yea but dropping out???

Yeah it can get pretty tough

I'm so sorry OP. I dealt with the same thing before I left high school, and although it's still a pain in my ass, I can attest to therapy (and medication) helping a lot. It'll get better!

I agree. It'd be a great idea to see someone about these dreams.

Dreams can be pretty haunting. I know because I was bullied a lot. I wanted to drop out of school for years because I was completely miserable. The dreams are probably just reflections of stress. Sometimes I think talking to a professional helps because you can vent, look at things in perspective or just feel safe knowing somebody is on your side.

Not trying to be mean to the op but they didn't really take the initiative they gave up and ran from the problem rather than facing it. Probably part of the reason they are having nightmares is that there is unresolved conflict.

He's not lacking empathy. No matter the degree of bullying it was, what #12 said was true. OP ran from the problem by dropping out instead of resolving the issue. Now I'm not judging OP at all because I can completely understand why, but the fact still remains true.

It's not that I don't understand there are different levels of bullying and some of them can be particularly brutal, but there are better ways to solve the issue than running away and quitting college. Hell even switching majors would have been better than quitting college altogether and would have given him room to breathe.

#92, 96: You don't have any information about whether dropping out was the right call. There's every reason to assume that the OP did what was best for him/herself in that situation. For all we know, the OP could be suicidal or facing physical threats, in which case quitting (while still a sucky choice) is the best option.

or simply transfer to a different college. don't let bullies force you out of college

Or you know.. Talk to someone about it, transfer to different classes, or a different college. You're an adult now, time to learn how to cope with life, not run away from it.

But then OP will be cyberbullied. D:

I hate people like you. You think you're being supportive right now? Nope!! People like you make people like us feel worse. So please, do the world a favor and shut up.

#11 He literally told OP to refuse to be a victim, to be assertive. In what world does that constitute bad advice? People should ALWAYS get back up on their feet and face the difficulties ahead of them with unwavering determination. The alternative is to "lie down in the snow and die". If everyone ONLY relied on others being supportive, there would be nobody left to support them.

Oh yes because roses and puppy dogs will make everything better. BS Several bullies tried that crap on me. I stood up for myself and with a core group of friends prevailed. No one can make you upset without your permission.

He has a point. People aren't always nice to each other. You can't always avoid people that want to make you miserable. He could have phrased it nicer, but there is a point there. It is a skill that everyone needs is to be able to deal with people like that.

good advice is rarely taken when given in such a jerkish manner

Agreed #6. Since when did people get to be such pansies?! I can't believe someone would drop out of college because of a couple assholes. My dad would would laugh if I called and said I was dropping out bc people were picking on me. Assholes are everywhere. Learn to take it with a grain of salt bc more often than not, those people are a very small portion of your life so why give them control over how you feel? Chin up, and make their corpses your red carpet.

#19: "No one can make you upset without your permission." Bullshit, because if that were true nobody would ever choose to get upset. You've never been upset? It's nice that you know how to control your feelings now, but why don't you have more compassion for people who haven't learned how yet?

#97: "Make their corpses your red carpet," isn't something a well-adjusted person would say in a serious conversation. Are you okay? Would you like a hug?

I actually tried that on my bullies. It made it worse. They knew they could break me. If I tried to pretend they weren't hurting me... I made it in to a game. Who will be the next to break me? This really created an exercise for creative cruelty as they improvised on new ways to make it hurt. Bullying needs to be addressed as a problem with the perpetrators, not how the victim deals with cruelty.

I did that, and it only made them try to hit harder, to the point they brought my personal life into it.

I guess I'm an unusual case. I learned to suppress my emotions so that people honestly couldn't tell if they were getting to me or not. I think part of it would probably be that if they know they're hurting you and you're acting like it's not, then it makes it more fun for them to see how long you can hide it. Where as in my case I would play along and sometimes make them look bad if they kept it up

#30 You can't expect everyone to act nice all the time. There are always going to be assholes that bully people. That is never going to change. We're not supposed to murder people. We have laws against murder. We even punish murderers, but we still have murderers. We can't completely wipe out bullying. Some people don't have huge amounts of empathy for others. Some people think themselves superior to others. Some people don't care if their words or actions hurt and injure others. We can't stop people from doing that and thinking like that.

Well yes. But to revisit your analogy of murder... There are consequences for those actions. It's called prison. Bullying destroys your lie and you're still alive to feel pain about it. We can't always stop people from being horrible, but we can put people in jail or in mandated therapy for it. It's the very idea that there's this "suck it up" attitude that needs to be addressed. Words cut deeper than swords.

Would be very hard to put someone in jail for bullying. Fines and such would be pretty much the extent of it because of the nature of the crime. I minored in criminal justice. Even assault which is physically touching our harming someone only has very little jail time but possible heavy fines depending on amount of damage and reparations. And you can actually prove physical abuse. Mental abuse is a whole different story.

I suppose it was a little hyperbolic to suggest prison. Though I knew a few bullies who would have been much improved by prison. There do need to be better laws, particularly for cyber-crime. People who drive people to suicide should be in prison. Other people should be in therapy or deal with heavy fines. People are terrible, but that doesn't mean we should just let it go.

I used that one. It can sometimes help in the short term, but in the long term it screws you up. If the bullies choose to push you to the breaking point, it comes out that much worse if you've got all that shut bottled up inside.

We have laws against murder, but society could not function if that was the only reason that people did not do it. Some people get pleasure from making others suffer. The only long term answer is to find a way to make them choose not to. Sometimes that is education, sometimes it is someone bigger than them who will make them too scared to do it. The latter is far from ideal, and does not make for a healthy society. Good laws are ones that are obeyed because people don't want to do what's banned, not because they are too scared to. Sadly, some people can only be motivated by fear.

#64 I'm not saying we should ignore the issue, bullying is becoming a larger problem every day, realistically though it's something only society can fix. It's not something that we can expect others to fix for us. Punishment doesn't work on the people who typically are bullies the best bet would be therapy for them. Find out what's causing the behaviour, there's always something in their past contributing to it, and work towards fixing that. Therapy for the victim wouldn't hurt either.