Bullying, has it affected you now as an adult?

Was bullied a small bit, but only up as far as JC. Made a few more friends then, and any lads who used to bully became mates to see 'em.

Got mugged when I was younger if that counts. Still see yer man around town and everytime I see him I wanna bounce his head off the wall a few times. The lads know to keep me moving whenever we see him
Other than that, I'm quite docile.

Sure as hell didn't make me any 'stronger' or 'thick skinned' anyway. I could do without wanting to cave someones head in everytime I see them.

Going unreg for this

This has been on my mind recently, bullying in school has had a major affect on my adult life. I was bullied from about 3rd class in primary school right up until the end of college. Maybe it was because I was overweight, or shy, or had glasses, or had nerdy interests, or didn't like sport, or did well enough in class, or didn't cause teachers any trouble, but for whatever reason I was an easy target.

There was a little bit of physical abuse but it was mainly mental abuse, calling me names, staying stuff about me, mocking me, every single day, in school, at break, on the school bus, hell on earth. I genuinely believe I've blocked a lot of it out but I remember being swung around by the arm, slapped in the face, threatened that I was going to have a banger thrown at me (I hate Halloween), being called gay and having dirty sexual jokes made about me and my brother and cousins (turns out I am gay - that didn't help), people making fun of the way I pronounced certain words, everyone in the class voting me as class rep because they knew I didn't want to be, stealing my drink from my bag (until I put salt in it one day ), being tricked into wearing in my casual clothes on a fake "non-uniform" day, a guy sitting behind me in leaving cert year *rolleyes* constantly pushing his desk forward so it would dig into my back, etc. etc.

My brother and his friends were (and still are) my best friends in school, and they got bullied a lot too, but they were a year ahead so I was all alone in my class. There was even a teacher who used to single people out and mock them if they answered a question wrong. I used to dread his classes because I got so nervous I was bound to make a mistake, and ended up being humiliated by him in front of all my bullies.

Looking back I am so furious at how I was treated, why I didn't fight back, say anything to them, tell someone, but I was so shy, so innocent and so naive, I just didn't understand why people were being so cruel and always thought it would stop. Now that I'm older I have a hard time trusting people or opening up, have serious social anxiety issues which are affecting my work (can't make phone calls, too afraid to speak up in meetings) and am very wary of other peoples intentions. It caused issues coming out as gay and with making new friends in college. Despite what people say, being bullied didn't make me stronger, just made my weaknesses worse and shattered my self confidence.

At least now I have a great, understanding OH, still have my best friends from school and was recently referred to a therapist so I'm determined that bullying isn't going to rule the rest of my life.

Logical Fallacy wrote: »

I was bullied pretty horrifically when i was younger.

It has probably affected me as an adult by manifesting as a stout refusal to take **** off anyone, ever.

This. While I probably didn't recieve it as bad, I remember when I moved schools at 10 and moving to a school was terrible. Got bullied for a few years and labelled a gay for a few more. Was the combination of a growth spurt, taking up martial arts and a few fights that ended it.

Like Logical Fallacy, I've reached a stage where I don't accept that crap from anyone now and hasten to stamp bullying out if I see it

Will wrote: »

I realised people will like me, for me. Good and bad. Just a learning experience. Having people being horrible to you is quite upsetting, so going out of your way to be nice to prevent previous episodes is natural. A learned behaviour maybe?

I can never understand why people will be horrible to me. It was something I found very difficult adjusting to as I became an adult. I had fantastic parents so as a kid/teenager I thought all adults were the same. How wrong I was!

I would consider myself a nice easy going guy and I get on with most so it really takes me aback when somebody is deliberately nasty or lies about me etc.

