I wish I’d fought back…

[Gyakuto115 124]

As a school kid, I was the target of a bit of bullying. Nothing major, a bit of grabbing and pushing up against a wall with verbal threats, the odd kick to the shins with further verbal threat; ‘normal bullying’ if there is such a thing and I ignored these idiots as was often advised by various adults…”don’t rise to their taunts”… you get the idea. So I didn’t. I somehow defused those incidents and remained wary of those two or three bullies.

And yet those experiences stay with me…coming back to me occasionally, as they did this morning whilst vacuuming the house. No trauma or anything just school memories, but I thought today, ‘I wish I’d fought back!’ I wish I’d ignored those adult’s advice and attempted to kick the bully’s arses. I probably would’ve faired pretty well having started my Karate journey at 12 year old, provided I didn’t hold back and ‘punched first and asked questions later’. On the other hand, I may have had the living faeces kicked out of me, got into trouble with the school authorities and had a criminal record for using my hands, registered with the police, as deadly weapons.


Do you think this regret is reasonable? Do you have similar thoughts and experiences?

 

[HighKick]

As a school kid, I was the target of a bit of bullying. Nothing major, a bit of grabbing and pushing up against a wall with verbal threats, the odd kick to the shins with further verbal threat; ‘normal bullying’ if there is such a thing and I ignored these idiots as was often advised by various adults…”don’t rise to their taunts”… you get the idea. So I didn’t. I somehow defused those incidents and remained wary of those two or three bullies.

And yet those experiences stay with me…coming back to me occasionally, as they did this morning whilst vacuuming the house. No trauma or anything just school memories, but I thought today, ‘I wish I’d fought back!’ I wish I’d ignored those adult’s advice and attempted to kick the bully’s arses. I probably would’ve faired pretty well having started my Karate journey at 12 year old, provided I didn’t hold back and ‘punched first and asked questions later’. On the other hand, I may have had the living faeces kicked out of me, got into trouble with the school authorities and had a criminal record for using my hands, registered with the police, as deadly weapons.


Do you think this regret is reasonable? Do you have similar thoughts and experiences?

It is easy to second guess when you are looking through a different lens. It is incredible to look back at our young selves and realize the tunnel-vision we had. Just not ready/able to process the things going on around us yet. Completely and perfectly normal.

 

[isshinryuronin4 4]

As a school kid, I was the target of a bit of bullying. Nothing major, a bit of grabbing and pushing up against a wall with verbal threats, the odd kick to the shins with further verbal threat; ‘normal bullying’ if there is such a thing and I ignored these idiots as was often advised by various adults…”don’t rise to their taunts”… you get the idea. So I didn’t. I somehow defused those incidents and remained wary of those two or three bullies.

And yet those experiences stay with me…coming back to me occasionally, as they did this morning whilst vacuuming the house. No trauma or anything just school memories, but I thought today, ‘I wish I’d fought back!’ I wish I’d ignored those adult’s advice and attempted to kick the bully’s arses. I probably would’ve faired pretty well having started my Karate journey at 12 year old, provided I didn’t hold back and ‘punched first and asked questions later’. On the other hand, I may have had the living faeces kicked out of me, got into trouble with the school authorities and had a criminal record for using my hands, registered with the police, as deadly weapons.


Do you think this regret is reasonable? Do you have similar thoughts and experiences?

I've had the same experience. My first thought: I'm taking the high ground. Second thought: I didn't like fighting. Third thought: I might get hurt. I think all three were true, but in all honesty, at the time, the last reason was probably the main one.

As an adult, I avoid fights because I don't like hurting people and with my matured skill and fighting instinct there is a good chance of that. If forced to do so I go into survival mode, my inhibitions vanishing. "Do not draw the sword lightly."

 

[Dirty Dog11]

There is no one size fits all answer. In general, I think it's best to avoid conflict. But if conflict there must be, we should make it as short as possible. Fair fights are for tournaments.

I also think we've told people "don't fight back, give them what they want" too much.
I think we enabled the terrorists on 9/11. It's really difficult to kill someone with a box cutter. It's even harder if 3-4 people jump on you.

