I'm now 25 and just come to the realisation that bullying has f*cked my life

[Gavin85]

Anyone else experienced this?

My high school was a typical playground whereby the only way up the macho hierarchy was to make yourself look 'cool' by bulling. Behaving like this was your 'ticket to popularity'. Obviously wasn't really for me. It wasn't until I got to university that I realised "interacting with peers didn't have to be that way".

I don't really relate to my friends from high school anymore though, they are still preoccupied with getting drunk, doing drugs and travelling. None of that ever really appealed to me.

I don't relate to my siblings either. They're all in their late 30's, highly successful, and have their own agendas.

Now I see immigrants who can barley speak English whom are extremely rude and less qualified than me coming to the town I have lived in for 25 years and getting the jobs I want.

I see the most arrogant, stupid, and generally repugnant individuals from school married to high quality respectable women, with children I might add.

Why? Because they have 'confidence'. The thing I had sucked out of me during my adolescence.

Whenever I hear that word, it sounds like fingernails down a blackboard.

Thanks for reading my terrible story. Feel free to discuss.

Gavin.

 

[Dj SL]

Hello Gavin, I'm a student, and I'm 23 years old. I took a public speaking course for 3 months in the institute I'm attending. I gave 8 speeches front stage. I class with 28 students. I felt nervous before give the speeches, but I didn't give a f*** of who's watching me or thinking about me. Man, I was the only hispanic there, I've been living in the USA for 5 years, and my accent is different from americans. I did my best. I got a "B". The course helped me. I gain more confidence, and I believe I can do it. There's a brilliant and radiant inner light in our souls protecting us. Just think you feel protected.
You will gain more confidence

 

[Honda]

I am glad you are accepting the harsh reality... It will be hard at first but taking action to change things will require alot of time and effort and better start now than never..

I was a coward in school, used to get beaten up and pushed over by bullies and never even had the guts to stand up to myself... College came and I was terrified of people, scared and confused for the first 2 years... It was a nightmare.. All I did was run away from my problems, never had the confidence to get a girlfriend and never had a decent social circle.. I still find it hard to be confident in social situations especially in-front of more confident people and females..

But I will try my best what else can I do?

The incidents of the past have shaped the way i live my life today and its shakes my confidence every now and then..

 

[LifeInternal88]

Hey Gavin. Yea...confidence !!

It is true. I understand that now too.

But the good thing is...you CAN start to build confidence. Try reading stuff by John Kehoe.

@DJ SL I think I'm gonna take a course too. I think these things take practice. The more you do it, the easier it gets...and you also gain confidence that way.

 

[gaddie]

Hi Gavin,

First off, I am sorry to hear about the tough times you have had growing up being bullied. Unfortunately from what I hear though, I get the impression that you are blaming the way that your life is not going as you want on the fact that you were bullied.

It appears to me that you lack severe confidence (as several other commentators have mentioned). While it may not seem like it, confidence does make a huge difference to your life. People do tend to treat you in a better manner when confident (though don't think that confidence will make you immune from bullying).

So attend some courses on confidence building, if possible try and let go off the past and don't let the bullies of the past with their supposed successes with the women hold you back. Some women are shallow (like men) and as such, both are attracted to each other. With confidence, your life will improve.

Alex
Author of Beat The Bully: A Guide To Dealing With Adult Bullying

 

[irish_bob]

was never bullied in school but was visciously bullied in the workplace while working overseas as a young man , i was a confident person at the time and actually fought back , unfortunatley i was out of my league and the visciousness overwhelmed me , i didnt breakdown untill a while after having left this place of work and believe it or not , didnt even class my experience as bullying untill a few months afterwards , when i eventually suffered a breakdown , my reaction was so severe that i had fully subscribed to the lies the bully had told about me , i thought i was a wicked person , off the back of this , i engaged in self destructive and shamefull behaviour as my self esteem was shot , as such , i harbour an incurable bitterness about my experience , its one thing to eventually accept that you were not at fault but when false appraisals result in you doing things you are now ashamed of , its all the more infuriating , lies can make someone believe they are someone they are not and while i engaged on those acts , i would never have done so were it not for my experience at the hands of that bully , bullying changed my life and changed me as a person , i know i will never be the person i was before and after thirteen years , i know that the effects of this horrendous experience will always be with me , bullying scars the soul

 

[Nothingness]

I was bullied for years. It was like there was a big sign over my head telling people to come f*ck with me! I could be in a crowd of strangers and I'd be singled out everytime. I was concidered a wimp. When I got to highschool. I decided that if they are going to hate me for no reason, then I'm going to give them one and got mean! That's when I went from being wimpy to crazy! You just can't win! lol!

