Frequently Asked Questions

Hi there, I get asked a lot of great questions when I do my presentations in schools and thought it might be an idea to publish answers to the ones i seem to get asked the most. I hope you find it useful!

Rob Higgs (7th January 2008)

- - - - - - - - - - -

Have you seen the people who bullied you since you left school?
Yes, but not for a number of years. Shortly before i left for University i saw one of them coming towards me in the street. For a split second i kind of froze and it felt like i was fifteen again and being bullied at school. But only for a split second. Then i just walked towards him, looking him in the eyes. He didn’t bother me. I remember feeling wary, which was markedly different to how i felt when i was scared. By then i’d recovered a lot of confidence and i had all this anger to call on that made me feel pretty safe. I’d stopped thinking like the victim. I actually looked him in the eye knowing that if he tried to bully me in anyway he had no right to do that and i felt confident enough to do something or say something back.

What would you do if that bully walked in here now?
I’d be friendly to him unless he wasn’t friendly to me. I don’t feel angry at those who bullied me anymore. I don’t want to confront them or hurt them or hear them say sorry. I understand what a weak thing it is to bully. I don’t want to hit them or fight them now (and i never did in the first place). I feel i’m in a position of understanding them. And when you understand bullies you take away a huge amount of their so called power because you no longer turn inward, you no longer think ‘why’s this happening, what have i done, why are they doing this to me?’

You get so strong in your mind that you don’t doubt yourself. You project it back at them if it happens and you immediately think, ‘what am i going to do to stop this? I’m not letting this happen to me again.’ I can think back to my late teens and remember seeing some of the bullies out on the town and i remember some of the little things they did, a facial expression, an aspect of body language. And i noticed them, understood them and rather than intimidate me they just made me smile - almost laugh. When you understand what someone is trying to do, however subtle, you just see it as pathetic, weak and laughable. That’s how i feel about people who bully. My anger at them has gone. Bullying was a very traumatic experience i went through at school. But it’s only one experience in my life, I don’t want to define myself by it. I’ve had loads of other experiences that were and are great. Bullying is all in the past. It feels like a lifetime ago. Very surreal to think about how down I was. I have developed myself so much.

Do you think some of the bullies have read your book or heard you on the radio? Do you think they know you talk about bullying?
It’s possible they might have done. I honestly don’t know.Perhaps they wouldn’t remember me. I think you always remember the people who’ve hurt you, but the bullies never remember the people they hurt. I wish all of them the very best. I hope they’re happy and doing great things. I hope they’ve grown as people. I hope they no longer bully. I wish them well. All of them.

How do you stop someone bullying you?
Ideally you would answer them back assertively the very first time they tested the water, but it doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes you can let things go, give people the benefit of the doubt and before you realise it’s happened four or five times. Once bullying gathers momentum it becomes more and more difficult to stop. The earlier you can take action to stop the bully the better. I know from experience that allowing it to continue and develop into an abusive bully/victim relationship can cause you a lot of harm emotionally.

I’ve found that overcoming bullying is really about you, not the bully. It’s about developing confidence in yourself by identifying and facing up to your own fears. I was very afraid of speaking to people, so to develop my confidence and learn to cope with it I got a job where I had to speak to people eight hours a day. The first week I worked was horrible – very daunting, but within two weeks I couldn’t believe I’d been so scared of it. It was easy! It was only my fear telling me I couldn’t do it. The moment I challenged that by facing up to it, I found out that I could. You can cope with the things that scare you. You can overcome bullying. You just have to summon up all that anger, be brave and take that first step to confront it.

It’s a process of helping yourself, which builds massive confidence and of allowing other people to help you. You should always talk about bullying, don’t bottle it up and keep it a secret. Bullies thrive on secrecy because at some level they know that what they are doing is wrong and that if the right people found out they would be stopped. Talk to the right people – your parents, your friends, your favourite teacher, the PSHE or Anti-Bullying co-ordinator in your school. Just talking about it will make you braver. Sometimes in life we encounter problems we struggle to deal with on our own. There’s no shame in telling or in asking for help and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

Sometimes you tell the teachers and they don’t do anything. What should i do?
Be persistent. Don’t give up. I do hear about this a lot and my advice is always the same. If one adult doesn’t listen, is dismissive, says they will help and then doesn’t, then go and tell someone else. Tell the headteacher if you have to. Keep telling until you are taken seriously. You have the right to be listened to. Your school has a duty to stop other pupils bullying you. Never lose sight of the fact that what bullies are doing is wrong. It’s not your fault, but you can change it. You should feel angry about being bullied – it’s wrong, bullying is not normal or something you should ever accept. Use that anger. Be determined and keep telling until the bullying is stopped. In the meantime, think of ways you can build your confidence and help yourself.

Why do you think you got bullied? Did you ever work it out?
The simple answer is that I got bullied because I let people bully me, but in truth it was more complicated that that. I was first bullied aged five and I went into a victim state at that age and learnt to revert to that state whenever I was bullied. It was behaviour I learned because I didn’t know what else to do. I think I had a lot of fear at school and bullies were able to see that and capitalise on it. All bullies are really is a representation of your own fears. Bullies expose and mirror your fear and use it to hurt you. When you overcome your fear you grow as a person and you take away all their power.

Do you still have nightmares about the bullying?
Not now, but I did when I was going through it. Bullies would crop up in my dreams quite a lot and it was always frightening. It really shows how big an impact bullying has on people, how it seeps into every part of their life. But I don’t have nightmares about it today. I’m much happier with life now!

How did you stop the bullying in the end?
It was really a process of thinking about what I’d been through and developing an understanding of the ways bullies work. That made me feel so much better. When I was struggling to regain my confidence and someone would occasionally bully me I was able to understand what they were trying to do and why. I could see for the first time in my life how weak they were for doing it and that made me feel stronger by comparison.

For me it was a long process, I didn’t recover overnight. It was a very long, very traumatic and frightening experience and you need time to recover from things like that. But I do remember that I got very angry one day and decided I wanted to be happy and live a braver life and no longer be bullied. I got sick of being so scared all the time so I made myself face up to my fears. I started talking and socialising again and making plans for my future, setting goals. Life became exciting again and I became very determined to do all the things I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to do great things and not waste anymore time being down and unhappy. It was that determination that pushed me through some very uncomfortable feelings and really helped me to grow. I’m still growing as a person now, I always will be because I like to challenge myself.

Why didn’t you tell your parents you were being bullied?
I felt ashamed. Shame is part of the victim state. As an adult it’s easy to forget how frightening bullying is when you’re at school. It’s easy to forget how brave the children are who tell because bullying is so distressing. I felt like I deserved to be bullied in the end because I’d been told I deserved it so often and had stopped trying to challenge it. In situations where I needed to protect myself I was frozen with fear. I started to bully myself by putting myself down and allowing all these negative thoughts to dominate. My victim state made bullying very hard to challenge and much easier to endure and accept. But going through each day with a grimace is no way to live your life. I wish I had told my parents because I know now they would have helped me.

- - -