In my youth, I was mugged by a guy with a knife. I gave him my wallet. He then decided to attack me. That cost me an eye.
What I should have done was drop or toss the wallet. And when he took his eye off me, I should have dropped him.

I've had a knife pulled on me with intent on two other occasions. In both cases, I reacted immediately. And nobody got hurt.

 

[KenpoMaster8051]

i remember when i was in elementary i was bully i got punch in the stomach ill never forget that day then i started learning the karate the next time he was gonna punch me i kick him and he started crying

 

[opr1945112 22]

Amazing, I had a similar experience. Except I never considered fighting back. As an elementary school kid (1-6th grades) I was somewhat small for my age. for some reason I never figured out two brothers who lived about 15 houses up the street took a dislike and up seeing me they would chase me and if they caught me the would beat me up, the older one was two yeas older than me and a ruffian the younger was a year younger than me.

I often dreamed of beating them both to a pulp. But, reality was I always got hurt so my defense was first avoid them second run like the dickens. Fortunately, we moved when I turned 12. Problem solved.

However, when I started drinking beer, illegally, I developed "short man's disease." After an appropriate amount of beer I would find a guy much bigger than me and intend to teach him a lesson with my fists. It never worked, not once. Usually ended after I got hit 2 or 3 times. In my early 20s I realized that alcohol was not my friend. I haven't consumed alcohol since. I haven't been in another fight since. Cause and effect?

My takeaway was Size is a big factor in contests of this nature. It can be overcome, But, not easily.

But, those days are long past for me.

 

[Stuarto76 17]

As a child I had a few similar experiences, mainly in middle school. There was one kid who regularly agitated me until one day we settled our differences in the playground. That was the last time he messed with me. Sometimes if we had beef with someone, we would put on boxing gloves and duke it out in a backyard and the problem would usually be resolved. There was this one kid that no one could beat in a fight. Other kids would hire him to beat up bullies. I never saw that kid lose one fight. He was unusually strong for a child his age. One time I watched him arm wrestle a grown man and he beat the guy. The guy wasn't exactly a toothpick either. There were a few other times in high school where some kid had an issue with me, but it never resulted in a fist fight. The best way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them. If you didn't, they would ride you forever.

 

[Same Trick59 10]

Haha, karate hands registered as deadly weapons…. I actually had that in mind when I in my early 20’s went to Okinawa, not that I really believed it to be so…right, but without any knowledge or contacts where to find a good dojo I stepped into a police station and asked if they could suggest any Karate schools and point them out on my Naha tourist map, their initial look was as they was about to LOL, but instead they fetched from a back room a sturdy looking officer who actually know a couple of places and circled them out on my map.

As for being bullied,, I never was, some tried. to because of my “funny” sounding name, but that was early on(1st-2nd grade) I wrestled them down and pinned them there and they gave up, two or three guys I threw into some of the rose bushes adorning the small schoolyard, fists never really came into action at that age.

I started martial arts at age of 6 (kids class at the local fencing school), it was probably there a foundation was laid to be confident in confrontational situations , throwing guys(potential bullies) into thorn bushes was my sword.

 

[Gyakuto115 124]

It seems that the consensus is as kids we should’ve stood up to our bullies. Is that about right? Would potentially receiving a bully’s beating be more traumatic than the bullying itself or is taken control of the situation, regardless of the outcome, sufficiently empowering to overcome bullying trauma?

I do wonder what became of the bullies. I suspect they continued their behaviour as adults and took it into the workplace, although the law prevents them using physical bullying- except for a certain nation’s leader, but to say they’re an adult is stretching the term!

 

[Stuarto76 17]

It seems that the consensus is as kids we should’ve stood up to our bullies. Is that about right? Would potentially receiving a bully’s beating be more traumatic than the bullying itself or is taken control of the situation, regardless of the outcome, sufficiently empowering to overcome bullying trauma?

I do wonder what became of the bullies. I suspect they continued their behaviour as adults and took it into the workplace, although the law prevents them using physical bullying- except for a certain nation’s leader, but to say they’re an adult is stretching the term!