 

[new account]

You shouldn't tell people that they lacked confidence when they were bullied. Confidence is just feeling good about yourself. Let's say someone feels good about himself, other people can't read his mind, they can't tell he's confident, so they may still decide to bully you. People behave how their experiences shaped them. If someone was treated horribly and was told bad things about himself, it will affect their whole life. You can't tell a fat person he's disgusting for five years straight and then tell them it's because they lacked confidence, do you understand? A fat person can be confident, but that won't stop people from mocking them will it? I'm just making an example.

People really are horrible and if they makes people crazy, then that's normal. If someone saw worse people are more successful, and he's kinder and he gets treated horribly, and he was still happy, THEN something's wrong. If I was a psychiatrist and someone told me they were beaten for ten years, but he said he was happy, then I'd think he's insane. The way the world is makes people behave how they do. Why don't people try and find the solutions to the causes of bullying and other problems instead of trying to cheer the victim up after it happened? If a type of toilet always leaks, they don't tell people "well keep putting glue in the hole every time it leaks", they redesign the whole toilet so it never happens, so why not try and stop bullying from happening in the first place? There's got to be a way right? Is that a stupid thought? Why should someone have to adjust themselves to this world? Why can't all people treat people better?

I wouldn't want to get more confidence to try and act a certain way so people like me better, why can't they like me being nervous? Why should I change so some idiots will be proud if I was doing drugs or whatever normal people do? The way I see it, the whole world is horrible and we're just going to keep ruining people. It's normal that that the guy doesn't have any confidence. Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't see anything wrong with how he is thinking. I hope I'm not offending anyone. I would say more but I don't want people to mock me and say I'm an idiot.

 

[irish_bob]

Anyone else experienced this?

My high school was a typical playground whereby the only way up the macho hierarchy was to make yourself look 'cool' by bulling. Behaving like this was your 'ticket to popularity'. Obviously wasn't really for me. It wasn't until I got to university that I realised "interacting with peers didn't have to be that way".

I don't really relate to my friends from high school anymore though, they are still preoccupied with getting drunk, doing drugs and travelling. None of that ever really appealed to me.

I don't relate to my siblings either. They're all in their late 30's, highly successful, and have their own agendas.

Now I see immigrants who can barley speak English whom are extremely rude and less qualified than me coming to the town I have lived in for 25 years and getting the jobs I want.

I see the most arrogant, stupid, and generally repugnant individuals from school married to high quality respectable women, with children I might add.

Why? Because they have 'confidence'. The thing I had sucked out of me during my adolescence.

Whenever I hear that word, it sounds like fingernails down a blackboard.

Thanks for reading my terrible story. Feel free to discuss.

Gavin.

welcome to the club

an eppisode of bullying ( in the workplace ) more than a decade ago was the catalyist for the depression which went onto completley consume my life , im now dead inside , incurabley bitter and unrecognisable from the person i used to be and the most annoying part is that thier is absolutley nothing i could have done to have avoided this , i didnt see a way out at the time and hindsight has no value , everything that spun off afterwards happened in a spiral and i couldnt stop it , nor had i anyone in my family who was competant or cared enough to help me , when it comes to depression , thier is a point of no return , those of us who live with it know when we have gone so far that thier is never any going back , innocence is lost , too much of the darkness was seen and the old us is dead , some people are able to rebuild and start a fresh , good for them but some of us cannot or will not except second best and a pale shadow or our formerselves , why should we

 

[irish_bob]

Hey Gavin. Yea...confidence !!

It is true. I understand that now too.

But the good thing is...you CAN start to build confidence. Try reading stuff by John Kehoe.

