Yep. And coining victimspeak ain't a way to build strength. I'm opposed to that completely.
My feathers are a tad ruffled at the use of the word "children" when the majority of kids who kill themselves in these situations are teenagers.
So it's a tugging heart strings kind of approach.
Instead of a campaign for victimspeak, I really liked the "It get's better" approach that was used earlier. I think that is much more empowering. The other thing is parents need to get involved with their kids more. I'm not blaming the parents but I'm shocked that some of these parents have no idea what is going on in their kids life. The teen years are dangerous. I can't imagine not paying attention to my teens.
No, no it really doesn't always work like that. For a classic example:
Hi, I was a mentally unstable child who was bullied emotionally and mentally, but never once physically and it caused me to snap. I had what pretty much amounted to a minor mental and emotional breakdown when I was 18. If I had tried to fight the people who were bullying me, I'd have gotten into trouble for fighting right after having my head kicked in, so that's not exactly the greatest idea in the world, and I think the message that you're sending (Hey kids, being bullied? Violence is the answer!) is monumentally stupid. Sometimes fighting back can indeed work, but if you're most certainly the weakest person in the equation, that can amount to a massive ass kicking and then punishment for being the disruptive influence.
So many times I wanted to beat the people who bullied me (boys and girls here, I was an equal opportunity target) I had exceptionally violent thoughts about all of these people due to the vast amount of pent up rage I had at these nasty people who were making my life hell. When I got to be 16 I had a good network of friends and the bullying had actually stopped, but by that time I was massively paranoid and hugely insecure about absolutely everything. I was convinced that my friends were secretly making fun of me, and that I wasn't liked by them. Any time I did something stupid (and being human, I did) that got one or more of them mad at me for a short period, it further drove the idea into my brain that these people hated me.
It got to a point where I would not be naked in my own bedroom at home. Why?
Because I was convinced they had placed a camera in my light-fitting and were secretly recording me. That's right, my mental state was in such tatters that I was convinced my friends, most of whom were really good friends and really good people, had broken into my house (or in my really dark moments, colluded with my parents) to install a secret camera in my bedroom. This went on for months and I was getting more and more ill in the head. What this paranoia did to me beyond totally ruining my whole self perception and sense of trust was that it also made me a horrible, evil two-faced little bastard. I fully admit it now, because I was NASTY. Really horrible to these people who genuinely liked me because I was convinced that they hated my guts. It didn't help that I hated my guts as well, and that everything negative anyone had ever called me sank in and stayed there like a silently brewing acid deep inside me.
I was, to put it bluntly, a massive ticking time-bomb which finally went off just before I departed for University. I went absolutely mental, hitting walls until I started breaking the skin on my knuckles, screaming when I knew I was alone at the entire world, crying myself to sleep most nights, just crying on others, losing sleep at night and being tired and angry all the next day. After a while, I pretty much got all the rage out in secret, but not everything else, and the rest of the negative feelings just kept eating away at me. I finally broke down in front of my mother in the car on the way to dropping an application form off for a job at ASDA. I was a total wreck, utterly incapable of bettering myself or my life because I was convinced I was a worthless waste of oxygen and flesh, forever doomed to being a drain on everyone and having no one to like me.
Going to University did help, having friends who I actually could tell were genuine, having grown up a lot following my episode and genuinely having fun all helped. I wasn't perfect, I still attempted suicide once, and one night got so depressed I took my ties and shoelaces and hid them away, locking myself in my room. I still lacked sleep much of the time, and I was still fragile, but the paranoia had all but gone and I was finally able to be a normal functioning adult, after a fashion. I'm still unstable. I still get depressed, although I haven't thought about suicide since my cousin killed himself about two years ago now. I'm recovering day by day, little by little and if I start to slump again, I'm heading straight for a psychologist and getting professional help. I seriously doubt that fighting back would have helped. In fact, in one instance I did threaten the bullies, and they laughed at me. I knew I wouldn't be able to follow it up, so that just crushed me even more.
Don't assume that everyone is like you, and that fighting can help. Sometimes it just isn't an option, and even when it is, it's likely not always the best option. I don't know what to do myself, so I guess I shouldn't criticise, but when I see people saying that fighting the bully physically is the best way and all the namby pamby crap doesn't work, well I look at my life and I think "Yeah, of course that helps".
