“It’s really hard to be hated on when you don’t know who you are yet.” Millie Bobby Brown
“I know that bullying is real and that society does sometimes see highly sensitive kids as sort of less than the ideals that our society puts out there of strength and prowess and achievement.” Psychotherapist Carolina Mariposa
“I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.” Lady Gaga
Bullying was labeled an “Adverse Childhood Experience” (ACE) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017. Cyberbullying Research Center
“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.” Physician Gabor Maté
Therapy “can help you reconnect to or to build your emotional resilience so you can process and heal from childhood bullying.” Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz
- See more quotes and resources below.
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Julie Bjelland, LMFT is a psychotherapist and founder of Sensitive Empowerment, specializing in Highly Sensitive People, Neurodiversity, and Autism in Women.
She announced a new addition to her Community programs:
Supporting Sensitive Children Through Bullying Challenges
“We warmly invite you to our Intuitive Parenting Open Discussion. This session features parenting experts Carol Huckle and Carolina Mariposa, who will offer insights and strategies to navigate the difficulties associated with bullying.”
- Free to members of The Sensitive Empowerment Community.
Learn about “Brain-Training for the Highly Sensitive Person – Techniques to Reduce Anxiety & Overwhelming Emotions” and other online courses for Highly Sensitive People by Julie Bjelland.
Note – “All courses include eight weeks free inside the Sensitive Empowerment Community (for new members). Connect with me and other kind-hearted sensitives, plus access all the events, Meet & Greets, and specialized groups (including groups for the sensitive experiencing Depression, HSPs 60+, and BIPOC & LGBTQ+, Autistic Women’s Group). Plus, access to our HSP library of resources.”
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In her interview article, writer Emily Zemler comments about how much Millie Bobby Brown has been affected by fame and cyberbullying:
Since the first season of Stranger Things premiered in 2016, Millie has become hugely famous.
So famous that she can’t even go shopping without security…and she went to therapy to handle the constant bullying she has faced online.
It’s hard to escape the fact that people are obsessed with everything Millie says and does.
The actor has been inappropriately sexualized for years, something she’s tried her best to ignore, but the effect of trolling and harassment has been severe.
Before she deleted Twitter and TikTok, Millie had been constantly bombarded with hateful messages, angry threats, and even NSFW missives from adult men.
Over the years, Millie has struggled to understand why being herself generates so much vitriol.
“It’s really hard to be hated on when you don’t know who you are yet,” she says.
“So it’s like, ‘What do they hate about me? ’Cause I don’t know who I am.’ It’s almost like, ‘Okay, I’m going to try being this today.’ [And then they say], ‘Oh, no, I hate that.’ ‘Okay. Forget that. I’m going to try being this today.’ ‘Oh, my God! I hate when you do that.’
“Then you just start shutting down because you’re like, ‘Who am I meant to be? Who do they need me to be for them?’
“Then I started to grow more, and my family and friends really helped. It helped to be able to understand that I don’t need to be anything they said that I need to be. I just have to develop within myself. That’s what I did…That’s what I’m doing.”
From article “Millie Bobby Brown’s Year of Healing” By Emily Zemler, Allure Sep 2022.
video: Millie Bobby Brown: “Young people don’t want to be talked about. We want to do the talking” Nov 20, 2019 United Nations
UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Millie Bobby Brown addressed the issue of online bullying. She said, “I am convinced that social media doesn’t have to be a place of fear, bullying and harassment. It can bring people together. It can be a place of love and support.”
Brown continued, “somewhere in the world right now, a teenager girl is being bullied online. She is scared, she’s vulnerable, she feels alone. My message to her is this: you are not alone, there are people who care about you and there are people who would listen if you reach out for help.”
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13 Celebs Who Were Bullied in School Jun 24, 2017 Clevver News
The first artist in the video above is Lady Gaga who was bullied at school, even thrown into a trash can.
She said, “I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.
“I didn’t want to go to class. And I was a straight-A student, so there was a certain point in my high school years where I just couldn’t even focus on class because I was so embarrassed all the time.
“I was so ashamed of who I was.” (2012 New York Times interview.)
These quotes are ones I’ve used in several articles, including Creative People, Trauma and Mental Health.
This image is from another article of mine: Challenged By Being So Smart – Lady Gaga has said she “felt like a freak” in high school, and that she creates music for her fans who want a “freak to hang out with.”
She also said it took her a long time to be okay with how she is, and get beyond needing to fit in or be “like everyone else.” She was identified as a gifted adolescent, and at age 17 achieved early admission to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
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An article on the Cyberbullying Research Center site points out:
”Bullying, widely considered a form of school violence, often occurs as a stressor that over time can have traumatic effects.
“Indeed, bullying was labeled an “Adverse Childhood Experience” (ACE) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017, and has been strongly and consistently linked (as is the case with many other ACEs) to poor outcomes later in life.
“Apart from the harm, what seems to be most important is the repetitive nature of bullying and cyberbullying because it disrupts trust in oneself, others, and the world. One study showed that the level of frequency of exposure to bullying is the greatest factor in predicting level of trauma.”
From article Trauma, Bullying, and Cyberbullying.
