Bullies

How do you respond to bullies? What in your life has influenced your reactions? Is it still bullying when adults deliberately set out to make each other feel like crap? Or does it have a new definition? Real life perhaps.

I hate to say this, as I'm a grown woman, but I've been encountering behaviour recently that makes me feel bullied. It is very similar to behaviour I encountered at school; people calling me names, accusing me of things I didn't say or do and apparently deliberately attacking my choices and words. This bullying behaviour even extends to my family. One of these people suggested to my husband that his mother was lazy, which is why he didn't do better at school.

I'm an HSP, Highly Sensitive Person, and all my life I have had difficulty in moderating my response to people like this. I become deeply upset, I lash out. I was regularly accused of being a "drama queen" at school because of this, apparently I was supposed to either ignore the bullies or give as good as I got. But an HSP can't always do this. HSPs feel things more keenly than others and are easily overwhelmed. I become overwhelmed and extremely emotional when people are overtly critical or abusive towards me.

For a while at school I did actually get it under control. I learned how to not storm away from a situation in an effort to protect myself and to sit still and take it for as long as I had to before I was free to walk calmly and quietly to a private place. And then I would release my feelings. I was afraid that if people saw how upset I was that the bullying would be worse.

That period was very black for me. I became very depressed and drifted away from many friends, I found it very difficult to trust people and open up to them for a long time. These days, I don't do much better, my behaviour is more moderate for the most part, but I can and do still react strongly to being cornered and because I couldn't lash out when I was younger I over compensate now!

I'm not hiding behind these events, not at all, I'm using my experiences to illustrate the point that because of my nature, bullying did not do anything positive for me, as others argue it should have done.

Apparently, it should have toughened me up, I should be over it and be capable of dealing with obstructive people now as a grown woman. My point is that actually, being bullied crippled me emotionally and did not prepare me for "real life". I don't have a thicker skin and I don't really feel better equipped to deal with these people as adults.

I am pretty good at standing up for myself now, but not because of bullies, it's because of surrounding myself with people who care about me and who care about the same things that I do. I have drawn strength from other people, just enough to stand on my own on some issues, but not personal attacks against me.

I'm not afraid to state my opinion now, I was quite a doormouse for a few years! Now I'm not afraid to be honest about what music I like, or books I read. I'm not embarrassed by my tastes, I don't care if people judge me for those things as ultimately they are all a matter of personal taste and don't matter that much to me.

I regularly get myself on the radio and in the papers, saying what I think of maternity services and what should be done to improve them. I have been on demonstrations and been openly critical of the government because I believe passionately that we have to speak out about these things if we are to make positive changes. But these things are a step removed from me and I'm not likely to be directly confronted by anyone unprofessional enough to make a mockery of me or my views.

Where I stumble is when, like recently, a few individuals come at me relentlessly with misguided and antagonistic vitriol about me, my parenting choices, my lifestyle choices and my family. But I do want to do better, I want to be able to just walk away from them, ignore them, not get into pointless internet debates with ignorant people. I still have some growing to do!