Tag: school mobbing

Adult Survivors of School Bullying: 19 Things They Do Differently

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‘Want to know how adult survivors of school bullying differ from other adults? Here you’ll find way just how differently they handle people and what they do that most others don’t.

adult survivors of school bullying

Targets of school bullying often learn tough lessons- lessons that they carry into adulthood. Bullying shapes their personalities, and the ways they do things once they leave school and move away from their tormentors.

Therefore, in this post, you will learn how adult survivors of school bullying differ from other adults. Moreover, you will learn their attitudes and how they handle social situations.

Once you learn all about these differences, you will be able to tell if you fall into this category and why you should be proud that you overcame and come away from it stronger than ever.

This post is all about adult survivors of school bullying and how they differ from adults who weren’t bullied as kids.

Adult Survivors of School Bullying

School bullying can teach you some hard life-lessons, things you carry into adulthood. School bullying changes you. It changes the ways you do things. Also, it changes your attitude and the way you handle people.

So, if you were bullied in school as a kid, how do you differ from other adults?

1. You Watch others Closely.

Your experiences with bullies during school sharpened your emotional and social intelligence. Because you learned very early on how evil people can be, you know how to watch others without looking like you’re watching them.

You notice body language, facial expressions, micro-expressions, tonality, delivery, and demeanor. Your people-sense wasn’t fully developed during school years. Therefore, back then, you often let those in your life who were only there to do harm you.

Moreover, you paid dearly for it. Therefore, as an adult, you watch closely and avoid such people.

2. You no longer fear saying “no” and will sometimes say it simply because You can!

When you were a schoolkid, bullies violated your boundaries to such an extent that they silenced you. As a result, no one allowed you to protest when something didn’t feel right.

People forced you to take a lot of abuse. However, now that you’re an adult, you get to decide what you will and will not tolerate. Moreover, you exercise that freedom and autonomy every chance you get!

Why? Because saying no and setting boundaries gives you a feeling of empowerment.

3. Adult Survivors of School Bullying:

You’re a no-nonsense adult.

You learned, early on, the games people play. Therefore, manipulators can’t dupe you so easily. You live by the old, “fool me once…” saying and hold it close to your heart.

4. You Solidly refuse to take any crap from anyone.

And this goes no matter the consequences you face. You took enough crap from classmates in school. And you took even more of it from a few rotten apples, who called themselves school staff.

 As an adult, you’re even more determined not to let others violate your boundaries.

5. You don’t give people many chances.

To you, first impressions are important, so anyone you meet had better make it count. These are your mottoes.

  • One red flag, I’m gone!
  • One bad vibe, goodbye!
  • Any attempts to bullshit, see ya!

In the past, you were too forgiving of others. Therefore, others took you for granted and mistook your kindness for weakness. They then exploited your kindness. Moreover, they did it much to your humiliation.

Therefore, you refuse ever again subject yourself to such abuse.

6. Adult Survivors of School Bullying:

You Work Your ass off!

Why? Because you’re tenacious when it comes to getting what you want. Therefore, you’ll stop at almost nothing to reach success.

You had enough of what you didn’t want while in school. Others called you a failure many times back then. This lit a fire under you. In other words, it made you that much more determined to succeed at everything you set out to do.

In fact, you may do it for no other reason than to show the haters and naysayers that you can! Show them up and shut them up is another motto you hold.

7. You like having control over You own life.

 Moreover, you will do anything to keep that control.

You had enough of others taking control of your life long ago. Therefore, you will shut down the first jack-weed who tries to take away your personal power.

8. You can spot a bully a mile away.

… in the dark! Yes! You’re that good! For years, you dealt with bullies in school on a daily basis. Therefore, you know the signs by heart.

This makes you nearly expert, at pointing out the troublemakers.

9. You either avoid bullies like the plague or take extreme pleasure in putting them in their places.

You’ve grown to looove standing up to bullies and they will call them out every chance you get. Moreover, you love to make bullies feel like the losers they are.

Understand that you do this, remembering all the times you didn’t or couldn’t defend yourself in school.

10. Adult Survivors of School Bullying:

You have a thick skin that has become difficult for others outside your circle, to penetrate.

That’s your power. You love being unpredictable and keeping others on their toes. In other words, you love making them try and figure you out  because it’s fun.

