I was recently looking into different aspects of Borderline Personality Disorder (for this blog) when I came across Quora which is a forum where people ask questions and other people respond with their takes on the topic. There are quite a lot of questions on BPD on that site, one of them being “Does Bullying cause BPD?” this got me thinking about my experience with both bullying and the disorder. On the one hand I feel that the bpd caused me to behave in ways that were seen as weird, annoying or just set me up as an easy target for bullying. On the other, being bullied caused a lot of emotional distress in me and damaged any sense of self approval I had of myself. To explore the link between BPD and bullying in my life I suppose I should start at the beginning.
I remember my first “proper” bully, before him there were a couple of incidences I had with other kids but nothing ongoing. I was in year 5 at primary school, this would have been when I was about 9/10 which was already a shit age for me. I should probably admit I said something stupid to this guy, well, I straight up insulted his work. I didn’t intentionally want to be malicious but in primary school I had issues with impulse control where my brain didn’t pause before getting me to do or say something. To make my point, when I was 6 years old I once saw a ladybird and, with no malicious intent, I stepped on it. When asked why I did it, I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know, my brain just told me to.
Anyway so I insulted this guy and he responded aggressively, trying to hurt me by standing on my foot and harassing me later on calling me a “crybaby” he probably didn’t know I wasn’t upset because he tried to hurt me, I was upset with myself for blurting out what I said and upsetting him. I told my mum about this incident and she took me to a teacher who basically said he was justified because of what I said to him and she wasn’t going to do anything about it (like, girl, not even a conflict resolution exercise?) because of this I never reported the further incidences I had with him where he would deliberately try to trip me up and mock me. This guy still appears in my dreams and its always either us resolving our feud, him still bullying me or I straight up brawl with him. There are a lot of mixed feelings I have regarding this particular bully such as guilt, anger, feeling sorry for him, feeling sorry for myself or hoping that he’s moved on so I can move on too.
Things didn’t get better when I switched to a new high school closer to my home. I stood out like a sore thumb because, well, no one gave me lessons on how to not be weird and make people want to stay away from you at high school. I had two bullies this time, they harassed me a lot they called me “cheesy chip” because my hair would often be oily because… puberty. I was physically attacked by them a couple of times. Choked as a “joke” pushed in the mud, things stuck to my hair and they just made fun of me in general. This went on for about a year, nearly two before I finally reported it to a teacher. Started in year 7 and ended during year 8 however while these two had been dealt with the worse was yet to come.
In year 9 there was a rumor spread about me being a lesbian and having sex in the school bathrooms with one of my friends. It’s all a bit messy in my mind but basically pretty much the whole year had turned against me. There was stuff being thrown at me, rumours, insults, name calling; the classics. Everywhere I went it felt as if someone was whispering about me. I guess what triggered it was likely something that once again I said on impulse it was something along the lines of “I only care about my friends everyone else can die” again I don’t really understand why I said it but I think the main bully of the year overheard me say that to my friend so that might have been what triggered it. To be honest, it was totally out of line to say but from the beginning at that school I was treated less than welcomely. I tried to be nice and friendly but that got me mocked and seen as gullible so people played tricks on me. If they weren’t bullying me or whispering about me, they were avoiding me, refusing to work with me or leaving me out and this was before I said I didn’t care if any of them were dead so, quite frankly, I had every right to be pissed off (not wishing people dead though.) I also want to point out the majority of those kids didn’t seem to give a toss about me so why would they care if I hated them too?
When I say things got worse this time around they got WORSE before this point I clearly had emotional/behavioural issues but had somewhat of a handle on it and more resilience where I could just put things behind me for one day and try again the next however at 14 being bullied like this nearly sent me over the edge. I felt both suicidal and homicidal, full of rage and hurt. I started self harming to punish myself because I must have done something to deserve such treatment. I attempted suicide multiple times, lost the last scraps of my self worth and developed severe anxiety. I had to try not to have a panic attack while in school and would often cry myself to sleep at night. I felt unwanted, worthless, like my very existence was the problem. There was also a part of me that was so angry, wanting to fight back, wanting to retaliate. I fantasized about joining a gang, rioting, killing and making those that hurt me wish they had never been born. I also became paranoid, feeling like I couldn’t trust anyone, hearing things like my name in conversations and feeling like everyone was staring at me everywhere I went.
As I said I’ve had issues for a long time, my emotional turmoil had started brewing in my home life when I was around 6; the bullying at school stirred it up more. So looking at my experience in retrospect it makes sense that BPD and bullying would be closely linked. People with BPD tend to be emotionally vulnerable and have a hard time coping with stress and managing emotions thus making us easy fodder for bullies. I do also believe that bullying was responsible for the worsening of my symptoms such as rage, paranoia, fear of rejection/abandonment and Splitting.
The experience of bullying taught me to mask my mood and suppress aspects of myself that were deemed too “weird” or “annoying” but that didn’t make them go away, I became a people pleaser bordering on codependent with friends because my fear of rejection and conflict was made worse by the trauma. I had no self worth or respect for years and never spoke up for myself or set boundaries creating difficult dynamics in my relationships. Bullying caused this deep sense of needing approval and equating how others treated me to what I was worth. You may say that “bullying is normal” “it builds character” blah blah blah but I will say this and stand by it BULLYING IS A TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE. I still have bad dreams about those bullies and what I experienced in school and to this day I get defensive when being teased and certain events have caused me to relive that feeling of humiliation I felt back then causing me to dissociate and act in rage or fear.
I almost lost my life to bullying, I came out the other side but not without wounds. There are children as young as 9 and teens who don’t make it and end their lives as the result of being bullied and yet I don’t think there is enough justice or support for those who are being bullied. Neither of my schools helped nor seemed to care when it came to bullying and it’s only through my own sheer fucking will I made it out of high school alive (and not in prison.)
Thank you for reading x
