I was bullied as a teen

[MissBeeBee]

Hello,



I feel extremely ashamed, but I was bullied as a teenage girl from 12 to 20. I had a best friend since age 4, we lived in the same housing, and we saw each other almost daily for years.


She came with me from primary school to secondary school. Everything was fine until we started year 7 at secondary school. It was my 12th birthday, and my first day at school. Us kids were being assigned to go to our form groups, I was late to go to my form group, so the teacher escorted me. As soon as I sat down, my best friend cut her eyes at me. I was stunned. Like actually stunned.



It was the start of a catalogue of verbal, and emotional abuse. To cut a long story short, she's gotten away with it. It beggars belief that some people think it's normal, okay or a "rite of passage" to get bullied at school. I had no friends. All I had was her, the abuser whom I kept on going back to like a battered child or spouse does. They love the abuser, and wait for them to change. I did the same.



I feel pretty f***ed up now as a grown up. When the flashbacks come, I can hardly believe it was me going through that. I had no support system. It's like, that's it. It's over. There's no justice for me. I am to simply "move on, and get over it." Well, I wish I could more than anything in the world, but I didn't choose what happened to me. I have been diagnosed with a few anxiety disorders which I can't seem to shake. I was fine before her bullying.



I've never experienced a healthy relationship of any form. I've even had fantasies about shooting her and her bystanders. I reached out to her on Facebook years later, but she blew up, denied it, and seemed to want me to play pretend that nothing ever happened.



But I can't pretend like she does. I've never received any type of compensation in life for what I went through. The only good thing in all of this is I've never met anybody like that again. I'm currently in therapy, but it's hard to speak about childhood bullying because people, even therapists tend to be blasé, and brush it under the rug.

[long road]

I was bullied from age 5 through to 16. I don't have loads of words but wanted to drop in.

I get what you mean about not all professionals taking bullying seriously, I have had an experience where a psychiatrist quizzed me like crazy for what really happened, not accepting that the bullying I disclosed was enough for me to have developed the symptoms I have and saying I had to have been abused. However I also had a psychiatrist who acknowledged it as major childhood trauma and got that written in my medical record. And my recent psychologist was very understanding and helped me work through some of it. I hope when you try opening up about the bullying your therapist accepts the emotional impact of your situation.

It's an old thread but you might find this thread on reasons why bullying is abuse helpful: https://www.recoveryourlife.com/foru...d.php?t=142018

[MissBeeBee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by long road

not accepting that the bullying I disclosed was enough for me to have developed the symptoms I have and saying I had to have been abused

Yes, this. I don't understand some health professionals. I wonder if they want to help anyone at all. Maybe they don't care. I'm at least grateful that I've mentioned the bullying to my therapist and it's chipped away at the boulder around my neck just a little. Although it revealed just how how much I need to get through.