Were you bullied in school?

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Happened a few times thru my years at school, but it wasn't that terrible. Some things done included my height and first name being mocked. An d now in Grade 12, some people in one of my class give me a cold attitude just cuz I'm not good at that subject.... well they don't have the math talents that I have

Yes.

Many of the other students were awful to me. There was a lot of verbal bullying, some physical violence, and a lot of intimidation.

I had a teacher bully me once. She would slap my hand when I was stimming if she told me to stop, but I started doing it again.

Strangely I was actually a bit of a bully myself in elementary school. Never physical bullying, but me and my friends would pick on some other kids verbally. I stopped that after elementary school though, when I started thinking about it deeper and realizing it was wrong.

In high school I was the target of bullying only once, and it was basically because I was stepping in when my friend (who had AS I think worse than me) was getting targeted by two bullies (verbally, not physically). They sort of started trying to pick on me instead once I did that. After a week or so I went to the school principal about it and got them in trouble. They were sort of the stuck-up preppy sort of bullies, not the physical type, and I didn't have any fear of fighting with them anyway (I was sure I could take them if I had to, but didn't want to initiate a fight because then I knew I'd be getting in trouble). So since I knew they would care about getting in trouble I was able to shut that down pretty quick and they left me and my friend alone after that.

I got bullied at school and it started with my kindergarten teacher!
I repeated my first year of school, as between the difficulty adapting to change in routine, the cranky old teacher, and the failure to connect and find friends, as well as feeling overwhelmed and over stimulated, I could not cope.

The bullying followed me throughout my school life, and even into my work life.
Those of us that are different seem to provoke the herd mentality in neurotypicals, in that they feel the need to exclude us and drive us away.
The problem is, in a school or work environment there is only so far you can go to get away, and they come back to bother you until you leave or they do.

At lunch time at a couple of different schools (I changed school due to bullying), I would get bashed, which funnily enough stopped when I was surrounded by other taking hits at me and I fought back, injuring some bullies.
It was all too late though, the psychological damage was done, and I would never feel accepted by those around, me, just tolerated, other than by the nerds, the losers, and the stoners.

In the workplace I get treated differently because I think differently, I can't stand people who want to vary from the accepted process, can't stand when there are bureaucratic processes that don't make sense, don't work and add to the work, and can't stand the distraction of others wanting to chat through the day, when I just want to get my work done and go home.

Likewise back in my school days, I felt overwhelmed in class, too much distraction, too much noise, and too many thoughts going through my head, and no reprieve at lunch time. I'd go home and be unable to do homework, as I was just emotionally drained, and mentally exhausted.
Some say school was the best time of their life, but I can't relate to that.

..and of course my family bully me also, we could never have a family get together over Christmas, Easter, or Birthdays without each of us ridiculing the others, including my parents.
It was a toxic relationship, which is why I now have nothing to do with my family.
I feel conflicted, because I know I should love them, but to have allowed me to wallow in such a toxic environment, and for them to single me out because I was different (I'm getting diagnosed next month at the age of 41, but have accepted a self diagnosis of Asperger's for the past couple of years).

Bullying is hard enough at school, but when you come home to face it from your family, the only place you can escape is in your head, which then only makes you more alienated, and you get stuck in a vicious cycle.
In my case it lead to a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia when I was 17, and spent a few weeks in a psych hospital; I wasn't in psychosis, I was hiding out in the only safe place left - my imagination - as it was safer and more comfortable than my family home or the psych ward.

Hi,

New member here. Been lurking for months but had to register to reply to this thread.

I've been different all my life and I've tried really hard to understand this. I've blamed it on a lot of things..parents separating, bullying at school e t c. I now realise that I was always different and the bullying at school was because of the AS not the other way round.

I cannot even begin to tell you about the bullying that went on. I would faint so many times just out of fear, I would be forced to clean toilets, be physically and verbally assaulted, I would be teased, ridiculed, humiliated, embarrassed, every single day of my life. The funny thing is inspite of all this, I kept coming top of my class and the idiots didn't like it so they would bully me more

This bullying has continued to my work place. I am a lot stronger these days possibly because of all I went through in high school but I am still being isolated, excluded and people are uncomfortable around me which makes me pretty sad because the last thing I want to do is make people uncomfortable.

It was suggested that I might have Aspergers Syndrome and I resisted this idea for ages. I recently took about 3 online tests scoring 168/200 on one and 42/50. I am now able and open to a formal diagnosis and I have a GP appointment next week where hopefully she can refer me to a psychologist.

