Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
Among my close friends, there are many who, to this day, haven't recovered from childhood bullying. They're fairly normal people in most respects, but their sense of self-worth (and their ability to trust and value others) is incredibly low, which makes things like relationships difficult.
I have a 'friend' like this, he was bullied all through out high school and at home (being the eldest of 4 children). I befriended him in junior high school because I knew that I could relate to him on an intellectual level at the time. Over the years I noticed that he himself became a bully and that he loved the idea of exerting power or control over others. I tried offering my help and at one point it seemed that he was making a turn for the good but it didn't happen so 9 years later he's an intolerable person who never passes up an opportunity to put someone down, including me and our other friend. I've tried confronting him about his aggressive, unhealthy behaviour, but that just makes him even more defensive and paranoid. So our 'friendship' has now reduced to us meeting once a month to 'catch up' and that's as far as I'm willing to put up with him. Not that he attemps to bully me, but he's also a compulsive liar and incredibly paranoid that everyone's out to get him. The sad part is that every now and then I see his 'true' self coming through but it doesn't last beyond an hour.

I know that he has some sort of a complex, and I think that it's mostly owed to his parents, particularly his mother, because he always use to complain about them, and would come to school every now and then in tears (because of his mother). I know that he's also jealous of my friend and I, that we've moved on from him in many aspects, that we don't have any obvious issues, that we have friends other than him. His response to that is accumulating over a thousand friends on facebook, making status updates about his supposed busy, high class lifestyle, talking about how he puts people in their place in his every day life, how he drives his car without a license and manages to persuade the police not to fine him (even though he doesn't have a drivers license or a car)...and each time we meet up with him, it's his usual stories of how he interacts with so many people, how he hangs out with his 'other friends', how he has a new girlfriend (yet we've never met any one of his supposed countless girlfriends), and the latest story is that he's going to the UK, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Samoa this month for a holiday + conferences I tried introducing him to my other friends, and even they noticed his lying nature, and he goes on to find something wrong with them.

I don't care for him anymore. I tried helping him at one point, but it just backfired and these past few months I've been waiting for the right moment to just end the friendship with him because I've had enough of him and his negative behaviour.

I went from being trusting and happy to being a distrusting, disloyal, shut in, and extremely unhappy misanthrope who wanted nothing to do with people. I became aggressive. In the beginning of my recovery, I became even more aggressive and adopted a black-and-white zero-tolerance approach to interpersonal relationships.
I was like that for a period of time as a teenager, and somewhat recently, but it wasn't because of bullying. Mainly because of me experiencing an incredible disappointment (and nearly trauma I'd say) with respect to my parents and close friends. I didn't have a 'recovery' period, rather I just slowly got over it all and I'm back to my mostly positive self. However one thing that remained is that I'm not so trusting of people, not even my parents, and above all I've distanced myself emotionally from everyone around me and intend to maintain it. It's not a nice feeling, not having anyone to open up to, but I don't dwell on it.

Anecdotally, most (er, almost all) of the examples I have given in this post have had a few things in common. They are examples of bullying where the victim did/could not fight back. When they tried, they were eg. further punished (for being "over-sensitive", for "imagining things", for "being weak")
One of my other so called 'friends' use to do this with me. He'd say something seemingly innocent, yet snide, and when I'd call him up on it, I was labeled "overly sensitive, weak" and the worst part was that a part of me believed it.


There are people who act like total assholes towards other people, and if the target of their abuse ever fights back it's all, "Whoa why're you getting so worked up? Relax, we were just kidding, take a chill pill," and suddenly the victim of harassment is weird for reacting to it.
That's how my 'friend' is. Any time he's confronted, he quickly turns it into a joke "I was only joking, god, don't you know sarcasm?" and that takes me out of my skin sometimes because he assumes this smug, superior look, as if there's something wrong with you.

In Sweden, it's embarrassing to be bullied, and it's embarrassing/shameful to acknowledge bullying (which you kinda have to if you want to fight it). Open conflicts and open displays/acknowledgements of emotions can be very taboo. It doesn't make fighting bullying particularly easy for the bullied.
We're brought up to hide/supress our emotions, that it's a sign of 'weakness' if you openly cry, or openly express any sort of emotion (more so ones that constitute pain than happiness). I've found that this is more prevalent amongst males. And I hate that way of thinking, that just because you're a male, you're not supposed to cry, cannot show any signs of 'weakness' and what takes me out of my skin are the people who encourage that way of thinking, the ones that mock you if you do show such emotions.