11. You can’t stand to watch others being made fun of and will rush to their defense.

You’re not afraid to get nose to nose with a bully if you must. Moreover, you defend others from bullies not only to help them. Subconsciously, you do it to make up for all the times you felt helpless.

This compensates them for all the times you didn’t or couldn’t defend yourself against bullies in school.

12. You Have a nose for horseshit.

If someone tries to feed you a load of hogwash, you know it instantly and instinctively. Moreover, you see it as an insult to your intelligence and become angry.

Why? Because you know that the liar thinks you’re too foolish to figure them out. Therefore, you won’t hesitate to call the creep out!

13. You can More easily pick up on the emotions of others.

You cannot stand the thought of causing emotional or physical harm to another person. However, only if that person isn’t trying to harm you first.

14. Adult Survivors of School Bullying:

You place extra value on your families and friends.

You take extreme care not to take those you love for granted. Why? Because you know what it’s like to be completely alone and have no friends at all.

Therefore, you cherish your family and friends and the time you spend with them.

15. You are, in some ways, selfish.

You put a lot of value on yourself and your wants, needs, and interests. Why? Because others didn’t value you as a kid during school.

Therefore, you make it a point to put yourself first in almost everything. The only people you put ahead of you are your children, spouse, and parents.

16. Words don’t convince You. Only actions and patterns do.

Back in the day, others duped you. You heard a mountain of empty promises and cheap words and paid dearly for believing them.

Therefore, you’ll be damned if you ever repeat that mistake.

17. You live by your gut instincts.

In other words, you trust your gut because you paid a heavy price for ignoring it. Therefore, you now have a sixth sense.

You’re excellent at picking up vibes (especially bad ones) and reading people and their intentions. If something or someone doesn’t feel right, you won’t hesitate to either walk away or tell the suspicious person to take a long walk off a short pier.

18. Adult Survivors of School Bullying:

If anyone tells you that you Can’t, you’ll do it anyway.

Moreover, you’ll do it just to show them that you can. On the other hand, if someone tells you not to do something and you’ll do it and take pictures.

You only see it as a challenge. Therefore, you’ll do just the opposite of what the other person says, just to show them up.

For example, you may work toward a goal and have naysayers who try to discourage you. Instead of listening to them, you only double down. You then reach your goal and end up living an enriching life!

19. You don’t send your kids to the same school you were bullied in.

HELL NO!

In fact, hell will freeze before you allow your children to grace the halls of the school.
What parent worth their own salt would subject their children to that kind of learning environment if they could help it?

You know that bullies tend to take jobs that give them authority (Teaching, Law Enforcement, Corrections Officer, Supervisor, etc.). Moreover, you know that many of your former bullies will probably be teachers by the time your babies reach school age. You also know that teaching is the second-highest profession for workplace bullying.

Also, you know the mentality of bullies. If they hated you first, they will hate your children even more.

In other words, if they targeted you, it’s a safe bet that they’ll would target your babies once the bullies find out that you’re the parent.

Therefore, you’ll send your children to another school or you’ll home-school them.

This post was all about adult survivors of school bullying and the things they do differently so that you can find out if you see yourself in a few or all of these characteristics.

Related posts you’ll enjoy:

1. The Bullied Brain: 7 Ways Bullying Effects Mental Health

2. Bullying Tactics: 9 Subtle Moves Bullies Use to Avoid Detection

3. Bullying and Banter: 9 Differences You Must Know

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

5. What Constitutes Bullying and What Doesn’t

6. The 4 Stages of Bullying

bullying teacher

Bullying by Teachers in School: 7 Steps to Protect Yourself

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Have you ever suffered bullying by teachers in school? ‘Want to know the statistics of students who are targeted by school staff and what you can do if you fall into this category?

bullying by teachers in school

It’s bad enough when your fellow students target you. However, when school staff, who are supposed to be adults, target one of their minor students, it’s much worse.

In this post, you will learn the surprising statistics of young students who endure bullying by teachers in school. Also, you will learn what you can do if it happens to you.

Once you learn these stats, you will be surprised to realize that this issue is more common than you know. Moreover, it will prompt you and your parents or grandparents to take the appropriate steps to gather evidence and conduct your own investigation.

This post is all about the number of kids who suffer bullying by teachers in school every year and what they or their families can do for protection.

Bullying by Teachers in School

According to the Better Help website, “In one survey, 45% of teachers admitted to bullying their students.” This is alarming!

Here is something you or your family can do to combat this insidious type of bullying.

