Amazin' what 14 years of orthodontia will do for you. :thumb:

I'm not looking for sympathy. I have everything I could want. If a 'bully' were to pick on me now, I would nail his ass to the wall.

What I do have is some remaining empathy for those who are still living it.

note to self: don't mess with Pie. ;)

What usually encourages a serious victim mentality is personality, combined with dehumanizing physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, neglect, or other serious adverse events during childhood.

it doesn't really come from websites

If somebody has worked out a way for a supportive caring atmosphere to make money, I salute them! I think that being relentlessly bullied for a year helped to turn my panic disorder into social anxiety disorder, but I'd never know without serious therapy. Oh well!

My experience echoes this. One of the key reasons I won;t have children is that i don't want my heart broken constantly day in and day out, like my mum's. I don't want a kid with eczema (likely) because that's just a fucking big target sign right there. But it can be something smaller. And Shawnee, you can be as fearless and plucky as y'like but if you have the misfortune to run into a particularly competant bully who can turn it into something bigger, you're fucked. Once it gets past the intimacy of your immediate peers and makes into the class, the year, or the main student body, then changing that is like turning a juggernaut.

I suspect the people who tried it on with you just weren't very good at it. Bullying, real bullying, the sort that exists in both playgrouind and office and can utterly destroy lives, child and adult, isn't about getting the shit kicked out of you, though yes that figures. Its about a character assassination that includes making you responsible for the bullying. It includes painting you axs uniquely deserving of that contempt. It usually involves the bully being painted as the 'victim' of some perceived wrong at the hands of the bullied. I've experienced it as a child. I've seen it as an adult. I've counselled people through it when it's been threatening their health and ability to do their job.

Lj. I hear what you say. BUt to me, you just add to the noise. The hazy cloud that stops people seeing clearly who actually is the victim and where the responsibility actually lies.

So come on. Hey Shaw, Classic and Jim: why don't you tell me now that I asked for it. Tell me, did I paint victim on my back? Was that me?

Bullshit, you cute chicks just don't want competition from younger cute chicks. :p

You mean they don't have an instruction tag on the bottom? ;)

Dana, did I not concede those very points?

I won't be painted ,either, as a cold heartless person because of what I said. I took another look and gave another post, was that not sufficient?
That borders on shitty, very condescending.

:corn:

Shawnee, their skin is very thin when it comes to this subject and rightly so. They are going to be prickly....let them have it. Count your blessings that you never had to deal with the inhumanly humiliating effects of being a bully's target. Ive been there too, a little bit...its hellish, and life shaping.

Well, there are things I am quite prickly about too (see: only people I care about treating me badly and make your own conclusions) but I don't expect everyone to understand that or even to care.

We have all had crosses to bear.

If I say I'm sorry if I seem heartless one more time will it mean something? Keep in mind I never say anything remotely resembling a lie.

Awww...Im sorry, I dont mean to dump on you, Im just saying we all know that you arent heartless.

Shaw, I never saw you as being heartless, fwiw. As you say, these crosses are individually tailored.

please don't put words in my mouth. I am quite capable of getting in my own trouble......

troll

Cyber Bully.

Will you two knock it off and get a room already? :rolleyes: