Are You Still Bullied? The Childhood Scars Adults Unknowingly Mask

Did you know that people:

• Shoot in schools
• Act abusively toward their wives and children
• Join crime gangs
• Get involved in substance abuse
• Take their own lives
• At the very least, experience deep-seated trauma for the rest of their lives

… all primarily because of one shared reason? What vice could be so bad?

Bullying. Yes, it’s that bad. The supporting global reports and studies are just as bad.

Major international reports indicate that roughly one-third of all adolescents worldwide have experienced bullying within their schools.

When looking across broader global studies, the data reveal a pooled prevalence rate of over 30%.

In the specific case of cyberbullying, around two-thirds of children worldwide report an increase in online abuse.

You might be asking yourself at least one of these questions:

1. Is anyone safe?
2. Why do bullies bully?
3. Was there something inherently wrong with me that made me a target?
4. Did the playground teach me to shrink myself just to stay safe?
5. Why am I still over-explaining myself or constantly apologizing as an adult?

Considering the title likely caught your attention, you may be wondering one more question: What is masking?

First off, masking. Is it just plain and simple as hiding your pain behind some other emotion? Much, much worse.

An involuntary mechanism, meaning you don’t get to decide whether you should hide the pain yourself.

An unwilling and forced sacrifice of your actual self just for the sake of survival.

A coping mechanism that is meant to protect you, but does more harm than good.

What is it? It’s the unconscious survival armor you built as a child that now functions as an adult straightjacket, plus a psychological erasure of your true self.

And I, for one, still deal with it today at a relatively mature age of 27. To make matters worse, I spent most of my life fighting my own brain, only discovering my ADHD last year.

So I truly and sincerely get you. You are not alone. And believe me, you and I are not alone. Several other adults with or without ADHD are going through exactly this cruel phenomenon of masking right, possibly considering ending their own lives.

If you are reading this right now and feeling that heavy weight, know that your presence here means you are still fighting for a way out. There are answers to this pain, and you and I are going to confront them together. No more waiting; let’s get started.

Is Anyone Safe?

Do we really have to answer this question? We are not even remotely safe. We live in a world where if you successfully tackle physical bullying, online predators are hiding behind the keyboard, experiencing no consequences. Did you know that nearly 46% of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 have experienced some form of online harassment or cyberbullying?

While that’s the majority part of bullying that everyone experiences, the school and the internet are not the only two places. Your residency, the sports facility you went to as a kid, marketplaces, and, in fact, almost every single place you go to has bullies. Except, of course, your safe havens that are more like mental heavens.

And all these places, in one way or another, can add to a level of trauma that cannot be resolved, sometimes even contributing to suicide.

Why do Bullies Bully?

If everything that you read so far proves that bullying is this bad, or maybe worse, why is it still so common? Why do bullies still exist? Most importantly, what drives those bullies to do this vice without thinking twice? Every action has a reason, and so does bullying.

People generally consider bad parenting to be the root cause of bullying. However, that’s not always the case. While bad parenting does contribute to bullying in several cases, it also contributes to kids getting bullied.

So, what is it? Several factors. While I can’t discuss all of them, I can list the most important ones:

• The Desire for High Self-Esteem: Bullies don’t always hide their low self-esteem, but many of them have high social status, exercising it. They recognize early on that social groups operate on hierarchies.
• The Dopamine Loop of Power: Exerting control over another living being releases a massive spike of dopamine and adrenaline. For someone who lacks control over their own life, the act of making another person cower, cry, or clear the hallway is an instant, intoxicating high.
• Lack of Empathy: Parenting does play a part. If a child’s parents are emotionally absent or abusive, they project their helplessness outward. At extreme, they reframe their emotional numbness and cruelty as a joke, or convince themselves the victim deserved it. “He’s too weird anyway.”

While physical or overt bullying is often associated with boys, relational and psychological bullying, frequently seen among groups of girls, can be far more destructive.

Girls know that they are not physically capable of fighting boys. But they are far more aware of their emotions compared to boys. So they weaponize this ability.

Instead of being upfront and direct, they use their “whisper network” to degrade you. They whisper your personal secrets behind your back, ridicule you anonymously, and laugh at you for no reason at all, shattering your confidence on a subconscious level.

Reasons? The same. Then why do they react differently? Because society has conditioned boys and girls differently. We raise boys to be more physically capable, while raising girls to be more emotionally aware.

Why Was I the Target?

Acting in a specific “nerdy,” “geeky,” or “dorky” way doesn’t necessarily mean you are the target. In many cases, if you fall into the girl bully trap, that is rarely their criteria. Even among boys, you might escape bullying as a nerd.

However, while there are multiple contributors, the bullies have one definitive criterion: you can’t defend yourself.