I got bullied from 2nd to 6th class,i was all ways a small lad and not very into soccer or any sports which was looked on as kind of weird ,all-ways the last to get picked and the likes of that,went to secondary school and i taught to my self new start and the likes so actuality turned into a bit of bully myself,there was all ways a group of lads who came from better class family's and i had it in my head they were looking down there noses at me and talking behind my back so i would bully them every chance i got,would all ways go for the biggest of them just to try and prove i was hard in some way.
I am ashamed to this day over what i did and have since apologised to the lads i bullied and they were very forgiving which made it worse in a way,i still talk and have a few pints with them every couple of months.
But to this day if i think any one is trying to take the piss or get one up on me i can get very confrontational and i think the bulling had that effect on me

Only when I moved over to Ireland at about the age of 8.

Moving from Sheffield, to Knocknaheeny here in Cork didn't go well for me at all.

Before then I'd never really encountered people hating others due to where they were from, in this case the fact I had an English accent was enough to get my head pounded in on a daily basis (i think I still have the scars on the back of my head actually), and on top of that my own parents are gay, which wasn't the cause of much bullying, more remarks and comments about not having a father.

Even in secondary school I got it quite a lot, mental and physical, but frankly I probably deserved a lot of it, and gave as good as I got.
I was a sarcastic, evil, wind-up merchant who was shagging half the girls in my year, so often their boyfriends would get pissed at me and want revenge, it was one big circle really

I don't think bullying had a huge affect on me, even as a small child I didn't care much what others thought or said, and I still don't.

If someone wanted to call me a cóck smoking ******, I did't care, because their opinion means sweet sod all to me, and it shouldn't to anyone else.

edit: apologies for the grammar, hard to type with my two year old son beating me with a power ranger :P

Anonymous for this post wrote: »

I did get revenge of a kind though.

As the years have gone by and I changed from a school going kid to a professional worker bee to a worker bee supervisor to a management type bee I never forgave or forgot that core group group of people who turned me into a social pariah.
So imagine my delight a number of years ago when we were interviewing people for positions at work when one of them turned up. The look on their face when they realised it was me was priceless to say the least. Recently I came across another one one night when i was out for a few pints. He started telling me how hard he was finding it on the dole etc. Really enjoyed telling him about my new car. Karma is a bitch, but I love her!

Revenge is always sweet!

I still have fond memories of when I got revenge on one person in particular, who had forced me to leave the school I was in during the final months of 6th year. He had spread a rumour I was planning a shooting spree, and this was when Columbine was still fresh in the minds of people.

Anyway, several years I was driving through Cork with my absolutely stunning girlfriend at the time, on my shiny new Suzuki Marauder.

We pull over on the side of the road to stop into the shop, pick up some drinks for the night and what not, and who do we see, but the infamous person who made my life hell for so long, slumped semi-unconscious on the street, with a begging up, practically pleading people for some cash.
We walked into the shop, I picked up our stuff and walked back outside, and handed him a bag full of food, groceries and water, and a 20euro note.

To this day I'm not 100% sure if he knew it was me, but the feeling of pure satisfaction was overwhelming!

I'll freely admit that i was suicidal. It didn't help that i kept it all in, and didn't tell anyone. My parents just thought i was going through a hard time with school, as in the actual learning bit. I was doing 7 honours subjects, so when i stopped going out on a weekend night or even during the weekend days i blamed the schoolwork, and locked myself away in my bedroom. The fact that my schoolwork was suffering and a reasonably smart kid dropped from B average to scraping D's seemed to back this up. I turned from a normal teenager with all the usual teenager tantrums and angst, mixed in with all the usual teenager sunshine and success on the athletics track, to a chap who had a dirty great big black thundercloud following him around, and no interest in anything. I gave up the running, gave up anything that I had been good at.

My time consisted of getting up in the morning, pretending that i was a normal kid going out to school for another day, walk there alone, with classmates totally ignoring me, and other students in the school doing the point and giggle thing that kids are so cruel at but so good at. Coming home in the evening would mean more of the same. After school I'd go up to my room where I would lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, sometimes having a bit of a cry. I'd come down for dinner, have the usual over dinner conversations, all the while putting a face on, help with the clean up then go up to my room to do homework and study. At about 10:30/11:00 each night my parents would go to bed, then i went down stairs to watch Star Trek which was on Sky One at 11 pm in those days. Weekends were helping Dad and Mam out around the house as opposed to going out.

