Another survey based on junk science.
Bullying in childhood “throws a long shadow” into victims’ adult lives, suggests research indicating long-term negative consequences for health, job prospects and relationships.
Bollocks. I was bullied at school. I enrolled into judo classes and learned how to fight back. I hurt them more than they hurt me and they learned the hard way to leave me alone. I developed a tough outer shell and learned how to look after myself and not to spend my life being a victim. I am not, therefore psychologically damaged, nor do I suffer from low self esteem or any other psychological disorder.
Notice also that this ridiculous survey that is statistically insignificant also wheels out the usual bogeymen.
Described as “easily provoked, low in self-esteem, poor at understanding social cues, and unpopular with peers”, these children grew into adults six times more likely to have a “serious illness, smoke regularly or develop a psychiatric disorder”
.Ah, smoking, of course…
By their mid-20s, these former “bully-victims” were more likely to be obese, to have left school without qualifications, to have drifted through jobs and less likely to have friends.
And obesity…
Well, I don’t smoke, have never smoked and am never likely to. I am self-employed and am good at what I do – so much so that I am in demand to the point where I am turning work away. Or is that a psychiatric disorder these days? Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, they are digging up all the clichés now, aren’t they?
Nope, not obese – not even remotely, despite their fiddling of the BMI figures; and I am able to make friends – although, I am selective, preferring a few good ones rather than a collection of faux Facebook “friends”. I am, despite being an introvert, able to deliver a variety of training to a range of people and can adapt to their learning needs. I consider myself well balanced and amenable such that I can teach and teach well. All in all, I am successful in my chosen career, despite being bullied at school
But I guess, I’m okay because I was not a bully myself, so not a “bully-victim”. That figures, eh?
Those who had been victims of bullying, without becoming bullies themselves, were more likely to have mental health problems, more serious illnesses and had a greater likelihood of being in poverty.
Well, yeah, I did come close to poverty. I guess losing my job happened because I was bullied at school some forty years previously. Obvious isn’t it? And my mental health is just fine, thank-you very much. As for serious illnesses, I am in obscenely rude health. Clearly something is very wrong with me. That or this survey is nothing more than the usual rampant bollocks.
Take your pick…
So a series of one self satisfied person proves – what?
I am not “self-satisfied” I am pointing out that bullying decades ago at school has had no effect whatsoever on my mental state or my career. What I have achieved is through self-motivation and a refusal to be a victim, much as the modern left would have liked me to be. What I have pointed out about my career are merely facts that contradict a clearly absurd and statistically insignificant survey designed to keep those of us who were bullied at school in a constant state of victim-hood. That you have read self-satisfaction into this is in your head and nowhere else. Kindly do not project onto me.
But of course bullying casts a long shadow and destroys lives – it does so because anyone who comes up against a bit of unpleasantness is carefully and deliberately turned into a victim, thus ensuring that a minor incident is turned into an emotional mountain of life shattering proportion. In my day were simply told to get on with life.
Precisely. In my case, the added advice to learn how to defend myself.
@ I am self-employed and am good at what I do – so much so that I am in demand to the point where I am turning work away@
That is such good news after your situation when you had to leave France. Well done you!
Thanks. It has been a long slog, but things are doing well now.
There are of course massive differences between physical bullying and emotional, systemic verbal abuse.I was very badly bullied at school but in those days bullying did not exist it was before the liberalist left and the do gooders leapt on every bandwagon going, and started banging their respective drums.
This was not physical bullying but systemic verbal abuse,it is difficult as a child to know how to react to this because you have no idea why they hate you!
In my day it was called character building.
I think that despite feminist hype that women can “do it all” and “are the same as men”, there are differences, aside from the physically obvious ones, most women are unlikely to get into a round of fisty cuffs and at my private girls school fighting would have been seriously frowned on.
For me I was a victim then and as a result went on being a victim for all my life until a year ago, that is my fault I elected that role, I had a brutish bully of a father and my parents were going through a messy divorce. I was dyslexic (although that was not known till much later on) i was brandid “dumb” and therefore someone to be ridiculed. I am not feeling sorry for myself I never have it was just life in those days and you had to get on with it.
I will say however all these elements come together to cause and effect, you see if you are told everywhere you’re dumb and if you are beaten for being dumb and then bullied at school for being dumb as a child you don’t alway have the skills to cope with these things. I remember thinking why me? am I such a nasty person, I wasn’t that was the trouble I was a very gentle shy person so an easy target.
What I am saying rather badly is that circumstances are not always black and white and whilst a lot of bunkham is written about victimisation sometimes circumstances go beyond our control as a child, I wasn’t born feeling utterly useless and unloved that developed later, because i heard no praise at home my father constantly undermined my self confidence and I was perceived as an easy target by others because my father had browbeaten me into submission.
Sometimes circumstances are not black and white.
I went on to marry a man like my father because that sort of behaviour was all I knew.
Please understand I am not saying poor me poor me ultimately we are all responsible for our choices and actions.
I chose a path and stayed on it for far too long.
That was my responsibility, and I did the best I could given the circumstances.
