inside the bullied brain

The Bullied Brain: 7 Ways Bullying Effects Mental Health

‘Want to know what happens in the bullied brain? Here are the changes that happen in the brain of a bullied person that you need to know about.

the bullied brain

Prolonged bullying can cause actual changes in the brains of it’s victims. And these changes aren’t good.

Therefore, in this post, you will learn all about the bullied brain and the exact changes that victims’ brain goes through.

Once you learn all about these negative brain changes, you will be able to better describe how bullying has changed you. Also, you will be more motivated to take the steps needed to protect your mind from vicious bullies.

This post is all about the bullied brain and why it’s important for you not only to protect your your mind from bullying.

The Bullied Brain

Bullying and Changes in the Brain

As we know, bullying can cause victims lots of trauma. However, bystanders also suffer a degree of trauma as well, just by witnessing it.

For now, let’s talk about what bullying does to targets, since it affects them the most.

Any form of psychological trauma, whether it comes from combat, rape, or bullying, changes the physiology of the brain.

Furthermore, it reprograms the brain’s alarm system. It also causes a sharp increase in stress hormones.

Put simpler, it changes the way the brain distinguishes real information from fake information. And lastly it comes more difficult for the brain to tell the difference between information that relevant and that which is irrelevant.

Because of these changes, you become hyper-vigilant. In fact, some victims and survivors become so much so that they cannot function day to day.

Once you’ve suffered enough trauma, you may have difficulty learning from experience. As a result, you may often repeat the same destructive behaviors. This is why others often accuse you of being a “bad” person.

Also, others may label you as lazy, stubborn, immoral, and having bad character.

1. Bullying rewires Your brain to prepare for a hostile environment.

You must understand that this is what happens when people bully you for long periods of time.  It will rewire your brain to prepare for a hostile environment.

 In other words, you will have difficulty trusting people. You’ll come to only expect hostility from them.

Moreover, people may accuse you of being lazy when you’re only dealing with “learned helplessness.” And learned helplessness is a common result of repeated and prolonged bullying and verbal abuse.

Also, others may accuse you of being defiant and stubborn when you’re actually shutting down.

Moreover, they may also accuse you of hotheadedness or craziness when you’re actually defending yourself. Or, you could be experiencing the release of pinned up rage.

This sudden out-pour of raw emotions often results from being abused, then silenced and punished for speaking out and defending yourself.

2. The bullied brain:

Prolonged and Repeated Bullying and Abuse Causes Learned Helplessness.

If you suffer repeated bullying and abuse, you may have no way of defending yourself. Moreover, certain circumstances may leave you with no way of fleeing and escaping the bullying and toxic environment.

Learned helplessness doesn’t only come from repeated bullying and abuse. It also comes from feelings of entrapment.

In other words, it’s caused from feeling powerless to do anything to better your situation.

For example, if a group of bullies lock the door of the bathroom and surrounds you, they block any escape. They then hold you down as they attack you.

This is likely to cause “learned helplessness.”

Here’s another example. You report the bullying to the school principal or teacher. But instead of helping you, the school staff only blame you and refuse to help.

Then, the next day, the bullies retaliate and beat you to a pulp for snitching. Even worse, this happens several times until you finally give up trying to take care of yourself.

Thus, you develop learned helplessness.

Battered Wife Syndrome: Another example of the Bullied Brain

A battered wife is constantly threatened by her abusive husband. He tells her that, if she leaves, he will take the children from her, or kill her, or worse, kill her entire family.

As a result, she feels trapped in an abusive marriage with no way out. Therefore, she is likely to develop battered wife syndrome, which is another form of learned helplessness.

Understand that it’s not so much the bullying and abuse that causes this condition. There have been many abused and bullied people who have escaped their situations.

They later became highly independent, healthy, and successful people.

What causes learned helplessness is the inability to oppose or escape the abuse. In other words, you develop learned helplessness when bullies and abusers block you from any possible paths of escape.

Why? Because you have no other recourse than to take the abuse quietly just to survive.  That is what causes “learned helplessness.”

This also happens when you have no one to turn to for help. When no one will listen to or believe you, the condition of learned helplessness has a strong chance of developing.

3. You become exhausted and lose the will to fight back.

When people bully you, it can be extremely exhausting. Understand that bullies know this. Therefore, they’ll deliberately wear you down to take the fight out of you. Then, they can take control over your life.

At first, you may defend yourself, fiercely asserting your rights to human dignity, respect and safety. However, most bullies don’t recognize human rights.

 They only see your acts of self-defense and self-protection as a threat to their power. Therefore, they only double down.

In other words, your bullies intensify the hatred and abuse to keep you fighting until they mentally and physically exhaust you.

You finally become so tired that you lose your will to fight back. You then decide that it’s much easier just to give up.

4. The Bullied Brain:

You lose the ability to recognize mistreatment.