Eventually after 6 months of this I snapped. I can't remember how or why it came about, but I DO remember taking a swing at my Dad and my older brother laying me out flat on my back. I then went to take the two of them on in a physical full on fight. At one stage my Dad actually had his hands on my throat similar to Homer Simpson before he realised what he was doing.... and burst out crying. That set me off. I just broke down and (feck it I have tears in my eyes here tying this!! ) all i can remember saying is I have no friends, I have no friends over and over again.

My parents felt very guilty that they hadn't noticed what had happened, and why 6 people had stopped calling to the door regularly. Mam was on the parents association of the school and pulled strings about the repeating 5th year thing, the School Counsellor got involved and got the teachers to stop bollocking me out of it in class, and suddenly i realised that despite all the psychological bullying that 60 people had put me through i was still there, and by jesus i wasn't gonna let them beat me. April and May went by in a blur as I decided i was actually gonna study properly and get a good college place and get the hell out of my ****hole of a town and become a success and rub everyones noses in it.

Before the Leaving started for the class ahead of us I was called down to the school and 'Offered' (by which it was strongly suggested that i take the chance) of repeating 5th year. I took it. Ended up with a decent Leaving cert which has resulted 17 years later in a good job, with my own house.... in my ****hole of a town. And i deliberately bought here because the lads who i got friendly with at the second swing of 5th year, have all bought around the area.

Would I change anything? Yes and no.
No, because I'm happy enough with who i am today, and my experiences over a period of 2 1/2 years of my life, while horrible, have helped mould the person typing this out.
Yes, because I wish i had spoken out sooner, maybe I'd find it easier to trust people now. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that i'll never marry or have kids, even though i'd love to, purely because any relationship i get into gets hijacked by a fear of being rejected again by people i choose to be part of my life, so after at most 2 years (my longest relationship to date) I get itchy feet and get my rejection in first.

All i can suggest to anyone who is being bullied is to say it to someone. It's a horrible thing to have happen to you, you don't deserve it, but trying to carry the weight of something like that on relatively young shoulders is hard.......and if you tell someone it doesn't have to be.

I am a regular poster on the site, as is one of the core group of people who perpetrated the psychological bullying, that's why I'm posting anonymously. Even today, 17/18 years later I don't want those people to know how badly they hurt me.

Don't feel as if you have to go through it alone. Being bullied is nothing to be ashamed of, and I'm well aware of the irony of me typing that line straight after typing the one above it!!

Whatever else you take from my meandering memories of something that I keep buried, take this, being bullied, being suicidal, being totally depressed can be helped by uttering one little 4 letter word.. Help.

i'm going to try and be as vague as i can. my writing style isn't usually like this but i know a lot of people i know irl are on boards and while i've never told them my account, i don't want them to figure out who this is.

so when i was young enough, there was a guy who tried picking on me to show everyone else how much better he was. this started off with lightly punching me when we were basketball training (i punched back) and it turned into us just trading punches for an hour. yes, my should hurt but i wanted him to get the message across that he wasn't going to get me.

so over the course of two days the entire thing snowballed and a fight is arranged without my knowing and i'm lured into an open area by people i thought were my friends and he and the entire ****ing school comes out of nowhere and he thinks he's gonna batter me and i just hit him back once, straight on in the face and use the moment of surprise to get the hell out of here (this guy was like two times bigger than me).

something must have happened after that because the guy never bothered me again and judging from future small conversations and nods of acknowledgement, maybe even respected me. i don't know. mightn't sound like much but it threw me off my game all year, made me very reserved, very shy. after being manipulated like that, i've found it very hard to trust people. it wasn't just him, you must understand, it was the fact that people i'd known all my life just revealed to me right there that they wanted to see me go down, getting pummeled. that hurt.

for the record i'm a-okay now. good social circle who are very loyal. i'm outgoing and all the rest. but sometimes on those dark days you think back and some part of me still feels fear.

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Coming from the other side, I treated a couple of people pretty bad in secondary school - one an awful geeky fat ginger who hogged the computer at school.

