Do I have PTSD from social isolation?

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When I was aged 12-16 I suffered terribly from social rejection from my peers at school, and I believe it still has an affect on me today.

Dealing with social isolation from peers at school can be almost as damaging to a child as being neglected/abused by parents. Luckily for me I had a loving, secure family, but my experience I had at school was mentally damaging for me. I was picked on, made fun of, humiliated, ostracized and rejected by my peers, and was also picked on by kids I didn't know.
It made me believe that I wasn't good enough, unworthy of friendships, denied happiness, and it was very isolating.

As an adult I am hypersensitive to any mocking or judging I might get from strangers, because of how kids I didn't know at school targeted me just to get cheap laughs out of me. So if I think anyone is doing the same to me in the adult world I feel extremely anxious and angry, because it reminds me of my sh***y teenage years.
Also to this day I fear social rejection very badly. At school I really wanted friends, but whenever I tried to join in, I got rejected and it hurt. So now as an adult if there are two females who I know talking to each other, I have a little dilemma; if I stand here and don't go over and join in they will think I'm not that friendly and I'll never make friends that way, but if I do go over and join in they might get annoyed and think I'm intruding.
It's always me that has to make the first move, and there are some things body language DOESN'T give away.

Anyway, all this social anxiety I have, do you think it might be a form of PTSD from how I was treated as a teenager?

you probably don't have literal PTSD, but all of the rejection did emotionally scar you.

Recently I've read a psychology today post that suggested social anxiety may in some ways be more closely related to PTSD than other anxiety disorders.

Not a fullblown PTSD, maybe yet. But definitely trauma.


Currently speaking;
Is simply just the future social prospect triggers you?
Like any typical anxiety session of already imagining and worrying while either anticipating socializing would just go wrong for whatever reason, or by simply stepping out into the crowd and feeling like everyone's judging you already.


Or the present/while happening? While socializing, or while there's a specific event while socializing (rejection, criticism, accusation, etc.) Without worrying nor necessarily anticipating about it, but as it did happed as opposed to imagined. Most especially if it's all the sudden.

It's something I still currently have to deal with. If the event happens, it's like I went back to a state when I was helpless in certain moments in the past. No literal flashbacks, only like a form of unreasonable helplessness and overwhelming (unprocessed and very unwanted) emotions.
It's this pattern embedded in my system somewhere, unless I have the EF to overcome it on the spot through reprisal.

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Rather C-PTSD than simple PTSD. Otherwise yes.
I'm still quite frightened of women about my age in groups because of it.

I know the adult world is more forgiving than school, but not completely forgiving. In my adult life I have still come across older women being cliquey and bitchy towards me, humiliating me and making me feel ashamed of a harmless quirk of mine by pointing it out in a catty sort of way. That reminds me of what I had to put up with when I was a teenager, and it hurts.

Am reminded of something I read in psychology today years ago. Someone researched how children play. You will hear little girls say "you cant play with us", but you don't hear boys say that. With boys "everybody is welcome, even the dorky nerds, but...". What comes after the "but" is "you have to respect the pecking order".

My own memories of childhood kinda bear that out.

I suppose that both genders still instinctively act that way as adults though it gets buried under layers of social nicety.

I had lots of trauma of that nature growing up.

That’s why I hated being a kid.

I was pretty much the kid whom everybody picked on—from first grade (standard 1) through 11th grade (form 4).

Things started improving for me my last year of high school.

This was because I didn’t know how to relate to other kids properly, and I liked showing off how “smart” I was.

I had to learn how to stand up for myself and to edit my words eventually.

There is also C-PTSD, with a bit different causes and symptoms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_p ... s_disorder
It's a new diagnosis, included only in the newest ICD-11. Typically, It's not related to a single event but to prolonged, repetitive distress with (by patient's subjective belief) no way out. The symptoms include poor sense of self, dissociative symptoms (depersonalization, derealization, etc.) and general emotional disregulation, sometimes seemingly randomly triggered. In my case, symptoms and life history definitely match C-PTSD, not "simple" PTSD.

Well maybe PTSD isn't the right word. I thought one could get it "mildly", like my anxiety as an adult is caused by my past experiences which sounds like a form of PTSD. But like some of you have mentioned it could be C-PTSD. Whatever the name is, my lonely teenage years do have an affect on the way I am now. I get annoyed when people say "stop dwelling on the past, you're an adult now so you can move on", because it's not as simple as that. Especially when I experience social rejection in adulthood, it reminds me of the social rejection I faced at school.
Also being an Aspie means you can't win. If you're ranked at the bottom of the social pecking order then you will be socially rejected all your life. Usually social rejection is found out by trial and error, which I'm scared to approach a situation in case I end up getting socially rejected. I'm very sensitive to social rejection, and usually having a disorder like ASD and ADHD is the reason we suffer social rejection. Maybe I'll come to accept it when I'm older but at the moment I'm not ready to be friendless and it's hard to accept it when I see my peers around me having social lives and not finding making friends difficult at all.

My experience - after finally finding a useful therapist - is that after you heal your past, you naturally stop ruminating on it.
But healing years of suffering is neither quick nor easy. It's all about stripping your defenses, unlearning coping strategies and then facing your demons... to learn how to deal with life once again.