1. Document everything in Detail.

If you’re one of the unfortunate 45 percent, you must document everything. And when you write everything down. Remember to use the 5W Rule.

This is especially important when you have a teacher who is bullying you. Why? Because the teacher is the person in authority. Therefore, any reports that they’re bullying will likely go ignored.

Realize that people will take the word of an authority member over yours.

Therefore, you absolutely must document the bullying in great detail. This means using the 5 W’s.

When you use the 5W Rule, you write down What happened, Where it happened, When it happened (the exact date and time of incident), Who was involved and the names of any bystanders, and, if possible, Why it happened.

Therefore, the trick here is to document in the tiniest details possible. Why? Because not only does it help you to keep your story straight, but it’s also admissible in court and in tribunals.

2. Bullying by Teachers in School:

Stay in communication with the school or other entity and save all email exchanges.

You must save all emails you send to the entity and those they send you. Always keep records of these things because it will show you whether they do anything about it.

Moreover, if they send you any bullying or abusive emails, you will have more evidence of their bias against you to present in court.

3. If you live in a one-party consent state, secretly record bullying incidences.

If a teacher is bullying you, I can’t stress the importance of getting it on recording. Now, this is assuming you live in a one-party consent state. This means that you need permission of only one of the parties being recorded. That’s you, of course.

Therefore, you can record the bullying without the possibility of legal consequences.

You can either use a digital audio recorder or a hidden body camera. Personally, I prefer the hidden body camera. However, if you can’t get access to one, a digital audio recorder will do and you can find them at your local Walmart or on Amazon.

Body cams, on the other hand, are only available online. Amazon sells many of them you can choose from.

4. Bullying by Teachers in School:

Take pictures of any bruises, cuts, or scrapes left on the body by school bullies.

Most teachers are too smart to physically bully you. Although they may want to and wish they could, most of them won’t for fear of legal repercussions.

Although a small percentage do use physical violence against students, the teacher is likely to let your bullying classmates do that for them. Therefore, you must take photos of any visible bodily injuries if you’re physically attacked in the bullying teacher’s classroom.

Why? Because the teacher can be charged with neglect or dereliction of duty if they allow another student to harm you. Moreover, you also have cause to sue the school if the injuries are severe enough.

5. Keep records of any medical treatment resulting from bullying at school.

In other words, if a bully in the teachers’ classroom hurts you badly enough to send you to the hospital, make copies of the records and keep them in a safe place.

Having these materials will make your case more solid and you can press not only criminal charges against the bullies’ but also file a civil suit for damages.

6. Bullying by Teachers in School:

Take pictures of any harsh remarks by the bullying teacher on your report card or assignment papers.

This is also important! If the remarks are too harsh, it will indicate abuse and possible prejudicial treatment.

Moreover, if you make good grades in other classes but seem to fail in the bully teacher’s class, take pictures of the grades on your report card. This will prove the teacher’s bias against you.

7. Get another teacher that you trust to go over any graded papers just in case the bully teacher gives you an unfair grade.

VERY important! If you know for a fact that you did well on a test in this teacher’s class and still get a bad grade, the bullying teacher might have marked a few right answers wrong.

Therefore, get another teacher you trust to go over your paper with you. Because, if a teacher highly dislikes you, they might try to give you a lower grade than you deserve to mess up your future.

Then take a picture of the test paper, circling the right answers that the teacher marked wrong. This will strengthen your case and exonerate you, therefore, securing your future prospects and life-chances.

Bullying By Teachers in School

I can’t stress this enough! You must gather your own evidence in cases like these. I won’t lie to you. Doing this will be tedious. In fact, you’ll need to put in a lot of hard work.

However, when you’re being bullied by any authority member, it’s not the time to be lazy. Remember that you are the only one who can stand up to this type of abuse and you have a responsibility to do so.

Not only to yourself, but to any future students this teacher may bully later.

In other words, you should never sit back and wait for the school to protect you. Because they won’t. Schools have their own self-interests in mind and they will only hide any bullying that happens in their educational institutions.

Again, protecting yourself and standing up to any bullying you suffer is your responsibility! No one else’s!

But Why Do Schools Ignore Bullying?

Again, they do it to save their own reputations. Moreover, most bullies are high academic achievers, athletes, or members of the cheer squad.

All this makes the school look good. Therefore, your school will more than likely only protect these students and find ways to lay the blame on you.