The other was a girl who thought she was it. She went through all my mates and when it was my turn I decided instead to reject her - big time. She was turned into social pariah no. 1.

Looking back I feel pretty bad how I behaved. I'm sure the affect on both victims was pretty devastating.

As part of my business I now visit Primary Schools and discuss bullying with the kids - not just the victims but also the bullies as well - treat people how you would like to be treated!

Why would come onto a forum about bullying and use terms like that a lot of people here are telling there very personal story's regarding been bullied and dont want to hear it,i dont think i would want my kid lectured by a business who describes any kid as " as a fat geeky ginger".Deep down it sounds like you have little regret over your former bullyng days.

Hey guys, regular poster going unreg for this.

Moved from Scotland when i was 8. Primary school was pretty uneventful, we had a very close knit class pretty much, couple of altercations here and there, but nothing that would'nt be solved by the end of the day. Secondary school however, was another matter entirely. Started lightly with teasing and put downs from those I hung around with, then into 2nd year that continued, whilst at the same time the scumbag gang in the class started on me. The main ring leader was in the boxing club, did not stand a chance. Himself and his lackeys beat the living crap out of me pretty much every day, spat on me everytime they passed by me or sat near me, beaten until I was bawling crying and could'nt handle the pain of it.

I grew up in a loving tightly knit family, always surrounded by love and support, so that kind of violence and pure hatred I could not get my head around nor understand it at all. It was torture. It all came to a head, when one day, when our lazy ass teacher had been 20 minutes late for class, that entire 20 minutes was spent with them punching & kicking me, and to finish it off, one of them came up and did this real massive gobby spit all over my hair. This of course had all them scummers laughing in amusement, and looks of pity from those who did'nt partake. Looking back on it a part of me died that day, the shame and humilitaion was something Ill never forget. Even thinking of it now, nearly 20 years later, im shaking & can remember vividly how degrading it felt. However I finally got the courage to tell one of the teachers about it, and those involved were punished, but it was hardly a deterrant. They were up to their same thing a forthnight later. However, soon after this, most of them left after the junior cert, so after that, it was just back to to put downs and being made feel worthless for 5th and 6th year. Although, that seemed like a holiday in comparison to what went on before. All of secondary school was pretty much a write off, self esteem down in the drain, did'nt do as well as I could have in the leaving. I pretty much just felt completely worthless.

I wish I could say that it was the making of me, but the reality is, it broke me. Always have been afraid of my own shadow, non existing self worth, anxiety prone, paranoid & cant take any kind of confrontation. If anybody remotely raises their voice or gestures their hands in any kind of angry fashion, immediately I just get the shakes, feel blood rushing to my head, like pins and needles all through my body. I never speak up, becuase really I dont want to interact with anybody, I find it very tough. When im talking to people I dont actually want them to like me, id just prefer if they did'nt even acknowledge me. It goes through phases, where it can be really unbareably bad but then tapers off to just about manageable. Ive never been able to forge any kind of relationship with any women down through the years. This is mainly due to the fact that any kind of rejection would just kill off any of the little self esteem I had left, so as a survival mechanism, I just decided to cut that completely out of my life and not even try pursue it. The way I see it is, I would not want to drag somebody into the woe of living with my insecurities, its no kind of life for any lady to have being stuck with somebody like that, I certanly would not want any of my sisters go out with somebody like me. So at 35 im single and never even been near the opposite sex. I must add, im not some woman fearing type, in fact, not even my closest friends (male and female) know about this, & I think ive been able to fool them quite well down through the years. If the situation requires it, I can be Mr. Social, but its a tough ask & something that in recent times has gotten harder to do. In the past 2 years my mental health has deteriorated quite a lot, anxiety, scared to go outside have all been amped up tenfold. Unfortunitely a few fruitless journeys to cash hungry psychotherapists (not calling them all that, but the ones ive been to certanly had euro signs in their eyes with little regard for the fact I was not just a wallet).

