Article on Ostracism

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It seems probable to me that everyone on the spectrum has experienced ostracism in some form. There are some interesting thoughts and references in this link:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/04/social.aspx

Ostracism: the story of my life, pretty much, until I became an adult.

My main experiences of ostracism were at primary school (awful) and then much later, after my husband died and I was parenting alone, ostracised by married women as if I was some kind of threat to them, and by others who simply hated "solo parents" as part of their political and religious orientations - and went out of their way to make it known, trained their children to be nasty to mine, to throw stones at our windows etc.

I can forgive the first group - they were young children, they didn't know any better.

I cannot forgive the second group, adults who were poisonous, malignant bullies, who targeted the vulnerable.

Article reminds me of one of my non-autistic friends, though not my autistic friend.

I ostracize myself on purpose sometimes (it takes too much out of me to socialize) for days and I feel super depressed afterwards. It sucks :/

I can relate to that, and probably most people here can in some way.

You can isolate yourself, but you cannot ostracize yourself.

It's a totally different thing. To be Ostracized is a collective rejection by a group. To be ostracized is to be shunned and shut out from every situation, to be cut off from any conversation. To have your existence denied.

The message is this: the collective rejects you. Your are unfit for our company. We don't want you to exist, but we don't care to kill you, so we will erase you and you will be dead to us.

It's a horrible thing.

Strictly speaking you are absolutely right, ostracism is an act perpetrated by a group on an individual or a class of individuals. Still, I know what the poster meant to convey...

I can tell that you know--I think we must have had some similar experiences. High school was the worst for me.
But I have known in it in adult life with particular group oriented situations, when I was unmistakably, firmly shut out.

I think the difference between voluntary isolation and ostracism is important. It's like the difference between smacking yourself and being punched. The fact that the hurt is the intentional act of others is important.

One form of ostracism that I think is particularly and utterly cruel is what sometimes happens when a marriage breaks up: in some cases, the partner who leaves (often suddenly without warning in these situations) acts as if the person left never existed and doesn't exist; their families too can act as if the abandoned partner simply doesn't exist, even after decades of marriage and children. Where the abandoned partner is entirely innocent of wrongdoing, it is particularly cruel. Some also act as if the children don't exist and that does significant damage to the children's development. It may be the cruellest form of ostracism in everyday life that there is.

The suffering of these people who are left behind as "denied existences" is immense. (The leavers who do this are often narcissists in terms of a cluster B personality disorder, rather than in the sense of everyday egocentricity). That's no excuse though for the emotional and psychological brutality. They know exactly what they are doing.

Inexcusable.

Suddenly, "DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS" makes more sense now than it ever did before.

When a few Ostriches got shunned by the In-crowd, they joined together to form an Ostracism.

I wonder how many of us are victims of ostracistic acts sometime in our lives. I find myself asking " Am I a victim of asperger's of a victim of ostracism because of aspergers." .

I would say the latter.

I would have to agree with you there. I'll bet that 99% of all people here on WP are not here because of there autism or asperger's. but because of the effects of it. And I'll bet that ostracism is #1 on the list.