Bullying isn’t on the original ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) questionnaire — but it should be.
The ACEs framework grew out of a landmark 1998 CDC–Kaiser Permanente study that uncovered a startling truth: the more adversity you experience in childhood, the greater your risk for chronic illness, depression, addiction, and even early death. Ten categories of adversity are measured — from abuse and neglect to household dysfunction. The higher your score, the higher your risk.
Peer bullying doesn’t appear on that list.
And yet, research shows that its long-term psychological and physiological effects can rival those of parental abuse — especially when a child has no safe adult to turn to. A 2015 study in The Lancet Psychiatry found that children frequently bullied by peers were just as likely to experience depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts in adulthood as those who were maltreated by caregivers.
A more recent study in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (2024) confirms that bullying involvement is significantly associated with higher mental health symptom scores among young people, especially those with neurodevelopmental or psychiatric conditions.
Together, these studies underscore that bullying — especially chronic and unaddressed peer victimization — operates like an ACE, affecting emotional well-being, neural development, and long-term resilience.
A childhood under the microscope
I was bullied for as long as I can remember.
In elementary school, I was nearly a foot taller than most of my classmates. Thin and awkward-limbed, I was a walking target. “String bean.” “Jolly Green Giant.” “Anorexic.” The names were relentless.
And it wasn’t just my appearance that set me apart — it was my family situation. Divorce didn’t seem as common then as it is now, and when it did happen, it was almost always the father who left. In my case, it was my mother who walked away. That fact alone carried a certain stigma, the unspoken implication that something must have been “wrong” with me for a mother to choose to go.
Single-father households were rare, and mine didn’t fit any of the heartwarming narratives you sometimes saw in movies. My father was neglectful, working all the time to keep things afloat, but also still trying to live out his glory days after being given a burden to handle on his own. He had no idea how to navigate the added challenges I faced at school. Instead of blending in, I felt like I was living under a magnifying glass — my differences lit up like a neon sign for anyone looking to take aim.
Without a consistent female presence in my life, my father didn’t know how to care for my textured hair. A quick brush-through was his version of “ready for school.” My hair frizzed in every direction — a halo I never asked for — giving classmates more ammunition.
In sixth grade, after moving from Texas to Minnesota, I tried to start over. I trusted the wrong person with my story — that my mother had left when I was young and, from what I’d been told, chose drugs over me. Soon the whispers began, followed by sharper cruelty:
“You should just kill yourself so you don’t turn out like your mom.”
Every morning, I prayed to become invisible.
No safe place to land
At home, comfort was nonexistent. My father’s answer was always:
“Just ignore them. They’ll stop.”
They didn’t. Sometimes it was words; sometimes it was food flung across the lunchroom, landing in my hair while laughter echoed off the tile walls.
The CDC calls a supportive adult one of the strongest buffers against the toxic stress of ACEs. I didn’t have that at home. Without it, bullying doesn’t just hurt your feelings — it rewires your nervous system to expect danger everywhere.
When the ‘solution’ is more of the same
Eventually, I was sent to Cross Creek Manor, the troubled teen facility I wrote about in my memoir. There, the bullying was institutional. Staff wielded power like a weapon, and peers learned to do the same.
Peers could block you from advancing in the program simply because they didn’t like you, disguising it as “feedback” for “not working the program.” Every move was watched, every flaw noted.
It felt like my life had been one long science experiment in humiliation.
Even at home, my father’s “teasing” often cut like the cafeteria insults.
What I needed was someone to tell me I was enough.
What I got was a reminder that my worth was negotiable.
The hidden health toll
The CDC reports that approximately 1 in 5 high school students are bullied at school each year, and about 1 in 6 are bullied online. Chronic bullying isn’t just harmful emotionally—it triggers sustained stress responses in the body, elevating cortisol and, over time, impairing immunity, digestion, cardiovascular health, and even altering brain development in areas tied to memory and emotional regulation.
When bullying overlaps with other ACEs like neglect or abuse, the impact multiplies. In my case, a neglectful home meant I had no buffer—no one to validate my pain or help me regulate. That’s the kind of chronic toxic stress that leaves scars you can’t see—but your body remembers for years.
And most devastating of all: bullying significantly raises the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Victims of bullying are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than their peers who are not bullied. In Britain, research suggests that at least half of youth suicides are related to bullying.
Current U.S. data underscores the urgency: in 2021, suicide was the third leading cause of death among young people aged 14–18, accounting for nearly 1,952 deaths—a rate of 9.0 per 100,000. Youth aged 10–24 now make up 15% of all suicides, with their suicide rate having increased over 52% between 2000 and 2021.
The long shadow into adulthood
The voices of my childhood bullies followed me well into adulthood:
You’re not good enough. Not pretty enough. Too dramatic. Too tall. Too skinny. You’ll never fit in.
But the truth is, bullying doesn’t always stop when we graduate. It just changes shape. We see it in the whispered judgment of “mom shaming” in the school pick-up line. In politics, where personal attacks often drown out real solutions. In the sidelong glances from strangers in a grocery store because you dared to shop for dinner without your Sunday best and a full face of makeup.
It’s the same pattern: policing someone else’s worth, choices, or appearance in ways meant to humiliate or control. It’s a reminder that the culture that allowed bullying in our childhoods still exists — it just learned to dress itself up as “opinions,” “debate,” or “concern.”
For years, I tried to shape-shift into something more acceptable. It took me until my thirties to finally see that maybe I wasn’t meant to fit in — maybe I was meant to stand out.
Like Elyse Meyers says:
“If I’m too much, go find less.”
I’ve learned that I’m not “too much.”
I’m just enough — enough to feel deeply, enough to notice where the world needs more love, more kindness, more acceptance. Enough to be the change I wish I’d had as a child.
Why this matters now
Bullying is not “just part of growing up.” It’s abuse. And when it’s chronic and unaddressed, it becomes an ACE-level trauma with life-altering consequences.
If we want healthier generations, we must:
- Expand the ACEs conversation to include chronic peer abuse.
- Train schools and communities to treat bullying as a form of emotional harm, not a rite of passage.
- Empower families with the skills to respond in ways that buffer stress, rather than deepen it.
Bullying leaves bruises you can’t see.
But when we speak about it, name it, and treat it as the abuse it is, we give survivors permission to heal — and we create a world where no child carries those echoes alone into adulthood.
Jessica Woodville | Memoir & Musings 
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