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Being bullied by peers may have worse mental effects than bad parental treatment

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I've been more or less bullied at home and at school.

It's completely fucked my life and myself up.

Yeah same. And do you know what, it is fucking terrible, don't know if i could rank them, although the home abuse put me in the hospital so I suppose that.

Like adults say 'its just kids' or 'kids are just immature' how do they think it feels, to spend 8 or 9 a day in a place, forcibly sitting in a classroom, with 30 or so people who don't like you? And will endlessly make snide comments, isolate you physically and mentally, particularly when school activities can be so group focused at times? And you know that telling a teacher will probably either make it worse, or you'll be told your worrying over nothing, and essentially, nothing will change or get better. No wonder it fucks people up, it fucked me up.
 

Moff

Member
that's obvious. and bullying is so hard to control that I think it's smarter to just raise your kid to be the bully
 
Yeah same. And do you know what, it is fucking terrible, don't know if i could rank them, although the home abuse put me in the hospital so I suppose that.

Like adults say 'its just kids' or 'kids are just immature' how do they think it feels, to spend 8 or 9 a day in a place, forcibly sitting in a classroom, with 30 or so people who don't like you? And will endlessly make snide comments, isolate you physically and mentally, particularly when school activities can be so group focused at times? And you know that telling a teacher will probably either make it worse, or you'll be told your worrying over nothing, and essentially, nothing will change or get better. No wonder it fucks people up, it fucked me up.

In my case people were physically abusing me in school, stalking me, and threatening my very life and no one did anything. My mother would scream and yell at them, but at the same time I'd get home and she'd scream at me to go in my room so she could watch TV because she didn't have time to deal with me. One time in Home Cooking 101(home eck or whatever) someone literally threatened me with a kitchen knife because they didn't like me and I told him if he didn't get that knife out of my face I would kick his fucking teeth in. I wasn't about to get stabbed to death at that shitty fucking school, at that point enough was enough.

Well, eventually they pulled an SRO in(campus police officer), and him and his friends all said I was the one with the knife, that I was threatening him and they were all bawling in the Principals office. I had never been so mad in my entire life, because the principal pulled me in and told me I was about to be expelled, there were four witnesses that said I was the one with the knife and only one that said it was the other way around. He also stated that since I was such a big and large kit(nearly 6ft tall and overweight, fat) that their story was far more believable than mine despite my completely clean record.

Yeah. Fuck schools. Fuck bullies. and fuck everything.

The system failed me, and has failed many others. I don't trust authority, the government, and I basically can't trust people anymore because of my numerous experiences.

It's a fucking travesty man, we send people into the fucking meat grinder without even trying to teach kids to behave like reasonable people, or believing that little johnny is a perfect angel that wouldn't hurt me, let alone a fly. Then when you get out it's the same fucking shit all over again, except now you get to be fed to the socio econmic meatgrinder hellhole we call "adult" life.


You're left feeling like you are barely human.
 

Ikael

Member
I don't know which is worse. It strikes me like the type of debate that one may have when stoned. "Dude, which type of death would be worse, death by piranhas or by flesh eating ants?". Welp, none of them are pretty, that's for sure.

But as a person that had been bullied I can confirm that it can fuck you up for good. It utterly, absolutely destroy your self-confidence and social abilities. And if you happen to be a man, that also means that it destroys a huge part of your personal atractive for the opposite gender too, so you have to eat the entire shit-package. There's a lot of "butterfly effect" involved in bulling that goes far beyond the inmediate treath to your physical safety.

Fortunately, it gets much better once your reach the adult world, where people are thankfully indifferent, even if there's always the casual social darwinist that needs to put other down for his / her own self-glorifying. It is a rare occurrence, but unlike in childhood, it is one that can be countered by escalating the fuck out of it, since you know that physical agression is out of the equation.
 
I don't know which is worse. It strikes me like the type of debate that one may have when stoned. "Dude, which type of death would be worse, death by piranhas or by flesh eating ants?". Welp, none of them are pretty, that's for sure.

But as a person that had been bullied I can confirm that it can fuck you up for good. It utterly, absolutely destroy your self-confidence and social abilities. And if you happen to be a man, that also means that it destroys a huge part of your personal atractive for the opposite gender too, so you have to eat the entire shit-package. There's a lot of "butterfly effect" involved in bulling that goes far beyond the inmediate treath to your physical safety.

