Bullying and the Effect of such.

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Awhile back I posted what I am about to post on another forum. I have to edit it a little for WP (fixed spelling, expanded, added some WP specifics, etc), but the message and point is the same:

It seems many people with AS and other similar things find themselves the target of bullying and social abuse in the years of about 6th grade to 12th. I am writing this as both a point of view, opinion piece, and a question. This may not be in a logical order, but bare with me. Some of this may seem abit redundant from other threads such as "were you bullied and if so how much", but I will try to keep it fresh.

So first, a question to you guys:

Have you been bullied?
Did such a bullying make you mad?
If so, what did you do about it?
Looking back, do you think you did the right thing and why.

I think these are important questions. It is good to reflect on the past even if it can be painful. This is not meant to be a rant, rather, if you answer those, a quick summery. If you want to expand feel free, but keep it as rant-less as possible.

I will answer first:

Have you been bullied? Yes, for the majority of my school life. Even since 3rd grade in fact by a particularity nasty kid and his friends. Then 4-6th are kind of a blur, I don't recall much either way. 7th I was home schooled. The s**t really hit the fan from 8th-till I got out of HS.

Did such a bullying make you mad?

Indeed, my life was hell. In the younger years-last few years of HS, many tears were shed and thoughts of revenge were had. I hated my peers and my teachers. I was made the joke, excluded, teased, physically abused (tripped, locked out of a building, etc).

In the last few years of HS, from 10th-"12th" (did 11 twice, not for failing 11th, but because credits got messed up) (I got my GED, graduation normally was not going to happen), I stopped caring, grew a very thick emotional shell, and felt better.

If so, what did you do about it?

When I was younger (6-8th grade) I had the typical anger and sadness. 9th I avoided most of it by skipping classes.

However, 10-11th was the worst. During those years I became the monster I so hated. But worse, the effect of years of peer abuse finally caught up and I am ashamed to say I became a tyrant many many times worse then any individual indecent. It was made more profound by the fact that during those years I was in a school with a small class of people who, for once, not only all had "issues", but many of them were extremely easy targets. By that time I had grown my "shell" so to speak, and insults/teasing had pretty much no effect. There was a kid in that class that I thought at the time went out of his way to make himself a target. I was probably a bigger jerk to him then anyone ever was to me, and made his life hell in a way that would make most NT/Regular bullies ashamed. The Irony? I found out later he had AS >.<

Looking back, do you think you did the right thing and why.

No, I am ashamed. I turned my feelings of rage and pent up aggression into a mental weapon to be used on others. What made it worse is that unlike typical bullies that will just call you names and such, I was the type that picked at the very fiber of peoples being until they came undone. I did not just throw pencils and say stupid things, I formulated attacks up to the point were I would plan things out in advance. I did not just insult people, I found out their fears and hates and weaknesses, and I picked them clean. I was somebody who, if I met my past self now, would probably hurt.

Anyways:

I have a theory, it goes like this: If you are picked on in your younger years you are more likely to become a bully in your later years. Bullying just creates more of the same.

For me, I became the thing I hated most. I regret it to this day.

Why do people seem to have the need to take things put on them and in turn dump it on another? Why do people bully in the first place? To make themselves feel better? To fit in/look cool? Maybe some just enjoy others pain.

After awhile I just stopped caring as I said. Nothing bothered me. Insults, rejections, etc, nothing made me feel bad. I think that is another bad thing that can happen. We learn to give ourselves shields to protect us. The problem is such shields can have the effect of loss of emotions and a bitter outlook on life, and sometimes we withdraw so far and so deep it is hard to "come back".

People wonder why the kid in the corner does not trust anyone, and why the outcast becomes the monster? Well, I think most of you know the answer.

In EXTREME cases things like Columbine happen. They are rare, but they do occur. Some punk thought it would be funny to push "bobby" over the edge. Shame nobody's laughing now. Shame 10 people are dead. Yet as with all things, nobody seems to learn from these tragic events.