When you’re used to being treated well, you can see bullying more clearly. Therefore, you know the difference when it happens.

However, after you endure bullying for so long, the lines get blurred, and you lose the ability to see aggression so clearly. This happens especially if the hostility is subtle.

Finally, you reach a point where you don’t recognize abuse at all!

5. Bullies condition you to accept bad behavior from others.

After bullies have verbally abused you for so long, you begin to believe their words. In other words, bullies have abused you until you finally start to believe that you somehow deserve it.

These damaging self-beliefs happen after the bullies, their followers, and bystanders have repeatedly abused you and prevented you from defending yourself.

Put another way, they have drummed into your head that you are worthless. Moreover, they have repeated that lie over and over until you begin to believe it too.

6. The Bullied Brain:

You begin to punish yourself.

You do this by engaging in risky or self-destructive behaviors. you may hang with the wrong people and befriend those who only tolerate you. Moreover, you may participate in risky sexual behavior or having relationships with abusive partners.

7. You contemplate suicide.

After bullies have tormented you for so long, the torture can reach a point to where you think of suicide. It’s not that you want to die, per se. However, when people constantly bully you without stopping, you may feel that dying is the only way to make it stop.

The Bullied Brain: Understand that Bullying is One Big PsyOp

Think about it. Governments and their military use psyop operations by starting propaganda campaigns. When bullies employ smear campaigns and verbal abuse against you, it is the equivalent of a government propaganda campaign but on a much smaller scale.

Therefore, understand that propaganda campaigns and smear campaigns are pretty much the same and they both have the same purpose. To demoralize the enemy.

When people bully you, they consider you the enemy and want to demoralize you. Therefore, you must realize that, if bullies can demoralize you, they can then crush your will to stand up for yourself and fight back.

The Bullied Brain:

Here’s How Bullies Attempt to demoralize you.

Bullies will tell you things, such as:

  • “You’re not strong (pretty, smart) enough.”
  • “No body likes you” or “You don’t have any friends.”
  • “You can’t fight against us.”
  • “You’ll always be a nobody” or “You’ll never amount to anything.”
  • “No one will ever date you (or) marry you.”
  • “You’ll never win that contest.”
  • “You’ll never make the team.”

You’ll never this and you’ll never that. You must realize that these statements mean to mentally subdue you. In other words, they force you to give up your natural reluctance to bow down and take abuse.

Understand that your bullies must slowly weaken you so that you won’t stand up to them. And once they do, you’ll give up on yourself and allow them to just walk all over you.

In Conclusion:

Understand that you must take care of your mental health and self-esteem if you want to avoid these results in the future.

Therefore, make sure you have friends outside of the bullying environment that you can talk to. Also, turn to supportive family members for help.

Do things you enjoy and keep company with positive and uplifting people any time you’re away from the bullies.

Your goal is to balance everything out by adding healthy and positive relationships and experiences. You must cultivate these relationships even if they’re outside the bullying environment.

This balance will soften the blows to your self-esteem and provide a buffer to your bullies’ attacks.

This Post is all about the bullied brain and why you should take steps to protect your mind just as you would your body

Related posts you’ll enjoy:

1. The Effects of Bullying: 17 Negative Results on Victims

2. Fear of Setting Boundaries: 5 Reasons You Don’t Stand Up to Bullies

3. The Explaining Trap: 3 Reasons Bullies Set It and How to Respond

4. Psychological Effects of Gaslighting: 11 Ways it Impacts Victims

5. Why do Schools Ignore Bullying? 7 Reasons Schools Do Nothing

the effects of bullying at school

The Effects of Bullying: 17 Negative Results on Victims

‘Want to know the effects of bullying so that you can take steps to salvage your mental health? Here are all the aftereffects victims suffer.

the effects of bullying

Bullying crushes your spirit. It sucks the joy out of life and reprograms the mind. If you aren’t careful, you’ll begin to believe the lies bullies tell you and see yourself through your bullies’ eyes.

Therefore, in this post, you will learn the effects of bullying so that you’ll recognize these aftereffects when you feel them.

Once you learn all about these crushing mental health consequences, you will be more compelled to take steps to protect your self-esteem.

This post is all about the effects of bullying so that you will become proactive in guarding your mental health from social leeches who wish to destroy it.

The Effects of Bullying

Sadly, bullies have ways of making you believe that, just maybe, they have a justifiable reason to bully you. However, you can’t seem to figure what it is.

Realize that this is your first clue that they’re lying to you. In other words, if someone tells you that you deserve bad treatment but can’t give you any reasons why, there may not be any reasons for their behavior.

Therefore, when you try to find out why, you’re probably searching for reasons that aren’t there. Understand that this is a sign that your bullies are only gaslighting you.

However, most victims of bullying don’t stop and think about these things. Therefore, they make extra efforts to explain themselves more clearly. Moreover, they cling to the hope that the bullies will go away and leave them alone.

