Assertiveness
How To Recover From Childhood Bullying
I was bullied mercilessly at my all boys high school. Turning up to Year 8 English class was a routine nightmare: Often one boy in the class would stake out the door waiting for the teacher while another group would hoist me up on top of a high cupboard against my will. As the teacher arrived, the scout at the door would give the signal for everyone to return to their desks so that at the precise moment that the teacher walked into the room everything looked normal in the class; except that Graham was up on top of the cupboard. The teacher was too stupid to work out what was going on, and I’d end up getting sent to the principal for more even punishment.
Childhood bullying is insidious because it can leave long-lasting scars on your mental psyche. This is a critical time of development of our brains, and if your experience of childhood or adolescence is one of powerlessness and victimization, it can program deep unconscious patterns into our minds that set us up for debilitating anxiety and depression later in life.
Fortunately though we can recover. There’s enough neural plasticity in our brains to undo the damage that bullying does, provided we’re willing to face the emotions that we were forced to suppress when the bullying occurred. Here’s how to recover from childhood bullying: (more…)