The long term effects of bullying- how does it affect you?

[firemonkey]

I think I would've been bullied whatever senior school I'd gone to. It's just that with a day school there'd have been more respite from it. I think it's hard for my father too, as there's a certain amount of guilt that going to boarding school, especially public school, had such a negative effect on me.

That's the way things are if you're a diplomat's son .Prep school then public school .

Another son of a diplomat,in the same school house as me, whose parents my parents had known, was quite popular and thrived at the school.

[LittleMissMouse]

What I would really like to be able to say here is that it hasn't, you can choose to let it linger and ruin the rest of your life or you can move on and rise above it. I want to be in that camp that moves on and doesn't let it influence the rest of your life, but I'm not. Bullying has pretty much obliterated my self-confidence and self-worth and I don't want to have a victim mentality but I know that I have to battle so much harder for stuff that just naturally lands in the lap of other people because of lacking the self-confidence to put my head above the parapet.

It's given me a lasting paranoia as well, if I ever have to walk past a bunch of yoofs and they are laughing my mind jumps to the automatic conclusion that they must be laughing at me, there is just no possibility that they could be laughing at a joke or a random cat video on youtube. So yeah, all in all it has pretty much crapped over most of my life.

[Northern Natterer]

I was very badly bullied all the way through Primary and Secondary school - by individuals and groups and by people in lower and higher year groups. I experienced both verbal and physical bullying - doors kicked in on my head, chairs pulled from under me. It took a huge effort to go to school at all. I allowed myself to be bullied at work too - I lost my first job as a result of that. It does follow you round and have an impact. That's my experience anyway.

[Tembo]

I was bullied during primary school, secondary, sixth form and even at university.

By far the worst was at secondary school. A comprehensive school in Esseeeeexxx in an old falling apart Victorian building with bars on the lower windows (this was the mid to late 2000s by the way, not the 1950s), where some of the staff were jailed for stealing huge amounts of money. One pupil stabbed a kid to death, and another two ended up on the Jeremy Kyle Show. Yeahhhh...
That's where I learnt humans can be absolutely horrible especially in packs. The kids with 'behavioural issues' dominated all the lessons. I was regularly picked on and abused, and once was stabbed in the leg (it was just a protractor, but it made me bleed). There wasn't any period where I wasn't bullied, and it was by both boys and girls. In fact, the bullying by girls was possibly the worst. A group of the girls 'pretended' to try and push me out a 2nd floor window, and the verbal humiliation from them was awful.
There was a couple of excellent teachers who really helped me. But many of the teachers didn't care about bullying, and I remember clearly a teacher laughing when a group was humiliating me, until she remembered she was a teacher and had to stop them. And the PE teachers just made us play football ALL THE TIME, and had no awareness of my physical disability, and were quite nasty to me (what is it with PE teachers???).
I thought this was normal for secondary schools - until I went to university and people were shocked when I told them what my school was like. If the old building ever gets demolished, I will be celebrating.

Sixth form was actually really good, and it's a shame I was only there for 2 years. I feel I could have developed friendships a bit better there, as I had good opportunities I didn't make the most of . There was a period where I was bullied by a group of year 9s ( bear in mind I was a sixth former), but apart from that wasn't too bad.

I was shocked how I was bullied at university, in my accommodation. University was somewhere I presumed was a bit more mature lol. They didn't like me, and regularly banged on my door and threw things at my window. Thankfully that was just the first 6 months and I soon moved out of that dump and I went on to make some good friends and largely enjoy myself for the rest of the time at that university.

The bullying has had a bigger affect on me than I first realised.
Due to the humiliation of my physical disability in primary and secondary school, I can never wear certain clothes and can never go to a public swimming pool or gym. Although perhaps it isn't all down to the bullying, but whatever.
My self-confidence is almost non existent, and I hate every part of my body. Except maybe my eyes lol.
The bullying probably explains some of my misanthropy and cynicism about this society.