what bullying can do to your mental health

A lot of people are bullied at some point in their life, in a variety of ways and for many different reasons. There are different forms of bullying including, but not limited to: emotional, physical, cyber, social, and verbal, but the point is, they can all negatively affect your mental health. 

I was bullied on a regular basis from the age of eight up until the age of thirteen, even now I sometimes get bullied, I got called fat quite a lot, people would make fun of me for acting a certain way or liking certain things, I was even ignored by my friends for two years in primary school. I think that being bullied definitely had a negative effect on my mental health. I stopped doing my favourite activities, which at the time were singing, dancing and karate, I stopped eating as much as I usually did, I stopped talking about the things I liked and I started acting differently around certain people. I still do these things sometimes without even realising, because of how long I had been doing these things for, in order to try and escape the bullying. 

Some more things that bullying may do to your mental health include:
• Increase stress levels
• Cause a change in sleeping pattern
• Increased feelings of sadness or loneliness
• More likely to develop Anxiety or depression 
• Decreased academic achievements for example, lower test scores, less participation in activities in school. 
• May start bullying others as a way to retaliate
• Extremely knock self confidence 

No one deserves to be bullied, but if you are, please tell someone, don't suffer in silence like I did for so many years, it may seem scary, but it is better to tell someone and get the bullying to stop than to let the bully get to you. Whatever you do though, don't retaliate, because it may make the situation worse. Most bullies are looking for a reaction, so try not to give them what they want. I you need someone to talk to, the team at TWE are always here to talk to. Just remember to stay strong. I promise, it does get better, the bullying will stop eventually. It may not seem like it at the time, but you will get through this. 
-Alex