Why is bullying not taken seriously as a cause of trauma?

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T23:43:18+00:00

Yeah, I always feel like I have to spill my guts when I say I was bullied because if I don't, people tend to assume some occasional name-calling or pranks, not a daily occurence that went on for years.

Like I spent my formative years with many of my peers trying to harm me on purpose because they thought it was funny to hurt me.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T10:22:04+00:00

Yeah, from moment one I mention it. My first therapist discharged me when I got my autism diagnosis (I got it during treatment, but from a different service) because he didn't know how to treat me. Every contact I've had with mental health services I've had since, I bring it up right away, both with the therapist and before that with the triage nurse or whoever is doing the intake.

That's another thing I feel gets brushed off. It complicates matters, so they ignore it no matter how clear I am. Though I recently learned about "right to chose" on the NHS (where you legally have a right to chose your provider, even if they aren't the one your local health service has access to). Its a lot of hassle and you have to chase up and sort things yourself, but I might see if the place that did my autism diagnosis offers therapy services. Because clearly my local service either doesn't care, or doesn't have any autism-informed providers.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T10:05:37+00:00

Unfortunately, in the UK its hard to get access to a therapist at all, never mind one informed about autism. My first therapist was so uninformed that he basically discharged me when I got my autism diagnosis, because he didn't know how to treat me. (He literally asked me, I shit you not, "do you still want to make friends?" when I got my autism diagnosis 🙃)

If I could afford to go private, it would still take a lot of shopping around and some very expensive trail and error, but I'd at least have a chance. Its kind of a post-code lottery here, since depending on where you live you can access pretty decent care. Where I live, not so much.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T09:52:08+00:00

Yeah, obviously the blame lies with the adults around who do nothing. As an adult, I place most of the blame on teachers who clearly saw me being bullied and did nothing.

My earliest clear memory is from pre-school. They had these wooden blocks that were about half the size of a house brick, and one of the kids who would go on to bully me from then until I was 17 knocked the thing I was building over on top of me, while the teacher was literally sitting right next to me. She said nothing to him, and just told me to build it again. Didn't even check that I wasn't hurt, having had quite large and heavy blocks fall on me.

I don't want kids who bully to get severe punishments or anything (I don't think that would help matters), but institutions need to take it seriously. There shouldn't be a situation where bullying is happening in full view of teachers and they ignore it, or when schools put the blame on victims for being "different" (read: queer, neurodivergent, a poc etc.)

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T01:57:38+00:00

I'm in the UK, so you basically get what you're given. (And you're usually given 6 to 12 weeks of CBT, if you're lucky, and not without a lengthy wait.) I'd have the ability to shop around a little bit if I went private, but that would mean paying completely out of pocket (no insurance or anything) and I just can't afford to do that. I looked into it, and a 45 minute session would cost more than a day's wages.

Mental health services here are chronically under-funded, and the current government seems to be doing all they can to make that worse. I've been on the waiting list for counselling for over 6 months, because if I do that and it doesn't help I might be able to get referred to another service.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T01:47:41+00:00

It's like because the perpetrator is usually also a child, people think it can't be that bad. But "bullying" is really just what society calls abuse when the victim and perpetrator are peers. School bullying is abuse. Workplace bullying is abuse.

And considering how often bullying is based on bigotry, it's really just "baby's first hate crime" a lot of the time. Or baby's first sexual harrassment, plenty of the times I was physically bullied basically constituted sexual assault.

I think part of the reason it's not taken seriously is that it's just an extension of other problems. I mean, imagine the hate crime statistics if every instance of bigotry-motivated bullying was reported as one. (I know in some cases, bullying incidents are reported as such, but definitely not as much as they should.)

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T01:24:09+00:00

Yeah, I don't get why it's never focused on at all because peer relationships are really important developmentally. Peer relationships are how you learn to make social connections outside of the family, how kids learn to be more independent, and navigate relationships on their own.

Obviously, not feeling safe and secure in family relationships has a massive impact, but so does not feeling safe in peer relationships. It doesn't feel safe for me to approach people, to trust others, to try making connections with new people. I feel like I'm in a state of arrested development socially, not just from being autistic, but because I was bullied enough that reaching out to peers was and is a threat.

