For those of you who don't know, October is National Childhood Bully Awareness Month.

Statistics for bullying are insane.

Recent studies show that one in four children will be bullied before they reach high school.

One in three kids are physically attacked before age 18.

Every 7 minutes a child is bullied.

More than 160,000 students stay home from school daily to avoid bullying.

If you're anything like me, perhaps you've had a misconception of bullying at some point in your life.

Before I began training and working within martial arts, I had an, admittedly, completely incorrect view on the matter. Being-- for complete lack of a better term-- a rather assertive child, I found myself almost bitter towards the idea of bullying.

I was utterly dumbfounded by it. Why would anyone just let someone be mean to them? Why didn't they just tell them to back off?

This misconception came from a complete lack of understanding of bullying in general. Like all things controversial, perceptions of bullying can be wide in variety.

For reference, bullying is defined as:

Bullying is not characterized by one mean comment, or a thoughtless, insensitive joke from a classmate. Bullying is habitual, intentional, aggressive behavior directed towards a specific individual, over a span of time, with the intent to dominate them, either psychologically or physically. Bullying ranges in styles and strategies widely, from psychological, to cyber, emotional, and physical bullying.

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Bullying is also not limited to children, as it can occur at any point in life. Though it is most commonly recognized in children, it can and does occur in the workplace and in the home.

Working at a martial arts school, I encounter a lot of children daily that have dealt with some form of bullying in their life. Most claim that learning to deal with bullying was a major factor that played into why they began training martial arts in the first place.

There have been many psychological studies focused on what creates and motivates people to bully, where these studies have produced research that insists bullies aren't born, but made. Along with these, psychologists have also looked at the long term effects associated with bullying.

Researchers have proved that individuals bullied in childhood are more likely to develop psychological disorders -- specifically depressive disorders, that would most likely require treatment later in life-- than those who aren't.

It's been proven that children who have suffered bullying grow into young adulthood, have higher rates of developing depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and substance abuse.

Cross-correlation studies have focused on the relation of bullying and suicide as well, producing numbers that are also abnormally high, as studies by Yale University have reported bully victims are 2 to 9 times more likely to attempt suicide than non-victims.

Recently, studies looking into the concept "ostracism," which is defined as: "deliberate social exclusion of individuals or groups," have brought up a concept of emotional pain. Ostracism would be an example of emotional or social bullying, which is more common than physical bullying, especially amongst older or female students.

Emerging evidence in the field of neuroscience has all but proven the "hurt" of emotional pain is all but metaphorical. This research suggests that the physical feeling of pain and the social/emotional feeling of pain, seem to overlap in terms of how your brain processes it. Basically, the same area of the brain that we know to be involved in processing physically painful feelings—the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex—is also relatively active when processing feelings of social exclusion.

Combatting bullying will never be accomplished through a majority scale. It isn't the school system, the government, or detention that will prevent it from happening.

Clearly it's an issue that needs attention, as it proves to be an issue handled inefficiently. This responsibility lies on an individual level.

It partly on parents to teach their children to not be bullies; to not raise children in a way where they are given no control, abused by control, or taught that they should always posses it.

It relies on the children, more and more the older they get, to have the self-discipline to not be a bully, with the co-existing understanding of how and why they should do so; to understand how to not act out of impulse, and resist the 'mob mentality.'

It relies on teachers, influencers, and coaches to be positive role models, and encouraging of self-respect and self-awareness; to hold children to a standard that they will be likely to fill if asked-- the standard of having and cultivating their own personal standards to begin with.

Bullying is a serious, relevant problem that cannot be fixed immediately or easily. It's a problem that requires constant, preventative actions, rather than consequential ones.

It's a problem that requires you to care.

For more information on bully prevention, or to join the bully prevention movement, visit https://www.hyperbullyawareness.com.

Live Your Life: Bully Awareness Movement - Bullying Ends Herewww.youtube.com