Lesson #1: Why were you bullied?

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I will be turning 70 in a few days, which makes me an Old Timer. And over the course of my life, I have learned a few important observations about my tribe, the Aspies. When I was young I was bullied something fierce and even today I still retain these invisible scars from those days. Those scars helped shape me, the person I was to become. Bullying is almost an Aspie trait. Aspies bear the brunt of bullying. It peaks in Aspie males in the Junior High School years and in Aspie females in the High School years. “Why are Aspies bullied?” This is a critical core question.

We share many traits with animals. There are physical traits such as the fact that humans and animals generally have two eyes, a nose, two ears, a mouth, etc. But we also share behavior traits. Two important traits that humans possess are herd traits and tribe traits. In order to understand the why of bullying, one need only study the tribe traits of animals.

As species evolved some animals (for example primates) began to exhibit social traits. Social animals in a hierarchic community have been observed exhibiting the following structure:

The highest-ranking individual is sometimes designated as the Alpha Male. Alpha animals usually gain preferential access to food and other desirable items or activities. Alphas may achieve their status by superior physical strength and aggression. The individual with alpha status sometimes changes, often through a fight between the dominant and a subordinate animal. These fights are often to the death, depending on the animal.

Beta Male animals often act as second-in-command to the reigning alpha. They will replace a dead or unfit alpha and become the next alpha.

Omega Males are referred to as the lowest caste of the hierarchical society. Omega animals are subordinate to all others in the community, and are expected by others in the group to remain submissive to everyone. Omega animals may also be used as communal scapegoats or outlets for frustration, or given the lowest priority when food is distributed.

This structure is also exhibited in tribes of humans. Humans form into societal groups called gangs. A gang is led by an Alpha Male (otherwise known as the bully) and his lieutenants, Beta Males. Generally this tribe encompasses the entire school class because the other members of the tribe participate as soldiers in the gang or as silent eyewitnesses. The leadership of the gang is determined by brute force. An Aspie fills the role of an Omega Male, a communal scapegoat.

One of the interesting observations about school bullying is that generally for males it peaks in the Junior High School years. What makes the timing of that phase interesting and special? It is because males are transitioning into puberty at that age.

In primates, Alpha Males often gain preferential access to sex or mates and as a result to reproduction and offspring. In humans, this bullying is part of thinning out the herd just prior to the mating age. It either mentally cripples males for the rest of their life or causes them to become loners and leave the tribe.

Once abuse and torture enters the picture, do not expect the child to advance any further along the stages of natural childhood development. Once you drive a turtle back into its shell in fear, don’t expect it to come out anytime soon. Aspies exhibit paralyzing fear, afraid of sticking their head out of their shell, because they don’t know what they did wrong to have their peer group turn on them, even their best friends, with great meanness pushing them out of their tribe.

The reason why I don't hold any ill-will towards my school bullies is purely because of what you said. At the end of the day we are animals and as such we do have a lot of herd and tribalistic traits.

I was bullied because of my extremely slow rate of development, both physically and mentally (emotionally/socially). I was actually bullied by people YOUNGER than myself as well as the same age and older by both boys and girls. At the age of 15 I was still reading fiction books for 7-10 year olds and 11-12 year olds, obviously I thought this was normal until I started getting picked on when other kids saw me reading them.
I had a singular friend during school, he happened to be a bit more outgoing than myself so I ended up in a small friendship group because of him. I could have definitely lived without them, in fact I frequently wished they'd just stop talking to me as it was too much mental effort to socialise with them, needless to say I ended up the omega of that friendship group. I was the subject of ridicule and exclusion within this friendship group, naturally I vanished from their lives as soon as my school years ended as I had zero interest in any of them as people and it seemed like the feeling was mutual.

Now as a 23 year old I avoid people, I don't have friends nor do I want them. It takes too much effort for me to wrap my head around the way most people are. I think due to my child and adolescent years of being bullied I'm pretty much unbulliable now, not only because nothing anyone says remotely affects me but I no longer feel any kind of need to blend into a crowd for survival plus I also have the physical stature to stand up for myself now, unlike my school years.
I'm also a lot more self assured than I was as an underdeveloped teen, though I still wouldn't say I'm where I should be, developmentally, for my age.

It’s fairly easy to understand once you accept that there’s nothing more disgusting in the world than weakness, and that people can and will judge you without caring whether you had a choice on what they’re judging you by.