Fortunately, it gets much better once your reach the adult world, where people are thankfully indifferent, even if there's always the casual social darwinist that needs to put other down for his / her own self-glorifying. It is a rare occurrence, but unlike in childhood, it is one that can be countered by escalating the fuck out of it, since you know that physical agression is out of the equation.

College can be a godsend if approached with fresh insight. A lot of the high school BS has diminished and campuses are so large, that finding similar peers is never impossible.

The problem is that some kids can't go to college for one reason or another, and those that have been bullied have to persist into young adulthood with poor self-esteem and trust issues. The opportunity for friendship building is restrained to the workplace or self-motivation (which is nearly defunct if bullied for so long in high school; hell, the only motivation is to get the hell out of the school).

I have strong feelings towards this. I wasn't bullied terribly in high school except for when I was in weight-lifting class (a 115 pound scrawny kid being made fun of because I couldn't lift much and I had no definition), but when I taught classes during graduate school, I could recognize the outcasts, the ones who were struggling to find people and I tried my best to involve them in class, talk to them after, and have an open door policy to make them feel like life after high school wasn't completely hopeless.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
Makes sense. Parents may be the single biggest influential relationship for a child, but I think people often overlook or disregard the effect of peers and their community.

It doesn't even make sense for everything that shaped you to be traced back to your parents like some Freudian view of the world.

I don't think people underestimate the importance of peers. I think that people, especially parents, would like to imagine that they have a little more control over their child's direction than they do.

You can raise them "right" but that doesn't mean they won't go "bad". After a certain point you really can't influence your kids as much as their peers and their idols, and that's scary as hell to a degree.

It follows then that this research at least passes the sniff test to me. Most people have a hard time divorcing themselves from others' perceptions, and that can lead to a lot of damage if you're bullied.

Most interesting thing for me was the mention in the study, summed up in the interpretation, that
These effects were not explained by poly-victimisation.
 
The problem is that these kids turn into adults and continue to act like assholes who don't know limits because it's how it was done in school and it fine to do in all walks of life.

Even today, removed from high school, I see so many rationalizations for shitty behavior with "That's how people joke!/Just having fun!/Lighten up!".

It's the inevitable answer to pretty much any complaints about online harassment. It always amazes me when people respond to shitty behavior with what amounts to "That's normal, get used to it!" instead of "Yeah, that's normal and it fucking shouldn't be".
 

CSJ

Member
Like others have said already in this thread, I was bullied and I'm pretty sure it fucked me up. I didn't want to be at school, I have no interest in being there and I failed hard. I only corrected part of that as an adult, but it's too late - my younger years being able to get ahead of things are gone.
 

Hatty

Member
I still automatically think that anyone that expresses any interest in me have a secondary motive. so I spend every first encounter with someone being skeptical and overly harsh before I correct myself

Like in high school a girl went to me and asked if I liked her and I said no because I didn't. She then laughed and went back to her friends and said "see he's a faggot". This spread and made my school life pretty terrible. Ended up going to court for truancy and got out of it due to getting A's in most classes

Bullies suck
 

Omikaru

Member
This doesn't surprise me. I went to a faith school, and being an atheist (and open about it), other students felt they had carte blanche to pile shit on me. The school's inaction in regards to bullying against different students (i.e atheist, gay, Muslim, and so on) reinforced that view. It was not a pleasant time for me, and no one seemed to give a shit.

Bullying in school has had serious and lasting effects on me. It's taken me about 10 years of falling off the rails, going in and out of counselling, CBT, and coming on and off medication to build my self-esteem and deal with trust issues related to my time in school.
 

PreFire

Member
Luckily I was never bullied, nor was I a bully. But I did fight the bullies when they bullied kids who didn't defend themselves.

I just hate bullies. I was an athlete in school, and had all types of friends. Some of them were "nerds" so I was always sympathetic when they were picked on. It bothered me to the point where I had to do something about it.

Eventually, I was suspended :( scary moment when NYPD officers walk into your classroom, calling your surname with handcuffs ready for you in 7th grade.

I always thought kids who got bullied when younger became stronger because of it. It's the bullies who I thought had issues getting friends, jobs and maintaining a normal life due to their inability to not be dicks.
 
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