ASD and disproportionate effects of bullying

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I don't know if excluding is a 'high school' behavior at all. It's seems perfectly 'normal' within mainstream society to exclude people from which you consider different from you, especially if he/she appears to be 'off'. Seems like practical human nature to me. It can happen within any controlled environment, whether you're in grade school or in the workplace....

I know that kind of experience and feeling very well, and the worst time I ever had with that was once at age 31. Someone I had thought was a friend had begun asking questions about something interesting to each of us, and then he took my answers and comments and turned them around on me and began criticizing and ridiculing me ... and it later took me about three months to finally figure out I had done nothing wrong and that he had just used me to make himself feel superior and to boost his ego.

the clueless folk who put other people down to make themselves feel better, have a real surprise in store later on...

Interesting. I think some people come by social skills easier than others. I was one of those who never understood the socializing game. It's my biggest handicap. I observe others, & see them interact, but I suppose it's all gone right over my head when it comes time for me to interact with others. I am clueless how to fix this mess. I am fine as long as I don't have to interact with human beings, but as soon as I try, I commit some terrible crime & people soon avoid me or bully me into oblivion. It's either one or the other, there's no inbetween of acceptance.

I didn't have a normal childhood since my parents found me to be completely repulsive & did their best to avoid doing anything with me at all. THe only time they did anything with me was to beat or scream at me. It was all very confusing. There was no normal interaction between us. The older I got, the more repulsive I became to them. Plus it wasn't just my parents, but their relatives, friends, children, strangers, teachers, peers who met me were all pretty much repulsed by me. So I can't say I even had many chances to figured things out with trial & error. Anytime I've tried to socialize, I've made horrible mistakes & became more & more repulsive to other people. Again, I find the whole interaction thing completely baffling. I really don't belong in society. Sometimes I feel I should be a lab experiment, or maybe on display in a zoo, or maybe I just belong behind bars or in a plot in a cemetary.

It's got to be me who's in the wrong. The entire rest of the world can't be at fault. Majority rules, & I am the common denominator. But at the same time, I really have no idea how to behave in a way that does not attract bullies. If I did, I'd be able to respond differently & would not attract bullies like honey attracts flies. It's disgusting. I really wish I had some way to fix my behavior.

There are checks and balances involved in the NT world. A certain amount of aggressiveness and competition is rewarded as "good sportsmanship", but people who bully their way up the corporate ladder, find themselves surrounded with other managers and employees who are only too happy to knock them back down.

Robert Greene wrote the 48 Laws of Power, had this to say about the kind of "higher ups" you're talking about: "The second type of person besides the deniers are those who love this Machiavellian part of our nature and revel in it and are master manipulators, and con artists, and connivers and are very aggressive...They can get pretty far, but eventually they are tripped up in life because they are too Machiavellian. They don’t understand that there is the other side to that whole idea of theory of mind and the mirror neurons, which is empathy and cooperation and seducing people and getting them to work with you. They are too much involved with themselves and their own ego and they love manipulating until they go too far and they have a fall in life. There is a wall. They can never get past it."

Which means that while NTs in the adult world have some tolerance for bullies in the work place, but they won't tolerate them indefinitely. Workplace bullies only have power until someone or something with more power comes along (i.e. government regulatory agencies, internal corporate auditing, etc.) and at that point, the people working under a "bully" have no qualms contributing to his fall.

It really depends on how you approach a management position. People who see management as "more power" are going to have a different approach than people who see a management position as "more responsibilities with a bigger paycheck and a few more perks". When "bigger paycheck" managers go down, they get a golden parachute; when "more power" managers go down, they go down in flames.



Yes. Although this site has given me some insight on social rules and empathy. It seems that the more empathy you have, the fewer social rules you have to follow. Social rules are like "red tape" you have to navigate towards getting people to treat you with respect, and empathy is like a portal into their souls.

Last edited by Buck-oh on 25 Jul 2011, 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This sounds exactly like the CEO of the last company I worked for. Oh after I resigned I realized he's a narcissist besides being a bully. He loves expensive things, & doesn't care who he steps on to get them. He also has a low opinion of women (in his eyes, we are only good for one thing). I'm so glad to be far away from that environment.