I met someone special that made that process easier. This person was a high school track and field runner with amazing split times. However, due to work she stopped running and focused 100% on her work. Something very normal in Japan. However, due to our love for the sport she fed off of me and I did from her. We complemented each other pretty well I would say making the process of running longer easier.

2021 came in and I was still struggling with mental issues. Things I didn’t really know were happening. I was just acting and doing things naturally (this was the scary part when looking back) I thought what I was doing was okay, normal, and that it would fade in some time. Because, this is the way I have always been, Do something and then I stop doing it. Funny enough, running has stayed and thus far it isn’t going anywhere.

My current workplace was getting insane to the point that I started developing a rash on a finger that went almost to my wrists. I thought I was developing allergies after almost 8 years in Japan but then I realized it was stress. By March I was forced to move to Kobe and after careful thought I said yes and felt part of my soul fading; I felt as I was getting constricted by an octopus. I couldn’t breathe; had major chest pains. First week of April we go back to work and after two days I knew this wasn’t the place for me. I spoke to my manager and said: “I can’t do this” I fear for my mental health and wish to leave. To be honest, looking back at that moment and knowingly leaving a high paying job with good benefits and looking at myself now: Best decision of this year.

Looking at these two pictures it is pretty clear something is wrong. The problem wasn’t food. I was eating like crazy and running way less than I was in October. This is proof enough of how stress can be a big factor in one’s health and writing about it makes me feel even better since now I feel better equipped to deal with these kind of situations. In the beginning of 2021 I started therapy. Something I thought only the damaged needed. Now, my entire view of it changed. Therapy isn’t out being insane or having a mental problem. Therapy is one of the nicest things you can do for yourself. I lived in constant fear of wanting to feel accepted and validated by everyone around me. I was working towards validation not towards self-acceptance.

Quitting my job was a major eye opening benefit. Something that money can’t put a price on. Yes, my salary decreased, yes, my benefits decreased. But, my professional advancement highly increased, motivation highly increased, regaining control of self incredibly increased and most importantly I started learning what self compassion looks and feels like. From this moment on (May 2021) the “self discovery” journey started.

This started by starting my new job at my new school. From the beginning I was accepted with opened arms and all my ideas were being heard and some of them even implemente. I had a big classroom like never before and also the first time teaching primary. I wasn’t scared but it was definitely a new challenge. A challenge I was ready to take on. New environment, new colleagues, new routines; all of this made my transition a positive one. I did not stop running but I was running around 60 to 70 kilometers a week and resting about one to two days.

I continued with my therapy sessions and also trying to find love (something I have not been lucky at) There were a few encounters here and there but it was until September where things started getting ugly in terms of my love life. I met someone who made me believe I was wrong at feeling certain things, wrong at behaving a certain way, and wrong at having some expectations of what a relationship should be like. I put myself down as I have never done before. I couldn’t sleep I was constantly thinking about how could I become the person she wanted. Nonetheless, throughout this time I increased my running exponentially I was running from 100 to 125 kilometers a week as well as running everyday without taking any rest. I was taking out all of my frustration by running this much.

That last relationship made me understand how much I have hated myself. How much I wanted to be someone else. How bad I am at dealing with myself. How much I can damage my own self to the point that I was doing things that were hurting me. At some point, I had enough and decided to put an end to it. I was so emotionally drained that I couldn’t    run anymore. I went from 125 plus kilometers week to 35. This was three weeks before the marathon. Perhaps it worked as tampering but I just felt I had no stamina, no willingness, and no motivation to keep on going. The week before the marathon I decided that I need to pick myself up and learn that it is okay to be who I am and that I don’t need to love myself but I do need to accept who I am. So, the week before the marathon I ran 75 kilometers and a 25km run 7 days before.

I get to the hotel and immediately was asked if I was there for the marathon starting a nice conversation with the owners of the place. I get to my room, changed onto my running clothes and went out for a slow 4km jog to get rid of any remaining nervous feelings. Got back home, get some light dinner and it’s for bed. Of course, due to nerves I couldn’t    sleep properly. Got up at 5:15am, changed clothes and did my usual routine before a long run which is going out for some coffee and walked for a bit. Went back to the hotel, got ready, and started my warm up routine of 350 crunches, 100 squats, and some active warm up exercises. 7am hit and I knew it was time to go to the venue. Left the hotel with a warm greet from the owner and as I was living he says the words “Faito” which mean good luck and walked for 30 minutes to the venue.

