Dear A&E, 

I’m a 45-year-old woman and I’ve found myself working in the same company as my boarding school bully. 

She pretends nothing happened and actually makes a show of the fact that we were at school together, which makes me flinch every time because she made my life such a misery back then. 

How do I get past it? It feels so ridiculous that I hold a grudge and that, if I’m honest, it still upsets me. 

– Bullied

Dear Bullied, 

We are not going to tell you what you should feel. But the one thing you shouldn’t feel is ridiculous. Childhood bullies hold a special place in all of our hearts. It is formative stuff with huge resonance: much of our adult behaviour is informed by these kinds of experiences.

Boarding school then was not boarding school now. It was, for some, isolating and often cruel. No emails or mobiles. Letters censored, telephone calls banned. Dislocating small children from their home, making them build a carapace around their feelings and vulnerabilities.

A friend of Emilie’s described how on his first night in his dorm, he heard the boy in the neighbouring bed begging Matron for a hug. All he remembers thinking is, ‘Thank God I’m not the one saying that,’ realising, even at the age of seven, that the other boy was exposing himself in a way that left him wide open.

Thirty years ago, it was sink or swim. But this is not a piece about the barbarity of boarding school, this is just a warm-up to remind you that you are not ridiculous. The last thing anyone would want is their bully walking into their adult life. It’s a nightmare.

But it’s also an opportunity. We spoke to Emma Reed Turrell, psychotherapist and author of Emilie’s personal bible, Please Yourself: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Transform the Way You Live, and she agreed. 

‘As a child, we don’t automatically have the means to protect ourselves against bullies; we need the grown-ups in our lives to take care of us and teach us how to speak up for ourselves,’ she says. 

‘Perhaps you didn’t have that support back then, so your only option was to survive the experience as best you could. But the good news is you do have a grown-up to support you now, and that grown-up is you.

‘You have an adult part [of yourself] today who can show up for your child part in this current situation and keep you safe, while you express your thoughts and validate your feelings. And if your child part came away from that early experience with any misplaced feelings of inadequacy or shame, your grown-up part can also step in to clear up that confusion and lay the blame back where it belongs: at the feet of the perpetrator.’

It’s interesting that the perpetrator keeps bringing up the fact that you were at school together. It seems unlikely that she does not remember. 

It also sounds to us like she’s bringing it up with a subtext of: ‘It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? It’s all fine, right?’ But it isn’t fine and here’s what you might do if she refers to your ‘friendship’ again: speak up. ‘That wasn’t my experience,’ will do. She doesn’t need to agree.

‘We spend so much time and energy chasing approval from other people,’ continues Reed Turrell. 

‘But self-acceptance is worth far more than consensus. If it feels right, and you would like to revisit your past experience, you could take her to one side and say, “Meeting you again has been challenging for me because of the way that you behaved towards me at school – would you be up for talking about it?”’

Even then, it’s not your job to absolve her, or listen to her own hand-wringing tales of dysfunctional family history. You don’t have to like her, you just have to neutralise this, so you can go about your professional life untriggered. But most importantly so you can honour the child that you were.

Once you have shown that child the protection, love and respect she deserves, then you will probably start to feel better in all sorts of ways. You are not ridiculous, Bullied, you are magnificent.

From Sunday 30 January, find The Midults in The Telegraph’s Stella supplement

More from the Midults: 

What readers advised in response to last week’s problem: ‘My fiancé takes no interest in planning our wedding’

@BonitaSamson: ‘My husband wasn’t really interested in the wedding arrangements either, and we’ve been married for 25 years. We saw the venues and agreed on guest lists together but, beyond that, I made the majority of the arrangements. I don’t think it’s a red flag unless there’s other stuff going. It was a nice day with beautiful memories, but by no means extravagant. After all, it is only one day in (hopefully) many more days together. It’s important to keep perspective.’ 

@ChristopherMarks: ‘As a man I have always found showy weddings to be a mistake. Think about how well Charles and Diana did. Or Fergy and Andrew for that matter. I had a registrar type wedding ceremony and the marriage lasted until the day she died, over 40 years later. Can’t we keep our attention focused on what is really important?’

@EirwenThomas: ‘My fiancé wasn’t interested in any of our modest wedding planning. A few days before the ceremony, his dad took him to the local Co-op for an off the peg suit (or god knows what he’d have turned up in). My cousin’s husband acted as the best man as groom hadn’t thought to ask any of his mates. Despite it all, it was our Golden Anniversary last year – he turned out a perfect husband but a rotten groom. Which one matters most?’