To answer the OP's question, I would say yes, it has unfortunitely affected me as an adult. The combination of anxiety, low self worth & depression stays with me to this day unfortunitely. Every now and again ill get sheer bursts of extreme anger (directed at myself), that just come from nowhere. Often I can sleep very well at night thinking about it all. However, I do remain hopeful that I can pull myself out of it.

Fair play to those previous posters who belted seven shades of crap out of their tormenters, had I any muscle on me I would have done the same

Apologies if this is too long or should be in personal issues, however, it felt good to offload some of that.

G86 wrote: »

It's in the past, so not something I want to fully get in to here, but I had it pretty bad through primary to secondary school. I grew up constantly being told I was ugly and getting slagged everytime I walked down the street, sometimes I couldn't even walk to the shop because I knew they were there.

I remember the first time a guy actually showed interest in me...he never called after our first kiss because they threatened to beat the **** out of him. I actually ended up always dating guys a good few years older than me because of that - I figured if they were older they wouldn't be put off by all the crap said about me. My first serious relationship was with a 23 year old when I was 16; I was lucky because he was a genuinely lovely guy, and if he ever heard anything he never mentioned it. I feel like I kind of missed out as well though, I never did the whole 'my friend likes your friend' fun dating thing...I never got to be a kid.

Tbh, I think the main effect it had was making me want to get the fcuk out of my town as soon as possible, so I just focused all of my energy on that and it got me through. Fortunately I had 2 or 3 good friends who kept me sane.

I've seen a few of the people involved around the place when I'm home, and a few of them have grown up and copped on a bit, well apart from the one I ran into in a bar at Xmas 3 years ago - who decided to spit on me when he walked past. He's 25 now - I mean wtf is wrong with people? That said, he's in a dead end job, still living with Mammy, and lets just say he hasn't improved with age - so karma won out there.

But you know what? None of it bothers me now, I've moved on and a lot of them are still stuck in the same place. In some ways, it made me who I am; it made me fiercely independent and ambitious, it's made me care about the true friends I have a great deal, and it made me realise that no-one can shape your life apart from you.

Wow, what an awful way to be treated! I am glad you have come out of it more positively!

I got teased for being ugly (never really thought I was that bad) but not to the extent you were. I also got teased for being over weight at times! So both of those issues destroyed any confidence around women!

Going unreg`d for this one.

I was bullied terrible growing up.From 1st year up until 4th year it was really quite severe.Used to get the **** beaten out of me most days...one day I was tied up with a lenght of rope and dragged home by this same idiot on his bike.Another day he decided to use me as target practice and tied me to a tree and threw shuriken stars at me for fun.He thought he was some sort of ninja and used me for practice.

Eventually I snapped--I just lost it.Decided one day that I couldnt take it anymore.So I flipped.I kicked this bloke senseless.All I remember is not being able to stop myself.I remember blood pouring out of his mouth and ears after the kicking I gave him.And then guess what Im the one thats dragged into the principals office and suspended.The whole story came out then and he was expelled..but has it affected me--Hell yeah.

Im like a couple of other posters who flatly refuse to take any **** off anyone these days.
Ive become the most stubborn person you could ever meet.
Ive encouraged my kids to stand up to bullies and if that means me defending them to any school head then so be it.My eldest had issues a few months back so I told her to go into school and the next time this bully starts give as good as you get and she did. And now its stopped.

My advice to anyone getting bullied--forget the "lets sort it out through proper procedures" crap.Confront them..give as good a hiding as you get.If theres more then one attck the main culprit.Dont be afraid to loose it altogether and flip out.If the **** hits the fan with principals etc you`ll be the one believed if you can prove its been going on for a while.People have killed themselves over being bullied--I was probably close enough at one stage myself.

YOu know the worst part*--most of the lads that were friends did nothing.They knew it was going on and could have helped.This bloke was one lad on his own--he had no backup but my so called friends stood back and let ne get the **** beaten out of me day after day.
Then last year I start getting calls to go to a school reunion from these same blokes.Lets just say they were told nicely where to go.Why would I go and pretend to be nice for a couple of hours to lads that I still hate 20 years on.
No chance.