Sadly, in most cases of bullying, it’s not about right and wrong, it’s about who’s doing it and the amount of power they have. Therefore, again, it’s your responsibility to do your own investigations and stand up for yourself. You must be your own voice!

Bullying by Teachers:

Here’s some food for thought.

We know that bullying often goes unpunished and it’s the victims who people scrutinize and punish while the bullies go Scot free.  Moreover, schools and companies sweep incidences of bullying under the rug to save their own reputations. That much, we also know.

Also, governments, local, state, and federal, refuse to pass more robust laws against bullying and mobbing. Why? Because there’s no way you can legislate human nature, even the dark side of it.

More importantly, bullies are experts at making the poor victims look like the instigators. Therefore, I’m not sure if we even should pass laws against bullying. And these are things I advocated for it at first.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I shied away from any laws. Again, bullies are good at reversing the roles and making their victims look like the provocateurs.

Therefore, it is because people blame victims and either let bullies off the hook or give them a slap on the wrist that I’ve stopped agreeing that criminal laws against bullying should be passed.

Think about it. If we criminalized bullying, a lot of innocent victims would end up going to jail or paying fines because the real bullies would find ways to manipulate their way out of it and place blame on their victims.

Again, there’s no way to legislate human nature. It’s impossible. Therefore, victims must be allowed to stand up for themselves and take responsibility for their own well-being.

I believe it’s the only way victims can successfully fight bullying and take back their personal power.

However, this only addresses part of the problem.

Bullying by Teachers in SChool:

Let’s Think outside the box for a moment. ask yourself these questions.

Why do schools ignore bullying and place blame on targets? What other reasons could there be besides to protect their reputations and their star students?

Wait for it!

Could it be to maybe benefit the mental health industry? It may or it may not. However, it’s certainly something to think about.

Due to the mental health crisis in this country, school districts and the mental health industry work very closely together. And why not? We do seem to have an epidemic of depressed and mentally ill youth.

Therefore, understand that mental health is BIG business and, like any other big business, such as big tech, or big pharma, it’s a money machine. A cash cow!

In fact, it’s only a branch of the healthcare industry and big pharma. Remember that public schools are government schools and school officials are elected officials. In other words, they’re politicians.

Are you beginning to see how all this ties together?

Bullying Continues to supply the mental health industry with fresh, new patients every year.

In other words, millions of new patients are made because of bullying. These are people who, otherwise, wouldn’t need psychological help.

As we know, the majority of mental illness, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders are caused by some form of abuse. And bullying is abuse. In fact, peer abuse is just another term for bullying.

Moreover, people who are bullied have a much higher risk of developing a mental illness and going in for psychological and psychiatric treatment.

Even worse, many end up requiring medication to regain stability.

So, should it be any wonder that corporations, schools and many other public entities refuse to properly address bullying and hold bullies accountable? Should it surprise you that they’re so quick to blame innocent victims?

Are you beginning to see the bigger picture here?

This is just a thought that I wanted to throw out there. And this should also give you something to ponder as well.

The 45% of people who are bullied by teachers probably don’t know to do their own investigations and likely haven’t been told how. This is a sad thing because, without proper guidance, they’ll only continue to be victimized.

this post was all about the percentage of people who are bullied by teachers in school and what they can do to not only protect themselves, but stand against this type of abuse.

Related posts you’ll enjoy:

1. Bullying by Teachers: 15 Proven Signs a Teacher is Bullying You

2. The Horns Effect: Bully-Induced Bias Against Victims of Bullying

3. Bullying Culture: When Bullying is the Status Quo

4. Why do Bullies Bully? 7 Reasons They Won’t Leave You Alone

5. Your First Line of Defense Against Bullying

What Are The Far-Reaching Consequences of School Bullying and Mobbing?

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How many lives could’ve been saved if we’d spoken up sooner?

For years, everyone saw bullies picking on and ganging up on targets- they saw it on the playground, the hallways, the gym, the locker room, the bathrooms, the classrooms, and on the school bus and the target was driven to act out in violence.

No one cared about any of the bullying until targets started taking matters into their own hands- more appropriately, until they started bringing guns to school and blowing their bullies away, committing suicide, or both.

It’s a shame that people had to die before we finally began to take bullying seriously. Being treated like an object for too long, instead of a living, breathing, and feeling human being can make one enraged enough to want to kill or desperate enough to escape the torment by any means (suicide).

