On the spectrum and NOT been bullied?

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I'm trying to figure out if I'm on the spectrum or not, and one of the "traits" that I don't have is having been bullied. I never have. So I was wondering if anyone in here who definitely have ASD also have NOT been bullied? Do I definitely not have ASD since I've never bullied?

I'm considering another factor that might be the reason I wasn't bullied though, and that is that I have grown up in a small, rural area and were with the same kids from kindergarten through all of school till the age of 16. We all knew each other well. My school had and still has a great no-bullying awareness program, my class was small (15 kids) and we were very including of one another. I lived a good 20 minute's drive away from everyone else till the age of 10, which meant I was usually alone after school and play dates were rare in those days.

When I went to high school I chose art school where being quirky and odd was the coolest thing ever. I've also had a best friend all the way since kindergarten, she has (perhaps unbeknownst to her, and partly to myself) been my shield and model and I think I've mimicked her all along. She was the cool girl. She's still my best friend and is one of very few persons I don't feel like I'm "acting" for.

I've always been (or at least felt like) the third wheel, though, I never really felt part of the gang I supposedly was a part of, and the older I get the more immature I feel when I talk to peers (except my best friend). The glass wall metaphor sounds very familiar.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Being bullied is not part of the criteria for autism so yes it is possible to have autism but not been bullied. It's not personally the case for me though.

Being bullied isn't a trait, lol.

Being bullied is a result of being a "misfit". We don't fit in very well, we're usually the "quirky" ones. We're easy targets, and we generally either don't retaliate, or over retaliate. Either way, we look like fools and end up the laughing stock of the school.

Apologies, that was sort of an explosion of my school experience, lol.

I know, that's why I put it in quotation marks!

It's just that in every book, article and web page I've read on this subject (quite a number now), bullying is ALWAYS listed as one of the main issues for people with ASD. And one of the main things that makes me doubt myself on this. So I was just wondering.

I think it's listed because it's an important factor to keep in mind. Parents and medical workers must be aware that children with autism may have some difficulties with socializing, friends, and as a result being the easy target for bullies.

Some children, and adults, on the AS can be the complete opposite. They could be overly confident to the extent they're over powering.

I think the autistic spectrum is just a label for people like ourselves who tick a number of boxes. We're all similar in some way, but not all.

I was never badly bullied, I never had my stuff taken, never got beaten up, never been grabbed or shoved. I was only teased and harassed and called names and egged to do things to get me into trouble. I was also teased for my psychical appearance and for how I talked. I didn't get picked on anymore when we moved because it was a smaller school and I had an aide and with a small school, bullying stands out more so it happens less in small towns. In large schools, it just blends in so no one notices and teaches don't notice because of too many students. I am not saying bullying can't happen in small schools.


I think it depends on the area and the school and how things are handled there. if they have a zero tolerance policy and if they enforce the keep your hands to yourself, then bullying will be less severe. If everyone gets in trouble for fighting and it doesn't matter who starts it, then there will be less bullying. But that means the victim will be punished too but if the bully also doesn't like to be punished, they will do it less. I have been in some psychical fights as a young child because they wouldn't leave me alone so finally I would use my hands and they would use their hands back and we would both be in trouble. But that didn't end the bullying, it only prevented being touched by my bullies. But instead what happened was they wouldn't fight back and I would be the only one in trouble so they knew they can pick on me and provoke me to touch them and I will be in trouble. Kids get smart so they find ways around the rules to get away with it unfortunately. They find loopholes.

In middle school and high school, kids would get goofy and they were just normal kids. I think that helped me blend in. I even read an article online from that area ans there was a boy who was autistic that attended the high school I attended and he graduated I think in 2012 and he had lot of friends and lot of kids accepted him. I felt a little jealous because he seemed to get better treatment than I did but then I realized kids did try to reach out to me and be my friend but I pushed them away because I preferred to be alone and do my own games and computer or listen to music or be in the library, I didn't want to chit chat and listen to boring stuff. We had nothing in common and I didn't like to be interrupted in the middle of something. So it's not like I didn't get the same treatment as the guy. He was just more social than me it looked like and let people engage with him.

I have never really been bullied. In school, I was picked on by a few people here and there, but most of the time, I just felt invisible. I was very quiet and largely ignored by everyone, which meant I was quite lonely in school. Being bullied is a common side effect of being different, unfortunately, but it's certainly not required for an ASD diagnosis.



I think that might have something to do with it. I went to a very small middle school where we changed classes but stayed with the same group of kids all day, and I was never bullied there. I was still quiet and by no means popular, but people did like me and talk to me sometimes, and the one boy who picked on me in the hallways (he was in a different class) was actually stopped by the other kids.



I can very much relate to what you're saying about your best friend. I am in a similar situation with mine, although we never went to the same school. We're still best friends and I can be myself around her, but with other peers, I feel very out of place and immature for my age (doesn't help that I look a lot younger, too). And even with my friend, as we've grown older, I feel like I'm falling behind her in life and almost starting to be more of an annoying tag-along than an equal friend (she's never said anything like this, it's just a feeling I have).

Hope some of this helps!

