Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

I have never heard of Peter Levine. I will check him out.

I don't know where to draw the line between harassment and molestation and assault. I saw a girl with her arms held behind her by one boy, so the other could group her chest. I saw a girl kicked in the crotch; she ended up lying on the floor in the fetal position from the pain. I saw girl knocked flat on her back with another boy on top. And boys clawed at girls' clothes on a number of occasions.

This all happened at school when I and the girls were 12 or 13. The boys were around the same age; there were about three repeat perps and another three or four occasional ones. Most of the girls, all but one, actually, were taken out of the school, so I guess I can't say nothing was done, but I never saw or heard even in vaguest rumor that the boys were punished.

I guess I would call it molestation. I don't know if everyone assumes that if the perp is 12 or 13 that it won't mess up a 12 or 13-year-old victim in the usual way. If an adult had done what the boys had done he would have gone to prison until his hair was white. I don't know if the boys even got a stern talking-to. A lot of the boys bullied me too, and I flash back to their bullying of me as well as their molesting the girls. What happened to me was mostly verbal (although I ended up lying on my side in the fetal position once myself). I don't know why I have flashbacks about sexual battery of a minor and have flashbacks of dirty looks and insults directed at me - it's like being really disturbed by the Spanish Inquisition and also being really disturbed that you're out of ice cream. My inner world is extremely self-centered.

I haven't journaled for a while. I quit when it got too negative and repetitive. Before that I did use the "rational voice replies to inner critic" method that David Burns talks about in Feeling Good, but I gave up on that for lack of results.

Kit wrote:So can adults.

I'm forever reading about bullying by childen but for me the bullying from adults is even worse. People seem to forget that bullies grow up.

Wow! I've always felt this way, but never really knew how to put it the right way:

"People seem to forget that bullies grow up"

Serina81 wrote:One way that I deal with the unfairness of life and the anger I have against those people is to pity them. How horrible their life must be when they feel the need to treat others so badly. It drains a lot of the anger away when you realize what's motivating someone else's bad behavior, especially in children. Those kids who bullied you were probably being terribly abused when they got home. Sure it wasn't right they did that, but how sad for them.

I spent the majority of my adolescent years growing up in a city that had a lot of wealthy people living in it (my family wasn't one of those families). The children/young adults that I went to school with were extremely mean, unkind, rude, judgmental, conceited, disgusting and abusive in so many ways. There were 2,100 people in my high school, and a large number of those people were bullies, unkind, made fun of people, etc. etc. I find it very hard to believe that those bad people had an awful home life. They had wealthy parents who probably didn't instill good values and morals in them, and they ended up being bad kids that ruined peoples lives. How sad for them? Try how sad it is for the person who got picked all throughout school and is left with the devastating memories of hatred and abuse that they experienced. To this day, I STILL hurt from all of the things that were done to me during my school years. I have bad dreams, recurring memories and flashbacks, social phobias, and on and on. I don't wish bad on those people who hurt me, but I have a hard time feeling bad or sorry for them. I didn't have the easiest home life as a kid, but I didn't treat people like crap because of it.

AJ

Bipolar1983 wrote:

Serina81 wrote:One way that I deal with the unfairness of life and the anger I have against those people is to pity them. How horrible their life must be when they feel the need to treat others so badly. It drains a lot of the anger away when you realize what's motivating someone else's bad behavior, especially in children. Those kids who bullied you were probably being terribly abused when they got home. Sure it wasn't right they did that, but how sad for them.

I spent the majority of my adolescent years growing up in a city that had a lot of wealthy people living in it (my family wasn't one of those families). The children/young adults that I went to school with were extremely mean, unkind, rude, judgmental, conceited, disgusting and abusive in so many ways. There were 2,100 people in my high school, and a large number of those people were bullies, unkind, made fun of people, etc. etc. I find it very hard to believe that those bad people had an awful home life. They had wealthy parents who probably didn't instill good values and morals in them, and they ended up being bad kids that ruined peoples lives. How sad for them? Try how sad it is for the person who got picked all throughout school and is left with the devastating memories of hatred and abuse that they experienced. To this day, I STILL hurt from all of the things that were done to me during my school years. I have bad dreams, recurring memories and flashbacks, social phobias, and on and on. I don't wish bad on those people who hurt me, but I have a hard time feeling bad or sorry for them. I didn't have the easiest home life as a kid, but I didn't treat people like crap because of it.

AJ

Also, I'm sorry if I came off sounding like a jerk; that wasn't my intention. This topic of conversation stirred up a lot of feelings inside me. I realize that you were only trying to offer your advice on how you think might be a positive way of coping with the hard feelings. Thank you for your input.

... I don't wish bad on those people who hurt me ...

-AJ

You are a better person than I. I wish a lot of bad on a lot of people. I think it is a moral weakness on my part.

Dog of the Gaps wrote:

... I don't wish bad on those people who hurt me ...

-AJ

You are a better person than I. I wish a lot of bad on a lot of people. I think it is a moral weakness on my part.

I wouldn't say that I am a better person than you. If my faith in Christ didn't steer me to love my enemies and those who hate me, I would probably wish the worst of devastation on the people who hurt me. It's still difficult to be kind towards those kinds of people, but I guess it's part of how I was raised.

I wish the people who hurt me all of those years, knew what they did to me.
AJ

At least you're a functional enough person to be married. I mean...could be worse.

HMJ wrote:At least you're a functional enough person to be married. I mean...could be worse.

I feel very blessed to be married. I spent most of my 20's alone and gave up on trying to find someone, then my wife came into my life. It doesn't change the fact that life is still difficult and hard to cope with at times. I'm not always "functional," and a lot of people have seen that, unfortunately.

I wish the people who hurt me all of those years, knew what they did to me.

This would probably be better than what I sometimes want to do to them, in the midst of my flashbacks. Sometimes I do think about looking them up ... I'm sure I could find an email address or two ... and mentioning it to them. No real point, and I doubt anyone remembers any more except me and the girls.

Dog of the Gaps wrote:

I wish the people who hurt me all of those years, knew what they did to me.

This would probably be better than what I sometimes want to do to them, in the midst of my flashbacks. Sometimes I do think about looking them up ... I'm sure I could find an email address or two ... and mentioning it to them. No real point, and I doubt anyone remembers any more except me and the girls.

Over the years, I've run into many of the people who treated me unfairly back in JH/HS, and I was surprised to find out that a few of them have grown up and are no longer total a**holes. When I seen them, they treated me as if we had been the best of friends back in high school. It was weird and it actually upset me, because I wanted to say, "Do you not remember how bad you treated me? You destroyed my life!" But I will never say that, because as you wrote, it would most likely do nothing, nor help the situation. Those people don't remember what they did to us, nor do they realize the extent of the damage they caused us.

It's really tough to let it go, but we'll get there one day. Keep on truckin'. Sorry, that was lame. I don't know why I wrote "keep on truckin'." Sorry.

Later on,
AJ