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Who else was bullied in high school?

illustrated.lady

I want to add a content warning here for bullying.

Hello!

I'm fairly newly diagnosed woman at the grand age of 32. When I was diagnosed the psychiatrist said that years ago I wouldn't have been diagnosed with our understanding of the autistic spectrum has changed over time. 

I keep thinking back to my time in school, I went to a girls school, it had a bad reputation locally and it was awful.

I have always had dreams about being back in school but they have become almost nightly since my diagnosis.

Academically, I did well in school, I thoroughly enjoyed some subjects - English, RE, Health and Social Care, Graphics. Socially, not so much although by the final two years I had settled into a friendship group with fellow nerdy kids. 

I always felt like an outcast, other girls made fun of me for every little thing, my frizzy hair, my body, my 'posh' ways of speaking, my geekiness, my online presence (these were the early days of social media), my interests.

I tried so desperately to fit in, I would listen to music I didn't like feign interest in things I didn't like and changed my ways of speaking. I couldn't recognize when people were being mean to me - that fake nice thing that girls would do that I still would not be able to recognize today!

I feel like I'm grieving for what could have been, my experience of school could have been so different in my autism was recognised and catered for. In Year 9, so at 13/14 years old I went through an awful stage of anxiety and school avoidance, I just didn't want to be there, I was just so overwhelmed and sitting in a class felt like punishment. 

It was actually only during therapy a few years ago in my late twenties that I had the sudden realization that I was bullied, that my experience wasn't typical. It wasn't normal for people to steal your belongings, to be pinched, to have your skirt pulled up, to be threatened, to have everything you do analyzed and criticized. 

My understanding now is that my experience is very common amongst autistic people. I am on the waiting list for therapy with the NHS as this is something I really need to be able to move on from.

  • I was very lucky, I was seldom bothered by the local bullies. I was always quiet tall and strong for my age and blessed with a resting angry face. So being tall, awkward, fairly uncoordinated with the additional issue of dysgraphia made school difficult.I was at school during the 70s and 80s when autism and ADHD wasn't really something that was considered, some of us were just weird lonely or highly disruptive kids or even a combination of the two.

    One of the problems I had was that I didn't fit naturally into any of the groups that formed so I was always quiet isolated . I had a friend who has friends, so I just tagged along.

    Living a life not knowing who or what I am is really difficult and having to put so much effort just to be accepted is hard.  The saddest thing was that they accepted the person I felt that I had to create just to fit in. Alcohol ended up playing a large part of my teens and early 20s, it just helped smooth the edges, thankfully I realised before it became a real issue.

    I wasn't diagnosed until I was 53 and it wasn't mentioned that I could be autistic until I was 50 after 30+ years of treatment resistant depression and anxiety.

    Living a life of not knowing who you are and having to put so much effort just to be accepted. The saddest thing was they accepted the person I felt that I had to create. Alcohol ended up playing a large part of my teens and early 20s, it just helped smooth the edges.

    I now don't really have friends, I have a wife ,kids, dogs and people I know (including family). I struggle massively with the human connection thing, it just doesn't come naturally.

    Speaking to a psychologist has been hugely positive, thankfully I have health insurance as if I had to wait for the NHS I'd have curled up in a corner months ago.

    I still haven't got a clue who I am or where I even start to peeling of the layers that have built up over the decades, hopefully things will become clearer at some point.

  • I was always a bit different to the others. I got bullied a bit when 11 in my first year at secondary school. But after that nothing really and I was one of the shortest in the school. I did weights from about 13. One kid tried it on when I was 15 but I lifted him off the ground by grabbing his shirt 

    I always dressed smart, my tie was done in a half Windsor when no-one else could tie theirs properly, shoes polished, shirt tucked in. I was smarter than most of the rest and I think I kind of intimidated other people. Did my first O level at 14.

    I didn't say all that much. People just left me alone. I didn't look for trouble, indeed I follow rules even if I don't agree with them (COVID was hell) so avoided anything dodgy. My school also had the cane.

    I think bullies leave people alone who can make them look small .

    My school was ok, only 1 person got knifed to death. The police came most days and fights often involved an ambulance. The joys of an Inner London Comprehensive in the 1980s. Teachers were on a work to rule for 6 of the 7 years I was there.

