High functioning girls/women. Help!

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I don’t think people really read my posts or understand what I’m saying in previous sections, so I’m posting here.

Does anyone ever feel like they can stop being overly emotional about verbal comments people say. I’m talking hurtful things. I can’t make it stop and sometimes it feels so uncomfortable, it’s like my body is on fire.

I tried posting about this regarding me always quitting jobs when there’s too much verbal abuse, but the general response was to just put up with it. Honestly, I’d rather live in poverty than have to deal with feeling like s**t at work.

I wish I had a good answer for you to make it all go away, but I don't.

I was subjected to 3 years of verbal abuse and physical abuse during Junior High. It left deep scares on my inside. The verbal abuse didn't bother me that much but physical abuse was a different story.

One day when I was in the hallway of my 6th grade school, I was surrounded by a group of boys. They asked me what my nationality was. I sensed danger and said nothing. They looked at me. I was small and had large ears. They decided I was Japanese. I said nothing.

For the next three years, I was told every Japanese joke ever invented. Whenever they threw a joke my way, I maintained a stone cold face. That was a little hard to do sometimes because I wasn’t Japanese and a few of the jokes were actually a little funny. But if I showed any emotion, the jig was up.

To this day, if they are still alive, I wonder if they remember the little Japanese boy that went to their school. And I am still chuckling deep inside. That is my quirky sense of humor.

Now if I were Japanese, every one of their jokes would have been a dagger to the heart. And it also made me somewhat immune to any other criticisms they leveled in my direction. If they called me stupid, an idiot, a klutz, an imbecile; I knew deep inside I really wasn’t because I was pulling the wool right over their eyes and they didn’t even realize it. This almost made me bulletproof from psychological abuse.


Verbal abuse causes great stress. It also destroys your confidence and self worth. For me I learned to ignore it all. I built up my confidence by developing many skills. I just let all their criticism bounce off me. I remember they voted me "Least Likely to Success" at the Junior High graduation party. So in a way, that steel hardened focus made it easy for me to succeed at anything I tried.

I definitely have a hard time not reacting when people say abusive things to me or especially if they say them to other people. Over time I have gotten better at responding with an even tone of voice and telling them exactly why their comments are not helpful, but I still sometimes can't help getting pulled into the temptation to get angry and chew them out or make sarcastic comments back at them.

This had a big part in my decision to quit my previous two jobs, because I either had an emotionally abusive manager or the managers wouldn't stop other emotionally abusive employees in my department. The stress wasn't worth it. My current job still has that problem but I don't work there very many hours and I have a plan to eventually move into a different line of work.

A few things that have worked to help me get through it: 1. Slowly writing the alphabet out on a piece of paper while listening to the other person talk at me. This got me through a lot of meetings where the managers would say dumb stuff that I disagreed with. 2. Asking myself whether getting upset or saying anything back is actually going to make a difference. Usually it won't, so I'd wait until a break and then go out to my car to curse or cry or do whatever. 3. Finding someone in my department who gets along with everybody and pretending to be that person when a stressful situation comes up, mimicking their words and tone of voice (Not in a sarcastic way. I know this one seems weird but I've found it can be really helpful when you have no idea how to deal with awful people.)

There are also lots of books and websites out there with professional advice about how to get along with stressful people, you might want to check some of them out.

Hi used to take things very personally and react emotionally to comments. I sometimes still do. Especially when stressed. I try and think that maybe there is a reason someone might say something that really isn’t to do with you and is more their own issues surfacing.

I'm not sure if I count as high functioning or not but since I work I probably do... yeah, I have the same problem.

I honestly have no trouble with name calling. Literally anyone, save for mutes and others who can't speak at all, can open their mouth and throw out an insult. That's why I don't feel bad about those; the person puts no effort in it... but if someone says in full sentences why I'm stupid or something, that kinda hurts. Since you know, making a speech about how and why someone is stupid means they're putting in a little effort, which in turn means that the subject isn't completely irrelevant to them, that they want me or others to know that I'm stupid.

