I Confronted My School Bullies

When memories of childhood taunts resurfaced, Carla Caruso knew she had to lay the old ghosts to rest for good

I’m perched on a couch in an incense-tinged side room of a yoga studio. My eyes are closed and I’m nodding as a hypnotherapist softly speaks, encouraging me to cast my mind back to the past. So far, I haven’t been made to dance like a chicken or remove any clothing, like I’ve seen TV hypnotists persuade people to do. The session is actually quite relaxing.

An ad on a deals site has led me down the path of hypnotherapy after a looming book deadline has given me an anxious stomach.

The hypnotherapist asks me to think back to a time when I first felt anxious. Apparently, it’ll help my unconscious mind release past hurts. “Was it before, during or after birth?” she prods. “I was 11,” I blurt, surprised to find my fists clenching.

A memory, long buried, has popped into my mind. Of sitting across from a fair-haired boy in year 7 and hearing him loudly remark on my Italian appearance, on repeat. He would call me names like “Moustache” and “The Sun” (the latter due to my olive complexion). Names that sound harmless now but then stung so much that I’d pretend not to hear him and never say anything back.

He was also the kid who snickered that I should have been the one in my group nicknamed “Black Cat”. (My three best mates and I had a club called “The Cats” and each had feline-sounding monikers, which we rather dorkily painted on T-shirts in glitter paint. My name was “Tiger Eyes”.)

The hypnotherapist now urges me to recall a similar experience, even earlier on. My mind reels to two blondes cornering me in the playground and asking what country I’m from. (I went to a very Anglo school in Adelaide’s southern suburbs.) When I answer that I’m from Australia, the girls tell me I’m wrong, to try again. But it’s true; only my mum was born overseas, in Italy.