I think some of them matured and grew out of it, as for the rest of them.... they met their match

 

[Gyakuto115 124]

I think some of them matured and grew out of it, as for the rest of them.... they met their match

I don’t know. The character trait that compels a person to physically (and psychologically) domineer another person must be a pretty deep aberration (pure conjecture, of course). I think the trait is always there and surfaces when it’s advantageous to the holder or that control over it is lost - alcohol, drugs, megalomania.

 

[Badhabits]

Where I grew up in a rural area if you got bullied and didn't fight back you kept getting bullied. It was better to fight back and lose than not fight back at all. Even if you lost the bullying usually stopped. Then there was the issue that girls wouldn't talk to you if you didn't fight back. But...we didn't really have people trying to seriously hurt each other, shoot or stab each other etc. It was all just a social thing. Parties were guaranteed to have fist fights. A bunch of teenagers in a cow field with kegs of beer ...some people just liked to fight. In that environment though, kids weren't really taught to not fight...we were mostly just told not to get in trouble at school when we fought. There's another side of it too- it can be said that it's good for kids to learn early on that acting like a jerk gets you punched in the mouth. On the other hand I have several friends who were bullies in school and grew up to be very respectable adults. My father made the observation a few years ago that nowadays bullying goes on and on to the point kids kill themselves over it. Because defending yourself gets you put in jail now. When it used to be that a kid got bullied, they fought and the bullying stopped. And you didn't have kids killing themselves over it because the bullying didn't go on and on and on

 

[Gyakuto115 124]

Youtube is reading my posts!

 

[skribs113 134]

I think with most things, there's good and bad retrospectives.

Good retrospectives are when you analyze the situation and see what you can learn from it. For example, when I lost my first competition, my retrospective is that I did not control my base during the grip fight, and so I needed to adjust my approach. After my second competition (in which I got tapped in 10 seconds), I learned that I needed to pull first; to play my game and set the tone for the fight. I also learned I didn't want to do only IBJJF single-elimination competitions; I wanted to do double-elimination or round-robin competitions to get more reps. In my third competition, I played my game for some of the first round (a first for me), and I won the second round. Even from there, I learned I would be better off moving down a weight class, because I was right on the brink of the next one down.

On the other hand, we had a guy from our gym have his first competition a few weeks ago. Great guy. But he came into the competition looking like he was about to storm the beaches of Normandy. (Not in the "gung ho" way, but in the "throwing up off the side of the boat" way). He did fine, but he lost. He was absolutely miserable. Didn't want his medal (because all he did was lose). Didn't want his picture taken on the podium. Kept apologizing, kept grumbling, kept talking about how he let everyone down. My Professor and I spent a good couple of days working him out of it. I was super happy to see him in class the next time, and after about a week he was in good spirits again.

For me, the retrospective was good. For him, it wasn't.

I think the same thing happens when something bad happens to you in the real world. We had our house broken into when I was in college (still living at home with my parents). We updated our home security posture. We added an alarm system to the doors and windows, and we started using wooden dowels to block the sliding windows from opening (easy to fix from inside: you just move the dowel, but impossible from outside). We took responsibility for our safety, and when we learned we needed to be more secure, we looked at how to be more secure and executed it.

It doesn't even need to be a crime. Recently, my job situation and finances have led me to the conclusion that I need to sell my house and move back in with my parents. Through this process, I have been analyzing every major decision I've made over the last 3 years. What I've been looking for is:

• What would I have done differently based on information I had available at the time?
• What would I have done differently based on information I have available now?

Because I'm able to look at these decisions logically and not emotionally, I'm able to prepare to move forward. Just as if I had lost in a tournament, and I'm able to prepare for what to do going into the next one. If I were instead to get stuck on, "I never should've bought this house, it's brought me nothing but misery..." then I would not be using that mental energy in any positive direction.

In fact, what you'll find in pretty much any role that has incident response: whether it's doctors, police, fire, military, security, cybersecurity, etc.: the last step of the incident response process is usually an after-action report that includes lessons learned.