The were so many people trying to check-in. I was so confused but finally worked my way around it.  My biggest concern before a marathon is always the toilet so I lined up, my turn went up and “safe”. Got my shoes ready, gels and everything on my waist belt. Got a poncho to stay warm and went to line up. The management for the event was perfect, and as expected everyone super polite and helpful.

As I was about to start my second lap, I felt something weird and remembered I forgot to do something before walking out my apartment, something so important it can ruin anyone’s run... to poop. I was so frustrated, how could I forget to do that? So I go to the toilet and take care of business. However, right before walking in, both knees started to feel tingly. I felt weird and thought maybe I didn’t stretched enough or maybe it is because it’s a bit cold and they need to get warm “but how can that be if I already ran over 4K?” I didn’t stop (big mistake) and decided to keep going until the pain goes away.

Of course, the pain continued to grow until the point I thought “maybe I made a mistake with the tape?” So I took it off, stretched my knees for a bit more and continued my run. I was able to do four rounds (12.2K) before having to give up and call it a day. I was so frustrated since it was a beautiful day, I wasn’t tired at all nor my legs were giving in or whatever excuse I could come up with... the reason was my knees. December 22nd was the day my training for the Shizuoka marathon got halted and here I am, almost a month later not being able to run.

The next two days were awful. I went to visit my girlfriends family in Hiroshima and couldn’t walk properly at all. Couldn’t go up the stairs, and didn’t want to think about walking down them. Lucklily, my right knee was able to take the hits and heal pretty quickly but my left knee was my problem... A problem I am still dealing with.

I was angry, very angry. I couldn’t believe that I still needed to wait, especially with the Osaka Half-Marathon coming up next week. So I started jumping, stationary running if you will. I was able to do so for around 13 minutes straight with some tiny little tingly sensation. I don’t know if I should call this a win but, I am for sure desperate for some answers...

Let’s see what happens between now and January 27th.

​Q

          We are currently at the peak of festivals/matsuri in Japan. It's summer time, weather hitting the 35 C, humidity of 80% but this doesn't stop the Japanese from having a great time by showing their skills in traditional dances. You listen from miles away the chants and the sound of taiko (Japanese drum). Like if they were calling you. As you get closer, you realize something great is about to start.  You see people wearing traditional Japanese clothing, following the rhythm of the taiko. 

I had the opportunity to experience yet another beautiful festival. This time in Higashi Rinkan. There were different groups from different sectors in Sagamihara, showing us what they've been practicing for a long time.

One famous group made appearance, Takara Bune

Violence, including bullying and other types of behaviors, has seen increased political and scientific attention over the past years. However, this behavior among younglings and schools has declined over the past decade; the abuse of children by other children in school settings remains as one of the major issues of concern among adults and communities. In response, a number of intervention programs have been developed to help reduce the amount of bullying and violence in schools. Results suggested a significant effect for anti-bullying programs. However, as expected, some of the results seemed to fall under some sort of publication bias and did not meet the necessary objectives for practical significance. Publication bias (or the “file drawer effect”) occurs when articles with statistical significance are selected for publication more often than are articles that do not obtain significance (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1991). 

Another point of impact is that even though the effect for programs targeted to bullied people are slightly better, this type of research produce little to no effect on young participants. Thus, anti-bullying programs may not bring such an impact due to its lack of credibility.

Violence in schools brings increase the continuance of the bullying behavior to more serious violence, is an issue that has been attracting educators, scientists, politicians, and the public over the past decade (Phillips,2007). Nowadays, the perception of children not being able to understand what they are doing and that they do not hold malice against their peers stopped being viewed as innocent. Moreover, research disputes this common assumption that children are innocent (Phillips, 2007), and recent literature has documented that lesser forms of violence, such as bullying, are common among children (Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla, Ruan, Simons-Morton, & Scheidt., 2001). In addition to this common assumption a multitude of school anti-bullying programs have been developed, but it is uncertain whether these programs can reach success in achieving their intended outcomes. This uncertainty may be due to many anti-bullying programs having not been subjected to systematic and empirical review, or could it be that we still do not know how to evaluate bullying? 

Most schools have implemented bullying prevention programs, and used high amounts of money to create safer school environments (Sherman, 2000). However, with the limited knowledge of anti-bullying programs’ success, parents, schools, and communities fall into the idea the they are addressing the problem when the resources committed to such efforts could be better used to develop more effective programs (Farrell, Meyer, Kung, & Sullivan, 2001).

Bullying as a Problem Behavior

Regardless of definitional constraints, affected people are more likely to have a negative perception of their school (Nansel et al., 2001), behavior problems (Haynie, Nansel, & Eitel, 2001), and difficulty concentrating on schoolwork (Sharp & Smith, 1994). Is it that bullying brings other types of problems such as: learning disabilities? 

