Were you Bullied? Tell stories

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Verdandi -- thank you. Thank you for putting into words/ explaining why and how bullying affects the victim, and why "just ignoring it" doesn't work for most people.

Max, do I take it you were fortunate enough to avoid being bullied physically? I'm guessing that your introversion meant you never put yourself in the way of that, either inadvertently or otherwise?

Thanks for the responses, btw.

I never said that. But I think if she learned how not to care what other people say, she would probably not be suicidal.



Have you every known anyone with autism who didn't get bullied in school? I just happened to learned how to deal with it.

That's pretty much it. I tried to stay as far away from the bullies as much as possible. From about the 5th to the 8th grade it was difficult though. There were a lot of bullies there.

I was mostly bullied at school but it also happen at work although not as bad as school though.

Being an introvert, excluded from all social groups at all, and having no social skills was exactly WHY I was bullied as a kid. It was as good as painting a big red target on my forehead. Not only was I hunted down every day by all the kids in my grade, but also the kids in the grades below and above.

I don't think you perhaps fully grasp the severity of the bullying experienced by many of us on here or I'm sure you wouldn't be so blase about it. You said in a later post that people could just avoid the bullies and they wouldn't get bullied. When 20 or 30 kids are actively hunting you down for "sport" every recess/lunch, it's pretty damn hard to just "avoid" them. It's why I spent so much time in the library, but even there I wasn't safe, and I couldn't be in there if I was eating. I wasn't safe in the toilets either because they could get in there too. Sometimes I would eat lunch in the toilet cubicle. I remember one day in grade 7, just after I had started at my third school, when one of the kids in class had bullied me and all the kids had ended up laughing at me, so I ran to the toilet cubicle and was eating my sandwiches for lunch with tears pouring down my face (because I had wanted to make a good impression and wanted friends so badly).

It's also pretty damn hard not to be hurt by things kids say to you if you have no other model from which to construct your self-esteem/sense of self (when bullied at a very young age). If it was an occasional thing, like maybe one nasty comment a day, or a nasty comment every few days, that would be bearable, but imagine if it was a constant barrage of insults and hurtful things all day every day that you couldn't escape from (before school, during breaks, in class, between classes, etc) interspersed with physical hurt. Can you imagine if people or a person managed to trick you into thinking that they liked you or they were your friend, so that you became absolutely devoted to them in your kindness-starved state, and then basically stabbed you in the back just because they enjoyed your hurt and reaction so much.

Eg. I had no friends in grade 6, and once this one girl was kind to me and I became completely devoted to her and convinced that she was my best and only friend (even though the signs were there that I was wrong I didn't read any of them because I had no understanding on body language, etc), out of the blue she turned around one day while we were walking to lunch and told me that she "hated me" and to "stop following her" directly to my face. I think being stabbed with a knife would be less painful than what I felt in response to that.

Groups of kids all the time would suddenly change their tune and act all kindly towards me, and I always fell for it because I was so starved for kindness, then they would always use my vulnerability to humiliate me. It was a kind of sick entertainment for them.

I was never suicidal but I dreaded going to school so much that I would actually become physically ill (the mind can have powerful effect over the body), and often miss weeks at a time.

This is not as metaphorical as it may sound. Unfortunately, social rejection activates the same parts of the brain that physical pain does.

All I can say is that I completely agree and can definitely relate. I laugh at the chest pounders who say just ignore/fight back/befriend/emphasize and bullies will stop. Yeah if you have 20 military soldiers hunting you down all the guns and ammo in the world are useless.


Damn right! The thugs were easy to deal with. What was hard were the kids who befriended me only to dramatically yell out to the entire class how ridiculous that they would want to be friends with me having the whole class laugh while the teacher played dumb.

It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant so many people are of how bad bullies can actually be. Every time I hear someone say "everyone gets bullied" or "it's your fault because you didn't fight back" I shake my head. They haven't got a clue what I lived through! That's not to mention the "mob" knew how to say *I* was the bad kid. No wonder I felt like I was going crazy at that age.