What is trauma?
Dr Gabor Maté is a physician and educator in addiction, childhood trauma and mind-body health.
He explains in an interview:
“The origin of the word ‘trauma’ is the Greek for ‘wound’. Trauma is a wound. How I think about it is that if I wounded you, if I cut your flesh, the healing would involve scar tissue forming.
“If the wound was great enough, you’d get a big scar, and it would be without nerve endings so you wouldn’t feel, and it would be much less flexible than your normal tissue.
“Trauma is when there is a loss of feeling and there is a reduced flexibility in responding to the world. This is a response to a wound.”
From interview article “Dr Gabor Maté on Childhood Trauma, The Real Cause of Anxiety and Our ‘Insane’ Culture,” HumanWindow.
He has also explained:
“Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically and then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you’re acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you’re acting out of fear.”
Along with other trauma specialists, he notes that a specific experience, such as childhood abuse or workplace bullying, is not so much the issue in itself, it’s more a matter of how we respond.
“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.”
See videos and more comments by experts, and artists including Sia, Mona Haydar, Jamie Lee Curtis, Alanis Morissette, Jewel and others, in my article How to recover from trauma – The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series.
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One kind of trauma many of us experience is bullying
Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts. She notes in an article of hers:
Many highly creative people have been bullied as kids. Are you one of them?
Perhaps you loved singing, writing poems, dancing, making fashion, or being innovative in other ways as a child.
When you were young, you invested in yourself fully in a creative endeavor.
Those early years were the foundation of the creative life and work you enjoy today.
Though these aspirations brought you joy, they also made you the target of bullies who made fun of, mocked, or ridiculed you.
You felt humiliated, alone, and scared.
In some cases, bullying can leave a lasting legacy of depression, anxiety, or PTSD.
A Psychotherapy Approach Called EMDR Can Help
In my clinical experience, I have found that many adults can trace their current emotional challenges back to being bullied as children.
Being bullied is traumatic and can have long-lasting effects on you.
Therapy “can help you reconnect to or to build your emotional resilience so you can process and heal from childhood bullying.”
- See more in her article What To Do When You Can’t Leave Childhood Bullying Behind
Also see more quotes by Dr Holtz, other therapists, and artists in article How Dealing With Intense Emotions and Trauma Can Release Our Creativity.
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More comments by actors and others
Zooey Deschanel recalls “Seventh grade was horrible. I was teased relentlessly because I was chubby. Then in the summer I lost all this weight, and all of a sudden everybody liked me.
“It was weird, because then I didn’t trust anybody. … But I’m actually oddly thankful for a lot of these things, because when I was really teased and tortured and all these things, it made me really ambitious.
“It made me work hard. Friends weren’t something that I could rely on, but my love for performing was always a constant.” [Mean mag. 3/4.2001]
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Evan Rachel Wood recalls getting beat up in elementary school for being an actor:
“I think it was because my SAG card fell out of my bag, and [the kids] asked what it was and I explained to them, and no more than ten minutes later I was getting spit on and slammed on the ground. By a boy!
“In junior high, the teachers were worse than the kids. They had it in their minds that if you’re an actor you’re spoiled and stuck up and you always get your way, so they wanted to give me the hardest time they possibly could.
“They knew that you have to keep up a certain grade point average to get your work permit. They would say in front of the class, ‘You know, you can’t be an actor if I give you a bad grade.’ So my mom pulled me out, and I did home school.” [Premiere Magazine premiere.com October 2006]
The Image is from article How Dealing With Intense Emotions and Trauma Can Release Our Creativity.
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Lily Cole gained acclaim as a model, is an ambassador for the Body Shop, an actor (“Snow White and the Huntsman”), and achieved the academic honor of a Double First in History of Art from Cambridge University.
She comments, “I was bullied because I have red hair, although actually, I think I was bullied because some kids bully sensitive children.
“I was of the type who gets bullied rather than the one who does the bullying, which I’m glad about. I’d rather be that than a bully.”
From post: Lily Cole and gifted kids being bullied.
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Alexa Vega says she was bullied “a little in my freshman year for being an actress and starring in ‘Spy Kids.’ Someone even poured soda on me! My sister went through worse. She’d come home crying every day from girls tormenting her to her face or over instant messenger. She was quiet about it at first, but she finally opened up to my family for help.
“My advice is to talk to somebody about it, and figure out a way together to deal with the issue. Don’t hide and say it will go away. It usually won’t. You have to confront the situation.” [Lifetime TV interview]
Delta Burke wrote in her memoir, “Because I was so shy, I was easy to bully and wasn’t a good fighter. And sometimes that would come back to slap me in the face.”
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One of the more common “excuses” for bullying is that some insecure kids [and adults] resent anyone who is exceptional, such as being creatively gifted and talented.
“Childhood bullying is something that a lot of multipotentialites seem to have experienced (apparently when you do origami at recess and play violin in an orchestra, other kids think you’re weird…)” – From post: Building Your Confidence from Scratch (a Personal Confession) By Emilie Wapnick.
Although often destructive to confidence and self esteem, the experience can have positive results for some people, as noted in a few of the quotes above.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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