People seem to get off on putting others down. Highschool is not for learning. At least not academically. It is for social experimentation. There is a hierarchy and so called food chain that evolves in schools. For some, it is a great time of friends and parties. For others, not so much.

Kids, AS, MR, or just "strange" are the target of abuse from peers pretty much everywhere.

In my mind, that person who was picked on will often in the end:

A. deal with it and suffer
B. commit suicide
C. turn into a bully themselves
D. flip out and cause a real problem

For me, it was C. I refuse to commit suicide for a variety of reasons. I refuse to sit and suffer. I am not a killer and have no want to harm others physically. Maybe those are pretty basic choices, and maybe you can think of more. But for most I think some type of A,B,C, or D happens.

I am out of HS now. My views on life have changed drastically over time. I am a different person then back then. Looking back it all seems kind of like a sick joke.

What are your thoughts? This is not meant as a post to rant in. I want to know what you guys think about the long term (and short term) effects of this.

Yet another interesting topic..

I was a bit of a bully when I was young ages 8-11. I realised just recently (now 33) that the reason I was like this was due to my father. He bullied me for many, many years growing up but at the time never completely realised it. I took his treatment of me and passed it onto others mostly because I just didn't understand and didn't have that level of self awareness. At the time I didn't even know I was doing it.

Then aged 11 up I became the complete opposite of a bully and in one case was actually slightly bullied by one of my peers myself. I was the bullied, became bully, became the bullied again and then became the person that I am most proud of and that is the one that stood up for people that were in those situations. Not by bullying in return but by speaking up for people and not letting others get treated like that.

I love the under dog.

Have you been bullied?

During my elementary and middle school years, though it completely dropped later.

Did such a bullying make you mad?

Mad never crossed my mind. I was frustrated, depressed, and wanted to know why, but never mad.

If so, what did you do about it?

Took it. Almost all of my classmates did it to me, so there really wasn't an option that I could think of. Blowing up isn't something I do.
It drove me kind of insane. I acted out for attention and my study habits were irreparably crippled. Despite a love of learning, I've hated schools ever since.

Looking back, do you think you did the right thing and why.

Absolutely not. But what could I do? I was a confused kid more prone to tears than fists. I learned to counter psychological attacks towards the end of my tenure with those classes, but that's a part of myself that I don't like since I've used it as a barrier ever since. Because in my mind, no matter how much help I get, no matter how often anyone tells me different, people despise me. I have to pretend to be someone else or everyone around me will laugh and turn away.

That felt pretty emo. I'd better go find some bright colors and a stiff drink.

I would avoid the drink, Alcohol is a depressant >.>

And you admit to knowing that your barrier is a problem, which is more then many can do.

Somewhat from y first days at school onward until about the year I left (age 5 to 17)


You bet!


Flapped arms, spun, cried a lot, later yelled, threw things, launched into torrent of verbal abuse and got beat up a lot.


No but I have no idea what else I could have done at that age fortunately I had learned to ignore most of it by the age of 14 although it did not help at school where I had been known since age 11.
As far as I can recall any help I was offered worked only temporarily.

I have to say none of these problems followed me away from school so somewhere there was a satisfactory resolution.

I read flapped arms and spun as one thing Funny image in my head.

I am glad things are better now though.

yes, from kindergarten until graduation


oh hell yeah!!
what makes me even more mad now, is that when i tried to be invisible during middle school, the only people i was really invisible to were the only ones who would have helped me, my current friends


took it. i didn't have much of a choice. if i stood up for myself, it got worse, or i was punished for retaliating, more often than not, a combination of the two of them.


no, of course not. if i had stood up and not taken some of the crap, or hadn't tried to be invisible, maybe i wouldn't be the mess i am now. the past is done and there is no way to change it. all we can do is accept that it happened, realize that it made us who we are, and move on

I was bullied a lot during elementary school, it stopped during 6th grade and last year, and I am beginning to be bullied again. When I was younger(up to 3rd/4th grade) I didn't realize that bullying wasn't normal. During 5th grade I began noticing such things, and when it stopped in middle school I found I was much happier. Up until now I had not experienced much physical bullying. For example I was thrown against a wall in the bathroom on Monday. I proceeded to call my attacker a B***h and leave the bathroom. I wasn't very disturbed by this until after lunch today. During my younger years I would have told a teacher or something else that would just increase the amount of bullying I received. I would probably gain respect by retaliating, but I would also probably find myself with an in-school suspension.