Thankfully, not all who suffer repeated and patterned bullying and mobbing commit homicide or suicide. Most targets suffer in silence. They live depressed, isolated, bewildered, and confused because they’ve had their self-confidence stripped away. In that, they’re prevented from realizing their full potential and capabilities.

Many children and teens are terrified of getting on the school bus and many more stay silent for fear of retribution. Young targets endure torment others cannot possibly comprehend and much of the wounds and bruises are unseen. Just because someone isn’t bludgeoned, bruised, and bloodied on the outside doesn’t mean they aren’t they aren’t so inside. Physical wounds can be seen but wounds to the soul can’t.

Bullying and mobbing leave permanent scars. Even after time has gone by, the memories are still fresh. In fact, they’re so deeply entrenched that even decades later, targets can still remember the names of those who instigated the mobbing, those who joined in and partook in it, those who encouraged it, and those who pretended to be their friends but didn’t have their back and refused to help them.

As a survivor of school bullying and mobbing myself, I can tell you that I remember the names of every single one of my classmates who fell in the above categories, one of whom I thought was a close friend. I only recently stopped talking to this woman and was a fool not to have kicked her sorry butt to the curb years ago.

Every survivor I’ve ever spoken too remembers these things specifically.

Understand that when a child or teen is bullied and mobbed by virtually everyone, minor occurrences of ridicule, name-calling, and shunning may occur. However, things such as these build up over time.

What ends up breaking and killing the target’s spirit and self-image is the accumulation of so many incidences of so many classmates brutally bullying her and the fact that the abuse comes from everyone and from every direction.

But I guarantee that if you were to tell each of the target’s classmates what they were doing and tell them of the damage they had done to that targeted child, they would either deny it or respond with, “But all I did was…!”

Again, these “little attacks” come from many, many directions and over a long period of time against the same person- this is one of the biggest hallmarks of mobbing.

I’ve asked other survivors of school bullying and mobbing why they think their classmates mobbed them and not one of them knows why. Each one of these people, even decades later, wonder what they did to encourage their schoolmates to gang up on them and torment them the way that they did.

I always tell them that they did nothing to deserve that kind of treatment and that they should never blame themselves for their classmates’ atrocious behavior.

During my years of research on bullying and mobbing, I’ve learned that mobbing is always caused by a trivial conflict that’s not even personal but somehow, becomes personal later. The origins of mobbing can be anything- a potential target is a new student at the school, or the potential target says something that isn’t necessarily bad but rubs the wrong kids the wrong way.

Maybe the potential target is different, or maybe the child is highly intelligent to the point of overshadowing members of the top clique. It could be that the potential target brags about something and ticks off the rest of the class, or wears clothes that are out of fashion and the bullies use it as an excuse to torment the kid.

And long after the initial cause of the bullying is over and forgotten, the bullying continues.

Understand that if you were to ask bullies why they mobbed and tormented a certain individual, they either wouldn’t know the reason, or they would give an answer that doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Therefore, targets and survivors alike must realize that the mobbing and bullying they presently struggle with or endured in the past was never about anything they said or did. It was never about them. It was always about their bullies’ own mental health issues. It was about the bullies’ senses of self-entitlement, their insecurities, feelings of self-loathing, and intense jealousy.

And once they realize these things, their self-esteem won’t take such a big hit.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Step-by-Step Description of Mobbing in Progress

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Mobbing is THE severest form of bullying. Once the bullying reaches the stage of mobbing, this is when the bullying becomes life-threatening! And if you’ve ever been a target of it, you know firsthand how destructive it is.

The reason that mobbing is so hard to remedy is that not only has it already rendered us so distraught that we’re unable to think clearly, but we aren’t able to name, describe, nor communicate the steps bullies take to destroy us.

A successful smear campaign is started by a bully or bullies who are well-practiced in the arts of persuasion and influence and can last for years.

Here’s something I want you to realize. A smear campaign is nowhere near as tricky as it looks. You’d be amazed at just how simple it is to smear someone. It’s so easy that it shouldn’t be so effective, but it is!

To quote the old Geico commercial, it’s “so easy; a caveman can do it.”