Will the bully ever target you if they know you have trained in any discipline of either martial arts or combat sports? Will they ever target you if they sense a strong background and parental support, with parents willing to do anything to protect you? No, they won’t. They try their best to avoid people capable of injuring them, and more importantly, those who can shatter their reputation.

Was the Playground Responsible for This?

So it’s clear that bullies don’t choose their target based on their looks, but on how defenseless they are. That leaves a question. Did the playground teach me to shrink myself just to stay safe? Absolutely. However, while the playground provided the threat, your childhood brain was the one to react.

Trauma is a deeply personal, neurobiological reaction. It isn’t just a memory of what happened to you. It is a structural remodeling of how your brain perceives safety. When a child is trapped in a hostile environment without protection, their threat-detection system becomes rewired to remain constantly alert.

Simply put, the trauma isn’t the playground itself. It is the survival script your brain internalized to keep you alive back then. A script that your subconscious mind is still blindly running today.

Why am I Still Traumatized?

See, that’s the cruelest thing about trauma. Unless you had a strong support system to buffer the blow when it happened, it structurally changes how you operate. And even if you do find safety later in life, the echoes of that survival mode are always quietly waiting in the background, ready to resurface the moment a modern-day stressor triggers your old defenses.

What Do I Do?

What do you do then? How do you deal with it? Sit in the corner and avoid people in general? Do nothing about it? Blame the oppressors for the rest of your life? No. There is no problem in the world without a solution, and bullying-induced trauma is no exception.

First, do the obvious. Learn how to fight, both physically and verbally. In contrast, while it would be better to escape the conflict, learn how to de-escalate verbally. Additionally, there is always a chance that verbal conflict will escalate into a physical altercation.

To counter that, fortify your body physically by going to a strength training gym. Additionally, enroll in any of the combat sport training clubs, ideally boxing, for its emphasis on fundamentals. While Muay Thai is great because it trains both your hands and legs, boxing is ideal because most bullies aren’t disciplined enough to fight professionally.

The Actual Solution

However, that’s not going to heal your childhood trauma. So where does the solution lie? It exists in the same brain that makes your body tremble when passing people with that specific energy.

We must understand what happens to your brain in that specific situation. Yes, you are physically an adult now. But when you experience that specific energy, whether passing through a group of boys or girls, your body recalls the specific trauma from that age and starts acting like that automatically.

How do we protect ourselves then? By utilizing somatic self-therapy. You faced the trauma as a child. Now you aren’t one. You are a grown-up adult.

Therefore, tell your nervous system that you aren’t a child anymore. Additionally, try to confront physical sensations like trembling or tightness in a safe zone as much as possible. This way, you’ll be able to overtake the fear and trauma more easily.

That’s exactly why I suggested learning how to fight on your own, both verbally and physically. Training in a full-contact combat sport like boxing or Muay Thai doesn’t just prepare you physically. It also trains your nervous system for a healthy threat detection habit if it sees a potential conflict. Even if you never have to throw a single punch in the real world, that physical training completely flips the script on your childhood helplessness.

Additional Suggestions

While that’s all you need to do, some additional activities and changes might help you heal even better:

• Take therapy sessions if needed. Healing from trauma depends upon how you actively try to heal it. However, a second hand is needed if healing is not fully in your grasp.
• Don’t overexplain or needlessly apologize. A child over-explains to keep an unpredictable aggressor calm. An adult states their position clearly and behaves like an authority.
• Identify the mask you wear. Is it your obsessive perfectionism, believing that mistakes invite bullies? Is it your assumption that relying on others leaves you exposed to betrayal? Scan the environment, and remove the mask when necessary.
• Don’t walk with naivety. Walk with relaxed shoulders, a neutral gaze, and an overall authoritative and positive demeanor. Bullies watch when you walk with slouched shoulders, a lowered gaze, and an overall timid demeanor.

Healing from Trauma is Your Action to Take

One thing is clear. Getting bullied in any way was not and never will be in your control, but healing from that trauma is your action to take. Additionally, your past does not define your present and future, and only if you take the right action will you truly stand on your own feet.

So first, stop blaming your fate for the life you’ve been living. I have been cursing my fate both as an ADHD and a prime target for bullies for nearly a decade. I sincerely do not recommend falling into that pit of despair. Once I realized my life’s trajectory is in my hands and my actions would define my level of happiness or grief, everything changed.

If someone has the right to curse fate and existence for their crappy life, that would be neurodivergents. However, that is not the excuse. Your life is more valuable and meaningful than you think. Your past doesn’t define your fate.

Therefore, fortify your mental and physical walls. Set boundaries. Limit exposure to bad people and environments. Most importantly, be yourself.

Parting Prayers

I will part away with some honest prayers. I hope that you find the peace you’ve been looking for. I hope you become the most wonderful human you’ve ever met. Lastly, I hope that you find the meaning and purpose of your life, and be the light that heals you and others around you. Stay blessed and live a good life.