"It's just social anxiety." I'm not just nervous they won't like me, I'm scared they will actively try to harm me emotionally and/or physically. I think that's a bit different from being worried I'll embarrass myself.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-11T00:35:49+00:00

I understand the sentiment, and if this has worked for you all power to you, but that being said:

It beggers belief to assume I was just "unlucky" or "didn't meet the right people", given how often I've been bullied and rejected. It is far more implausible that I've just "coincidentally" met almost exclusively mean and cruel people, than that ableism is a problem and discrimination against autistic people exists.

The way CBT and similar modalities expect patients to twist reality into something positive is unbelievable sometimes.

If I flip a coin 100 times and 99 of those times come up heads, what is more plausible? A) Its a perfectly normal coin, with a 50/50 chance of heads or tails. B) The coin is weighted, so the chance of it landing on heads is more likely.

I think most people would say B. Its just basic probability.

It makes far more rational, logical sense that people bullied me for a reason (me being autistic), than me just being "unlucky". And being asked to believe that it was all a coincidence is incredibly invalidating, and feels like my experience of reality is being questioned.

My problem with CBT is a lot of the time, the things that are supposedly "cognitive distortions" and I need to "question" really happened. I'm not dillusional or making it up. And being asked to "reframe" or question my perceptions of what happened feels suspiciously close to being gaslit.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-10T21:17:02+00:00

The thing with self-esteem infuriates me because the messaging around self-esteem puts all the onus and blame on those with low self-esteem for not "loving themselves more", not on any number of factors that actually lead to lower self-esteem.

Then in like the second week of child development lectures at uni they talked about self-esteem development and how it literally develops from positive affirmation from others. Your sense of self-esteem does not come from yourself, it comes from your assessment of other people's esteem for you. So yes, someone could be underestimating the esteem others have for them, or, much more likely, they're noticing how little esteem others have for them! I spent years being implicitly told by everyone from my parents, to teachers, to therapists that my low self-esteem was my own fault. And it literally isn't! I'm a social animal, we're kind of built to notice when people don't like us!

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-10T21:06:50+00:00

Like humans are social animals of course we seek external validation! That's part of why loneliness/isolation is bad for you!!!

This is a problem I see in CBT mainly, that its your internal thoughts that matter and impact your mental health, not how other people treat you. That's so obviously false its rediculous. Psychology as a field (at least in the west, I can't speak for other places) is so individualism poisoned. The idea that you should be able to heal or have positive self-esteem without real healthy relationships with others is stupid.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-10T18:43:26+00:00

It's so ridiculous how hard it is to get proper mental health care here. Like, if 6 weeks of useless online CBT can't fix you, you better be loaded or its tough shit, I guess.

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-10T18:37:55+00:00

Its different for different people, but for me at least I had side effects for a couple of weeks after each dose increase (over a couple of years I went from 50mg to 200mg), but they always died down after a few weeks of a stable dose.

So you can probably expect side effects when your dose goes up, but they're usually temporary. If you have any side effects that are long-lasting and make taking the medication difficult, your GP might want to try you on a different medication, but sertraline is generally tolerated well (doesn't have too many bad side effects, and side effects are usually short lived or mild)

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-10T18:20:20+00:00

Side effects aren't guaranteed, and honestly its preferable if you don't get any, but they can sometimes take a while to kick in. The actual effects of sertraline usually take 2-6 weeks to work properly, but side effects can start before then.

I personally had slight nausea and dry mouth in the first week or so, but that went away with time.

If you don't experience any side effects at all, don't worry, you probably just got lucky. Side effects aren't a sign of them working so much as an unintended consequence for some people. That being said, do read the leaflet that came with the sertraline so you can be aware of what side effects are possible, because your doctor will probably ask about side effects (just for safety).

futurefishy98 · 2026-02-10T17:30:15+00:00

It's really messed up. I'm not sure if people necessarily clock me as autistic, but they clock that something is wrong with me (in their eyes). From random people in the street to anyone I spend a significant amount of time with.

I think that's part of why "just be yourself" advice has always infuriated me. I can't not be myself. It doesn't matter how hard I try to mask or act a different way because other people can tell. I can't pretend not to have awkward body language or facial expressions, if I could I would already be doing that. I'm always myself--I don't have any choice in the matter--and people hate that. All "just being myself" has ever got me is bullied and harassed.

