Bullying Doesn’t Stay in Childhood, the BODY REMEMBERS | Özlem Özkan

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Bullying does not stay only in childhood.

[00:00:03]It really grows up with you quietly. In how you speak, in how you show up, in how actually you see yourself.

[00:00:12]Welcome to Bridging. It's Özlem Özkan.

[00:00:15]And today I want to talk about a very important topic. [music] Something we often think is just kids being with kids. It's actually not. What bullying actually does to you, we're going to talk about that.

[00:00:31]So, let me show you something very simple. So, take a piece of paper, clean, smooth, untouched.

[00:00:38]And now do this.

[00:00:46]Okay, this is what happens to the paper.

[00:00:48]When you take the paper, just imagine this was a child. And lots of things happened to the child and it became like this. Let's say for example, you're really sorry about what happened to that person or child or adult. And you just open the paper back.

[00:01:09]You try to make it as smooth as possible again.

[00:01:14]Let's just make it as smooth as possible. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying again. Maybe I also want to say sorry.

[00:01:21]I'm so sorry what I did. I'm so sorry for this. I'm so sorry for that.

[00:01:26]Etcetera, etcetera. When you open it again, it is actually never the same.

[00:01:32]The person, the child has a lot of scars and these scars we carry in our own life. So, it is never completely the same. And that is what happens to a child when a child gets bullied.

[00:01:47]Because for a child, these moments are not really small. Being laughed at, being excluded, being called something.

[00:01:56]For us, it might seem like, just a moment, but for a child, it really shapes something very deeper.

[00:02:04]Their sense of, do I belong? Am I okay as I am? And that question does not just disappear. It stays with us for a long time. Because at the core, we all want one thing. We want to belong. We want to be accepted. We want to be part of something. And when that is threatened, something shifts. Some children become more quieter. They shrink, they adjust.

[00:02:32]And some children go the other way. They become very loud, stronger, even harder, sometimes high achievers. And sometimes the one who was hurt becomes the one who unfortunately hurts. So, when I wrote, years ago, my master thesis, while I was studying behavioral science, one thing became very clear. Bullying is not random. It's often connected to belonging, to feeling seen and not feeling seen. And when a child doesn't feel safe in who they are, they either hide or protect themselves. And when someone is bullied in their childhood, even after years later, the body remembers. A hesitation before speaking, a softer voice, holding back, or the opposite, needing to prove, needing to be strong. And not because that is who they are, but because that is what they learned in order to survive. And later in life, we do not really call it bullying anymore, we call it, I'm just like this. I'm not that confident. I don't like attention. But then often, it's not personality, it's truly and really protection. And this is why it matters so much how we treat children, how children treat each other. Because what seems small is not really small.

[00:03:53]Words matter, moments matter, inclusion matters because you are not just shaping a moment, you're shaping how someone will feel about themselves, sometimes even for a lifetime. And maybe it's also something very simple, being there, really being there, listening to a child not to respond, but to understand.

[00:04:15]Because when a child feels seen, feels safe, feels like they belong, something changes. There is less need to hurt, less need to hide, less need to become someone else, and maybe that's where it starts. Not later, but here, in how we listen, in how we see, because the paper, this one, was always whole. And what we give to children can decide how much they feel that.