Retrospectives should not be used to blame the victim. Should not be used to cause more trauma. But if they can be used effectively, it's a good idea to look at the past and see what lessons can be learned.

 

[opr1945112 22]

More on my story....At 17 years old I in enlisted in the military. Most of the single guys in my unit were heavy (abusive) drinkers. One day a new guy shipped in and my sergeant said spend a day with him showing him the area and get to know him. I did and we became friends. He was on football scholarship at a west coast nationally ranked university as a football full back, third string. Unlike me he was a very big guy. His girlfriend dumped him, so to get even he enlisted (I never understood that, she was still in college partying, he was in service training people to go to Viet Nam.)

One night in the local preferred bar I was insulting some guy who was about to beat me up, the new guy next stepped to me put his arm around my shoulder, I was 5'6" he was 6'6", looked down at me and said "this guy giving you trouble?" I looked at the other guy who was going to pound me and noticed he was looking up at my friend, so I said "Not anymore." Incident over. I told my friend I will buy all the beer you want, Just stay within 50' of me. Ended my fighting until I was discharged. Shortly after that I quit drinking alcohol. Quality of life improved dramatically.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf114 145]

I was kind of the opposite of you. I was small and unassuming, someone who very specifically played a lot of sports with the 'jocks' (about 2-3 hours an evening most evenings), but then would hang out with the nerds at school or when I wasn't playing any sports.

Because of who I was friends with, by the time I hit middle school (6th grade, 11ish), I wasn't bullied, but my nerd friends were. I got at least one detention/suspension each year getting into a fight, and the teachers were always shocked to find out I was in trouble. I don't regret any of it, I could fight and knew how to protect my friends, and they didn't. And by halfway through high school, again in part because of who I was friends with and in part because they knew I'd defend them and I'd likely win the fight, my friends also stopped getting bullied.

Bullies don't want to risk getting humiliated by having a short nerdy looking dude be seen beating them up.

All that said, if I didn't know how to fight (or if my school had one of those zero tolerance policies) that would probably be a very different story. Getting expelled for defending myself/my friends would not be the best idea, nor would getting beat up constantly. The pre-requisite to defend yourself is being able to (physically, mentally, and legally) defend yourself.

 

[Gyakuto115 124]

Why do you all think you were targeted by the bullies? Was there something in your demeanors that drew adverse attention?

I was an average kid although of Indian descent in a school where there was only a handful of us brown faced types. I was good at science (nothing else!) wore spectacles, didn’t like ‘ball sports’ or follow a football team and my family was perceived as being financially quite well off (we weren’t particularly). I think those factors placed a large ‘kick me’ sign on my back!

 

[Xue Sheng107 25]

I was target in elementary school because i was a big kid. Smaller guys would show up with lots of friends to bully me. It only ended when one day the smaller kid jump on me and i simply walked away with him hanging on me. Then i got into Jiujutsu, and just waiting to be bullied… but they never did after that

The one time in junior high school i was about to use jiujitsu on a kid who jump in me for no reason, a unit director grabbed us both, let the aggressor go and threatened me with detention

By the time high school rolled around i was a leather jacket wearing kid that got left alone, for the most part

 

[opr1945112 22]

I do wonder what became of the bullies.

Still more on my story....I can answer that to only one of the people who bullied me. The younger of the 2 brothers who bullied me got drafted into the army, served a 1 year tour in Viet Nam and was killed when his transport plane was shot down as he was returning to the US.

I found his name on the Viet Nam memorial with all the names of all those killed in the war. As I stood there looking at his name I had mixed emotions, immense dislike for him, and sorrow as I didn't wish him death.

I eventually became a lawyer and resolved my disputes in the proper arena, Court not street.

 

[Fungus104 2]

those experiences stay with me…coming back to me occasionally, as they did this morning whilst vacuuming the house. No trauma or anything just school memories, but I thought today, ‘I wish I’d fought back!’

The trigger is your wife is pushing you to vacuum when you just want to scream that you need to polish you swords again and that brings back the trauma you want to deny.

That sounds totally normal.