@DJ SL I think I'm gonna take a course too. I think these things take practice. The more you do it, the easier it gets...and you also gain confidence that way.

confidence isnt like learning to plumb a sink by reading a plumbers guide , confidence is either natural or its generic and fake , you also cannot learn it late in life , if you loose it through a breakdown , your fcuked , you might be able to get by but you will never be the same again

 

[irish_bob]

You shouldn't tell people that they lacked confidence when they were bullied. Confidence is just feeling good about yourself. Let's say someone feels good about himself, other people can't read his mind, they can't tell he's confident, so they may still decide to bully you. People behave how their experiences shaped them. If someone was treated horribly and was told bad things about himself, it will affect their whole life. You can't tell a fat person he's disgusting for five years straight and then tell them it's because they lacked confidence, do you understand? A fat person can be confident, but that won't stop people from mocking them will it? I'm just making an example.

People really are horrible and if they makes people crazy, then that's normal. If someone saw worse people are more successful, and he's kinder and he gets treated horribly, and he was still happy, THEN something's wrong. If I was a psychiatrist and someone told me they were beaten for ten years, but he said he was happy, then I'd think he's insane. The way the world is makes people behave how they do. Why don't people try and find the solutions to the causes of bullying and other problems instead of trying to cheer the victim up after it happened? If a type of toilet always leaks, they don't tell people "well keep putting glue in the hole every time it leaks", they redesign the whole toilet so it never happens, so why not try and stop bullying from happening in the first place? There's got to be a way right? Is that a stupid thought? Why should someone have to adjust themselves to this world? Why can't all people treat people better?

I wouldn't want to get more confidence to try and act a certain way so people like me better, why can't they like me being nervous? Why should I change so some idiots will be proud if I was doing drugs or whatever normal people do? The way I see it, the whole world is horrible and we're just going to keep ruining people. It's normal that that the guy doesn't have any confidence. Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't see anything wrong with how he is thinking. I hope I'm not offending anyone. I would say more but I don't want people to mock me and say I'm an idiot.

good post , the world is indeed a horrible and disgusting place and whats more horrible and disgusting peopl often thrive in it , the psychology industry has been built around patching up the victim when instead the focus should be on destroying the perpetrator , most of the time the victim is patronised and in reality made to feel that thier weakness drew the attention of the bully , this thesis is especially attractive to people who are in a possition of supervision over bullys and their victims alike , teachers , business owners , managers etc , if the office manager only has to deal with the wimpy victim instead of the merciless bully , his task is less daunting , same deal with teachers in school

 

[mad2rix]

I am glad you are accepting the harsh reality... It will be hard at first but taking action to change things will require alot of time and effort and better start now than never..

I was a coward in school, used to get beaten up and pushed over by bullies and never even had the guts to stand up to myself... College came and I was terrified of people, scared and confused for the first 2 years... It was a nightmare.. All I did was run away from my problems, never had the confidence to get a girlfriend and never had a decent social circle.. I still find it hard to be confident in social situations especially in-front of more confident people and females..

I also regret not only I didn't stand up for myself but also not reporting bullying to higher authorities such as counselor during my junior high to senior high school. However, I was lucky I never bump into my enemies at my college.

I have a fear of being yelled or criticized by almost everyone, as if I'm just sensitive and leads to crying. Perhaps that might be the reason I couldn't stand up to someone who tells me what to do, otherwise they're just accuse me of being mean to them.

Rather than dwelling in our darkest part of our past, consider moving on or learn from our mistake.

 

[YellowBird]

I was bullied for years. It was like there was a big sign over my head telling people to come f*ck with me! I could be in a crowd of strangers and I'd be singled out everytime. I was concidered a wimp. When I got to highschool. I decided that if they are going to hate me for no reason, then I'm going to give them one and got mean! That's when I went from being wimpy to crazy! You just can't win! lol!

that reminds me so much of my case,but if you are generally mean,you might chase away people who are genuinely nice,if i still put the facade on,i wouldn't have met some of the people i've met,i still feel unsafe with people,but that's kind of my problem.

 

[WishingICould]

I was bullied at school and also lack confidence, so were a lot of other people. I turned 26 today and i've felt exactly the way you do for a long time but I've been thinking about it and I don't want to waste anymore of my life feeling bitter and angry over a past I can't change. How are you ever going to be happy if you base your worth on what other people have or haven't got? Stop focusing on other people's lives and concentrate on yours. Who cares if they have a better job or are married? That's their business not yours. If anything, you should feel sorry for the people they're married to if they're bad people like you say they are.