I am pleased about all the antibullying education that is being taught these days. Sadly I am not sure it is helping all that much. There are still too many young people suffering and attempting or committing suicide.

As I have mentioned in other threads I was bullied. I know some of the emotional harm it does to a person. I know with some of us not fitting the norm we were more likely to be victimized. I was wondering if anyone wanted to share their nightmare of being bullied.

The topic of bullying came up yesterday and I shared some of my experiences. My older friend was shocked that I had such experiences. What surprised me was the emotional pain I still have when I talk about it. I do not think about it much but the times I do I am amazed at how cruel people could be.

If you would find it useful to talk about any experiences of being bullied please share. Yesterday was a reminder that it is still good to let it go.

The way I dealt with bullies in school was to give them a good ass kickin. When I was young I was the target of bullies due to my small size, but what they didn't know was that I knew how to defend myself. For a good while I lived with my grandfather who was a career military man, Army, Air Force, and Marines who taught me how to use guns and other weapons as well as CQC [Close Quarter Combat] while I lived with him. That being said I had no problems dealing with bullies, but I would warn them to not mess with me, if they continued I would show them how weak they really were and usually in front of a crowd to teach them a lesson in not messin with the little guys around.

Tonight Anderson Cooper's show will focus on bullying. Actually all his shows this week will focus on the problem. They showed part of the show and one young man was bullied by 40 of his fellow students. Another young man was afraid for his life so he is being home schooled. A young straight man was being tormented because he had two dads. I am going to DVR the show and watch it after some comedy.

I remember the days of walking into school and knowing the verbal and physical abuse was about to start. The boys and girls would call me names and my nickname was Helen. Only the boys were physically abusive. Oh and some of the older class members would participate in my torment. When I heard these beautiful young people talk about suicide I remember the times I considered it.

I hope one day it comes to an end along with the suicides.

I'm completely with you Tugon. I was bullied at school and had a horrible time. Problem was I'd moved in from another part of the country so my accent set me apart. I was also an insecure child having been separated from my parents when I was 2-3 while my mother had a spell in hospital. I guess the bullies spotted that I was timid and shy and they picked on me. I really hated most of my school days. I think bullying is a very difficult to stop, but any kind of awareness raising is a good thing.

As an autistic, transgendered child who had not gone through the traditional infant-child transition, I encountered intense bullying in public school, from some students and from some teachers.

The bullying was so severe at the start of kindergarten that, on the third day of kindergarten, it came into my mind that I could escape future bullying by committing suicide (a way came to me that would not fail to work), except I concurrently recognized that my committing suicide on the way home after my third kindergarten day would hurt my family "a thousand times" more than the bullies would ever hurt me.

Twice, my parents moved to another state to escape a school system in which I was being bullied beyond anything that was safe for me on a sustainable basis.

I have worked for decades to unriddle bullying well enough that others can scientifically test models of the causation of bullying, with the goal of designing and developing a bullying preventer that is of universal (not constrained to any particular religion and/or society and/or culture) applicability.

Thus far, all the work I have been able to accomplish identifies, and only identifies, the infant-child transition as the one-and-only traumatic life event which ultimately drives every form of bullying which I have yet observed.

I contacted polio when I was 6 years old. Went to a special school for kids with polio and CP until I was able to get around on my own. At the time, I was smaller and weaker than others, and avoided physical contests such s baseball or dodge ball as I could not perform well back then. When I reached 6th grade, I returned to public school, where all hell broke loose with the Bullie's. The thing that stuck with me the longest was while standing in front of a urinal at school, a bully would come up behind me, and push me into the urinal. We had tall porcelain fixtures, and when peeing, I usually ended up with wet pants and many times injury to a foot or arm.

As a result, to this day, over 50 years later, I freeze up, and cannot pee in a public restroom when someone is behind me. This "phobia" has impacted my life, and I avoided public restrooms for the most part. Why the bullies thought this was fun or cute is beyond my comprehension.

Having moved back to the area where I did the last part of grade school through the first part of high school, I have encountered some of the people who, back then, bullied me. Many have apologized, and some who did not bully have apologized for not having done more to stop the bullying.

Shortly after we moved to this area, in 1995, I asked one classmate who had been among my best friends here during my public school days, what he remembered about the bullying. He said that he remembered "the name calling."

I asked him what he remembered I did about it. He said that he never saw me do anything.

I remarked that I thought he did see what I did to stop the bullying, but did not recognize it at the time, and further remarked that, if I told him what I did, because I understood what I was doing and why at the time I did it, my guess was that he would realize that he did see what I did.

He asked me to explain.

I said that I forgave those who bullied me instantly, because I understood that they were telling me about themselves, as I neither wanted nor welcomed being bullied, yet recognized that, were I to act as they did, I would merely reinforce the bullying. Through instantaneous forgiving, I never had any resentments that would lead to my retaliating in kind, and by acting as though nothing of consequence had actually happened about me, the bullies got tired of trying to bait me without a hint of their effort being successful. Variable-ratio extinguishing of an undesirable behavior through denial of reinforcement might be proper instrumental conditioning jargon.

This approach has worked rather well throughout my life. Perhaps thirty years ago, someone was upset about something (I never figured out what it was), and decided to "take it out on me." A fist to my head, stars seen, eyeglasses bouncing of a wall about fifteen feet away. Before the second blow, I had begun to hug the person, just tightly enough to prevent a second blow, while repeatedly, gently saying, "You can't hurt me that way."

