20d • 🤬 Bullying
The Body Keeps the Score
When someone is repeatedly targeted by bullying, their nervous system never truly switches off. They walk into school, into work, or into their own home with a quiet sense of anticipation: “Is it going to happen again today?” That level of vigilance shows up in the body long before the mind catches it.
A child who suddenly gets “mystery stomachaches” every morning.
A child who used to be expressive becomes flat.
A teenager who can’t sleep, wakes up exhausted, or constantly says they feel sick.
An adult who used to be confident becomes hesitant.
An adult partner who collapses on the couch every night, not from physical labour but from the invisible strain of “holding it together.”
Someone you love starts apologising too quickly, withdrawing too easily, doubting themselves far too often.
If someone is criticised enough, they eventually internalise the voice. If someone is rejected enough, they begin to self-reject before anyone else can do it to them.
Depression, anxiety, panic, intrusive thoughts, don’t appear out of nowhere. They’re often born from long stretches of “enduring” what no one should have to endure. Chronic stress weakens immunity, drains energy and chips away at health in ways that look unrelated until you zoom out and see the pattern. Bullying doesn’t just hurt feelings it injures the body trying to survive it.
One of the hardest things for parents and partners to witness is the slow, quiet disappearance of someone who is hurting. Victims often pull back from social circles, not because they don’t want connection, but because connection suddenly feels dangerous.
For a child, this might look like staying in their room, avoiding team sports, or suddenly dropping a hobby they once loved.
For adults, it looks like turning down invitations, avoiding work social events, closing off emotionally, preferring isolation over the risk of being hurt again
Isolation feels safe in the short term… but it deepens the wound in the long term.
It creates a loop: “I’m alone because I’m not good enough” which creates deeper isolation, which reinforces their belief.
Bullying destroys focus and the fear interrupts learning. A depressed or anxious mind cannot perform the way it used to, and yet we often respond to these changes with pressure instead of curiosity.
When a child suddenly wants to stay home, or when an adult starts dreading work, it’s easy to label it as laziness, attitude, or lack of resilience. But very often, it’s just self-protection.
As parents and adults, our job isn’t to solve every social problem, but it's to create an environment where someone feels safe enough to speak, supported enough to stand up for themselves, and valued enough to start recovering from it.
Sometimes the most powerful intervention is a question asked gently at the right moment: “You don’t seem like yourself lately. Talk to me. What’s going on?”
Bullying isn’t a phase. It's not a rite of passage. it's not something people can just “get over.”
It is an emotional injury that deserves the same seriousness we give to physical harm.
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The Body Keeps the Score
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