Carry on Beautiful!

A lot of us experienced bullying at some point in school and know how difficult it is to deal with, but if you’re anything like me you kind of expected it to stop once you left school. Unfortunately, adults love a good bit of bullying too and love coming up with excuses as to what it is they’re doing and why.

Which brings us on to my first point, which is call it what it is. It doesn’t matter if they’re trying to say it’s this or it’s that, if someone is consistently contacting you to lie, harass or upset you, that is bullying. If they’re trying to isolate you from friends and other people, that is bullying. If someone is keeping up with your online content just to be rude, cruel or otherwise make you feel bad in some way it is bullying, and they are a bully. Give it its name and remember that the only person who should ever feel bad, guilty or embarrassed about bullying is the person doing it.

Secondly, do what you feel comfortable doing to avoid it. It doesn’t really bother me any more luckily so I rarely bother blocking people, but if that’s a way for you to avoid someone who is being a bully then that’s something you should consider. Do what you can to avoid having them as a part of your space online and to prevent them from contacting you. Block them, set your accounts to private, whatever it is that you’re comfortable with doing to keep them from hurting you is what you should do.

If you’re like me and don’t really block people often, be sure to make it clear to the bully that you want them to leave you alone. This won’t always make any difference, the situation I’ve recently been in started over a year ago and I told the bully then that I wanted to be left alone by them and wanted nothing to do with them, but they’re still contacting me and letting me know they keep up with my content. I think it’s still important to do just to have the fact that you’ve done it and whatever continues from that point just shows what type of person the bully is.

Now it’s time to move onto how to handle it emotionally, because that can be hard. If my current situation had happened three years ago I’d probably be upstairs in my room crying right now rather than relaxing in my living room writing this. A part of it is growing up and seeing that bullying really is usually more that the person doing it has some issues than that there’s anything wrong with the person they’re bullying and honestly, i feel pretty sorry for the person I’m having issue with because they must be in a really bad place right now and likely have been there for a while.

Thinking about their problems isn’t always going to help when you’re truly hurt or upset by a bully though, so that’s when I’ve always turned to myself and my support system. Everything that’s ever gone down in regards to this loooong ongoing situation I’m in has been screenshotted and sent to my friends who will point out that it’s not true, laugh about the bully and generally cheer me up and make me forget. If you’re thinking you don’t have a support system with which to do this, message me on any social media and I’ll be your new support system ready to hype you up any time I’m not sleeping!

Self care and self confidence are also things that can help you feel a lot better while dealing with a bully. Not only the pretty self care things like baths and face masks but also really working on yourself as a person to be the kindest, most loving and strongest version of yourself there can be. Meditate, do some yoga, read a self help book! Work on your personal growth and you can outgrow the bully, you can outgrow the hurt or anger you might feel from their words and get to a point where you can just roll your eyes at it and wonder if they’ll ever manage to grow up.

Looking after your mental health is also especially important when you’re being bullied, if the bullying is really affecting you mentally please be sure to reach out to someone who can help you, visit your GP and just make sure that you’re safe and doing what you need to do to be safe and happy. If you do visit a doctor, I’d recommend letting them know what it is that’s affecting your mental health too!