About This Website

Contributors

Alan Eisenberg

Founder / Contributor 

So, what is Bullying Stories: Dealing with bullying from an adult perspective about. It’s actually been a long time in the making for me.  I felt  it would be cathartic for me (and hopefully for you) to share my personal stories of a childhood of being bullied with you to both let go of it. So many feel they are alone in what happens to us when we are bullied. But, it happens to the majority of us and it’s something that we should address and try to solve as a group. You can read my personal stories on this site. Just click here to view a list of them and stories others have submitted. I am also the author of two bullying support items. One is a memoir novel of my life called “A Ladder In The Dark” which is available on Amazon and the other is a one-act play called “Standing By”, which is free on Smashwords. I am also the founder and Managing Director of a company called Bullying Recovery.

With this blog, I am hoping to collect your stories and start to share in what I believe to be the long-term effects that being bullied or being a bully has on us as adults. This isn’t the kids perspective, but an adult perspective on how those informative years affect how we are as adults today: our fears, our attitude, and our memories of childhood. I am also sharing information I find about solving the bullying issue to help keep readers informed and pass on information that may help you. What started in 2007 as a small little website has become more of a crusade for me. I have a strong interest as an adult in helping others work through the issues being bullied creates. I originally didn’t plan to continue past sharing my stories, but have been encouraged to continue to bring information I find about solving the bullying problem to you.

Here’s a little about me. I was born in 1968 and grew up in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia.  I have had a successful career as a visual communications expert, web and video producer/programmer and writer. During my younger years from 6-14, I was bullied pretty bad, particularly during my years in Lexington, MA. While that ended long ago, I have found that the long-term effects of those important years do not leave us, but stay in our subconscious. In doing extensive research to prepare this website, I have found that I am not alone and the long-term effects of bullying into adulthood are common issues. While I don’t harbor bad feelings about my life, I do find that there are certain aspects of my personality and reactions that I believe are due to the years of bullying I dealt with. I have worked through most of my issues and hope to help others overcome the effects of bullying in their lives. It is my dream to one day do this on a full-time basis as I find more and more I want to help others and try to have stricter laws and support programs created to beat the bullying issues in our schools and work.

I hope you will be willing to share your story about your experience with bullying here and maybe you will also want to be in the documentary. Please feel free to send me your story at bullyinglte@gmail.com if you would like me to feature it on the site. It is my hope that, by sharing the experience of bullying here, we can help ourselves, and others learn to cope with their experiences and know they are not alone.

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Kate Cohen-Posey, MS LMHC LMFT

Contributor

After obtaining my Masters degree in 1973, I began practicing as a professional counselor in central Florida. Driven by a desire to provide clients concise information, I started writing booklets. One topic could not be covered in a pamphlet: Bullying. It seemed that every child I saw, sooner-or-later, brought up problems with peers. My own core issues were being replayed before my eyes. The long-term effect for me of being the target of anti-Semitism and rude remarks was a deeply instilled less-than/better-than mentality that rendered me mute in many social situations.

It was only when I could hide behind my professional persona that I began to change. I studied various treatment approaches with a unique slant born of my own issues. For instance, a common hypnotic ploy is to say, “Do you know how soon you’ll discover … your eyes wide shut?” For me this became, “Do you know when you’ll find that… kindness is the new cool.” In hypno-speak this is called a double bind because whether people answer yes or no, they are agreeing that they will discover kindness is cool.

I began developing a set of skills taken from hypnotic grammar and strategies for dealing with oppression (sexism, racism, ageism, and so on) that young people could use. This lead to the publication of my first book: How to Handle Bullies Teasers and other Meanies. By a near miracle John Wiley & Sons discovered booklets I had been writing on other topics, called me, and said, “We think you’re the author we need.” This proposal birthed 3 books: Brief Therapy Client Handouts, Empowering Dialogues Within, and Making Hostile Words Harmless. Publishing and counseling led to speaking engagements at the Florida Partners in Education Conference, Keys to Safer Schools Conference, many other conferences for professionals and interviews on radio, TV, and for magazines. Like Alan Eisenberg, my dream is to help victims of bullying and to teach skills that empower people in the face of subtle harassment that laws cannot touch.