The Long Term Effects of School Yard Bullying

It sets you up for more of the same

It was May 1990. I got up, got dressed and announced to my Mother that I was NOT going back to school.

I was in year 11, which in New South Wales, Australia is the second last year of high school. I was a good student, doing well. In the top class for most of my subjects. I wanted to be a writer, a lawyer or a teacher (in that order).

I don’t know why I was targeted by the school bullies. I suspect it was because I was a good kid, a smart kid, a kid that was afraid of doing anything wrong.

I wasn’t just naturally well-behaved, I was scared. My Mother is, and has always been, an anxious person. She suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that was only diagnosed in her later years. I am the oldest of 3. My sisters and I have talked about our childhood and the theme is the same, we didn’t do anything wrong because we were afraid that our Mum would not cope. If we did anything we shouldn’t have, we covered it up. The stuff we were dealing with, we dealt with alone.

Our Mum, despite her best intentions, just made things worse.

Apart from having my head ‘flushed’ on a couple of occasions I was not physically bullied. Girls don’t generally leave visible scars. Invisible ones run deeper anyway. Girls are mean. Girls spread rumors, isolate you, make sure you are really really alone.

It’s cruel. It costs people what should be fun school years, it costs their education, sometimes it costs their lives.

This happened in the late 80’s and early 90’s to me. Long before the internet and Instagram. Dissemination of information was more laborious but still effective. I read untruths about myself on school desks and toilet walls.

I have always had a deep sense of justice. But there was nothing I could do to defend myself. I dreaded school. I couldn’t wait to leave.

I would hide in the library at lunchtime. One day one of the main bullies found me there, looked me in the eye and said:

“If anyone ever asks you to marry him you better say yes because no one else ever will”

It wasn’t true, but it stuck. It cut deep and changed my perception of my own worthiness of love. 30 years later I remember this statement like it was said yesterday.

I had a boyfriend at the time, he had already left school. We were together 9 months. Then one of the bullies stole him from me. I knew the taunts would be worse than ever.

So I left. I vividly remember the day I went into school to sign out. I had to be signed out by each teacher. I was not the student they expected to lose.

But I couldn’t take anymore.

I went to secretarial college, found a job, got my driver’s licence, bought a car. I reclaimed my life. Men took an interest in me, but they only wanted one thing. I was a 17 year old virgin who was too scared for that to change. I’m grateful for that.

Then I met my first husband

My first husband was initially very kind to me. I was his first girlfriend. From our first date we did what he wanted to do and I went along with it. He never once attempted to explore my interests. I went to lots of car shows, sexist movies and ate lots of pizza. We went 4 wheel driving and to rifle ranges. It was always about what mattered to him. To be fair, it didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t interested in any of this stuff.

My youngest sister was 12 at the time and she told me when I left him, 24 years later, that she couldn’t understand how I, who she saw as pretty, funny, intelligent and very likable could end up with someone like him. He was illiterate, moody, controlling and shared none of my interests.

But he said he wanted to be with me, and didn’t try and get me straight into bed. That was enough.

I settled, because I believed he was the best I could do. I thought I was unattractive and unlikable. My self-esteem had been eroded by the bullying. I didn’t know who I was or what mattered to me.

I believed the lie of my high school bully, and it ultimately cost me almost 3 decades of my life.

Bullying set me up to accept abuse as normal. To assume it was my fault, to be in constant pursuit of change to please him, to attempt to manage his behavior with my own. Slowly, abuse erodes the victim away, molding her into what the abuser wants her to be, at the cost of who she actually is.

Something has to change

As I have gradually started to put my pieces back together after long-term abuse I have discovered a huge gap in how we look at high school bullying. If you google “long term effects of bullying” you will find excellent articles about long term mental health outcomes for both the bully and the victim.

You will see references to:

· Depression and anxiety

· Low self-esteem

· Difficulty trusting people

· Health problems

· Increased suicide risk

What you don’t see is the statistics on victims of bullying who go on to become victims of domestic abuse. When I finally left my first husband I berated myself for a couple of years about why I married him in the first place. Why I so readily sacrificed everything I wanted to do with my life for him. Why I allowed his interests to become mine. Why I didn’t see the red flags of abuse?

I now know. I did exactly what I had been trained for.

What can we do?

If I had a child who was a victim of school bullying my priority, after making certain they were safe and not at risk of self harm, would be to make sure they know, loud and clear that what the bullies say about them is not true.

I would try and help them understand that there is usually a reason behind the bully’s behavior.

For a great example check out this story:

But even more importantly I would lovingly tell them all of these things, until they were really really embedded:

· They did not deserve it

· It’s not their fault

· Their dreams matter

· People do like them

· They have a great deal to offer

· Their life is still their own

· Never ever settle

30 years later

I became a lawyer (because he thought being a writer was a stupid idea). Then maybe 8 years ago I was in Court defending a client on a low-range drink driving charge. I was addressing the Magistrate who asked me a question, I turned to seek instructions from my client and saw one of my bullies sitting in the courtroom. She was on shoplifting charges, I felt for her. In that moment I forgave her.

I’m still working on forgiving myself.