Here’s a chronological, step-by-step recap of how bullies do it and succeed at it:

1. The bullies have a dislike for a specific individual who refuses to conform to their standard of who she should be.

Now all this time, the bullies have been able to influence everyone else and get them to submit to their will and every whim. Then, low and behold, along comes the target (we’ll call her “Cindy”) who’s stubborn and either unable to or won’t submit to the bullies’ control and allow them to change her personality into what they think it should be.

And Cindy may not realize the bullies’ motives and that just by doing her thing, she’s enraging the bullies. So, she goes on about her business, makes plans for her future, makes achievement after achievement, and maybe she gets loads of positive attention and praise from others because she’s so successful and well-liked.

2. Next, the bullies begin to smear Cindy. To implement their smear campaign, they watch Cindy, studying her behavior carefully until they’re able to anticipate her reactions.

3. The bullies then train their audience (i.e., the other classmates or coworkers to expect a specific type of behavior out of Cindy. They point out these behaviors when they occur. The bullies then associate Cindy’s completely innocent behavior with something bad or evil.

For example, let’s say that Cindy is sweet, playful, and likes to engage in a little banter. The bullies watch as Cindy banters with people in the school or workplace. She playfully calls someone a “dummy” or a “goofball,” but others know that it’s all for harmless jokes and think it’s funny because Cindy is a genuinely kind person.

4. So, the bullies begin making offhand comments. They remark that Cindy’s kindness is only an attempt to kiss ass because she wants something from people and that she thinks the people around her really are dummies, but only disguises it under a veil of fun jokes and playfulness.

The bullies also make statements that Cindy thinks she’s cute and that Cindy thinks she’s smarter than everyone else. Then repeat, repeat, repeat!

To quote a propaganda minister to a well-known dictator in history, “Tell a lie once, and it remains a lie. Tell a lie a thousand times, and it becomes the truth.”

5. The next time others see Cindy being kind to and playfully bantering with someone, she doesn’t look so cute, and the banter isn’t so funny anymore. Now people see a side of Cindy they can’t believe they never noticed before.

6. Now feeling smug with gratification, the bullies look at themselves, then at Cindy with smirks on their crooked faces and try the same thing all over again.

7. And before you know it, everyone wonders what they ever saw in Cindy, to begin with. They start having negative feelings toward the poor girl.

8. Cindy begins to pick up on the negative vibes around her and withdraws a little. She doesn’t speak to people as much as she did and doesn’t understand what she did or said to bring it all about. The bullies notice that Cindy is more distant than usual, and they point this out to everyone.

“Hey, look! Do you see that? Now, what did we tell you? Cindy really does think we’re all dummies! She really does think she’s smarter than the rest of us!”

“And her ass-kissing (Cindy’s sweet disposition) didn’t work, so now she’s too good to speak to anyone!”

9. Cindy’s withdrawal only inflames everyone’s feelings of dislike and resentment. Although her becoming distant is only out of self-protection, others mistake it for smugness and arrogance.

10. And it only snowballs from there, getting worse and worse over time. Understand that people are human, and they make mistakes. They misjudge innocent others all the time.

And when bullies condition the whole of a group, school, organization, workplace, or community to see any quality in a particular person as a bad thing, a smear campaign is most effective. So everyone, even those who aren’t bullies and are otherwise kind and compassionate, can become extremely cold and cruel to a target. And everyone repeats the same cruelty, over and over again.

Understand that smear campaigns are just too effective because they can quickly become bullying, then escalate to mobbing, which is the most severe kind of bullying. And once it increases to mobbing, it’s unstoppable, and the only way you can take your life back is to leave that toxic, poisonous environment altogether.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

School Mobbing

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Not only workplace mobbing happens, but school mobbing exists as well. When people speak of mobbing, we usually think of the workplace environment. However, mobbing also occurs in schools.

Here are all the signs of mobbing at school you need to know about.

 

Millions of children and teenagers endure bullying at school every day. However, there are those who have it much worse. These kids aren’t only bullied, they’re mobbed at school.

In this post, you will learn the difference between bullying and mobbing at school so that you can take the appropriate measures to protect yourself in the future. Also, you will learn the signs that you endure mobbing at school, not simply bullying.

Once you learn to tell the difference, the more I realize that what I endured in Oakley schools went way beyond bullying. In other words, I wasn’t only bullied. I was mobbed.

Most people associate mobbing with the workplace and yes, mobbing does occur at work. However, it also occurs in schools. And a child or teen can be mobbed so intensely that his/her entire class and other classes above and below them will be out to severely hurt that child. I know this from firsthand experience.

