Have you ever been bullied?
goatfish57
Veteran
Joined: 12 Nov 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 617
Location: In a village in La Mancha whose name I cannot recall
Yes, being bullied seems to be a part of life. It can be real tough at times. The 6th grade was painful. As I got older, I learned how to deal with bullies in a better manner.
Good natured horsing around is difficult to understand. It still feels like a prelude to an attack. I have trust issues.
I switched high schools. At the new school a kid, a punk, demanded money to return a math book he took from me. Easy enough, gave him a quarter. The next day in gym class, during a volleyball game, I spike the ball on him. Got him right in the head. He tried to spike it back at me. I put my hands up, protected my face and blocked it. Problem solved.
There are also bullies at work. I remember finding a coworker crying in the hallway. He was humiliated by his boss for being late to collect his boss from the train station. Now, these are both Ivy league educated professionals. One had an MS in electrical engineering and the other a PHD in computer science.
I did my best to comfort my coworker and a few weeks later he left for a better job.
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Rdos: ND 133/200, NT 75/200
Not Diagnosed and Not Sure
Last edited by goatfish57 on 26 Nov 2015, 8:39 am, edited 4 times in total.
This is at least part of my problem. When I'm around new people or people I don't know very well I immediately go on guard, expecting that they will act negatively toward me in some way. It's a subconscious, ingrained reaction that I'm not fully aware of. That's making it damned difficult to let people into my life. It's like I'm a wild animal that needs taming. It takes time and a lot of evidence of kindness from a person before I'll start letting my guard down - more effort than most are willing to put in, and why should they anyway?
Instead of assuming that all people want to attack me until proven otherwise, I think I have to come at it from the opposite direction: that most people who have matured to adulthood have good intentions.
Do you think the counselling is helping you, Starfoxx? Are you managing to defeat the attitudes that make you dysfunctional around people, and if so, what are you finding is most effective in achieving this?
There was a time in 6th grade when I was walking home, some bullies started following me and started kicking me and swinging tree branches at me. I tried to run, but because of my gait, I couldn't run fast enough. I yelled for help to a girl I saw ahead of me, but she just turned back to look and hurried on forward. Why on earth would somebody do that when a person was obviously getting beaten? I was almost angrier at her than I was at the bullies. Almost.
My thought would be fear. Maybe she was just as much, if not more, scared as you were.
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Diagnosed April 14, 2016
ASD Level 1 without intellectual impairments.
RAADS-R -- 213.3
FQ -- 18.7
EQ -- 13
Aspie Quiz -- 186 out of 200
AQ: 42
AQ-10: 8.8
goatfish57
Veteran
Joined: 12 Nov 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 617
Location: In a village in La Mancha whose name I cannot recall
My thought would be fear. Maybe she was just as much, if not more, scared as you were.
Excellent point
_________________
Rdos: ND 133/200, NT 75/200
Not Diagnosed and Not Sure
I was ridiculed relentlessly in secondary school and in my early adulthood, mostly for my appearance. Like a couple of posters above when I tried to defend myself I usually came off worse with authority.
I am still badly damaged by the experience. I have been diagnosed with body dysmorphia and I find it hard to trust anyone. I'm afraid that I still have a very adolescent mindset and I assume (probably unfairly) that other adults do too. I am afraid that if I make the slightest social slip up I will be set upon and torn to pieces. I have nightmares about these experiences most nights.
I'm seeing mental health services now but to be honest my case co-ordinator isn't a great deal of help. She tells me that I need to think differently and feel different about myself but I can't just change what I think about myself by force of will alone. I desperately want to move on but I don't know how.
I have been given a place on an Occupational Therapy Lifestyle Redesign course which starts next week. I am questioning how useful it will be (I started a thread on this issue). I have argued that the course will be a very artificial environment where it will be much easier for me to reach out to other people because I will know that these people will have social problems themselves and should therefore be more understanding. Tt will alos be a "closed" environment of 12 people who won't really have the opportunity to behave in the ways I would normally fear (by talking and laughing about me behind my back and so on).
This is at least part of my problem. When I'm around new people or people I don't know very well I immediately go on guard, expecting that they will act negatively toward me in some way. It's a subconscious, ingrained reaction that I'm not fully aware of. That's making it damned difficult to let people into my life. It's like I'm a wild animal that needs taming. It takes time and a lot of evidence of kindness from a person before I'll start letting my guard down - more effort than most are willing to put in, and why should they anyway?
Instead of assuming that all people want to attack me until proven otherwise, I think I have to come at it from the opposite direction: that most people who have matured to adulthood have good intentions.
Do you think the counselling is helping you, Starfoxx? Are you managing to defeat the attitudes that make you dysfunctional around people, and if so, what are you finding is most effective in achieving this?
It's helping so far. Most of it is realising what my emotions are and that the situation is now different. Mostly it's my own feelings of being vulnerable and angry that's the problem because the students are not harming me. In fact one of them is very kind to me even though I wasn't giving my best impression of myself.
Also the councellor has helped me to realise i can talk with the other students since i can do it well in other settings and that she doesnt think im strange. Its just me who thinks that others think im strange lol.
Another very helpful thing is if I pretend I am in a different setting, not at college and focus on small tasks what I want to acheive, then it's like I know how to act and it becomes easier. Then I find I can do the small tasks so them I'm more confident.
I must conciously work on this often because if I don't my old ways of thinking return.
I wish I could stop anyone from being bullied.
When I was being bullied at 12 there was going to be a fight; some students brought in knives but I think it was just to scare me. I was going to stay and it thought that if the killed me in the fight it would be fine because I'd be a martyr, and then it will be in the news and all the surrounding schools would hear about it, then no student would bully anyone again.
I didn't stay though, I texted and family member to get me out. I planned on going back to the school but didn't. I moved house far far away. I felt like a coward for years though because I ran away instead of let them kill me lol.
Do you guys think I'm dumb for that?
Do you guys think I'm dumb for that?
Abslutely not! It's perhaps the only sane thing to do and I would have done the same. Don't blame yourself for it but be proud for doing the right thing despite it feeling, perhaps, humiliating.
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Many traits but no official diagnosis. Certainly BAP, possibly AS.
There are two examples, though they might not be bullying.
1. I wear a pair of radio earmuffs, predominantly in the hallways. Kids always give me a weird look when they pass by, like a(n) alien has attended the school.
2. I was wearing a pair of radio earmuffs in homeroom. Then some girl came and up and asked me, "what are those?" (Not the vine). Then some other kid who was popular in my grade, who was talking to the girl who asked me about my earmuffs asked me "do you have to wear those?" He sounded like he had a bit of dissatisfaction in his voice.
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Those who try to divide others will only succeed in bringing them closer together -me