Some of the posts on here are so spooky because some of you could be talking about the life that I live, word to word. It's so refreshing to be able to chat with people who do not think you are some sort of a freak

I was also singled out by my family. Every single day they would have a family meeting and I would be the topic of discussion. Castigated for what I didn't know what I was doing wrong. I am estranged now from my sister but I am now best friends with my mum. I think in their case, although they truly loved me they really didn't understand, they couldn't understand why I was the way I was and so they were trying to change me, make me conform. It was horrible.

I have always been very lucky. I believe it's mainly because I grew up in a socialist country with strong society pressure for everyone being equal, of the same value. A lot of teachers and most of the parents were from the hippie-era and it influenced the way we children were taught to behave. Especially in grades 4-6, we had a teacher who was passionate about anti-bullying. We were taught (indoctrinated?) to help one another, it was a constant in our classes. The kids strong in math helped the kids who were weaker, same for reading or writing or PE or whatever. And teasing was never tolerated. This was carried with us to an extent when we got to the higher grades. Also, I have always had a very strong sense of 'right and wrong' from pre-school/kindergarten up, and whenever I saw a kid being teased, picked on or bullied, I would loudly and firmly reprimand the bullies, and somehow that made me 'untouchable'. People simply didn't dare to mess with me. And I am a fairly good chameleon (sp?), I had a tendency to float around and loosely be a part of all the other groups in school, without ever being included. I was tolerated in the fringes, but not more.

I find that as an adult, I have a much bigger problem trying to become part of the group. I am often being pointedly ignored, I may make suggestions in any social or professional setting, but get no response at all, only to have someone else make the exact same suggestion 5min later, and they get praised for their innovative thinking or smart solutions or just general good ideas. Or at work, every week one of my collegues makes a McDonald's-run. Everyone in the group are asked what they want, except me. Sometimes they have called the office, I pick up, they ask to talk to one of the collegues and take their order, but still ignore the possibility that I might want something. And then they get upset if I don't take their orders if I make a burger-run.

Yes. Excluded, ignored and verbally abused for being weird/different.
At first I just wasn't popular, but then I became very much the outsider as I failed to grasp whatever it was that was so important to my peers and the social graces that would have smoothed my way.
I stood up for myself when someone tried to push me around physically so I didn't get beaten up.

Yes, I totally identify with the suggestion thing! I suspect sometimes people simply don't hear me, because I may speak too softly, but I can't be sure - maybe they are ignoring me. Other times what I say is acknowledged very briefly, so they obviously do hear me, yet somehow don't seem to "process" it - and then somebody else says the same thing in a slightly different way and it's understood. I think giving suggestions with energy is key - it communicates to NTs that you're confident about your suggestion, implying that it's a good one. It's easier said than done, though, because many of us are just not "high energy" people and it takes conscious effort to do this. Usually I don't bother unless the suggestion is important to me personally. If it's something I'm saying for their benefit I just figure it's their loss if they ignore it.

Do you think people are maliciously ignoring you, though? I've had experiences when I felt left out and, at the time, I considered it something malicious, but on reflection I think it's possible NTs were just confused by the non-verbal signals I was sending. So while I thought they didn't want me as part of the group, they may well have thought I didn't want to be part of the group - it's not like they were going to be beg me to join in. Of course, all that could have been solved by one side simply asking - but NTs don't work like that.

i had a sever stutter so i got bullied alot in K-5, lots of teasing, got beat up alot. teachers were nice though.
junior high 6-8th grade was a little worse. more physical but a few teachers seemed to bully me now. my PE teacher made fun of my stutter unit my mom complained to the school then he stopped.
high school was when the physical bullying stopped and more manipulative people came out.. my football coach would bully me alot and make the whole team laugh at me. he would hit me with the football while i was running laps. after i quit sports and got a job at 15 i got taken advantage of alot by people who acted like my friend... i wish my parents would have got me some help back in the day. i had no self-esteem and battled with depression alot back then.

I do believe they are ignoring me on purpose, if it is with 'malicious intent' or not, I don't really know. It all feels very 'high shool'; when the 'ring leader' is away, I am more included. But you do have a point, they are almost exclusivly talking about soccer or other sports, and I don't have the slightest intrest in who is heading the european league or the international ranking of this player or that... Or, because they all live in some hicksville village where everyone knows each other and are related one way or another, they gossip a lot about who is sleeping with whom, who is cheating on whom, etc etc... So I am generally not involved with their discussions.