If you suffer bullying, you must realize that your bullies may give you small reprieves from their harassment. Moreover, they may even act friendly toward you.

However, be warned! This is only a game they play to keep you confused and on the back foot! Put another way, bullies give you those breaks and occasional nicey-nice acts to get your hopes up and make you forget about the past.

Then, all of a sudden, they blindside you with another brutal attack. Therefore, understand that this is a mind-game they play.

This is equal to love-bombing by a person with narcissistic personality disorder. They build you up so that they can tear you back down again.

The effects of bullying: The Push and Pull Technique

Understand that the bullies are using the age-old push and pull technique to keep you trying to make friends out of them.  As a result, it only keeps you trapped inside the bully/victim dynamic.

They will also recruit others to side with them. Again, they do all this to keep you confused.  But know that this is how bullies maintain power over you.

In other words, if your bullies can keep your hopes up, it’s likely that you’ll feel compelled to keep jumping through hoops to prove yourself worthy.

The reprieves have the same purpose.

Here’s how it goes: Bullies stop bullying you for a while, and once you let your guard down and begin feeling safe and confident again, BAM! They attack! Therefore, realize that bullies, like all abusers, do this deliberately!

 Over time, bullying can cause these 20 effects on you:

1. Hyper-vigilance

You’re always on guard. You no longer trust yourself to act on your own volition and spontaneity or make your own decisions.

In other words, you’re constantly self-monitoring. You carefully construct your every move so that you don’t look weird, st*pid, or off-putting to others.

Spontaneity is gone. For instance, if something is funny, most people laugh without having to think about it. That’s spontaneity. When you can even laugh at something funny because you’re too afraid of what others will think, that’s a bad sign.

Also, you don’t make your own decisions and act on your own volition because you’re afraid others will criticize you for it.

2. The Effects of Bullying:

Increasing self-doubt

Bullying fills you with uncertainty of how you come across to others. Moreover, you feel you must be extra careful not to be or sound too sensitive or like you’re whining when you report the abuse.

You doubt your abilities and your worth. Moreover you allow your bullies to gaslight you into believing that you somehow cause their abuse when you really do not.

3. You think that something is wrong with you.

Bullies often convince you that something is wrong with you. In fact, they may even try to make you believe that everything is wrong with you. However, you must realize that this is what they want you to think. Why? Because bullies are afraid that if you ever notice that they’re the ones with the issues, you just might grow a spine and tell them to piss off!

4. You second-guess yourself.

This is a close brother to self-doubt. You constantly wonder. “Did I make the right choice?” “Am I being too sensitive?” “Do I measure up to everyone else?”

Understand that this is no way to live. Therefore, it’s imperative that you stop caring what people think and just do what makes you feel good. Free yourself from the chains of other people’s approval and you experience total freedom.

5. The Effects of Bullying:

You Constantly replay and review bullying incidents to figure out what went wrong.

In other words, you ruminate. You mind plays the scenario over and over like a broken record. However, this often leaves you feeling worse.

So, stop this now! Realize that nothing went wrong but your bullies’ deplorable behavior. You must realize that you can’t control others behavior.

Each person decides how they’re going to act toward you. And once you realize that people choose how to treat you, you will no longer feel the need for any replays.

6. You lose your zest for life.

In other words, you lose your happiness and peace of mind. Also, you lose the excitement of things to come.

7. You lose your confidence.

Once you lose confidence in yourself, you’ll be to afraid to try new things for fear of failure. Moreover, you’ll give up on yourself.

As a result, you’ll live a mediocre life.

8. You have a constant inner critic.

In other words, you often engage in negative self-talk, even if it’s in your mind.

9. The Effects of Bullying:

You fear that you’re going bonkers.

Bullies have ways of making you feel like you’re going stark raving mad. This is due to the incessant gaslighting they dish out to keep you from noticing that it’s them who have the issues and not you.

10. You have a dreadful sense that time is passing and you’re missing out

When people bully you, they’ll block you from having friends and enjoying positive experiences that others get to enjoy. Therefore, bullying can give victims FOMO and the sense that they are, in fact, missing out on a lot of things in life.

11. You get a growing sense that you aren’t happy but you should be.

Bullying strips you of any happiness you might otherwise enjoy. Moreover, what bit of happiness you do manage to scrounge up for yourself is often an illusion.

For example, you might attach yourself to the wrong people and attract friends who are fake and only come around when they need something from you.

And you may think that they really care for you when they really don’t. That kind of happiness is a mirage and it’s fleeting.

12. The Effects of Bullying:

You believe you can’t do anything right.

Bullies have ways of making you believe that everything under the sun is wrong with you. Moreover, they make you think that you can’t do anything right.

