How to Heal From Being Bullied in the Past

According to Pacer.org, 20.2% of students experience bullying during the school year. Then they go on to say, “49.8% of tweens (9 to 12 years old) said they experienced bullying at school and 14.5% of tweens shared they experienced bullying online.” To make things worse, According to Gitnux.com, 1 in 5 adults are harrassed in the workplace. This means that bullying is a major issue, and you or someone you know is likely struggling with the long term negative effects of bullying. There is good news. You can heal from the trauma. This article will teach you how to heal from being bullied in the past

Negative Side Effects

According to Stopbullying.gov, bullying has a lot of negative side effects. There are other sources that confirm these and additional negative side effects.

Depression and Anxiety.
Feeling of sadness.
Eating Disorders.
Health Issues.
Decrease in Academic Achievement.
Increase likelihood of suicide.
Low confidence and insecurity.
Loneliness.

An interesting fact is that bullying does not only affect the person being bullied, but it hurts everyone involved. The person bullying is more likely to experience:

Increase used of alcohol and drugs.
Increased violent behavior and criminal convictions.
Early sexual behavior and increased abuse in romantic relationships.

Even witnesses of bullying have negative side effects.

Increased Tobacco, alcohol, and drug use.
increase mental issues such as depression and anxiety.
Decreased academic achievement.
Increased levels of guilt for not helping the victim.
Increased chance at being a victim in the future.

Developing an Understanding

You want to know how to heal from being bullied, right? To begin the healing process, you need to understand why the bully treated you so badly. The answer is fairly simple. The reason why they bullied is because the bully had their own personal issues that they were dealing with. Sometimes it is difficult to know which issues the bully was dealing with. Their personal issues could be any number of things.

First thing first, if the bullying is continuing, you should seek help from a professional. This may be a counselor, your parents, teacher, HR department, boss or anyone else that is responsible for handling these situations. It is essential that you protect yourself from further harm.

After this, you need to focus on healing. This can be tough. It’s tough because healing requires 3 very difficult things. 1: It requires acceptance. 2: It requires forgiveness. 3: It requires understanding. These are tough things to achieve. It can take some time to reach acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding. As they say, time is the greatest healer.

Help the Healing Process by Improving Mental Health

Improving your mental health is a vital part of the healing process. By improving your mental health, you’ll not only be able to heal, and heal better and faster, but you’ll have other benefits. Mental Health also plays a role in your world view. With strong mental health, you’ll be able to break the negative loops of thought and begin to see the positive as well. Note: This is not to say that bullying is positive, but every situation has a positive and negative side. Improving your mental health will allow you to see this.

So how do you improve mental health? Here are a few suggestions.

Going out in Nature

This is a hobby which has really helped me through my struggles and I believe it can help you as well. It’s a great opportunity for adventure and a sense of adventure is an important part of improving your mood and becoming happier. Now, understand that you don’t need to live outside to accomplish this. Even a few minutes of additional time in nature per day or per week can help improve your mental health.

Let’s say that you have a busy schedule and you work a lot. Maybe you get a lot of drive-through and eat in the car before returning to work. It might be possible to drive to the closest park, eating on a bench, then driving back to work. This may add 5 minutes of driving, but you end up with an additional 10 minutes of nature per day. Just by making small changes, you could increase your time outside.

Journaling

There is a little trick for mental health that I have had a lot of success with and I believe it will be a tool that transforms your mental health. I found that after a session of writing down my thoughts and feelings in a journal, I am relieved of stress and I feel much better. Your journal is that one friend that you can talk to about anything. It won’t judge you, it will just listen. In fact, you should journal about the experiences you’ve had with your bully. This can absolutely help the healing process.

In addition, you can use journaling as a way to help with other issues you’re facing. For example, I find that when I journal about my day, the good parts and the bad parts, it reminds me about all the good stuff that I did, it reminds me of what an amazing day I truly had. Therefore I can express gratitude through that.

You can use your time journaling to write down things that you’re grateful for. You can use this time to develop a grateful mindset. Gratitude has many amazing benefits. Among these benefits are that gratitude develops a positive mindset and according to Time Magazine, it makes you sleep better. By developing a grateful mindset, you will begin to see the good things in life. By seeing the good in life, two things will happen. 1) You will start to feel better and heal from past trauma. 2) You will see that positive side of a negative situation, effectively helping you heal from past trauma.

How to heal from being bullied: Forgive your Bullies

By now, the trauma is done. The experience you had with your bully is done. Do you want to most effective trick for how to heal from being bullied? Forgiveness. The past is outside of your control, so there is no point focusing on it. Focusing on past trauma and lingering on those hurt feels is a self-destructive habit. The good news is that you can control this.

You can control this by forgiving your bully. Stop hating them for what they did. Remember, we are not forgiving them for their benefit, we are forgiving them for our benefit. Also, you need to develop understanding. The person that bullied you may be very different today than they were back when they bullied you. They may even regret their actions. It’s also possible that they have also just forgotten about you, and this is your chance to forget about them. Learn to forgive people and you’ll overcome trauma smoothly.

Adopt the mentality that everyone deserves a second chance. If you ever see them again, don’t hold a grudge against them. If you want to know how to heal from being bullied, learn to forgive. Forgive them and move on with life. Let the past live in the past.

Resources

If you would like to learn more about bullying, here is a great resource: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390414/

Using Stoicism to Overcome Misfortune.

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