I have been suicidal all my life, mainly because of the frustration caused by my peers. As I read more about AS, the less depressed I feel and the more rage I feel building inside me against the idiots who were supposed to support me and know when something was wrong. I have diagnosed myself many times as bipolar, schizo, AvPD and even spent months going crazy over what was wrong with me. I have never hallucinated or had delusions, I obsess over a ton of things even if it doesn't make sense and my obsessions only end when I find the key answer to whatever im obsessing over. This is what happens inside my head while on the outside I try very hard to blend in to doctors, parents and teachers when in reality my peers think im some type of mute, sociopath, jerk. I rely on rationality to get through life and when people confuse me, it leads to irrationality to fill in the blanks and causes me a great deal of anxiety. I do not have social anxiety disorder, I know what actual anxiety is and I don't have it when I unsurprisingly fail to communicate/network in the "right way". I can communicate with adults after years of group therapy and gaining trust but I cannot communicate with peers due to my lack of wanting to be one of them. Sorry if my post goes offtopic a bit, im going through confusing times trying to think why I think the way I do.

~ZT

I was bullied very badly in a lot of schools when I was young. Anger never occurred to me. I felt depressed and sad. The emotional damage though has been rather extensive. By my teen years I was left alone. As an adult I have had the opposite problem where I was well liked and too many people wanted to be friends. I wasn't equipped to handle that situation either. Over the years I think I have developed some more off putting ways. I don't do it consciously however. And though I don't relish being disliked, it's much less stressing than being so incredibly overwhelmed in a social context for which I am completely inept and incapable. So I guess, rather than feeling inadequate I avoid people or put them off so I'm less likely to be faced with my own inadequacies. It's this catch-22 which has always made my life a living hell and yes, suicide ideation almost constant.

Yes, I used to be bullied in Years 7 to 11 at secondary school. It wasn't so bad in the last few years, however. It was mainly verbal abuse (I was never really beaten up by anyone but people sometimes touched me in ways I felt discomforted with).



Very mad, I used to be very hostile towards immature behaviour from peers because that seemed the logical thing to do. However, it only worsened the problem, and I think because some people knew I had Asperger's that they'd try and annoy me in a lot of ways. I was particularly annoyed when people would bully me, I would respond, and then the teacher wouldn't punish them because they thought I was the one causing trouble.



I used to tell the teachers but that didn't entirely work. However I eventually developed a strategy for ignoring people and blocking out what others said. This seemed to deter a lot of the bullies but people still occasionally tried to annoy me.



For the most part, I didn't just tell the bullies exactly what I thought of them, even though it would have been good to tell them that they were worthless idiots who will be stacking shelves in supermarkets. I think my choice to ignore them was more beneficial in the long term.

Deleted because I think I got too off-topic.

I hope you don't consider this post to have gone too far off the rails. You wanted to know about bullying and its effects. I have experience with it, but it requires some back story.

Yes, I was bullied, from grades 3 through 12. This started in the mid-1960s, when there was no such thing as a diagnosis for AS. The school board had never encountered anyone like me. They figured I must be some kind of genius, so they created a program where I accelerated past my peers and came out a grade ahead and two years of age behind the rest of the kids. And then the bullying began. I kept being told that I thought I was smarter than them, and they would beat me up for it. I never actually said those words, or acted like that was how I felt. But I was repeatedly punished for it.

In reality, I was not smarter than them. My mother taught me to read before I went to kindergarten, and as I was somewhere on the autistic spectrum, I was different from all the other kids they'd ever seen. So I was a target from very early on.

