The adult consequences of being bullied in childhood

I sympathise with the thought process, but more laws/rules can't/won't fix it. Many (most?) jurisdictions in the western world and elsewhere already have laws against workplace harassment, and the possibility of civil action against any conduct that leads to severe emotional distress. And schools have rules against it. But it still happens - determined/clever bullies will always find a way to make their mark in some kind of way.

Better to help people learn how stand up to bullies, and for companies to make it a priority to be emotionally healthy places and become an example of how to do that most effectively so others can follow (this is one of my great hopes for any companies I build).

Parent commenter should look up Medicaid in their state.

The city or state should have people to help with the forms, including social workers.

From there, they can also get connected with licensed mental health counselors.

I was bullied at primary school (when I was 7-15). Mostly because I was very sickly, also because I was a nerd.

I managed to "overcome" my social anxiety at high school and both high school and university were pretty good experiences with good friends, no bullying, I even started dating by the end of university (which was horrifying to me earlier). I thought back then that bullying won't have any bad effects, I was pretty religious and considered it a trial that I passed that made me stronger and more empathic to people being victimized.

Problems started at work and in relationships. I realized after decades that I consistently let other people walk all over me by default and it caused A LOT of issues. I rejected all the women who seemed "too good for me" becuse they were normal healthy people, and I have been in a series of co-abusive toxic relationships (somehow the girls ALL have turned out to be bullied as well later).

I stayed at my first IT job for over 5 years not asking for rises while the IT salaries grew quickly here, and by the end I was underpaid by more than 50% compared to people with similar experience and skill. I had problems with procrastination and I always felt I'm about to be fired, but by now I worked for several companies and managed to get to normal senior-level income and all of the companies were always saying they are happy with my performance. I was a teamlead for a while and they were OK with my performance too. I realized consciously they wouldn't keep me if they were lying, but deep down I thought they are lying for some reason and they are about to fire me. Sometimes it was so strong a feeling I couldn't deal with it and have left the job on my own.

> Given the reports of bullying's adverse effects of a society's productivity, I'm almost wondering if we should apply legal penalties to bullies and mitigate such externalities.

A beautiful idea which will not work, any more than resort to adult authority ever does in such cases. Three reasons:

Shallowly, first, the authority is not absolute and cannot be. There will always be opportunities for a bully to bully; trying to forbid this only makes it more appealing. A sufficiently interested bully won't let themself be avoided, and they find the appearance of vulnerability interesting because they're out for a good time and not a fight.

Shallowly and secondly, bullies rarely act like they do for the sake of pure sadism. There is usually some prior damage back of it. Heaping punishment on top thus tends to make them worse and not better, because they blame their own victims and treat them worse in consequence.

Deeply, bullying leaves a longlasting mark on people who have been made to feel helpless. Resorting to someone else to protect you does not ameliorate this. Learning to defend yourself does, because in doing it you discover that you don't need to resort to outside authority.

A bully puts you in fear. You learn you can take yourself out of it. It usually doesn't take long, and requires consistency much more than the ability to take a punch; once someone gets the idea you're guaranteed to give them a fight rather than the good time they want, they desist. Most childhood bullies can't fight for shit anyway, or at least most of mine couldn't.

> I would love to avoid bullies for the rest of my life. What kind of workplaces are least likely to have them?

Those where there's no access to money or power worth having. As far as I can tell, those are the primary incentives in adult life to which people respond with bullying behavior that has to be taken seriously.

That said, it looks like the situation in South Korea may be far worse than what I've seen. If it's as apparently universally described, I'd tend to think of it as a cultural pathology. (That's not American condescension, I promise. If anything, given the state of America these days, it's half professional opinion and half commiseration...)

I can understand your concerns regarding the difficulty of enforcing of these anti-bullying policies.

What are some resources you would recommend to help learn how to stand up to bullies?

I am also rather skeptical that companies will prioritize providing emotionally healthy places. Bullies can be people in a higher position (seniority, ranking, etc) than their victims, and companies are incentivized to rule in favor of the bullies.