October is Bullying Prevention Month, founded by the PACER National Bullying Prevention Center in 2006. Each October, organizations around the country come together to educate about bullying, the effects of bullying, and advocate for a world free from bullying.
Bullying doesn’t just happen to men in their childhood or youth. Men can be bullied by parents, siblings, friends, employers, or even online strangers well into their adulthood. The effects of bullying are real. Bullying can lead to addiction, mental illness, difficulty performing well in school or in a job. Bullying affects self-esteem, confidence, and wellness overall. When men are bullied, they can be affected for life.
Bullying And Addiction
Healing the wounds of bullying is many times healing the wounds of addiction. Addiction is never an isolated issue. Most often, men turn to drugs and alcohol to either feel or not feel, block pain or create pain, or both.
How Brotherhood Heals The Wounds Of Bullying
At Tree House Recovery, men don’t just enter treatment with other men. They are enlisted into a camaraderie and work to build a brotherhood with their comrades in recovery. Bullying leaves deep scars in our psyche about ourselves and about others. We learn about ourselves through others’ bullying actions: that we are worth hurting and that because we are worth hurting, that must mean there is something wrong with us, because we aren’t worth treating nicely. Moreover, we learn about others. We learn that others are capable of immense cruelty. As a result, we lose our sense of trust and confidence in others. Our bullies may have been obvious and we may have been an unlucky target. Our bullies might not have been obvious to us and their bullying may have taken us by surprise. Regardless of how prepared or ill prepared we could have been to be bullied, we couldn’t have been fully prepared for the toll it would take on our personal lives.
Likewise, it is not often that we are fully prepared for the many benefits of recovery, like building a brotherhood of close friends and allies. In treatment, the bonds we build with our brothers are unparalleled. Men who are in treatment are in one of the most vulnerable places in their lives and they are being asked to be vulnerable every single day. At Tree House, men are encouraged to step up to the challenge for themselves and for each other. By engaging in honest, authentic, vulnerable, respectful relationships, men heal the wounds of bullying they’ve experienced from other men, or anyone else in their lives. By rebuilding their lives from the inside out, men experience an incredible transformation which builds a foundation for lifetime abstinence and sustained recovery.
We believe in your ability to change. We know men struggling with addiction have the capacity to create transformative change in their lives, sustainably, building a sustainable sobriety and future. Call Tree House Recovery in Orange County, California today for information on our men’s addiction treatment programs: (855) 202-2138