I have been both bullied and a bully. The latter I deeply regret. I don’t think bullying is due to one singular reason, instead there are often multiple contributing factors. Personally, I acted out and hurt the ones that I cared about because at the time I didn’t possess the emotional capability to accurately convey my feelings in a healthy manner. Anger and frustration frequently took control of me and I wasn’t sure how to deal with that. Bottling up my emotions only made it worse as I found myself exploding unexpectedly when I didn’t mean to.

To give you an example, I was friends with a girl but I often felt conflicted about our friendship because she would defend this boy who was physically bullying me at the time, and would take his side. As such, I felt betrayed and confused. She would also take sides with this girl that was psychologically bullying me, so even more hurt feelings ensued.

When I think about it, a simple conversation would’ve saved us a lot of time, but due to my experiences I thought that I had to ignore my feelings and hope that they’d go away instead of address them. That’s what I thought it meant to be tough, I was wrong. Suppressing my emotions just made them unstable. I didn’t feel in control of myself anymore and that was terrifying.

She understood this and wanted to help me curb my anger, and sometimes I would self-harm because I hated myself for my behaviour and thought that I deserved to be hurt/punished, but didn’t know how to stop because acting out was all that I knew leading to a rather unhealthy cycle. Unfortunately, it was a difficult situation to navigate but that doesn’t excuse my behaviour.

I didn’t act this way to ensure that some kind of hericary was maintained, rather I just felt frustrated at her and wanted to scream “How dare you take their side? Don’t you care about me? I thought we were friends! He hurts me everyday, so much that it’s painful whenever I walk and yet you defend him? Why? As for that girl, she makes me wish that no one could see me or that I just could stop existing! I feel depressed, angry, frustrated, hurt, confused, but I feel as though I’m supposed to pretend that everything is absolutely fine because I’m supposed to be tough, responsible and selfless due to the fact that our teachers are neglecting us so much that sometimes we’re expected to do their jobs and look after the younger years who often go unsupervised otherwise no one would and that makes me feel stressed out beyond belief, I worry that I won’t get there in time one day and one of the kids will accidently kill or hurt themselves with some spare rope lying around or something. I just want to be a child for once, I’m only ten years old and I shouldn’t have to deal with all this!”.

Damn, getting into the mindset of my ten year old self again felt intense.

Trying to ignore my emotions led to becoming the exact same person I hated. A bully. I know that sometimes when I tell people about my experience they reply saying that it's completely understandable that I acted this way, and sure it explains it but in no way does it justify my actions. Shame that I didn’t have a therapist at the time that was actually helpful, instead I had a woman have a mental breakdown and call me worthless, who told me that I’d never amount to anything. I internalised her words for many years. Took a long time to learn how to open up to people again and cope with being bullied and my anger issues.

I remember being picked on because I was a loner most of the time. Not that I didn’t talk to people. I naturally drifted away from the loud bully kinda people and would talk with the silent people who were also friendly.

We had a huge group - a few of us that didn’t like the other bullies. We kept to ourselves.

Later when I got married to my ex- husband who I didn’t know was a school bully. He mentioned it to me after we started drifting apart. He said that it’s weird when people don’t talk. And more reason to picked on.

(I have a slight overdose of my meds today and have mental confusion. Hence my language might me a bit off)

I was bullied/abused/tormented/insulted, etc a lot when I was younger, not just from school kids but also by my adult relatives and even strangers in the neighborhood. I consequently developed PTSD and never thought I'd live to see 18. When I did, I never thought I'd live to see 21. When I got to 30 I realized I'd overstayed my welcome and made a serious suicide attempt.

Today I still live alone in social isolation. I don't really care for that but it seems like it's the best and only way for me to cope with this cold, cruel world. I'd say I was bullied because I was a loner, still am, and came from a different country, so American kids mocked my accent incessantly. Plus, I was poor so I never wore the hip fashions, always "high waters" and "skips." I also wore glasses so, naturally, I was "Four Eyes." There were other issues besides those but you get the picture.

I could only ever daydream of that. They almost always deflected my blows, but even when I hit them with all my might, I only made them laugh. There was a general consensus that I only tickled them. It’s always seemed to me that in order to be worthy of the tiniest amount of respect (as in not being constantly assaulted), you need to have been born with ten times my muscle mass. Unless you’re female, too old or too young, or you have an obvious physical disability, so beating you would be considered cowardly, that is.