Other research adds that victims receive lower grades and avoid certain areas and activities (DeVoe et al., 2005). In addition, some victims of this form of violence tend to experience stress-related symptoms such as headaches and nightmares, whereas others suffer from depression and school phobia (Sharp & Smith, 1994). Research has also shown that bystanders or witnesses to acts of bullying may also experience similar problems (Kyriakides et al., 2006). With respect to bullies, there is evidence that has shown that their likelihood to engage in criminal activity as young adults is much higher than their less aggressive peers (Bollmer, Harris, & Milich, 2006; Heydenberk, Heydenberk, & Tzenova, 2006), although, according to Olwus, 1995, bullies may evidence fewer mental health and social problems than was once thought whereas less aggressive people might present higher tendencies of agitation (Fishkind, A. 2002).

Programs Designed to Prevent Bullying

Anti-bullying programs in schools are as diverse as the definitions constructed to understand this form of violence. More traditional anti-bullying programs follow the Olweus model. The Olweus Bully Prevention Program is designed to help identify bullies, in elementary, middle, and high schools, and to help them as well as their victims cope with the effects of this type of school violence. The Second Step Violence Prevention Program is also a classroom-based program that has shown some success in improving social competence and reducing anti-social behaviors (Taub, 2001) as well as decreasing aggression (Van Schoiack-Edstrom, Frey, & Beland, 2002). Moreover, Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP) teaches students social skills and how to respond to different problems that might affect they everyday activities (Farrell, Meyer, Sullivan, & Kung, 2003; Farrell, Meyer, & White, 2001).

More recent programs have approached this problem from a restorative justice model, which tries to restore the relationship between the victim and the offender by using the reintegrate shaming techniques proposed by Braithwaite (1989), as well as forgiveness and reconciliation, to reduce incidents of bullying (Ahmed & Braithwaite, 2006).However, is it possible that shaming techniques might have a negative influence on bullies and thus, increase the level of aggression? Moreover, researchers are exploring the role of biological processes and, more specific, the role that hormones play in the ability of youth to mediate conflict (Hazler, Carney, & Granger, 2006). 

However, literature also suggests that bullies are “skilled social manipulators that lack the empathic reactivity towards victims’ suffering” (Gini, 2006). Thus, programs that focus on the cognitive and emotional dimensions of bullying as well as moral sensitivity and appropriate empathic reactivity have also been implemented in schools (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006).

Essentially, depending on the approach, anti-bullying programs can bring a number of elements ranging from the impletion on how deal with aggression, pedagogy within the school to individual counseling for the behavior shown, which often can involve the juvenile justice system (Phillips, 2007). Phillips (2007) also suggests programs that hold society accountable for bullying. Because “masculinity and male violence are primarily socially constructed – is it bullying only male students experience? Thus, he proposes that “we should hold society accountable both for the development of norms that are not healthy and for the violent practices that affirm them”. Although there are many other programs, it is imperative to be able to decide which are most effective and jumping to conclusions such as shaming techniques are successful and male violence is primarily social should be avoided. Thus, the purpose of this study is not to provide a review of each anti-bullying program implemented in the United States (Nansel et al., 2001; Olweus, 1995; Olweus et al., 1999) but to provide a constructed criticism to what others have analyzed regarding the effectiveness of these programs in general.

Analyses of School Violence Prevention Programs

Christopher J. F., Claudia SM, John K., JR and Patricia S. (2007) conducted a research on all the articles published regarding bullying between the years of 1995 and 2006. They used a special criteria which included topics bullying intervention, prevention, treatment or therapy (please see pg. 12 for more details on the criteria and tables used on this study). A total of 42 published articles were found. Under their results they found that the effect of anti-bullying programs on violent or broader bullying outcomes was positive and significant. However, they argued that as meta-analyses emphasize on pooled sample size, the mentioned that the statistical significance in and of itself was not meaningful. Of greater concern is the interpretation of the effect size of the outcome (Cohen, 1994). They interpreted their results as indicating the effect of anti-bullying programs is positive in the population, but the size of the effect is minimal. Moreover, they found that the impact of these programs is less for low risk children with a 1% impact and higher for high risk children with a 3.6% impact. Therefore, we can conclude that even though anti-bullying prevention programs bring a slight portion of positive results they are still rather unnoticeable. Results were best for programs that specifically targeted high-risk youth, although even here, the overall effect size was small. 

