Do bullied children become anxious and depressed adults?: A cross-sectional investigation of the correlates of bullying and anxious depression - PubMed
There is little empirical research examining the historical and clinical correlates of exposure to childhood bullying in adult clinical subjects. Using structured clinical assessments, the authors studied a group of adult males and females presenting to an outpatient depression clinic, to...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Above are just a few of the countless studies(I had to restrain myself from posting more as to keep this relevant) done on how being bullied as a child can cause you to suffer from mental illness as an adult, with perhaps the worst result (for men) being the development of various types of anxiety, particularly social anxiety. Meaning that not only did bullying ruin your childhood and/or adolescence, it might've also ruined your adult life as well.
I think most people, especially women, struggle to understand just how much being pathologically inhibited can absolutely destroy a man's capacity to socialize. If you have social anxiety as a sub 4 man, your life is basically over. Obviously being below average means that you're already going to have a great deal of difficulty with romantic success in the modern west, and more or less eliminates any notion of meeting women online from the equation. But having extreme social anxiety on top of it means that the hope placed in any other manner of trying to find a partner is pretty much gone as well. Even if you muster the courage to approach, involuntary signs of fear or discomfort, both in your facial expression and displayed elsewhere on the body(e.g. trembling hands) will put off women immediately, even those who might've otherwise overlooked your ugliness and given you a chance.
The low self esteem developed over years of repeated bullying likely caused you to isolate yourself, meaning that you have no social circle from which you can meet new people, and that the years of isolation have made it far more difficult for you to even make friends. This is due to a combination of lacking social skills, your very knowledge that they're lacking, and your age sabotaging you since most in your age group have had the same social circles since highschool/college. When you try to insert yourself, you'll be viewed as weird, and it very well might be that you are, as you have very little experience with social encounters, it ultimately becomes a catch 22. All the while your childhood bullies have been accepted and validated countless times as you're rotting.
Also, While I mention men specifically, I don't mean to imply that women can't suffer from similar problems. However the difference lies in how much their lives are impacted. A short look at any forum or subreddit for social anxiety and similar issues will reveal that most of them have friends, boyfriends, and they even go out of their way to mention this(while being showered with support from random people). This is a big part of the reason why some men have difficulty in expressing their issues within these particular online spaces, as they feel like their situation isn't being understood, and possibly feel as if they're being mocked(even though the women in question almost always have no intention of hurting these men in this way).
Although not entirely related to my main point, bullying can also fuck with your brain chemistry, limit your capacity to achieve professional success, and potentially shorten your life.
Impact of Bullying in Childhood on Adult Health, Wealth, Crime and Social Outcomes
Bullying is a serious problem for schools, parents and public policy makers alike. While bullying creates risks of health and social problems in childhood, it is unclear if this risk extends into adulthood. A large cohort of children was assessed for ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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