Moderately severe- from kindergarten until about 10th grade.

-In kindergarten kids followed me around saying "I hate *my name*

-In elementary school kids constantly teased me, pulled my hair, pushed me down and punched me (one kid) at recess.

-kids would dare other [people to touch me or take their friend's hand and make them touch me saying "eww you've got *my name* germs" or "how much would you have to be paid to kiss *my name* -a million dollars? a billion? I didn't like people going too near me and I'd sort of swat them away if they were in my space so they played this game where they would chase me and try to get as near to me as possible without touching "the it", really meaning being touched by me to swat them away.

-Two boys once pulled down my pants and spit water all over my underwear so it would look like I peed my pants.

-One kid stabbed me with a pencil and said I was going to die within 24 hours of lead poisoning and laughed at me with a group of friends. I believed him until the teacher told me differently.

- They'd purposely exclude me "I'm going to invite everyone in the class to my party except *my name* This really popular girl left the school and then came back to visit the class -everyone asked her "can I play with you?" at recess and she said yes and she was playing a big game of tag with the whole class on the field I asked if I could play and she said no.


-Two older girls once pretended to be my friends. We played games where they threw me from one to the other and dragged me around. They said they were games and this was what they played. Then they said we should play hide and seek with me and said they wanted to be my friends and that I should turn around close my eyes and count while they hid. They then ran some distance away and when they were some distance away they turned and laughed at me and then ran away together.

- In middle school these popular girls pretended to be my friends and said they'd give me a makeover. They smeared lipstick all over my cheeks and forehead making me look like a clown and the whole class laughed. I didn't realize why until I went to the wash-room and saw.

-constant threats to beat me up after school in middle school from 1 girl

more but I want to stop writing now.........

I think it's very hard to explain to people the fully consequences and experience in the moment of moderate to severe bullying unless they have experienced it themselves.

All my "bullying" was just teasing, and I don't even consider it bullying.

When I was 13 I was told by some classmates of mine that I had schizoid PD and no emotions because they teased me a lot but I never got hurt because of that.
I just can't see how I could get hurt.
Words are words, they are just misleading to me.

I've been teased since I started school and teasing has never hurt me.

Until the age of 11 I didn't even understand I was being teased.

When I was in 8th grade I was told by a classmate that everyone in the school hated me and that I had no friends, I told him "I know" and just couldn't bring myself to care about it.

Always in 8th grade, I had some classmates told me several times that they were going to beat me up, but I always laughed when they said that because threats make me laugh. They did never beat me up; and the only times I was beaten up was during elementary school, because I entered in a lot of fist fights with other kids.

Once some kids threw some paper balls at me in 8th grade, and I ended un having a meltdown and throwing things and them, and they were so scared they didn't do that anymore.

My school life has never been that bad after all.

In elementary school, one kid was just small (don't let that deceive you; he's sadistic). He was dumped in our IEP group and I would stay with an HFA girl because she was pretty much one of my only friends. He liked to touch us and watch us suffer and have meltdowns. Kids in my class would also tease me when I ticked. No matter how many times I said, "I can't help it." they wouldn't listen.

Middle school, I am constantly harassed by promiscuous girls. I was mad. Every time they even dared to talk to me, I slapped them. I wasn't stupid about it; I did it when a teacher wasn't around. I started dating my girlfriend, they backed off, either out of depression or an actual modesty towards me. This all still happens in high school, except I don't have a girlfriend now.

The teasing/bullying ranged from kids making funny faces or sounds at me while I walked past them, to calling me names (racist or otherwise), to putting gum in my hair on the bus, to taking something of mine and throwing it around so I couldn't get it, to pushing me nearly off a cliff on a field trip, to ganging up on me calling me names while shoving me and throwing dirt at me, or one time a ball at my head so hard it banged my head into a brick wall almost making me pass out.

