If you've ever felt scapegoated, outcast, or ostracized ...

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If you've ever felt scapegoated, outcast, or ostracized by peers or family members would you please tell me about it and why you think you were treated that way?

I have not yet been diagnosed with AS, but I've always felt different, and I've always felt outcast, looked-down-upon, and dismissed. I was wondering if what Aspies experience with their difference is what I've experienced.

If you've had these experiences and would tell me a bit about them and why you think you were treated this way, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

I think in my case it always has to do with me inadvertently giving wrong social signals (i.e. not what was expected from other people), showing behaviour that is perceived as inappropriate or a sign of disrespect or dislike.
I often tried emulating other people and didn't recognize that what other people did only works in a specific context and relationship between the parties involved. E.g. I would see other people teasing each other with "fake insults" and bonding because of it, but I didn't realize you need to have a certain level of closeness and rapport before you can do that. I also have a very hard time estimating how close I am to someone, which complicates this issue further.

In my case, it was similar to LookTwice, but based on power and class rather than familiarity.

There are certain behaviors that are totally acceptable from a strong, handsome dude, but not acceptable from a scrawny boy. Likewise, there are certain behaviors that are totally acceptable for the boss to perform, but not for rank-and-file employees to perform. And there are certain behaviors that are totally acceptable for adults to perform towards children, that are unacceptable for children to perform towards adults.

Most of this comes down to "knowing your place" and "respecting your betters".

I think most of here have felt that way. Fo me, i was just "different" and did not fit into the group mentality, which in their eyes gave them carte blanche to do to me as they felt fit.

I was outcast by relatives but not my brother. For example, on my father's side (the ones with Aspie traits) even as a toddler I was always treated like the black sheep. For example, my grandmother would give my brother expensive gifts but me very basic ones. I have no idea but I think it was because I look like my mother (my brother looks like my father and most would never guess we were related) and my father's side HATED my mother. Why? That's another discussion but it seems to be because she didn't fit the 'obedient' housewife stereotype at least right away.

As for my mother's side, I have similar issues but I still can't figure out why. For example, one of my younger cousins I treated just like a sister and we were practically best friends (despite being 2000km away) until she became a teenager. Then she become obsessed about her looks and self-image even though she was very beautiful (long blond hair, blue eyes and very soft spoken) and started cutting her hair short and dying it bright purple, wearing black mascara and becoming very cold. I ran into her recently and to say he was a total &(&(@# to me would be an understatement. I still can't figure out why, even with my AS tendencies I treated her like gold.

So, I have been outcast from both sides of the family tree but I don't not think being an Aspie has anything to do with it: they are just nasty people who can't behave like responsible adults.

No offense meant, but how can a person feel different from other people?

This would require that one actually knows how others feel. They would first have to make a survey with a representative number of persons in order to have a basis for comparison.

It as always been to do with me being too quiet and just ending up following a group of people around just for the sake of being with people because I've always hated wondering about on my own. If the group of people are nice enough then they let me tag along and maybe say a few words to me but, as always, all the attention is always drawn to the life and soul of the group. I hate being the quietest one of the group. My uncle says it's OK to just listen, but I've heard people criticise me for being too quiet because they accuse me of just following them. It's always been the same with me, whoever I'm with. I could be in a whole group of Autistic people but still feel rather ostracised because I'm so quiet, and so everyone in the group will always pay attention to the one who is the loudest of the group, whoever it is. So I'll still probably end up just following the group around, feeling nervous and afraid to start up a conversation with anyone, whether they're other Aspies or not.

It happened before, when I joined a club for special needs teenagers a few years back. They were all more severe than me, and had all sorts of different things wrong, but even then I still felt ostracised because I was so quiet. There was a girl without a voicebox, literally, and so she couldn't talk but always took up a lot of attention from volunteers (who were NTs) because she was always grabbing their attention by tapping them and getting in front of them and so on. She wasn't Autistic or anything but had obsessions, and so she was always writing or drawing something to do with her obsessions and wanted everyone to see it, and the volunteers always played along.

I suppose I let myself be ostracised because I care too much of what people might think of me.

I do not know if I have AS or not, I am currently seeking diagnoses.

I experienced ostracisation from around age 5-15 (possibly earlier than this) however the reasons are complex.

Reasons included:
- At ages 3-4 I found other children loud and physical in a way I struggled to understand, I wanted to be quieter and talk but their speech was generally much more limited than mine, so I only connected with children 3 or more years older than me and adults
- at age 5 I attended a school where my father taught and was very popularand some other children were jealous he was my Dad
- at age 6 I changed to a school in an area where children were, because of attitudes in the local community, very hostile to outsiders. I was immediately strange to them because I started school in a different year to them, had a very different accent, spoke like an adult and used long words they did not understand. In short they did not understand me, so I was deemed an outsider, so they were all generally hostile to me, and I did not understand what I was doing wrong; there was a complete breakdown in communication, and I was severely ostracised for about 2 years.
- By age 8 onwards I had learnt to generally communicate with peers, though it still sometimes went badly wrong, but by then I had internalised a feeling of extreme difference to others, and I did not trust peers easily, this made it much more difficult for me to connect with peers, this has continued to be a problem
- Ages 11-15 my intelligence was seen as threatening to some which led to ostracisation by some but not all.