Most of these statistics are bunkham and without proper in depth analysis it is impossible to see the merits or otherwise of any given research.
There is some truth in the survey you quote and for some people it will ring bells whilst others like yourself LR it will not. The issue here is the way the facts are presented these days not in the facts themselves they are presented in a hyped way to cause public outrage and make people cross, nothing is objective anymore, it’s all done to illicit a knee jerk reaction.
Whilst there is a lot of truth in your comments there is some genuine merit in the original research, but the way it is presented makes many people go “OH dear god here goes the woe is me brigade again” I don’t blame my victimisation on bullying but on myself for allowing it and continuing to allow it when I should have stood up and said ENOUGH! But when you are born into that environment it is all you know and therefore you assume you deserve no better.
The problem with this survey is that – as usual – it conflates correlation with causation when there is no evidence to support such an assumption. Indeed, the psychological problems could be the underlying cause and not the symptom. That would make more sense when looking at post childhood problems.
What made me fume was that based upon a statistically insignificant sample, they are stating that bullied people suffer into their adult lives, when this is patently untrue. Some people may well do so. The majority most likely do not – as I have come across plenty of well balanced individuals who don’t smoke, aren’t obese and have successful careers and were bullied at school. I would rather trust my life experience and that of other ordinary people than some piece of junk science cooked up by people with an agenda to push.
Your own situation differs from mine in that when all this was going on, I had the support of my family – in particular my father who helped me to overcome both the physical and mental bullying. Girls aren’t the only ones who can be spiteful without causing physical pain.
Although only you can answer this, the question is; was this all part of the wider picture of what was going on, or was bullying at school the cause of what happened later? The point being, you don’t fit the profile of what this survey was supposed to be about any more than I do.
actually I think your comments are very fair, you are right. I was talking purely for myself.
I agree with you that bullying does not make for unbalanced adults, nor does it lead to psychological damage in the main.
My circumstances were very individual and most people don’t get bullied at home as well as at school, I was just lucky 🙂
I think the hardest part was on the whole the thought that “If my parents didn’t like me or think I was worth anything how could anyone else?”
Now looking back on it I understand better why things were the way they were, I would not change a moment of it however as it made me strong enough to deal with life.
I don’t believe the bullying really had any bearing on what came after but was symptomatic of me allowing myself to continue being a victim later on, if that makes any sort of sense. it became the easier option.
Oh well hindsight is a wonderful gift 😉
Whatever the statistical significance of that survey, it has more of it than the one person in your own. That’s not to say the report and conclusions aren’t a load of bollocks.. but your own experience means nothing. You can’t criticise their sample size when your chief debunking is based on an even smaller one.
One thing that occurs to me, I must say, is that the facets of a person that lead the, to be bullied may be the same ones that lead to various problems later in life… so the chain of causation might be skewed. I was bullied, and the things that I blame that on are things that affect me today.. albeit they are no longer things that cause me to be a victim of anything.
If you’re someone who developed the mind and means to fight back against bullies, then those qualities probably exhibit themselves now when you fight back against whatever adversity afflicts you.
I’d want to know why kids got bullied before drawing a line to their lives now. Smart kids get bullied… but are kids who got bullied for being smart suffering any after effects today? Or is it the kids that got bullied for being dumb, or unstable, or weak-willed the ones with problems in adulthood? Because maybe their problems aren’t that they were bullied.. maybe their problems are that they are dumb, unstale, of weak-willed.
(and, having just read the comments, I note you pose the same question)
.but your own experience means nothing.
On the contrary, it means everything. When people publish a survey that does not differentiate between causation and correlation and then make a sweeping assertion on the basis of that flawed survey and that assertion is repeated verbatim in a fawning media without a hint of challenge, my experience is the only reliable thing I have to go on. And, when this cack is published, it only takes one contrary piece of evidence to undermine it. I’d also point out that I am not publishing a survey and making a sweeping assertion – I am speaking from experience. The burden of proof is on them, not me and they have significantly failed to make their case. If they had said that as a basis of their study – on a very small section of the population – that there is some indication of a link between bullying in school and some people experiencing difficulties in later life, but the evidence did not identify which was the chicken and which was the egg, then I would accept that as reasonable. Doesn’t make for a good headline, though, does it? It probably doesn’t help with the funding, either. What the BBC article actually said was
Childhood bullying ‘damages adult life’
And:
Bullying in childhood “throws a long shadow” into victims’ adult lives, suggests research indicating long-term negative consequences for health, job prospects and relationships.
This is imply untrue. I know it is untrue because I have personal experience – there is no long shadow over my adult life and never has been. The only suggestion that this survey offers is that they need to learn how to conduct research with a degree of vigour. The reality is that there are millions of us out here leading perfectly balanced lives and there are plenty of us who experienced some degree of bullying at school, given that it was rife when I was growing up. So, yes, when I read such nonsense – particularly when it is talking about me – I am going to go with my own life experience as that is far, far more reliable. And I am going to gainsay their nonsense. I am going to shout it from the bloody rooftops if I have to, because I will not let these arseholes try and turn me into some sort of victim.