Last edited by Quill on 06 Nov 2015, 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I live near your neck of the woods, and I can't say I've been the victim of serious bullying as a child. Shunning as a teenager, yes, but then again I didn't have a lot in common with those people... I think they picked up on the fact that I thought they were incredibly boring. Childhood in the countryside, lots of freedom, friendly school and kind teacher, tick all the boxes.

That said, there is a lot I don't remember from my teenage years, and I'm very suspicious of people, so who knows what I've forgotten.

I am in a very similar situation to yours. I accidentally started reading about females with autism, and shared it with my husband, who even pointed out a lot of traits I hadn't noticed about myself. Took some tests, was gobsmacked.

In short, I don't know that I have it, but what I do know is that I have a lot of autistic traits. I have been thinking along the same lines as you have, that growing up in a stable community with a lot of freedom is perhaps one of the better environments for an autistic child. I wonder if the large number of diagnoses in the US reflects that it is a country which is largely made up of unstable communities with weak social bonds and a very fluid culture. But this is really just an armchair theory

Yes, I think smaller schools get so "transparent" that bullying is difficult. At my school we were only 150 pupils, from ages 7 till 16. I'm not saying everything was perfect, but I can't recall anyone being seriously bullied. Sure, I remember being teased every now and then, but mostly good-humoured, and nothing more than anyone else experienced. When I was 7 I was also tall for my age, and I've always seemed older than I am, so maybe that also discouraged teasing. Also, I have the impression that if anyone were to be bullied at my school, it would be because they weren't "smart enough". But at least in my class we were always friendly to those who had problems with school - it was sort of part of our group mentality. I was one of the clever ones, and I had perhaps a better vocabulary than others.



Thanks, it does! I know what you mean about "annoying tag-along". I've felt like that plenty of times. I don't know if my friends feel I am, but I definitely feel I'm just shadowing my friends when at parties or in large groups - I sort of hide behind them. If I go to seminars or meetings or whatever where I don't know anyone, I just sit by myself and usually don't say a word. I need someone with me to work out how to behave. And I definitely change my behaviour depending on who I have with me, and who I talk to.



Seems we have a very similar experience! As a young child I had plenty of freedom and remember playing outside - alone. I was exeptionally good at drawing and would create whole races of aliens including their equipment and UFOs, I would make a bow and arrow and borrow my dad's fur hat and pretend it was a bear I shot in the forest. I would read Guinnes' book of world records for hours ... that kind of thing. My mum was a tired mom of three and I guess she didn't keep that much track of me, whenever I try to ask her about my childhood there's a lot she just doesn't remember or didn't notice. She just says I was good at playing by myself, good at drawing, and in school I was good at everything except PE and religion!

What you say about not remembering parts of your teens also is true for me. There are events that I've just completely forgotten, like I wasn't really present there in mind, or I've sort of blocked them out. For instance, we went on a class trip when we were about 15, and I don't remember anything from it. Just one or two little glimpses.

Thank you all for your replies!

this was me.

thanking my lucky stars no one gave too much of a crap about me.

I've always been in a school with other asd kids. But I have been bullied/teased there a few times.

I had things happen to me occasionally from 7th to 12th grade but I wouldn't call it bullying because it didn't happen all the time.

Even lacking some of the 'criteria' for autism is not proof that someone is NT. Especially given that it is defined as a 'spectrum condition'.

Nor did I say it was.

I was never seriously bullied to my knowledge after grade school (got into plenty of fights in grade school but I could hold my own so I was generally left alone after a while). Though I may have missed some of the signs if I were being bullied socially as opposed to physically as I just don't like most people and think they are dicks anyway. But I was also one of the gifted students and kept to myself, so I seemed to belong to a group even if I didn't really socialize with them very much either.

Probably the worst high school experience I had socially was right after the Columbine shootings when kids in my classes started to go out of their way to interact with me and make themselves known to me and I realized after questioning why they suddenly started treating me differently right after Columbine that they almost certainly thought I was one of those kids and wanted to make sure I didn't put their name on a kill list.

Have been bullied ALL MY LIFE except in 5th and 6th grade. The reason? Probably the same reason as what you state. In that school all the kids went to school mostly since pre-K to 12th. Although I only attended a total of 3 years, 1/2 of 2nd/3rd and later 5th/6th, they knew me well. I was the only blonde there and I think that made them somewhat accept me originally a bit, at least the boys, they still talk about that. But even the girls, most were very nice to me. I had a boyfriend there with a prosthetic leg who went to school there from pre-K through 8th and was never bullied there either. There is also a guy, who without a doubt would've been diagnosed on the spectrum and he has never been bullied and attends all the current class parties (almost every 2 months) and he is accepted. It was a small school, 2 classrooms of each grade pre-K through 12th. All the other schools I have attended have been huge schools, schools geared towards certain ages only, i.e. elementary only, middle school only, high school only and I think that is a recipe for disaster. I have always felt that bullying would be a lot less if kids went to the same school all their lives or at least had that possibility vs. how schools are divided up today. You don't hear as much about bullying in private schools as you do in public schools and I think it is directly related to that.