I have not experienced any serious ostracisation since then but I remain almost phobic of it happening again, age 40 I am working hard to soften and reduce the level of anxiety I can feel in social and work situations. It has got a lot better but can still be a problem.

I am uncertain that I ever felt different until I was ostracised/ shut myself off from others severely ages 6-7. At this stage I was labelled different / odd by others and having internalised that label it's stuck.

I was never ostracised by family members.

All the time its a curse really.

My parents have treated me that way, because they feel that there should be a cure for every "illness" so that everybody can "live their lives in peace". I thought that my parents hated me when they were being hard on me as a child to act more NT as a child by not talking about my special interests and forcing me to make eye contact using harsh words, because they hated me. If they see autism as a horrible disease that needs to be cured, it's more likely than not that they did hate me.

Even during that week that I stayed at my parents home for a week in the October of 2009, that my mum wanted me to be more NT. She kept on telling me that I wasn't going to obsess this time. There was one night before everybody came over for Thanksgiving Dinner that my mum said to me, "This is the worse that I've ever seen you. This is all that you've done the entire time that you were here. You have a one track mind. You're like Ahhhhhhh. If you don't improve, I'm going to put you in the hospital. I've tried everything to make you better and there's nothing else that I can do!" She got into my space, pointed at my computer screen when I was listening to a Kinks song, shook her hands when she was talking about my one track mind and gave me a dirty look.

She didn't try anything to make me better. She told me that I wasn't going to obsess and pointed it out when I did it. She got mad at me when I said the word, Bloody because she felt that it was un Canadian and than she read read the riot act that I'm Canadian and I should make myself act Canadian just like everybody else in the family. I even sent her an E-Mail that night that I don't feel Canadian and that Canada has been a swear word for me since Teresa walked off on me on Canada Day for acting like a Punk in front of a bunch of typical teenagers. I also told her that only I can make myself better by telling her one simple thing.

That one simple thing I picked up the nerve to tell her after 11 years at the time was that Mick Avory is my favourite Kink and he's always been my favourite Kink. Her sarcastic attempt of comparing me to Mick Avory in 1998 blew up in her face, 11 years later.

When I was in the navy, I would occasionally skip sleep so I could have some private time. Usually I would stim with my headphones on. Almost invariably, some watch duty guy would see me and throw an ashtray at the back of head. Worse things were done to me, but that little example sort of says it all.

There is plenty of ways to be an "outcast" in everyday life.... Sometimes when you think outside the box, or think differently then others.... it leads to really weird impressions and has people wondering "Why is that guy so weird/angry all the time?"

I came to America when I was 12. I lived in a black neighborhood. The people were ruthless, absolutely ruthless. They made fun of my accent left and right. Everywhere I went they never let me forget I was a foreigner. Naturally, I grew to turn my back on black culture. Now, if you drop me in a black home or a black neighborhood, I wouldn't know what they're talking about. They can talk about their entertainers or movies or hairstyles and it'll be like Greek to me.

Ostracizing and scapegoating are just forms of bullying as far as I am concerned.

Different people are always picked on, regardless what the difference actually is.

At school, the most common victims of bullying were kids that were too short, too tall, too fat or wearing glasses. Having a strange behaviour (as Aspies often do) only makes things worse.

Children can be VERY cruel sometimes. Even evil.

I completely relate to this, actually I lived the same thing.

I was the black sheep, my bigger brother (who looks more like my father) always had bigger gifts, more money, both by my parents and my grandparents... he was always taken more seriously than I am (while I'm far more mature and reasonable than he is, he is more fickle and spoiled, yet no one seemed to realize it... for exemple when given money he would squander everything the day after, while I would economize for important things).

The deal is that I'm the silent resilient type and he is the self entitled type.

My stepfather too... he bullied me, menaced me gratuitously, but he spared my brother for some reason, I fell into a deep depression at 16 because I had no room or private space (for an aspie, private space=oxygen), and because I was a lone, bullied aspie dropout with no friends, no help and nothing and just completely lost.

...so I lived in some kind of entrance hall, sleeping on a couch I would see my stepfather passing by back and forth, terrorizing me in the process while I would be curled up in fear in the couch. He throwed random tantrums at me, and automutilation, OCD started, even panick attack and cardiovascular problem (oh I forgot, the family doctor shrugged all of this off, while taking the little spoiled hysterical crisis of my brother with great care)

The worst of it all, is that while I had no room, wasn't even supported morally or financially, I learned much later that the rent of my brother's flat was *paid by my mother* for 10 years.

From then on I decided that enough was enough. I felt guilt all those years but now I realized, a bit too late, that what I lived through was not normal, and it destroyed me.

If someone can give me a feedback or thought about what i told above, it would be nice