Hi all,
I recently have found out my brother was severely bullied in high school 10+ years ago and it has negatively impacted his adult life in a pretty serious way.
I knew back at the time he was getting some grief but I was busy skipping school etc and stupidly put it down to just the usual high school issues I thought every kid faced and didn’t really think much of it.
I have very recently learnt due to him telling me briefly the extent of the bullying being both very physical and emotional with regular beatings and emotional bullying all due to things that were made up about him from another student. As a result I am now seeing him struggle with depression, anxiety, and what seems to be in my unprofesssional opinion ptsd like symptoms. He now doesn’t like to be very social, has trouble trusting many people and is quite withdrawn from most things. He also doesn’t look after his health overly well. I took time to do some research and it led me to lost here for some help.
How can I help him in any way to encourage him to get back to his former self or to get a positive outlook on life again. I don’t want to come on too strongly and cause him to shy away from the issues or not want to confide in me which may cause more issues being that I’m one of very few that he can talk to.
I’ve always had very strong mental health so it’s hard for me to put myself in his shoes to be able to help in some way. Any advice would be super.
thanks in advance :)