by High school was going to be different.
At least, that’s how it started for Ashley Bendiksen.
After being bullied in middle school, her freshman year showed promise.
A boy approached her at a dance. That led to her first relationship.
“I was like on a pink glittering cloud,” Bendiksen said.
That’d all change as her boyfriend started pressuring her to sneak out to meet up and to lie to her parents. He insisted so many times, Bendiksen gave in.
Their secret dates felt uncomfortable and came with expectations Bendiksen wasn’t ready for.
Her boyfriend then started picking on her and spreading rumors at school. The bullying returned.
“This super sweet, nice boyfriend just changed one day,” Bendiksen said. “I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
In the absence of coping skills, Bendiksen turned to substances and alcohol. Her eating habits suffered. Her self-image tanked.
“I’d look at the mirror and pick myself apart,” she said. “I didn’t like what I saw.”
This is how Bendiksen started her story to a small group of middle and high school students Thursday evening at Northview Church.
The talk, centered around healthy relationships and mental health geared toward kids, capped the Family Service Association of Howard County’s annual Prevent Child Abuse Conference, held earlier that day. This was the first year for the student-focused talk.
Bendiksen is a national speaker and activist from Rhode Island, covering issues on domestic and teen dating violence, sexual assault and resilience.
What Bendiksen found herself in as a freshman in high school was an abusive relationship, though she wouldn’t realize it until much later on. One in three teenagers experience abuse in dating relationships.
And like most teens, she didn’t speak up. Teens who do speak up, only about a third, tell a friend.
Bendiksen encouraged the kids to talk about what they’re feeling, which helps diffuse negative feelings and lowers brain chemical activity.
“When you don’t want to talk about anxiety, it’s kind of running the show,” she said.
Bendiksen also spoke during the day’s Prevent Child Abuse Conference. Her talk earlier in the afternoon covered current challenges facing students and their mental health. The audience was mostly adults.
“The biggest takeaway for them is how we reach these kids,” Bendiksen said.
That includes fostering good relations, making kids feel connected, initiating conversations and identifying red flags.
Other speakers included Trisha Pickett of Ascent 121, an Indianapolis organization that provides care for survivors of sex trafficking, and Carla Carlisle, a Kokomo native, who spoke about her experience as a foster and adoptive parent.
Back in high school, Bendiksen convinced herself she was fine and assumed she would figure it out, but her struggles persisted.
In college, she dated a guy who was so controlling he made her drop out of school. Bendiksen was isolated from her friends and family and living out of her car. She was 18 years old.
“I started thinking maybe bad things are just meant to happen to me,” Bendiksen said.
She eventually worked up the courage to break things off with her college boyfriend. The result was a physical reaction from the man. Bendiksen called the police.
“This was something I never though he was capable of,” she said.
He’d be charged with assault. In a way, it was a turning of the page.
Bendiksen remembers walking out of the courthouse realizing she wasn’t living for herself and hadn’t for a long time.
“My life had been run by those toxic people,” she said.
Avoiding toxic people was another message she encouraged students to take to heart.
If your friend group is studious and do well in school, you probably will, too. If you’re friends are involved in sports, clubs and activities, you will, too.
Same goes for hanging out with negative people.
“Who we surround ourselves with matter,” Bendiksen said.
When she was younger, and after leaving the courthouse for a hearing, she felt fed up. Bendiksen decided to start looking at herself more positively.
“It’s a silly piece of advice, but we want to talk to ourselves like our best friend would,” she said.
Bendiksen sought out a domestic violence shelter. Staff there asked her to share her story. It launched her speaking career.
She went back to school, graduating at the top of her class. Bendiksen has helped lobby for policy change, helping pass a new law in Massachusetts.
She also founded the Blue Hearts Project, a platform where other survivors can share their story.
Bendiksen travels the country sharing her story, and she sees kids dealing with more issues, compared to previous generations.
Some of those issues span generations like worries about their future lives, social comparison and academic success. But with social media, Bendiksen said she sees more kids worried about global issues since social media gives them access to news all day, every day.
“They have so much more to think about,” she said. “Kids are inundated with a lot.”