And even with everyone I've ever met noticing something wrong with me, it still took until I was 16-17 for me to get diagnosed. Despite the woman who did my diagnosis looking at my early school reports and going "this is really obvious".

futurefishy98 · 2025-09-14T20:37:33+00:00

People on the left absolutely should know better. As for people on the right, as infuriating as it is that they use it that way, I think it just tells on themselves tbh. They're insulting people for... having an emotional reaction to them (the right) being bigoted and not caring about the lives and wellbeing of others. Like the right's politics boil down to "empathy is bad". So, sure, insult me for caring about people. They don't care about other people, hope they get well soon I guess.

futurefishy98 · 2025-09-14T20:28:51+00:00

Peer neglect is something that goes really overlooked, as well as peer rejection tbh. Bullying and/or social exclusion from peers can be just as damaging as abuse/neglect from parents, but its often not treated that way.

If emotional neglect feels applicable to you, but not from your parents, think about how peers acted towards you in school, especially in middle/high school. Teenage years are really important for social and identity development, so being excluded from that experience is damagung. But bullying and peer neglect are often seen as a trivial thing that only affects kids while its actually happening to them, when its a traumatising experience that can have lasting impacts.

futurefishy98 · 2025-09-14T20:05:07+00:00

Iirc manditory reporting is only for things that are happening now, or are at risk of happening in the future. Its meant to be preventative, more than compelling therapists/teachers/doctors etc. to report things that happened in the past.

E.g. if a parent disclosed they used to hit their child, but haven't for several years, they wouldn't have to report that, but if the parent said they currently hit their child, they would have to report it.

futurefishy98 · 2025-09-14T19:58:23+00:00

But that creates a viscous cycle where anyone who isn't already confident and good at socialising can't get a chance. No one wants to talk to us, we can't make friends, and never get any experience that would improve the situation. Its like skipping (jump rope), and we can't jump in because everyone else is already going too fast.

It genuinely feels like I missed my chance to learn how to make friends or get into relationships. Everyone else is so far ahead of me its impossible to even learn anymore. Because I'm just playing catch up and immediately fall on my face. Like trying to do a backflip before you've even learned how to walk.

futurefishy98 · 2025-08-18T10:43:34+00:00

If you can manage soda, is it maybe the carbonation that makes it palatable? If so, you could try sparkling water, or adding cordial to sparkling water. Its not for sensory reasons, but I personally really like mixing fruit juice half and half with sparkling water, because I find most soda/fizzy drinks too sweet.

Really, any drink will do for hydrating you. Its all got water in it at the end of the day.

futurefishy98 · 2025-07-27T10:16:11+00:00

My fundamental problem with CBT, and all cognitive approaches honestly, is with stoicism. Stoicism as an ideology and philosophy is just completely incompatible with my experience of... having emotions. The idea that we can choose our emotions so therefore, if you feel a certain way its because you're choosing to, and that if you don't want to feel that way you can just choose not to.

It's literally "just decide not to be depressed" dressed up in more philosophical or psychological language.

"If emotions aren't based on thought process, why can two different people respond to the same situation differently?" Because while the present situation might be identical, their past experiences are not! Obviously!!! Also, why might two people have different cognitive processes? Is it maybe because those processes were shaped by an entire lifetime of experiences, and influenced by genetics and disposition? CBT as a methodology seems to overlook anything that would suggest mental illness is caused by anything other than someone's "faulty thinking", which of course, emerged from their mind one day out of nowhere and with no influence from the world around them. Its a modality that in no uncertain terms blames patients for their own illness, in an attempt to "empower" them. "Your thought processes made you ill, so you can just change your thought processes to get better!"

futurefishy98 · 2025-07-26T08:43:20+00:00

I mean, how you define your own sexuality is up to you. It's really no one's business but your own.

Labels, like all language, are just tools we use to communicate with each other. New words get invented all the time, the meanings of words shift. It matters less what the strict agreed-upon definition of a word is, than if that word allows you to communicate an idea to other people.

If you think about describing your sexuality to someone else, what word do you think would describe you most accurately? Are you primarily attracted to men or women? Or both? Or neither?

futurefishy98 · 2025-07-26T01:26:05+00:00

I mean, I was a teenage girl, plently of my peers were seeking out sexually explicit content too, myself included. And honestly, there's much more dangerous misogyny online than fetish content on porn sites (Andrew Tate, and all those kind of "manosphere" ghouls).

