Under and overconfidence in AS

Post Reply New Topic

I'm reasonably confident about anything to do with the products of my mind. But when it comes to social interaction, I tend to take any real or imagined slight personally, (ie. sitting alone on a crowded bus, being picked last for anything) causing further damage to my fragile self concept.

As a child, most of my teachers treated me as their pet. However, in 6th grade, two teachers ganged up on me for "being too intellectually cocky" and did what they could to "take me down a peg" in the one area of my life where I had been the most at home. Those wounds will never really go away.

Was I intellectually cocky? I've given it a lot of thought and I don't think I was cocky; more like intellectually hungry and desperate to interact with and contribute to what was going on in the classroom.

What went on at school always felt like life or death to me. My home life was extremely chaotic, so school was the closest to a haven that I had at the time.

I had really liked and trusted those two teachers and thought they had liked me too (missed social cues, I guess). When they singled me out, it made it easier for other kids to feel it was safe to pick on me too. Lucky me.