Healing from a mental trauma: A CASE STUDY Anonymous
All Images in article: Bonnie hyatt - Flower sketch 40
CONTENT WARNING: ABUSE, STALKING, BULLYING, MENTAL TRAUMA I have been bullied and stalked. Unfortunately, like so many others. However, unlike many others, the institution I turned to for support listened to my complaints and helped me resolve them. It felt amazing, and I want to share this to help people, and highlight the importance of feminist movements. It took me about a year to realise that what I had experienced was bullying, and to name it for what it is. These insignificant actions that occurred over the course of a year or so, and the mental health damage they did was lying right in front of my eyes, but I couldn’t see it for a long time. The irony is that I even had the special-feminist-reality-decoding-glasses on my nose! For some reason, they would not operate when I looked at myself in the mirror. I think this was the first element that puzzled me: the inability to recognise processes affecting myself, even when I was well aware of them in general. This fact alone probably explains half of the unreported cases of bullying that occur. We’re unable to recognise it happening to ourselves! Maybe friends or colleagues who know about the situation can help point it out, but often they won’t have any idea of what we are going through. We do not mention all of it because each action taken individually is truly insignificant. This is the power of bullying: making legal, nonserious actions, and repeating them over time. If offering to go out for a drink to your colleague is not an offence; offering several times a week, for months, when she (or maybe he!) has shown a lack of interest, or even clearly refused it, and has a deteriorating mental health, that is an offence! Thankfully laws exist to describe and punish such behaviour.