Therefore, know that they have the issues, not you and that there are many things you can do right. See your bullies for who they are. And who they are, are your enemies who are out to destroy your confidence in your abilities.

13. You feel discombobulated and off-balance.

Bullying and peer abuse makes you feel off-balance. The bewilderment and confusion bullies cause you is the reason for it. Therefore, learn everything you can about bullying.

This means reading and learning about bullying from all angles! Moreover, it means learning about different types of bullies, their tactics, and the mindset behind those tactics.

I promise you that once you learn all about these things, you will feel so much better about yourself. Even better, you will be able to protect yourself more effectively.

14. You have a distrust in relationships.

Bullying can cause you to fear being harmed and suffering more bullying in the future. Therefore, you shut everyone out to be safe.

However, this is bad because, any time you withdraw from others, you cheat yourself out of wonderful opportunities to make friends. Moreover, you miss out on those who might prove to be true friends and wonderful assets to your life.

So, see total strangers as opportunities and give them a chance because, you just never know.

15. The Effects of Bullying:

You lose faith in humanity.

In other words, you adopt the belief that all people are inherently evil and enjoy seeing others suffer. Bullying can make you believe that other people just aren’t safe.

16. You have an overwhelming desire to escape and get away from the bullying environment.

When you’ve suffered severe and long-term bullying from the same toxic people in the same toxic place, all you want to do is to get away from the creeps! This goes especially if circumstances, such as finances, keep you stuck there.

Understand that this feeling is normal and that one day, a door will open and you’ll get the opportunity to pick up and leave. So, don’t give up hope.

17. You constantly live in the future.

In other words, you believe, “things will be better when I graduate.”  Or, you may think, “Life will get better when I turn eighteen.”

The running theme in your mind will be that life will get better when you get another job, move away, get married, have children, etc.

Child and teen victims of school bullying often wish for the future. Therefore, because of the bullying you suffer in school now, you long for the future.

You daydream about the day when you can finally graduate and get away from the creeps who make your existence at school a living hell.

However, know that this is normal for anyone in your situation and it isn’t your fault.

The Effects of Bullying:

In Conclusion

If bullies are making your life a nightmare and you have any of the above symptoms, leave the toxic place, if you can. Why? Because, any time you’re so hurt and perplexed that you cannot tell which end is up, you’re living in hell, and it’s no way to live.

You deserve peace, happiness, and confidence. Go where you can flourish, and your spirit can get the nourishment it desperately needs.

This post is all about the effects of bullying so that you can recognize the symptoms and take steps to get your life back on track.

Related posts you’ll enjoy:

1. Psychological Effects of Gaslighting: 11 Ways it Impacts Victims

2. Smear Campaigns: 4 Tactics Bullies Use to Sully Your Reputation

3. Forgiveness Does Not Require Reconnection

4. The Explaining Trap: 3 Reasons Bullies Set It and How to Respond

5. How to Overcome Self Doubt: 7 Easy Mind Hacks to Achieve Success

How Bullying Negatively Affects The Targets Performance in School

As we all should know, bullying can have a devastating effect on grades and class performance. Here’s how:

Anytime you are a victim of bullying, you are forcibly put on constant alert for an attack. It feels as if you have a target on your back and you must grow eyes in the back of your head. You become hyper-vigilant, which breeds anxiety and leads to exhaustion. Not only is the body tired, but also the mind.

When so much focus must be placed on ways to protect yourself and maintain dignity, safety takes priority over studying lessons. How can one concentrate on schoolwork when they’re constantly bombarded with threats, taunts, name-calling, and physical violence? How can a student study and learn effectively when the mind is tired from being stuck in what seems to be a never-ending fight-or-flight mode? It’s almost impossible!

I can tell you this because it happened to me.

In my book, “From Victim to Victor”, I talk about having been on the honor roll before I began attending school in *Oakley (The school I was bullied in). I also talk about the transfer to *Roseburg High School during my senior year and how my grades skyrocketed overnight! After leaving that toxic learning environment and moving to a new school, my grades went from ‘C’s and ‘D’s to all ‘A’s with maybe one ‘B’. I made honor roll again for the first time in five long years!

Here is an excerpt from my book, “From Victim to Victor”, which explains things a little deeper:

bullied victim tortured

“…when anyone, even the most logical and rational of anyone is under a large amount of stress over a long period of time, the glucocorticoids that have flooded the brain and body for so long will cause the atrophy of areas responsible for memory, emotional regulation and ability to maintain positive relationships…”

Therefore, should it be any wonder that the majority of victims of bullying have such poor grades and class performance?

Second, after being told repeatedly and for so long that they don’t and never will amount to anything, victims begin to believe it themselves. A condition, known as “Learned Helplessness” develops and victims simply stop trying altogether.

In conclusion, bullying can affect ALL areas of a victim’s life. Not just social, but academics and achievements as well.

(*Not the real name of the town.)