When Being Bullied as a Kid Makes You an Emotionally Withdrawn Adult

Written By Caroline Smith

Being bullied in childhood, adolescence, and teenage years can cause the victims to experience varying degrees of emotional withdrawal and mental illness much later on in life, but there are some ways we can cope with our past.

Join me as I discuss my personal experience with bullying in my schooling days, how it affected me into my early adulthood, and how I came to accept my past without letting it affect my future. We’ll also discuss some practical strategies you can use to accept your own unique past with bullying or exclusion and transform your life so that you can learn to trust people again.

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Transcript:

Welcome to The Introverted Misfit Podcast with me, Caroline Smith, where we discuss topics related to the human experience of connection and communication with a slightly awkward, introverted twist.

In today’s podcast episode, we’ll explore the many ways that being bullied in your childhood and teenage years can affect your mental and emotional health in adulthood, as well as some mindset changes and strategies you can use to overcome your past and conquer your future.

But before we jump into the episode, I want to officially announce that enrollment for my online program Communicate with Quiet Confidence: A Social Skills Course for Socially Awkward, Anxious Introverted Women, is now open. If you are an introverted woman who struggles with social anxiety and awkwardness in your personal and professional life, this program will help you become a socially confident version of yourself without having to fake being an extrovert. You can learn more about the course by clicking the link in the description.

Now onto the podcast episode:

If you were one of those kids in middle school and high school who was easy to pick on for whatever reason and just couldn’t seem to catch a break, you can probably relate to the feelings of loneliness, self-doubt, anger, and feeling like a social outcast.

Some of those kids didn’t have much trouble leaving their miserable grade school experience in the past, but a lot of us carried the resulting emotional and mental pain well into adulthood. It negatively affected affected our ability to socialize and make friends after school, our experience in our professional or work lives, and our romantic relationships or lack-thereof.

For those of us that just couldn’t seem to let the past be the past, we remained stuck in that childlike state of vulnerability, just wishing that someone would swoop in and save us from seclusion. But, no one came, and so we decided to rely on ourselves.

We built up walls to keep everyone out, because we figured being alone was better than being outcasted. Even if people in our adulthood were just trying to be nice to us, it didn’t matter, because our past experiences with bullies wouldn’t let us go.

We were scared to let people get too close for fear that we would mess it up or that we didn’t deserve it, because deep down, we’ve gotten it in our psyche that those kids must’ve been so mean because there was something deeply wrong with us. Why else would they feel the need to treat us that way?

The only problem with that strategy is that the world is not a very nice place for grown people who have decided to withdraw themselves from society. You’ll likely list out on friendships, romantic relationships, job opportunities, and overall a rich and fulfilling life.

And for what reason? All because some select few people from your past still have control over you in the here and now, even though you’ll never see them again?

And although we don’t enjoy feeling lonely and unimportant within the walls we’ve built for ourselves, we’ve gotten so accustomed to the safety from the outside world that we can’t imagine breaking down those walls to try again.

Well. in the spirit of finding the will to try again, I want to tell you my story of accepting my past to overcome my fears of the future.

My experience in my formative years were really shaped by two things: my race and a neurological disorder called Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) for short, which is basically what I call an innate form of social awkwardness and emotional unintelligence. In my case, I wouldn’t say that I was bullied because that implies that kids were going out of their way to make me miserable; it was more like I was excluded and rejected. I was that weird black girl that didn’t quite fit in with the at-the-time more rigid stereotypes of black American culture; I didn’t talk like them, dress like them, joke like them, and therefore I wasn’t one of them.

And even though I would’ve theoretically fit in better with the culture of the non-black kids at my school, my struggles with socializing and communicating made that nearly impossible; I struggled to pick up on basic social cues, my monotone voice, and poor use of facial expressions made my peers uncomfortable talking to me, and my very blunt and dry way of expressing opinions — even about sensitive topics — was not popular among other girls my age.

All of my adolescent and teenage years were an unending series of unapproving sideways glances, being physically shut out of group conversations, and being snickered at for things I said or did, all of which led me to make most of my friends with the fictional characters in my books and my own deep, introspective thoughts.

It felt like I was sitting on the sidelines watching the game of human connection and thriving relationships, but couldn't play because I didn’t know the rules, and no one wanted to explain the rules to me; it felt like everyone just automatically knew the rules and I just had to either figure it out for myself, or stay out of the game.

Naturally, I opted to stay out of the game for the next thirteen years to be precise.

Everywhere I went, I actively avoided people’s eye contact, I purposefully dressed poorly to hide any sort of feminine curve that might attract attention, I was terrified of drive-throughs, and I wen through all of college with basically no social network.

And as for my love life, it was nonexistent, because I had decided to intentionally shut down the only two men who had ever shown interest in me; the thought of awakening my emotions from their dormant state just scared me too much.

Life went on like this for quite some time, until somewhere along the way, I stopped using unhealthy habits to cope with my loneliness, and decided it was time for me to make some serious changes to my life.

A major catalyst for that change was my amazing nephew Cairo; from the moment I got to hold him for the first time and witness how his little face just lit up with a big smile whenever I made him laugh, I realized just how essential human connection is for everyone right from the time we are born, even people like me who at that point was still convinced that I was doing just fine on my own.

That’s when I decided it was time to accept that what had happened to me in my past was not a life sentence to being a social outcast; it was as unfortunate combination of my natural personality and a bunch of other things that were outside of my control, both of which I had to cope with if I wanted to have a fulfilling life.

