Advice: Responding to Clueless101

Dear Clueless101,

I hope that you revisit my blog and know that I did read your comment and that is why I writing to you here.

Life in middle school and high school are certainly not easy at all - and I am glad that you can relate to my story because that means that I can relate to you! Ironically I have really dry skin too!!!! In fact I'm itching away at my face as we speak - AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH it is is driving me bananas! In fact I have always suffered with my skin, because I have a skin condition called eczema. At the conference Nicole spoke about her experience with eczema, which is always really hard to deal with.

The reality about the girls that are making your life difficult at school, is that those are girls who do not love themselves...they are so aware of their own insecurities and imperfections that they do not want other people to notice - so the easiest way for them to prevent that is to draw attention to someone else.

Right off the bat, I can let you know that none of the guest speakers would think these girls are cool at all. In fact these are people whose lives are so boring and suck so badly, that they spend their time talking about others. It's harsh to say - but its true! As the saying goes "Great minds discuss ideas, small minds discuss people." The reality is, is that many people that are bullies have a lot of personal problems in their lives. These girls probably have problems in their families, perhaps are being called names themselves - and this is their way of lashing out.

The first thing to establish is - do you have a group of friends? Real friends? Ones that you are certain that you can trust? If you do, this is a great tool that will be able to help combat these bullies. IF you do not - than we need to work on establishing you a group of friends that you can trust.

The second thing is to talk to your parents. Let them know what is happening. Immediately they will probably want to jump in and go to the school, and of course I am sure that you want to avoid that, but it is very important that your parents know what is going on in your life, so that they are also prepared. Sometimes parents forget what it is like to be a kid - and forget how tough growing up can be. I would suggest approaching them and asking if you can talk to them privately about something very important to you - but that it is very important to you that they respect that you would like their help to figure out how to handle it yourself, rather than them intervening and trying to fix it for you.

Secondly, you need to speak about it with a teacher at school that you trust. Speaking about bullying means that you do not tolerate it - and at your school they are trying their best to look at ways that they can make this situation better -but they can only help if they know what is going on!

Lastly, taking care of your health will also help with your skin. Drink lots of water and moisturize, moisturize, moisturize!