Teasing

Post Reply New Topic

Watching videos of kittens and puppies, I see that their play consists of mock fighting and chasing. During introductions, larger, older dogs are careful to not frighten kittens or puppies, often by keeping their elbows on the ground. Once they are acquainted, young animals attack each other with abandon, trying to prove that they could have killed if they had wanted to. Eventually, they will need to kill to survive, and really do need the practice.
Since humans need to fight socially for success, our mock attacks are verbal, and the attacker is best pleased if they get an interesting, fairly equal game out of it. Aspies run into trouble by over or under-reacting. We might make them look foolish, but that can backfire. We might just not know how to play the game, and so lose by default. There are better and worse ways to not engage, though. The situation to avoid is becoming an easy "point" for anyone in an "in group" to score by harassing you at any opportunity.
I have sometimes been able to defuse a situation with humour, and have seen others pretend to a major deafness, always misunderstanding and quickly "giving up." What other tactics have worked for you?

Zero-tolerance policy. If someone harasses me at every opportunity, I will have nothing further to do with them.

I've found that teasing is usually an early warning sign of an immature, insensitive, passive-aggressive personality that will eventually act out in other unpleasant ways.

Like any negative situation in life,humor has always worked for me and not taking things personally,water off a ducks back really.

But yeah,along with pi woman,i have a zero tolerance policy to dropkicks,once they've shown there true colors.

Kindness.

A girl and her "posse" used to bully me relentlessly in high school, mocking me for everything I did or said. One day, she had forgotten to do a homework sheet for a class we were both in and she was in a panic as a result because missing it would bump her from pass to fail towards the end of the semester. I smiled at her and gave her my completed homework sheet to copy before class started.

She was kind to me to the point of defensiveness when others tried to bully me for being weird from there on forward. I got other "protectors" through similar means. I'd carefully watch people who targeted me and wait until they were in a moment of weakness and then solve their problem to earn their protection, etc.

Not going to lie but this is the model of most of my relationships. I lose by default every time unless I do something to establish a mutual relationship where the other person needed me, took from me, and both of us know it.