I am 16 and up until last year I have always been bullied...

K-6 was teasing and name-calling mostly.
Around 7th grade I became depressed.
8th grade I got transfered to a special 'program' around the end of the year.
In this program that I was in for all of 9th grade and the last few weeks of 8th grade I was bullied a lot.
My main teacher in this 'program' physically abused other students.
Tackling people, hitting people, grabbing people and pushing them.
He only hurt me once or twice, but I couldn't do anything about it.
In 9th grade I was really depressed. I am shocked that I am still alive that year.
One girl in the 'program' was so ill-behaved, she would walk up to other students and punch them in the stomach.
She also liked to throw things, like chairs, at me.
But this one guy... Oh, this one guy...
He knew every way to get under my skin, and every way to get all of the teachers and staff on his side.
He stole everything he could get his claws on, not just from me, but from the teachers that loved him so much.
But now I am out of the program and am able to celebrate going a year without being bullied...

Not unless you consider not being taken seriously to be "bullying".

I was considered "odd", but not to the point of being a freak. There were kids in school who were, but for whatever reason, I wasn't one of them.

But I was not taken seriously and my opinions often discounted, I think because I didn't project enough of what I call "personal power". Have you noticed that? People who are perceived as being more "powerful" have their opinions taken more seriously, no matter how valid the opinions themselves happen to be.

I was also considered physically attractive, which I suspect might have defused any bullying urges that people might have otherwise had. The flip side to that, however, is that boys put it together with "odd", and somehow concluded that I must be "easy". Led to several unpleasant confrontations.

A little bit. First off, it depends on your definition of 'bullied.' I recently graduated from high school, but in the last year, I wasn't really bullied in the traditional sense, I just didn't have any friends. (Okay, I had Ian and a couple of others). However, something about 12th grade stirred in me a sense of dread, because (some of) my teachers treated me differently than other kids for having Asperger's and I felt it was unfair. Just because I had a difficult time socializing with my peers does not mean I should have been treated differently. In 12th grade, I ended up in a psych ward for a week due to all of the collective stress. (Besides the fact that I was off my antipsychotic)

Having said that, before 12th grade, I was teased a bit. Around 5-7th grade, I got made fun of by other kids due to what I wore, so I decided to dress like 'them,' and I was still made fun of. I had a wart on my lip, and these girls came up to me at recess and made fun of me by saying 'oh, you look like you have cancer or something ha ha.' It stung a little, but as Chibi from The Birthday Massacre would say, people like that are morons and don't even deserve to bring you down; in fact, I wouldn't want to stoop to their level. However, because I was young and immature myself, I reacted in a way that got me in trouble a lot. Probably 4-7th grade, I was a bit of a poser; I listened to everybody else's music, did my hair like everybody else, and tried to act like others. Posing got me nowhere and I was still made fun of because I was socially awkward. I decided to go on with my life and do whatever I want/ed. (accepting the fact that I'm awkward socially and that people may or may not care about it)

I've been a straight A student for the majority of the time I was at school, but there were times I neglected myself (and homework) due to the fact that others said / did things to me. An example of this was in fifth grade. On a random day walking home from the bus stop, I minded by own business, and a guy name Tory (who I think grew up) decided to throw snowballs at me. Why, I have absolutely no idea. Immaturity I guess. Another time I got treated poorly was in 6th grade on Halloween Night. I went trick-or-treating by myself and these two girls taunted me a bit. One of them-named Katrina-who I was friends with for quite some time, decided to hit me on the head with the metal segment of her pumpkin basket. (The handle). I speculate it has to do with the fact that I didn't do her homework. I didn't do her homework, because her homework wasn't MY responsibility. (There are other examples, too, like the time I was getting off the bus to go to school and this guy pulled my pants down. Everybody laughed at me)

Anyways, I'm done ranting. I didn't write all of this out as a form of self-pity, but because I figured it was the right thing to do. Explanation goes along with the poll. (Which I rate myself a 5 on)

yes i was bullied at school until i was forced into a corner at which point i totally lost all control and severely injured my two attackers putting one in hospital.was never picked on after this incident but have severe anxiety about losing control to that point again as i am now an adult six foot four inches tall and 136 kg or 300 lb and know how easy it would be to end up in jail from throwing one punch this scares me daily as in general i find people frustrating most of the time.