I hate talking about it, but during secondary school (junior high in other places, I think) I was bullied. I started hanging out with a group of girls who seemed alright once I graduated and got into the school I wanted, but eventually they didn't how I wasn't involved enough with every little activity they were doing and phased me out. Well, silly me didn't get this and still tried to hang out with them, and they decided to shun me more and more until it got to the point where one girl shoved me to the ground and started hitting me with her friends cheering and all the other kids standing back. One of the other girls there also cornered me in private and slapped me in the face for getting 100% in an Art exam she didn't do too well on despite her being a top student.

I wish it had stopped there- physical things are unpleasant but easy. They hit you, you hit them, whoever's strongest or holds out more wins and the other person nurses their wounds and their shame. It just escalated from there. Similar to others here I lost other friends because I was unpopular and weird. Once my mom hit me in frustration because I kept losing friends, though it turned out it was largely due to the influence of the aforementioned girls who were the 'alphas' of the class. Anyway, it got worse and worse, and one day I snapped and said I couldn't stand them next to someone who I thought was a trusted friend. First thing she did, though, was turn around and gossip to them, and they decided to humiliate me. One day I noticed a lot of people were either avoiding me, looking at me weird or whispering and looking at me, then at lunchtime one of the girls invited me to the classroom. I can't remember what she said it was for. She made me stand in the middle of the class surrounded by the bullies and other classmates, continuously called me names and made me admit to being an arrogant b***h who would amount to nothing then started throwing things I said to my 'friend' back at me while the class watched and laugh. I couldn't run since they blocked the doors, there were no teachers around so all I could do was stand there, try not to cry and apologise. They kept doing that for about half an hour until lunch was over. When it was all done I ran into a bathroom and cried until some other student told me to get out. It's still hard not to blame myself for everything that happened.

Aaand that wasn't the worst of it. The worst part, I think, was facing school for the next month. None of the people I would talk to would risk being around me because now I was hated. I was surrounded daily by the people who had laughed at me and feeling more and more like trash every day. No body had said what happened until about a week later when the teachers found out. Can't remember how. I won't even BEGIN to go into THEIR response because that would be a whole 'nother post. I guess this is all to just get it out. Sorry for ranting.

That's.... not really an answer. From what you've said it just sounded like people didn't like you. They didn't pursue you and didn't affect your life, really. They were people whose taste you did not fit, and that's normal, but they're NOT bullies. And no, not every autistic child has been bullied. I know many who have not, simply because of circumstance. For example, a certain older person I know wasn't bullied despite having undiagnosed Asperger's simply because he grew up in a time where school rules were very strict in this country, not to mention it being very work-oriented. Helped that his older brother was very protective of him, as well. Some are just fortunate to never experience being a victim of bullying.

Again, I went through 12 years of public school, with undiagnosed autism. Bullying was as common at the schools I went to as it is anywhere. Do you really think that I somehow made it through all those years and never got bullied? Really? The above poll shows that only 4% of people here were never bullied. Most were moderately to extremely severely bullied.

Why does everybody think that bullying is something that only happens to them?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCFeUoVsJ-Y[/youtube]

One Monday, this kid in elementary school told me he was going to beat me up. I don't know what I did or said but he promised to beat me up.

Tuesday came and he made the same threat. On Wednesday and Thursday he kept up his promise. By then I thought he was joking.

Friday, after school, he started following me home. Word got out that there was going to be a fight so other kids followed. I looked back behind me and saw the small group following. I didn't really pay attention because I thought it was just empty boasting.

As I rounded a corner by a hospital, the kid suddenly ran up and started punching me. He then put me in some kind of hold. Reaching into my book bag, I pulled out a refill pen and somehow shoved it into his neck. Screaming, he let me go. Then, running across the street, he picked up a half-empty bottle of Guinness Stout and flung it at me. It missed and crashed against the hospital wall, its contents spilling on my shirt.

I guess he realized he was defeated so he just turned and walked away crying. I went home and removed my shirt before I entered my house just in case my grandmother saw it and got angry.

Oh, yes. The good ol' days.