"The worst thing is not that they robbed me of my adolescence, which they certainly did, but that I have come to feel that my life had been stolen from me." The cruel sentence belongs to Irene, who in her forties links clinical psychology treatments with medication from her psychiatrist after overcoming several suicide attempts. She simply doesn't want to be in this world. She is not yours. In fact, her life was taken from her when she was thirteen by some schoolmates. They convinced her that she was fat, ugly, inferior and even humiliated her in front of the whole class every week. She doesn't know if she went for a physical reason, because of the color of her hair; perhaps because she was very withdrawn and she hadn't managed to get into that little group... It doesn't matter.
Since then his life began to become hell. It was then, when she did not understand anything or know how to defend herself, when neither the school nor her parents knew what was happening, because she herself was ashamed of her person, nor was it later, when the damage had already been done and had transformed her. forever. Depression, anorexia, isolation, low self-esteem, emotional dependence, domestic violence... A rosary of ills for which Irene finds no end. “I have never been happy. It's hard to admit, but that's how it is, ”she confesses.
Much has been said about bullying or harassment in schools, but little is still known about the worst side of this abuse of children: its evolution over time and the consequences for adults who have been mocked, ridiculed. and violence in his childhood. And the same can be considered of that minor who has learned from that early age to abuse his peers and who has developed a personality as an abuser that can become lethal in adulthood. In the same way that it is not usually free to have lived in a bullying environment, even without having been a victim or a harasser, but having normalized that situation of dominance and aggression.
Irene's case is extreme and, fortunately, many of the victims of bullying and violence during childhood manage to lead an apparently normal life in adulthood. However, the trail of bullying never completely disappears and shows up in numerous personality traits. According to one of the few reports on the matter carried out by the American Medical Association, through interviews over the last two decades with adults who suffered bullying, were the protagonists of it or were witnesses to these situations, emotional and behavioral problems they were notable among those who had had some experience with bullying. They also had a higher risk of suffering psychiatric disorders.
Those who had been bullied had a higher rate of disorders such as depression, anxiety, panic, and episodes of agoraphobia. For their part, those who acknowledged having normalized the bullying situation had a much higher chance of falling into depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and panic. Finally, the group of bullies was characterized by a high rate of antisocial personality disorders, use of toxic substances, and aggressive and even criminal behavior.
The problem was practically invisible just a decade ago, but today it cannot be said that it is a scourge of the past and an outdated educational model. According to data from the report carried out annually by Fundación Mutua Madrileña and Fundación ANAR, based on multiple surveys carried out among schoolchildren throughout Spain, in the 2021-2022 academic year, 24.4% of primary and secondary students recognized that they had been or victims or witnesses of cases of bullying. A figure that amounted to 34.1% before the pandemic and that was even higher in previous courses, since the awareness of the problem on the part of the educational community has managed to contain it and reduce it by detecting and acting on cases. The last frontier is now in cyberbullying, more diffuse and with a wide reach.
Now, as in the past, the main victims are those girls and boys who are seen differently by their peers. Hence, work to respect and normalize diversity is essential to combat bullying. “My colleagues, being gay, used Photoshop to disfigure my body and send the photos to each other on Instagram. Once they even projected them in class. The teachers intervened, but the pain that this has left in me has not healed. Now I lead a normal life and I even have a wonderful partner, but if it wasn't for medical help, I wouldn't be here”, reveals Pol.
“Once they played a hangman game on the class blackboard, and they painted me fat. What did I do? Stop eating. Until I fainted at the entrance of a hospital weighing 37 kg”, recalls Irene.
“All of us, throughout our lives, are going to experience emotionally shocking situations, some of which can be traumatic. Sometimes we are not capable of identifying or coping with them and we develop defense mechanisms that, although in the short term they can help us reduce emotional discomfort, in the long term they have a risk of triggering other problems. Any wound from the past can be healed, as long as we carry out the appropriate treatment”, explains the psychologist at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Laura Blanco.
Living in an environment marked by abuse and mistreatment also implies, according to these studies, a tendency to become desensitized to suffering or the generation of the belief that violence is inevitable, with the emotional implication that this entails in the social relationships. Precociousness and sexual lewdness, in most cases due to low self-esteem and the need for recognition, is another of those indelible traits of school-age bullying,” reveals Mark Jordan, from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
Whether they have a pathological background or not, the victims of bullying will carry, for life, the fears and insecurities that were etched in their bodies and minds during their childhood and adolescence years. There's good news though: that heavy old backpack can always be made lighter. One of the therapies that has proven to be effective for the treatment of psychological trauma is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR), developed by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s.
The theoretical framework on which this therapy is based is the model of adaptive information processing (PAI). This model considers that we have an innate physiological learning system in charge of establishing the necessary connections between memory networks so that new experiences are stored and integrated adaptively into existing networks.
A stressful incident can interfere with this processing, causing the thoughts, images, emotions and bodily sensations associated with that experience to be stored in a maladaptive way. “Thus, even if years have passed since the traumatic event occurred, external stimuli similar to the initial incident can trigger the same bodily sensations, cognitions, feelings, and images as when they first occurred. EMDR therapy allows access to the traumatic components of memory and, through bilateral stimulation, facilitates the association with somatosensory, emotional and cognitive systems that favor the integration of the experience and, consequently, alleviate the clinical symptoms associated with it. In short, what is sought is that the wounds heal well and that, when present stimuli touch said scar, it does not hurt”, explains Laura Blanco, who precisely uses this technique to reprocess experiences of sexual assaults in the special unit of the Hospital Clínic for women who have lived through these excruciating experiences.
“I will always remember Aitana's face, someone who never had enough of harassing me socially and psychologically, making me feel worthless. Now I am a journalist, I have even worked for The Washington Post and she works as a Public Relations with a lot of precariousness and they usually throw her out of the jobs she gets. She periodically sends me press releases and, when I delete them without reading them, I feel empowered”, reveals Luisa, who is also a teacher and closely monitors her students so that there are no cases of bullying that can go unnoticed.
Luisa has worked with other therapies currently in use to combat bullying and is in the process of starting a treatment with MDMA right now in the study phase to combat the effects of post-traumatic stress from even physical aggression. Before her, she has worked with relaxation and breathing techniques because of her high levels of anxiety, and with other techniques such as psychoanalysis and family constellations to forgive the lack of understanding she received from her parents. she. This new treatment with MDMA hopes to be approved soon in Spain thanks to the initiative of the recently established Spanish Society of Psychedelic Medicine.
After a long debate on the effectiveness of regressive therapies to lead the self to an earlier stage and intervene on the focus of the problem, a technique already pointed out by Sigmund Freud himself, the use of these substances seems to have opened a path for an effective intervention. .
Irene knows that she will never be able to overcome what she suffered, but she has learned to live with her pain and all the shortcomings that it has left her. She recently had the courage to face the past and ask one of her stalkers, face to face, why she had ruined her life. She did not receive a request for forgiveness, but she did receive confirmation that her main aggressor knew perfectly well what she did to her when she mistreated her. The inspiration for Irene? Kate Winslet, who at school was called "whale blubber" and one day, upon meeting one of her aggressors, told her: "Thank you for being mean to me, you made me stronger."
Irene, thirty years later, still has a lot to work on in psychotherapy, but she already respects herself and sometimes even values her strengths. The fight continues, but there is always hope that often comes from the courage of other victims, such as Lady Gaga, who created the Born this Way Foundation to raise awareness about the bullying that she herself suffered. As in other ailments, the solution is found in the union between victims and educational and medical help.
