Lessons Of An Angry Young Man

2nd June 2003

Years as a victim of bullies gave me a big enough store of anger to last me a lifetime. Every incident, every insult, every challenge to fight that I walked away from and every punch landing on my face that went unanswered all added to that store. I was too much under the control of my fear of fighting to fight back and too habituated as a victim to say a word to my detractors. Anger is just energy and as energy it has to have somewhere to go, it has to be used in some way. Unfortunately for me as I couldn’t express it i kept it all inside and suppressed it. I left it there bubbling away, wearing me down and turning my expression to a permanent frown. At the time I didn’t understand this and began to use the anger store to beat myself up, I added power to the bully’s attacks by bullying myself, talking to myself very negatively. I became angrier every time I walked away with insults ringing in my ears, angry with myself for not standing up to them. Every night after school I’d be lying on my bed at home replaying the bullying over and over in my mind. I’d watch it all back; see the kid who insulted me stood in front of me. I’d see him clearly, hear him threaten me again. And everytime I’d watched with satisfaction as my punches smashed his nose all over his fat f****g face and hammered the admiring onlookers who stood round laughing. I battered them all, in my head, every night...

I thought it was helping at the time but it was only adding to my anger. Each visualization I had felt totally real, I felt all the fear, nervous tension and rage that goes with it. When I was hitting him I was really there, it was real and I repeated it over and over for about half an hour. I was getting an extra half hour every night of these angry feelings, stoking them up and it was only doing me harm inside. In the end after turning the anger on myself I entered a deep depression and started fantasising about something even more serious than violent revenge, I started thinking about my own death and the various ways in which I could bring this about. It’s fascinating to me to look back to the mindset I had at that time because I can now see, quite clearly that the way out of it for me was learning to use my anger. I had to learn to get it out of myself and physically use the anger as energy to help myself. I put a massive amount of it into my GCSE exams (for more detailed description please refer to my book What Have I Ever Done To You?)

After giving up playing rugby and football for the school and club teams I also put a huge amount of energy into individual sports. I played a lot of golf; I did a lot of weight training. I used all the negative influences around me and turned them into positives. When one of the bullies laughed at my lack of muscular development compared to his in PE one day I took all the anger he gave me and used it in my weight training. I started putting all my energy into each session rather than just playing around with the weights. I trained several times a week with my best friend at the time and we both had the same desire to push ourselves and enjoy it. We both kept getting stronger and always had our eyes on the next heaviest weight. We increased it incrementally as we got stronger and it was great to have someone with you pushing you on when you were getting tired. Some muscle groups responded quickly to the training and some took longer but I enjoyed it all. A lot of times my muscles were sore for days after a session but I loved it and what’s more, I was getting lots of the anger out of me. I was always scared when I progressed to a heavier barbell or heavier set of dumbbells and the thought that I wouldn’t be able to lift it always came in to my head. But I used my anger again and pushed it out again, I saw the bully standing behind me laughing, I heard his insults in my head and every single time that heavier weight went up! Very soon I started to see the progress in the mirror, that lessened my anger and started building my self esteem back up.

Training is great in that respect as it’s very hard to still feel angry when you’ve pushed yourself to exhaustion squatting a barbell or hammering a punchbag. The mistake i made initially was to turn all my anger inwards on myself, when I started to express it physically in a way that helped me and increased my esteem life started to get better. And from those lessons I’ve kept going, I still train very hard, I still push myself and wear myself out. Nowadays it’s more a case of needing to get my stress out rather than anger but I still do it and I still love it.

As a victim of bullying you should feel anger, bullying is a crime against a person. As the victim, it’s a crime against you; a crime that left unchallenged could potentially ruin your life. To come out of it you need to use that anger in ways that will help you. Use it to push your fear away, to summon your courage and ask for help. Use it to develop your confidence, put it into your schoolwork, into the talents you want to develop, into kicking these bullies and their destructive influence out of your life. Whatever you do, use anger to help yourself, don’t turn it inward and bully yourself as that will only lead to depression. Do your utmost not to project your anger in a way that will harm innocent others as this will only give you negative returns.

Negative Returns:

There is a price to pay for using your anger in the way, as negative returns I think you’ll agree that the following qualify:

• Police visits/legal proceedings
• Expulsion/suspension from school
• A punch back in your face
• Loss of a friend

So use your anger to help yourself, to achieve positive things: an end to the bullying, increased confidence and esteem. Anger is just energy that at one time or another we all have, use it positively and a happier life will be yours.