    I was bored for most of it. I should have done better at school, uni, jobs, life, etc. I feel I have underachieved, which is why I am now 3 weeks from a formal diagnosis, it may be negative of course which will leave me with even more questions, but I need to know if there is a reason. I wonder now at 56 where this feeling comes from. I have kind of fantasy images of what I should be. I don't compare myself to others just this notion of what I am supposed to measure up to. The bar is quite high in some regards. Outward image seems to matter even though I didn't think it did. I think I am suggestible or at least absorb expectations. Maybe it is related to masking.

  • in reply to Lotus

    I can't either, I'm glad my children mostly did though, the smell of being in a school building still grips me with fear, that heavy sense of foreboding and doom around every corner, especially the gym.

  • I agree that you're grieving for could of been, it's a process so don't try and rush it, just go with it and feel what you need to feel.

    I wasn't diagnosed until I was 50, I was bullied at school, not just secondary school, but primary too, I didn't have any academic, sporting or artistic talents, so I was just seen as a total failure, in the bottom groups for everything, I just bunked off for a couple of years, left school with nothing. I later found out that I'm dyslexic, have an astigmatism in one eye, have dyspraxia before being diagnosed as ASD, or Aspergers in old money.

    I'm in a good place now, when I found out about dyslexia I taught myself how to distinguish letters, although I always read a lot, just not always the same words as others. Later I did an access course and got a degree a few years after that. I'm still can't draw a bath let alone a picture, my dog looks at me as though I'm crazy when I go to throw something for her and it goes up in the air rather horizontally for her to catch, I still can't do sport and have no interest whatsoever in it, but who cares, I don't, I'm able to laugh at my mistakes and mostly don't feel embarressed by them, although I do suffer from terrible foot in mouth syndrome.

  • I also never really recognised I was bullied until many years later. I went to secondary school in the 1970s and some of the teachers were bullies too. Use of the cane (for boys) or a ruler on the hand (for girls) was still common then, and in one lesson a teacher threw a blackboard rubber at the head of a pupil who was misbehaving (a blackboard rubber was a piece of shaped wood with a padded side used to rub off the chalk the teachers wrote on the blackboard with). In my case the bullying was subtle, not physical - making fun of my appearance, calling me "teacher's pet" and so on. For somebody who just wanted to be left alone it was horrible though. Then one day it became physical - she pushed me up against a wall when she started the verbal bullying. Something snapped in my brain - probably due to the horror of being touched - and I finally spoke up for myself rather than freezing. Thankfully it ended then.

    I really cannot understand how anyone enjoyed school.

  • in reply to Alien0n3arth
    Alien0n3arth said:
    I’m my case I laughed while being bullied, laughed at, called names, being pushed etc.

    Whoa me too. I never could figure out why I laughed when I got pushed several times into the lockers, but it actually made the bully uncomfortable and not want to keep pushing me. It feels weird that it’s something other people have dealt with!

  • Hi, your experience is very similar to mine. I managed the bullies in other way- I was gifted in some topics- geometry, languages especially the grammar, it also happened to me to help someone with physics so I started having a queue of my peers to help them with homework and preparation for exams. This way I traded with them - I will help you, but you stop bully me and let me move around with you. And it worked. Although I was still in a totally different world, but I earned myself bodyguards. The bullies did not dare to touch me anymore. This way I also learned, that I have to be a part of a group in order to not become a prey. I saw school as a jungle with wild predators hunting for me and other quiet little creatures that just sat minding own business and not harming anyone. I couldn’t understand why it was like this but I understood that it is what it is. I’m my case I laughed while being bullied, laughed at, called names, being pushed etc. it was an inappropriate reaction, It wasn’t funny or pleasant to me, I was sad but at the same time I couldn’t control my totally idiotic reaction. Now I found out from my therapist that it’s typical for autistic people. I often recognized much later that I was actually not liked, but bullied. Till now I recall these years as traumatic. I was also forcefully pushed by teachers to play with other kids. I cried and had a panic attack because of fear of the noise and chaos that the kids made. Breaks, school trips and PE felt like a hell. I could write a lot… but I think it’s enough from me now. Being bullied is very common autistic experience. 

  • Yeah I was bullied too and late diagnosed. Almost got beat up a couple times but thankfully I was very in shape at the time from cross country running so I was able to get away. I also had to deal with people taking my stuff, as well. It was worse for me before high school, because I was fortunate in high school to find a social group with people as strange as I am.

    That’s good to hear that you are in line for therapy, I hope that helps with the nightmare problem.