Bullying and other trauma can deeply impact us. How can we recover?

“It’s really hard to be hated on when you don’t know who you are yet.” Millie Bobby Brown

“I like to behave like an actor or how I thought an actor was supposed to be and that apparently provoked a lot of people into hitting me." Robert Pattinson

“I had some terrible, abusive experiences in the dark as a child. And I became afraid of the dark until I was 28 years old…I found EMDR therapy very effective…it truly removed the emotion that was linked to the traumatic memory or thought process.” Jameela Jamil

Bullying was labeled an “Adverse Childhood Experience” (ACE) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017. Cyberbullying Research Center

Adverse Childhood Experiences "can give us the message that I am not okay." Donna Jackson Nakazawa

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

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This audio is an AI-generated "podcast conversation" and summary of this article. (Created by Google's NotebookLM AI tool.)

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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.

“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.

“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?’ …

She adds, “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..

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Musician and actor Lady Gaga 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.)

(At age 17 she achieved early admission to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. See related post: Lily Cole and gifted kids being bullied.)

These quotes are ones I’ve used in several articles, including Creative People, Trauma and Mental Health.

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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.”

But, she adds, 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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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.

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Continued below with quotes by Dr Gabor Maté, Jameela Jamil (also podcast episode), Robert Pattinson, Zooey Deschanel, Evan Rachel Wood.

Also:

*video of Millie Bobby Brown addressing the United Nations on the issue of online bullying,

*link to class by psychotherapist Carolina Mariposa on "Supporting Sensitive Children Through Bullying Challenges.”

*podcast episode with Donna Jackson Nakazawa