So how did I do that?

Well depending on the severity of your mental and emotional state, it might require some deeper strategies that a counselor or therapist can provide, but here’s how I went about solving these problems I was faced with:

Number 1: Remember that we can’t help our past, but we can decide the trajectory of our future.

Everyone has a past full of events and circumstances over which they had no control.

Some of us have naturally more quiet, introverted personalities that made us an easier target for bullying and exclusion (which was part of my situation).

Some of us came from unstable home lives and childhoods that made us feel emotionally neglected, mentally unsound, and even physically unsafe.

Or if you’re around my age of 26 or younger, the boom in popularity of social media in our younger, formative years could’ve been contributing to a lot of the mental unease we experienced in addition to how chaotic growing up already is.

The common denominator among all of those past experiences is that we had no control over them; we are just faced with the consequences today, and unfortunately for us as adults, those consequences can sometimes mean less money, less stability, and less overall well-being.

But the good news is you don’t have to be the same person today that you were five minutes ago, or a month ago, or even 5 years ago. Our brains are plastic until we die in that we can rewire them to do all kinds of things — both good and bad — barring any severe neurological disorders.

I can be completely transparent with you about the fact that in spite of my troubled days in school, I was blessed enough to have a strong homelife: two loving parents who were emotionally, mentally, and financially invested in my and my sisters’ well-beings with no strings attached, and a lot of my extended family had a similar mentality.

Growing up, I used to look at them and think they just all magically had it together and made everything look so perfect, but as I grew up and really got to sit down and talk to my elders, I learned that they didn’t always have it together; there were a lot of things that went on under the surface that people were constantly working through, including communication issues in marriages, overdue bills, and yes, even issues from their past — some of those which included not fitting in and being bullied in school.

That’s when it clicked for me: every single person you see walking around is going through something troublesome, no matter if they are rich or poor, CEO or custodian, black or white, man or woman; we’ve all done things we’re not proud of and had things happen to us that we didn’t deserve, and we are all just trying to come to terms with them and move on with our lives as best we can, day by day.

There’s a common saying that we are the choices we make, but I actually think it’s a little deeper than that: I think we are a combination of our genetic predisposition, our past experiences, and the choices we decide to make with those realities.

So given the circumstances that you’ve been dealt with in your life, you can decide if you will make choices that keep you in a downtrodden and withdrawn state forever, or if you will take the steps today that will change your life for the better.

Number 2: Believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with you.

Most of us who were bullied and excluded were not intentionally doing anything that would warrant the treatment we received, and that makes it easy for us to believe that we are just naturally unlovable. As a result, we decided to completely shut down and withdraw from the outside world.

Maybe you’re like me and had difficulty with socializing and communicating the way most people do, so you found that you were being excluded from conversations and interactions on a regular basis.

Maybe you have a noticeable birth defect and were excluded because of the superficial forms of friendships and cliques.

Maybe you’ve got a sense of dark humor that really doesn’t sit well with the majority of people, but growing up no one in your life ever corrected you on it so you grew up thinking that was socially acceptable, only to find out that it was not a widely-accepted form of humor.

Well, as humans, our brains are wired to thrive on connection with other humans, from the time we are born; we look for the signs of love and affection in our parents to feel safe and secure, and that need for quality social connections remains as we grow older, but what tends to happen in cases of bullying is that the already chaotic path of trying to find where we fit in during puberty and adolescence is thrown off by being excluded or targeted by peers.

But once we can change that mindset of self-doubt and all of the negative things we tell ourselves about ourselves, we can improve our self-image, and learn to not be so afraid of opening ourselves up to the right people, because despite what happened in the past, not everybody is out to get you, and we can begin to walk through the world without being so afraid of what people may or may not think about us.

That all begins with us genuinely believing that no matter what unfortunate circumstances have happened to us, there is nothing inherently wrong with you that justifies how you were treated. I know that it’s not as simple as I’m saying it right now, especially considering it took me years to believe it about myself, but the important thing is to just start somewhere, and keep going.

If you need a good place to start you can start by writing down some positive mantras on a piece of paper, and repeating them to yourself every morning.

Number 3: There are people out there who will benefit from a relationship with you.

That may not be your experience now because the person you’re presenting to the world is someone who exudes low confidence and self-esteem which doesn’t tend to attract positive energy, but the real you — the you that you were on track to be before the trauma of being bullied and excluded and that still yearns for human connection — is a good fit for a certain set of people, which is really all you need.

Whether those people are in a local church, a food pantry where you can volunteer, a book club, or local hiking group, it’s never too late to find community with others.

You don’t have to start with an overwhelming social event, either.

Go for a walk around your neighborhood, and practice the act of smiling and saying “Good morning,” to people that pass you by. Or say a few extra words to the Starbucks barista or grocery store clerk every time you go. Little things like that are what I did to build my confidence in my ability to start friendly interactions, and you can incrementally start to get involved in more things.

That’s all for today’s episode. If you enjoyed this talk, please don’t forget to hit the follow or subscribe button, leave a review or comment if you’re watching on YouTube, and share this podcast with a friend. Thanks for listening, and have a great day!

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Caroline Smith

Caroline is the founder of The Introverted Misfit, a community committed to helping socially inept people become more socially confident in themselves.

https://theintrovertedmisfit.com
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How to Stop Being a Social Outcast from an Autistic Woman’s Perspective