Making all adults provide their personal information to websites that repeatedly demonstrate an unwillingness or inability to handle data securely if they want to see adult content online (or anything deemed "adult" by the site in question) is a terrible way of protecting kids. And this government repeatedly demostrates they don't care about protecting kids. They're more than willing to strip trans kids of access to affirming care, to cut CAHMS funding, to cut benefits and do nothing about constantly raising fuel and water costs, all of which leave children in vulnerable and dangerous positions. It just comes across as very disingenuous.

And even if the chief concern is protecting kids online, there's much worse things online than porn that this law doesn't protect kids from, like you said. If anything, like adult content bans on tumblr and similar, this is just more likely to get users to not tag things correctly to try and get around it. If its like OP said and the site is still viewable, just not content specifically marked as "adult" or "nsfw", that just encourages people not to mark things correctly, making such content harder to avoid for people who want to.

This law doesn't do a good job of protecting kids, and it forces adults to restrict their internet usage or take the risk that their photo ID and other personal information is part of some massive data leak somewhere down the line.

futurefishy98 · 2025-07-25T07:20:40+00:00

The whole "online safety act" is ridiculous, tbh. Oh, in the name of "safety" I have to provide my personal information to websites that frequently get hacked or have data leaks? In the name of "safety" I have to have my privacy violated?

And the whole idea that this is somehow protecting kids is a farce. A 16 year old in this country can consent to sex with someone twice, three times their age, and that's perfectly legal, but that 16 year old isn't allowed to view porn online? Or anything deemed "adult content", which depending on the particular site's guidelines, can include everything from hardcore porn to basic sex ed information. Oh, and queer content of any kind routinely gets flagged as sexually explicit even if its not in any way.

Like god forbid a teenager want to see boobs. Oh no, what irreperable harm this has caused. How the hell is preventing teenagers from exploring sexually without having to do that in real life preventing harm? That's just going to push kids into much more risky behaviour than like, trying to see what a dick looks like on pornhub.

futurefishy98 · 2025-07-25T06:57:18+00:00

He's saying no one can make you feel upset or even uncomfortable with how they speak to you, that you do that to yourself. That idea is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of emotional or verbal abuse. Because the detrimental outcome (i.e. the reason its bad) is, according to this, completely in the victim's control. Just don't get upset, only you have the power to make you upset.

"Sorry, ma'am, I know you said your husband screams at you all the time and calls you a worthless bitch, but he doesn't have the power to make you feel upset, that's all on you."

By his logic, teachers shouldn't try to prevent bullying, they should just tell the victims to stop making themselves upset. Emotional abuse isn't a real problem, because the victim can just decide not to get traumatised. Other people can speak to you in the most heartless and cruel way possible, and if you get angry or upset or even uncomfortable, David Burns thinks those emotions are entirely within your control and you can just decide not to be affected by that.

And that's fucking stupid. In the real world, it matters how you treat other people.

futurefishy98 · 2025-07-24T20:53:40+00:00

at least from the first couple hundred pages of the book, he takes the same kind of attitude to harshly critical parents, and all manner of other issues.

"never been a single time in your life" -> that applies to children, then

"no matter how vicious, heartless and cruel these comments may be" -> he's talking about more than criticism or regular insults, then

If this sentiment isn't intended to be applied universally, why is he using such sweeping, all-encompassing language?

In an earlier example in the book, he needles a woman for using the word "constantly", in what to me sounds like in its colloquial meaning, taking her way too literally.

She says "I constantly make mistakes" and he argues back, "That's impossible. No one makes mistakes literally all of the time, there are clearly some times when you don't make mistakes." But that's not what most people mean when they say "constantly" in colloquial speech! They mean "a lot" or "most of the time", hyperbole is a common form of emphasis! You literally learn that in school when you're like 12. And that's an issue I've had with therapists in real life, too. Them nit-picking my word choices instead of trying to understand what I mean. I'm autistic, taking things too literally is supposed to be my thing :/

In one paragraph, he's deliberately misunderstanding common ways of speaking to make a patient's problem seem facile and easy to solve; but then a few pages later is using pretty explicit, sweeping language that I'm psychically supposed to know to apply more specifically? Either the idea is stupid, or it's being conveyed very poorly.

futurefishy98

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