People have tended to bully or ignore me, have you had this?

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I was talking to my parents about my problem a while ago & whether the problem was with me or them.

When I was a child, I made a 'friend', but they made another friend & they eventually began to say horrible things about me & leave me by myself in the playground if I stood up to him. Another 'friend' often used me so I would draw pictures for her & said 'I won't be your friend unless...' or 'If you were my friend, you would...'.

In secondary school, I made 'friends' with a girl who after a while, made other friends & went out on the weekends & after school without me. I made some new 'friends' & a lot of them ganged up against me when one particular guy decided he didn't like me, but stupidly I went to the park with them & stuff even though a lot of them said horrible things to me, threw leaves at me & ruined my birthday, then laughed about the way I cried afterwards. The one who laughed was a guy who 'stuck up' for me & the other who stuck up for me began to ignore me after the whole bullying episode was over.

I made some new 'friends', but they recently ganged up on me on Facebook about me lightly poking fun at their organisation skills & have totally ignored me when I've had problems (For example, I hadn't asked permission to be in a particular place & me being paranoid, asked if we could go back to a safer place because I could've got found out by one of my parent's friends. They all also decided to go to KFC while we were there, totally ignoring the fact that I'm a vegetarian...). A few of them also urged me to 'make friends' with a girl who told her friends to not talk to me! There was also this computer in the school library that, when you touched it, sent out a small electric shock & they tried to get me to touch it, but I was really reluctant, so they pulled me towards it (even though I was struggling) & eventually had to push them out the way to get free & I started crying. They seemed to feel bad about it. I wonder what they said to each other in private, though (I felt really silly after the whole thing, like I completely overreacted). We also planned a day out somewhere, but I was left waiting for them for an hour & when I texted them, they told me flat-out that they weren't coming. No 'sorry' or anything.

I look back on some of these things & wonder if I was being too harsh on these people? Is there a reason I can't think of why people would be deliberately mean to me...? I try really hard to be nice & polite, but I don't think it works because pretty much everyone (except my lovely parents) seems to treat me kind-of badly. What's going on? Has anyone else had this happen to them & how have you dealt with it?

Thank you for reading (sorry it's so long).

Not just you. This is one aspect of what we all talk about here in different ways.

Meme.

It might seem that this happened because of your autism but it's actually a very common way for NT children to interact with each other. It's a stage where children figure out the rules of relationships. It's doubtless hard not to take it personally but all around you, whether you noticed or not, other children were doing this with yet other children, all of them NT.


In the general course of an NT childhood, these different clashes get resolved in multiple ways with multiple children and the child eventually builds up an internal model for how friendships work.

It is possible that the AS child, when confronted with this behaviour, is far more alarmed and stressed out by it than an NT child and reacts with anxiety instead of the "sez you!!" social aggression that eventually leads to a resolution.


I was both the "do-er" and the "done-to" many times over when I was a (NT) child. When other NT people reminisce about childhood, this sort of thing comes up all the time. Sometimes I would coerce other girls into doing things they didn't want to do (play with their troll dolls, it was the 70's) with the "if you were my friend..." line. Another girl said, "If you were my friend you wouldn't try to take my troll doll". Oohh. Good comeback. Repeat that sort of interaction 5,000 times over the course of 15 years and a person comfortable with friendship dynamics comes out the other end.

The AS child is likely too stressed out by the whole interaction to replay it 5,000 times to resolution.

My point? It's not you. It's just kids. They all did it to each other. It had nothing to do with your neurology.

edited to add; I didn't want to go over each incident in your post because the it would be one of those tl:dr posts. But there is a common theme. They push. They expect you to push back in a socially savvy way. They will keep doing this to each other (and to you, if you are around them) until they grow out of it by adulthood. I just want to assure you that even though you don't know about it, they are doing it to each other, too. The difference is that you are reacting with anxiety rather than social aggression or social savvy. Try not to take it personally although it surely feels personal. They really are doing it to each other too.

Hmm, never knew that... That's, er, really odd.

I was always ignored in social situations for the most part. I`m sorry this happened to u!