I also know that feeling of one's body feeling like it's on fire. I mostly get it when people, usually men, stomp on women's rights verbally. I mean one sexist joke I can always brush off even if it's tasteless or throw an equally bad sexist joke back, but when people sound like they seriously think that women are worth less or want some of our rights cut... yeah, I snap.

In my youth, I almost could have written the same. I tried coping by channeling how I felt into writing or art, but in the moment I usually just fought or froze.

It does get easier over time.

In my case at least, I still have scars on my psyche from childhood and teenage bullying. When inflicted, they felt like bleeding wounds (a few actually were), but with time, they've healed over although they may never be gone completely. Learning more about myself and about the nature of bullies has also helped the healing.

Over the years nasty adult comments have become gradually easier to shrug off. In most cases I've been able to avoid those kinds of people. Work can be difficult, but if you can find ways to avoid the cruel people, or switch to a job where you don't have deal with as many people in person, that will help. If possible don't quit a job because of the verbal bullies in the first month or so, because sometimes you may be perceiving more than is there simply because learning a new job is hell on it's own. Weigh out the costs at least.

I've had a couple of people go after me hard the last two years, and while at first it was awful since they are relatives, they eventually went so over the top that it became laughable. It was quite cathartic to discover that I'm a narcissistic psychopath - one of the few diagnosis I'm really pretty sure doesn't apply. And that turned my sensitivity to those two right off.

So, IMO nasty people may always do some damage, but it becomes much, much less over time and experience and knowing yourself well enough to know that what they say is nonsense. Learn to call them on their BS in the safety of your mind. Hang in there, it really does get better.

I hope you've already found some good coping mechanisms, but if not, check out Dan Siegel's Wheel of Awareness mindfulness practice. It has really helped me build skills to escape unpleasant and upsetting thought cycles.

We are never going to be able to prevent other humans from being hurtful but we can learn to employ adaptive behaviors and thought patterns to improve our quality of life.

Honestly, the only thing that has worked for me is not giving a s**t. Why do I care what some ignorant a***hole thinks of me? People are going to find me odd. I can't change that. But to give those a***holes the validation they want by getting upset? No. Not any more. I'm 40 now so it's been a long, hard road. But you have to pick your battles. Save your energy for negotiating the relationships you DO care about. These days I just do my job and go home, end of story.

If you're getting mistreated by someone in a senior position, that's a different story. Is there a HR dept or someone more senior than your line manager that you can take this to? Bullying in the workplace should not be tolerated by that workplace. You have to be the one to report and start the process though.

When people say nasty things it is more about them than about you. Life is stressful and everyone has problems and shunting them onto someone else is sadly a very human coping mechanism. Try and observe it as if they are saying the things to someone else or transform their words to being a complaint about how they are feeling in your head and respond to that. If they say your are a fill in insult. Then respond with something like 'I am sorry you are stressed but please take it out on someone else' or similar...Easier said than done I know! I tend towards avoidance myself but that isn't ideal.

This is the best advice that I know to give you. If bad things seem to happen over and over again in your life, maybe it is the universe trying to give you the opportunity to grow as a person. Like for example, to choose not to let some things upset you and make you angry. To teach us patience, and to teach us to just be still, and to be happy with ourselves. Everyone has bad times sometimes.

I think this describes me well... my sister was my biggest abuser growing up, she's younger and NT and always knew how to hurt me verbally until I would break down or blow up then plan the innocent little sibling card and somehow convince all the adults that I was being a mean unreasonable older sister. I think a lot of it was semi-unconcious or she didn't realize just how much she was hurting me. But our relationship is still pretty awful despite that. I remember I would get so upset I would hide in closets, bathrooms, or just anywhere I could curl up out of sight and one time I threw a harry potter book at the wall so hard it punched through. I covered it up with a poster and didn't tell anyone. I think my parents must have found it when they sold the house but they never confronted me about it.

For me, rubbing or playing with something can help not to burst in tears immediately. It's not the best strategy when you are in public, but you could put your hand in a pocket and rub your skin or flip your hand behind your back. I usually do this and try to somehow end the conversation quickly and then hide somewhere.

I've suffered bullying and I know how you feel. It's hard, after that, to not take small things seriously.