When you’re mobbed at school or anywhere, it’s the feeling of being held hostage. You live in constant terror and there are days when you wonder if you’ll make it back home at the end of the school day because the death threats are real. Adults would fear for their lives if they were getting constant threats of being killed, that’s a given. But imagine what it does to a teenager who is still a child by all accounts.

 

Imagine what it does to a young person whose mind is still developing- a teenager who doesn’t quite have the concrete thinking skills nor the processing abilities to better deal with the situation. It’s hard enough for an adult to deal with being mobbed and many adults don’t know how to cope with it, so, how can we expect a kid to be able to withstand that kind of pressure? Can you imagine how tough it is for a child?

Imagine the sheer terror, the shame, the hopelessness, and the helplessness that poor boy or girl feels. Imagine how alone in the fight they feel when the adults, who are supposed to be there to protect them, turn their backs on that child and refuse to help, support, or even listen to them.

Imagine the gut-level humiliation and hurt a teenager feels when even a few of their teachers, who are supposed to be the adults, join their classmates in bullying and mobbing them. I had a small handful of teachers who did the same to me- one during the seventh, one during the eighth, and one during the eleventh grade. And let me tell you, it got so bad that I was almost driven to drop out of school and to suicide!

 

Back then, there wasn’t a name for this type of horrific bullying, so, they didn’t call it mobbing. This made it much more difficult to describe and explain what was happening. Without a name, the experience can be felt but never articulated because people don’t know how to describe it.

Once you can put a name to a situation that’s so difficult to experience and even harder to explain, it makes it so much easier to call out and talk about because it gives you a label to arrange your experiences around. With a name, the memories can take shape and come together. Then, your story can unfurl because you now have a foundation from which it can build.

With an experience as complex as getting mobbed, giving it a name is crucial.

 

For twenty-six years, I have researched bullying front, backwards and sideways- I have read countless books, articles, and victim testimonies. During the mid ‘90s, I came across a magazine article about a boy who was relentlessly bullied at his school. From this article, I finally got the answers to so many questions that had, for several years, gone unanswered and burned inside me.

The article also was my assurance that none of the bullying I’d suffered in school just a decade earlier was my fault, nor was there ever anything wrong with me. This was like a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders.

As a result, my interest in the phenomenon of bullying and social hierarchies took off from there, and I began reading every book and every magazine article I could get my hands on and every online article I came across about bullying. I was hungry and developed an insatiable appetite for the knowledge of it.

 

In my bullying research, I’ve discovered the term “mobbing” and researched that as well. I’ve found that mobbing is bullying- but it’s bullying to the highest extreme. A more popular definition of mobbing is “bullying on steroids.”

If there was a scale from 1 to 10 measuring the intensity, frequency, and severity; moderate bullying would be at levels 1-4, severe bullying would be at levels 5-8, and mobbing would be at levels 9-10.

So, what is mobbing exactly?

Mobbing is group violence. The entire school or workplace gangs up on a target by more than just physical violence- more by use of vicious rumors, gaslighting, and smear campaigns. Anytime a target is mobbed, they’re discredited, humiliated, isolated, and intimidated. Mobbing is designed to instill terror in the target.

 

It is also designed to make the target look like the guilty party- to make it look as if the target instigated the bullying or brought the bullying on him/herself. And the perpetrators or, more appropriately, “the mob” will vehemently claim that the target “deserved it.”

I’m thankful for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He carried me through what were the worst years of my life, and I didn’t just survive, I overcame. I believe He allowed me to endure the gut-wrenching terrors of school mobbing because He knew that later, I would develop a thirst for knowledge of it and use what I endured to help those who would endure, in the future, what I was enduring and reclaim their personal power and very lives.

I now realize that in allowing me to suffer at the brutal hands of my schoolmates, The Lord was preparing me for my calling, passion, purpose, and life’s work!

Therefore, if you’re currently being mobbed at school, I have a message for you:

 

Know that you are worth fighting for and you are worth living for. Know that you have value even if others can’t see it. In spite of what your bullies and mobbers tell you, you are just as worthy of love, respect, dignity, and friendship as the next person. You are enough and you matter.

Your peers may not appreciate you now, but I promise you that if you hold on, there will come a day when things are going to change for the better. You will see the sun again. You will find your tribe and you will have friends who love you for you and see the good you bring to this world.

How do I know? Because I’m living proof!