Dear Lea:

You are welcome! You were definitely a victim of School Bullying, I started a thread on the topic and posted in it today, you can see the title on the current page listing the topics.

It hurts a child a whole lot to be locked in a closet, to have things thrown at, to be fat shamed, to be excluded, isolated, all the things that were done to you in middle school. And you suffered the consequences: anxiety, an eating disorder, loneliness, lack of motivation, excessive people pleasing, etc.

In your original post, you wrote the sentence that caught my eye: “I always play victim, a quality I completely despise in myself. I can gaslight myself into believing anything. But it’s always poor me. Ugh.” It sounds like something someone told you in anger, an exasperated parent perhaps, saying something like, poor you, Lea, playing the victim! Ugh! 

I asked you, based on your sentence (boldfaced above), in what ways were you truly a victim, and you answered: “it sort of makes me uncomfortable because I genuinely don’t feel I have any reason to feel like a victim“.

It sounds to me, again, like it is something someone told you, a parent perhaps (could be a teacher, or another adult in a position of authority), something like, you have no reason to feel like a victim, poor you… ugh!

(That would make you feel uncomfortable to think about or talk about being any kind of victim).

I went to an earlier post, looking for that adult in authority who told you these things. Here is what I found: “My dad… One time he told me to shut up because he wasn’t interested to hear the garbage coming out of my mouth” –

– that would make you feel uncomfortable to say anything that people might disagree with. It explains this: “I tend to just agree with whatever they say because I don’t want to upset them” – you don’t want people to tell you that what you say is garbage.

“(father) just calls me moody or sensitive… My parents…  say things like ‘that’s how people are’ ‘the world is selfish’ etc.” – it sounds like they are saying that (1) your hurt feelings are not the result of being victimized (ex., by school bullies), but a result of some character defect (being moody or sensitive), (2) you cannot be a victim because if you were, then everyone is a victim because everyone in the world is selfish, etc.

“Just to clear stuff up here: My parents aren’t bad people. They both support my sister in every hobby she takes up…” – it’s just that when they are upset and/ or very tired, particularly your father (because he works such long, long hours), they say things that hurt your feelings?

anita