Did it make me mad? Yes. What did I do? I got physically assaulted at home as well because my parents wanted to beat whatever it was out of me. It got so bad by the time I was in grade 12 that soon after I turned 16, I quit school and moved away from that hellhole of a town and those abominable people and I never went back. I spent most of the next twenty years homeless and on (non-physically-addictive) drugs, trying to numb the anger and frustration of having lived through my past and not being able to rise above the bottom rung of society.

Was that the right thing? No. Did I have a choice? Probably. Did I make the right one? No. Would I recommend it to anyone else? Well, the getting away from everyone who makes your existence unbearable, yes. The rest, absolutely not. The first 37 years of my life sucked harder than the vacuum of outer space. I didn't cope, I coasted.

I did eventually get myself together because a woman came into my life. She helped me to have a more normal life than I had ever known before. I have motivation to keep going now, and many reasons why I can't let myself backslide. I owe it to my wife to be as "normal" as I possibly can, and not to revert to the old ways I dealt with things, mainly by not dealing with them. I have never been suicidal, though, or homicidal, and I can't treat people the way they have treated me. I avoid them, where possible. The difference now is that one person in the universe loves me. That's one more than I ever had before. I want her to continue to love me, so I do what I can to make that happen.

So I don't have the greatest life I could have, but it is so much better than what I used to have, I need to be grateful. I know what my life used to be like, and I will do everything within my power to keep it from degenerating into how it used to be. I can't go back there. I just can't.

Very much when I was younger. Both by my ret*d parents and by the morons I was forced to be educated with. Between my home life and school life, I had little respite from constant victimisation. That I was small as a child as well as handicapped (by what would be later diagnosed as AS) did not help.

Very much and I am still mad about it today. I hated my parents and the other kids at school with a passion. Given my complete lack of empathy, I am surprised I did not go on a shooting rampage at school. What still p***es me off is that as a result of bullying, I had a miserable childhood and adolescence. That I am AS has given me enough emotional issues to deal with. I really hate having a head full of bad memories about my childhood. I am very mad that I was just expected to take whatever was dished out to me - at school, the teachers never cared. As far as they were concerned, bullying was just part of growing up.

At the time, not much. As I got older, I developed a lot of anger problems. In hindsight, these anger problems were just an outlet for my childhood frustrations. In the last few years, I have taken up fitness activities and bodybuilding. I look and feel stronger now and people treat me with a LOT more respect. This has helped me calm down a lot. I see this as me taking control of my life. At the same time, I am mindful of now not becoming a bully myself. Yes, I am able to stand up for myself but that doesn't give me the right to push others around.

Looking back, I wish I had been more assertive as a child. I didn't because all the other kids were bigger than me and I was scared of them. Although I know childhood fear is very exagerated and being afraid of anything bigger than you is rational, I wish I had at least once stood up for myself. Even if I had gotten the s**t kicked out of me it would have been worth it. As an adult, I now do stand up for myself when provoked but the childhood fear and memories still lurk in the back of my mind.

Yes, there has hardly been days where I didn't get bullied.


Yes, I even ended up in a tantrum in front of everyone else before.


Nothing, I really wanted to get revenge all time time , but never went ahead.


No, I remember being told to report the bullying, but I didn't. Maybe it's because I did report it once, but it just ended up getting worse within a few weeks.



A - Yes, I just went through all those years of suffering, sigh.
B - I threatened to before, my first time was at a time when the bullying was at its worst.
C - I admit, I was a bully for a while and was such a loner back then. I would've picked on someone who was actually more vulnerable than me. Funny thing was that my bullying got noticed by the teacher, yet still me being bullied wasn't noticed. It was better off because then I'd probably be still bullying this kid today. Also, I was sent to a psychriost (sp?) when I got suspended and that was when I got diagnosed with AS! Sometimes, I don't regret this because there would be a chance that I wouldn't know about having AS today.
D - I mentioned that I flipped out in front of my peers before.

I was bullied by classmates from kindergarden to gr.7, physically and verbally. It upset me, I cried (in private) but did nothing about it. The teachers didn't care either. Now that I look back, I wish I would've stood up to those kids.