I found some friends here and there - usually lone wolves or outcasts or very brave idealists. Occasionally some students who I came to call "foot soldiers" would taunt me to please their clique bosses. Very infuriating.

It was in my late teens when I was starting to get really stressed out. I had enough. I used to play video games so the exclusion didn't really get under my skin but at that age I wanted to be social, wanted to approach girls and was now feeling caged in by the lack of opportunity resulting from the hostile attitudes of my school mates.
I decided to remove myself from that environment - but not without my graduation, haha! So I got it and did a Batman. Just deleted social media and moved away without explaining.

I never looked back.

 

One time in school I'd had a really bad day and then two guys walked by and called me names, mocking me. I'd had enough. I knocked one to the ground, threw the other one headfirst into a radiator.

 

I never took any shit from bullies, nothing gets under my skin like those idiots and i always put a stop to it quick. If i saw anyone else getting bullied i put a stop to that too, i turn into Mr. Hyde when i witness bullying lol.

 

Thats the spirit

 

In fairness, those guys weren't the worst. They just picked a really bad time to mess with me.

I think nowadays I'm more annoyed about the teachers, religious types and other "authority figures" that affected me growing up. Well, those and the narcissists. Research narcissism. Don't put up with that shit.

If you're getting shit from bullies or narcissists or whatever, it might seem like the world is against you. Well I for one am on your side.

I know a lot of bullies had shitty lives as well. If you're a repentant bully, that's cool.

 

I was never bullied in school, but I will never forget the day I was in the bathroom at my university and two girls walked in (the leaders of a mission trip I had taken the previous year) talking shit about me behind my back and saying how I was too young to get married and that it was probably a shot gun wedding and that I'd end up divorced in a few years. Added to my long list of trust issues with women.

The only high school memories I have of being "bullied" was after I started dating my friends ex boyfriend (to be fair, I have been friends with him for years and had a crush on him for a long time, and I only met her because she was dating a different friend of mine like a year before... it wasnt as bad as it sounds). Anyway, she absolutely hated me for it and so did her new boyfriend, who had previously been a friend of mine. I remember getting some message from him on Facebook once, which happens to be the first time I had ever been called a c**t before. Cant even remember what the message was about... basically just about how I'm a terrible person for dating the guy she dated before, even though she was already dating someone else and I liked him first anyway.

But anyway, it's all pointless drama and it's in the past. I still get kind of angry about the bathroom thing ever once in a while though. Mostly mad at myself for not just walking out of the stall and confronting them in person. Instead, I sent them a message later and told them i heard everything. One of the girls was actually kind of nice about it. She apologized a lot and admitted that she was just jealous of me getting married,basically. But the other girl just stupidly denied she even said anything, despite me literally being right there and hearing all of it. But whatever. It's in the past, and every year I'm still happily married is just one more year to rub in the face of anyone who said we would never make it.

 

They were smaller and skinnier than me, but there were two of them so I don't feel bad about it.

I avoided those big, planned fights that used to happen in school. I was afraid of them, or just didn't give a damn enough. I was in several quick, spontaneous fights, that one being the most dramatic.

 

I was bullied steadily from third grade into high school. It was largely verbal abuse, but at times it turned physical. The school would never do anything about it until it got bad enough that they risked legal liability by not acting. Even when they succeeded in putting a stop to the bully's behavior there was always another one waiting to step up.

In junior high school I tried to punch someone who had been verbally harassing me for a few years. I missed. There was an uproar among the faculty and threats of being thrown out of that class (an elective), but nothing ever came of it. I think that was in large part due to the teacher speaking up about how badly other students treated me. I suspect he even approved of my response. After the dust had settled he told me "the next time you take a swing at someone, aim for his nose."

Early in high school I finally reached my breaking point. A group of guys were throwing things at me and spraying something in my face. I grabbed the first one who got close enough to me and wrapped my arm around his neck. It lasted all of a few seconds before the bus driver broke it up (note that he did nothing to stop it until I defended myself). We both could have been expelled. In the end we got a few demerits. The other students involved were never punished. It was clear that the assistant principal handling the incident cared more about the fact that I fought back than about the assault I was responding to. After that some verbal bullying continued but there were only a few scattered instances of the physical kind, all of which came from a single person who dropped or failed out junior year. I think once everyone realized I wasn't an easy target anymore they lost interest.

I also encountered a fair amount of bullying in the corporate world. The worst case happened after a great company I worked for merged with an awful one. The excellent supervisor of my department was sidelined and a new one was hired. He was clearly incompetent, but he did upper management's dirty work so they liked him. He was so short-tempered that he once had to be physically separated from someone. One by one he focused his abuse on people he didn't like until they quit. Usually it was verbal. Other times it came in the form of piling on work with very short deadlines. The smallest honest mistake brought a torrent of reprisals. Eventually it fell on me after I refused to go along with a change in my employment situation that he had arranged to make things easier for him. His behavior was the most commonly cited reason people gave for resigning.

 

lool, now that I look back on my life, bullies do not really bother me anymore. It is just probably rough people with a lot of issues to deal with like fines, jail time, etc. Now that I am more "educated" about these things. Usually a bully will always get in trouble with the law. And schools are perfect examples where bullies hang out. Especially in groups of people. But the sad part about it is that bullies will always exist. They prey on small people for fear and game. think of it as an evil character from a book. lol.

 

I had a retail job once where almost everyone hated this one particular guy. He thought he owned the place or something. He was constantly trying to order people around that he had absolutely no authority to order around. One day my manager, who was pretty nice but blind to this psycho he was employing, gave me plenty of things to do. This other idiot comes along and tries to order me around. I firmly said no, the manager has given me about ten things to do. He IMMEDIATELY went off and complained to the manager, who handled things reasonably well and the guy behaved somewhat better towards me after that. I still quit fairly soon after. Something I've noticed about bullies is, although they'll give people a hard time about "squealing", they'll be the first to "squeal" the split second they get out of their depth.

Bullies are often just jealous of people. When they feel jealous it tortures them and they react by attacking the person in some way. Normal people, if they are jealous, will just a feel a little bad but won't do anything so destructive.

I have a bit of a problem with the word "forgive", in many contexts. It's like, "I forgive you as long as you stay a million miles away."

Definitely set firm boundaries though. One issue with bullies, or narcissists, or twats, is that they'll try and publicly humiliate you, which hurts. So yeah, massive boundaries.

 

Maybe it's not always so straightforward. You want to avoid premature forgiveness. Perhaps you have to follow these steps:

1. Acknowledge the hurt.
2. Heal from it.
3. Set boundaries.
4. Forgive.