This piece is part of our PANpov series — firsthand stories from employees about unique experiences they bring to integrated marketing, PR and communications. Read more.
When I look back at my childhood, specifically in school, I can’t recall a time when I wasn’t bullied.
I remember feeling anxious every time my parents dropped me off at school. Would anyone let me sit with them at lunch or play with me at recess? Would they throw things at me? Almost every day I felt stressed and afraid, with several school days ending in tears and vows of NEVER returning.
This memory sticks out most:
It’s lunch time in the fourth grade. I’m nine years old. I walk into the school cafeteria and see a table of girls from my class. I take the last empty chair. 5 seconds later, everyone at the table stands up, grabs their lunch, and moves to the table next to us.
I feel everyone’s eyes boring into my back. I sit there, eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, willing myself not to cry. After a few moments — moments that feel like a millennia — some other girls from my class come sit with me.
I’d never felt more relieved, but at the same time, I was nervous and wary. The same group of girls who had come to sit with me had just the day before told me I couldn’t play with them at recess because I wasn’t pretty.
Different day, different people, same bullying.
Somewhere between the end of 7th grade and high school, I found my voice and learned to stand up for myself. A loving family and a few best friends who always had my back were major contributors. However, I needed to heal. I felt a lot of anger. Both towards the other students who bullied me, but also at the adults who hadn’t done anything about it.
In a way, being angry helped me find my voice and become my own advocate, but it also made me into a bully of sorts as well. In high school, and even carrying over into college, I could be mean. If I perceived anyone as being the slightest bit unkind to someone else, my initial reflex was to attack their confidence… like mine had been.
Leaving college and entering the workforce was a sobering experience. It was barely two years after the ’08 crash and the job market was a volatile place. I held job after job with nightmare manager after nightmare manager. Bullying showed its ugly face again, and choosing to advocate for myself might mean losing my job and not being able to pay rent. Nothing felt secure, and I craved a role that would bring growth opportunities and the possibility of longevity with a company.
I’ve learned to guide from a place of understanding and that the way people act towards me, or react to me, quite often has very little to do with me.
This time, though, I had the experience of my past to draw on and chose to let empathy and compassion be the guide instead of getting angry. It wasn’t the easy choice. When someone attacks our work or our character the knee jerk reaction is to defend ourselves, and matching someone else’s anger with your own is often a good short term defense, but it doesn’t solve problems long-term. I knew I needed a different approach and the experiences I’d had gave me the perspective to be able to see that.
As an adult, I could finally accept that, for a lot of the kids who bullied me, their meanness came from a place of fear or pain or anxiety. Some kids, I know, were just not nice, but still, it had nothing to with me specifically. I hadn’t been bullied in school because of who I was, but because of who they were and how they felt living in their own skin. I realized the same was true of the job market I was in during my early 20s.
This understanding helped me move on. I began a long journey of learning that I’ve carried into my current career and role as a manager. I’ve learned to guide from a place of understanding and that the way people act towards me, or react to me, quite often has very little to do with me. I continue to seek out understanding. Seeing people for who they are and what their circumstances are. It’s taught me patience and given me the ability to see beyond what’s on the surface.
Now, I get to be the manager I always wished I had in those early years of my professional life. I get to be the advocate I wish the adults at school would have been when my classmates bullied me. I get to be in a professional environment that fosters empathy and grace and accepts that we’re all human at the end of the day.
I would never wish bullying on anyone. It’s damaging, sometimes irreparably so. I’m simply glad I learned empathy, compassion, and kindness from my experience and found a professional environment that both elevates and rewards these traits. I hope everyone who seeks it finds the same.