Perhaps as an aspect of the way I am autistic, I do not experience my "self" as identical with my body; being treated like a punching bag did hurt my body, yet I get to decide whether a hurt of my body is, or is not, also a hurt to me. The reason I kept saying, "You can't hurt me that way," was simply because I did not grant permission to be hurt that way.

Why do bullies act out as they do? My best guess so far is that bullies experienced bullying which they were unable to elude or escape, and my best guess so far is that the most severe such bullying comes from people who undertake the parenting role (not necessarily mom or dad) who were similarly bullied when young and who bought the lie, "This is for your own good." through the terrors of the terrible twos. Bullying, as best I have yet been able to sort it out, is about the social propagation of deception from one generation to the next, as though deception was essential to human species evolutionary success.

I endorse a contrasting view. The purpose of deception is to allow people to become sufficiently aware of deception as to become able to understand deception well enough as to become able to learn to effectively avoid deception.

Are we there yet?

Methinks, no. Not yet.

I still have problems integrating with groups. In school I was always shoved out of groups(sometimes physically shoved) and if I wasnt ignored I was picked on or randomly punched or shoved. Girls would pick on me as well often by pretending to be nice to me to get close and then finding a way to hurt me emotionally. Only the boys got physical and I was terrified of getting in a fight as I was small and weak. Fights broke out frequently and I wanted no part of that. Even the fighting in my school was group based sometimes,although,those kind of fights typically were whites vs mexicans...in 8th grade...

I eventually withdrew from -everyone- and thats when the teasing stopped. The columbine shootings probably helped as well since after that the only crap I got from people was that they thought I was going to-one day-bring a sawed off shotgun to school under the trench-coat that I wore all year. I had no intentions of doing such but I kept quiet since that seemed to be the only thing protecting me.

Even today I only feel safe when I am completely alone--rejecting everyone I care about as well as the ones I dont. I am trying to kick that habit but I've been so stoic and friendless for long that I feel emotionally/socially stunted and I have to go around learning social skills that most people learned 10+ years ago. I have recently became close with my family and they tell me I put on this mask that hides my real self. I just dont know how to take that mask off.

I'm not sure I can talk about the bullying I endured as a child. A lot of it was hugely traumatic to me. I'm not sure I can even go into details about it anymore. I've buried so much of what happened into a single corner of my mind, that it all just blurs together into one event best left undisturbed.

I'm actually stuck on a part of the story I'm writing, where the main character will be bullied by a group of his peers. I know it needs to happen for the story to move forward. I know what I need to say in that moment, but I'm having difficulty writing it. My mind keeps rebelling and launches away from thinking about such things. When I write something, in my mind, I am living it. I'm not sure I'm psychologically able to inflict that on myself or even my fictitious character.

What I remember much more than the bullying, was the reaction of my so-called authority figures. They might bandage my wounds, or if I was in a real bad way, call my parents, but they all seemed to operate on the assumption it was my fault. I remember more than once a teacher telling me to "Man up" and "Stop being such a pansy" or "pussy" or "wimp" or whatever descriptive they thought of me.

I remember one teacher trying to be honestly helpful, who told me, "If you would just stand up for yourself, and hit them back, they'd leave you alone." Little did he know I was completely incapable of such a thing. I didn't have the stamina, physicality, or emotional capability to stand up to those who beat me.

I tried to keep my head down around other kids. I tried not to be noticed by them. My Achilles heel was my intelligence. Other kids would punish me for doing better in class than them. I was creative, and my family encouraged that aspect. I took part in drama classes, and choir, and such. That usually put me front and center for the bullies attentions.

What those well meaning teachers were really telling me, was to stop being smart, stop being creative, stop being sensitive, and just pick up a hockey stick. Play rough, and slam some kids into the side-boards, and you'll be okay. In other words, I needed to stop being me, and start being someone completely different. They were invalidating everything I was. They were very helpfully telling me, I was wrong to do everything that made me, me. Is it any wonder I developed low self esteem, and first tried to kill myself at fourteen?

I think experiencing the adults rejecting who I was, was far more damaging than being beaten up by my peers. I think it was far more insidious, and did nothing to stop the problem of my being a target for bullies. Why wouldn't another kid target me for punishment, when even the adult authority figures were saying what I was, was wrong?

My parents showed me a collection of videos of me as a kid when I went back to visit them this past July. Those videos were of a slightly effeminate kid, with a big laugh, and a bigger vocabulary. He wasn't awkward, or rude, or smug. At thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, he didn't appear sullen, or ugly. He wasn't a kid begging to be beaten up for his wrongs. He was just a kid, lagging behind his peers developmentally, but also excelling mentally. The kid in the video talked directly to the adults that talked to him. He took part in the conversations, and actually seemed to have something to contribute. He showed compassion and love freely. Even at fifteen, he would cuddle a beloved cat like a smaller child might cuddle a teddy-bear. Most kids that age I know, talk in one or two word sentences. Most kids that age are too busy thinking about when they are going to wank-off next, to even notice the world around them. To show affection or emotion would be to die a public death for "normal" kids that age. This kid's biggest sin, was simply being different.

Growing up in Northern Canada, in hockey country, kids were expected to be tough, and dumb as bricks. Because I wasn't a bruiser, and my IQ was higher than that of a rutting chimpanzee, I was wrong, and adults didn't hide the fact that I was wrong. More than anything that attitude contributed to me getting beaten up, picked on and abused.

I don't know if I harbor any ill feelings for what happened to me. I don't know I have a solution to help protect the next sensitive kid from suffering what I did. I just thought I'd share a bit of my story here. Maybe it will help me get over my writer's block.

Thanks for reading.

Suddenly I'm glad I'm not all that smart. It seems to be the smart kids come off worse.