Conclusion

School-based anti-bullying programs are not practically effective in reducing bullying or violent behaviors in the schools. This conclusion is likely to be disappointing for teachers, parents, and communities given the increased interest in targeting bullying and other violence in the schools. Given the noble, yet disappointing goal of reducing violence in the schools and the enormous financial and research effort devoted to developing anti-bullying programs, it would be useful to consider why these programs demonstrate such limited effectiveness. Are we seeing bullying differently, or is it that (as explained on previous papers) we facing the problem from a different perspective? Do we need to review what a bully is and how do they start even though research show that toddlers are naturally aggressive? Donald Herb (1997) and Tremablay & Nagic (2005). Several explanations are offered here, although further research would be necessary to truly understand this yet “inexplicable” behavior.

The first suggestion is that bullying, in particular (as opposed to more serious violence), is more advantageous to bullies than is nonbullying – we should understand this as bullying and “prevention” programs could possibly foster more violence behaviors rather than halting them. They might not be shown at school due to the consequences students might face, but this may transfer to outside violence. Although bullies are still perceived as insecure and, in effect, victims of their own aggression, research has suggested the opposite, yet some are still against this finding because research has also shown that some people might be seen hide themselves into projections of what they would like to be. On Carney (2010) words: “powerful people are better liars”. Here findings showed that powerful people shoulder shrugged less than less-powerful people.

Aside from aggressive and dominant personality traits, bullies have high self-esteem and are effectively normal children (Olweus, 1995). Bullying and violent behavior may, in many cases, be an effective strategy in climbing the dominant society among children at the expense of other children. As anti-bullying programs may encourage equality in problem solving that would involve bullies reducing their social dominance, there may simply be no incentive offered by these programs to attract bullies or violent children to follow them or be encouraged to participate in such activities. In other words, anti-bullying programs seem to only benefit victims by “halting” aggressive, and thus how are we really helping victims and more importantly what is happening with the aggressive peers is the are not incentivized for participating? As bullies or violent children see no personal benefit in following the program recommendations, they simply reject them. Nonviolent children are often seen trying to follow the program suggestions but may become frustrated when violent children do not. Thus, without effective incentives for bullies, there is little reason to believe that these programs are succeeding.

In conclusion, this study tried to examine the effects of school-based anti-bullying programs on bullying, bullies’’ perspective, and victims’ perspective. Results of this study suggest that anti-bullying programs produce an effect that is positive and statistically significant but practically banal. It is hoped that this study will stimulate discussion in this area and provide an urge for identifying where we might have gone wrong. How should we view bullying and can we define it? Or are there many types of bullying that we cannot possibly create a single “prevention” program to “halt” it? With cyber-bullying occurring more than ever, is it possible to halt in-school-bullying?

References

Ahmed, E., & Braithwaite, V. (2006). Forgiveness, reconciliation, and shame: Three key 
variables in reducing school bullying. Journal of Social Issues, 62(2), 347-370.

Carney, Dana (2010). Defend Your Research: Powerful People Are Better Liars. 

Christopher J. F., Claudia SM, John K., JR and Patricia S. (2007). The Effectiveness of School-
Based Anti-Bullying Programs. Criminal Justice Review 2007 32: 401.

DeVoe, E., Dean, K., Traube, D., & McKay, M. (2005). The SURVIVE community project: A 
family-based intervention to reduce the impact of violence exposures in urban youth. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma, 11, 95-116.

Fishkind, A. (2002). Calming agitation with words, not drugs: 10 commandments for safety. Current Psychiatry, 1(4), 32-39.

Gini, G. (2006). Social cognition and moral cognition in bullying: What’s wrong? Aggressive 
Behavior, 32, 528-539. Haynie, D. L., Nansel, T., & Eitel, P. (2001). Bullies, victims, and bully/victims: Distinct groups of at-risk
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Haynie, D. L., Nansel, T., & Eitel, P. (2001). Bullies, victims, and bully/victims: Distinct groups 
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Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006). Examining the relationship between low empathy and 
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Nansel, T. R., Overpeck, M., Pilla, R. S., Ruan, W. J., Simons-Morton, B., & Scheidt, P. (2001). 
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Phillips, D. A. (2007). Punking and bullying: Strategies in middle school, high school, and 
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Sherman, L. W. (2000). The safe and drug-free schools act. Brookings Papers on Education 
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Tremblay R, Nagin D, Séguin J, Zoccolillo M, Zelazo P, Boivin M, Pérusse D & Japel C. 
(2004). Physical aggression during early childhood: Trajectories and predictors.