 One time a boy at school at assembly just took a disliking to me and called me the r-word and started to beat the hell out of me. I still don't know why. Yeah, there's, it doesn't seem to be no any rhyme or reason, I think, when we experience things like that. Although it may not happen again sort of during our school experience. The fact that we couldn't predict it coming, we didn't know that it was going to happen. There was no particular signs for us to take notice of before that type of thing happened. We can develop just like this extremely high baseline anxiety throughout our school experience. I mean, there's obviously those social battery aspects and the social and sensory overwhelm which definitely increase our anxiety in that in that sort of school experience. But it makes us very paranoid and hyper-vigilant to the point where it can be really, really difficult for us to cope with school. This is a video from a relatively small channel called Aniva talking about harassment and bullying as an autistic adult. Something that I'm sure many of us have experienced with. Sadly, it seems to be a pretty consistent part of a lot of the lives of autistic people that we do face these negative circumstances. So today we're gonna take a look at this video, see if it resonates with us, see if there's anything that I can add, and yeah, let's get into it. Bullying happens to people who are different. So the definition of bullying is, I almost said, gerund or present participle. I haven't said that in a long time. Seek to harm, intimidate or coerce someone perceived as vulnerable. People view a lot of autistics as vulnerable. Does that mean that we actually are? I think that we can be. I think that sometimes, like in the times that I have experienced bullying, I usually caught it kind of off guard, like I definitely did not see it coming. Sometimes I didn't recognize it, like I didn't realize that it was bullying. So the issue here is that autistic people are clearly different. The way that we move, the way that we talk to people, the things that we talk about. Yeah, it's, I don't know if you guys have the same experience, but it does seem, it does seem that bullies do have a knack for picking out people who are different in that way. I was definitely very vulnerable when I was younger and when I was experiencing bullying. The thing is, I wasn't particularly like physically weak. You know, I trained in Taekwondo, I went to the gym quite a bit. So from my age, I was, you know, still very tall and I still was very sort of physically active. But I struggled because I didn't know how to respond. I didn't know how to deal with it. The issue with confrontation, the issue with bullying, is that a lot of people have a lot of different ideas on how you should conduct yourself in this situation. You might go to one person and they say, you need to fight back, you need to show them who's boss, you need to at least deter them in that way. Other people will say that's not the right thing to do. What you need to do is you need to talk to a person of authority in order to get them to sort it. You need to talk or you need to talk to them calmly or you need to try and help them understand. There is no like particular rule book in order to deal with this type of stuff because it's very different situation to situation. And everyone has their own ideas and how to sort of conduct yourself in that circumstance. Because of that nature of confrontation. I found myself in a lot of situations where I just couldn't advocate for myself. I didn't know what to do. Perhaps there might be someone who was particularly smaller or younger. I had that experience quite a few times who would sort of harass me. But I would be hesitant in order to advocate for myself in that situation because they were smaller and younger than me. It's not the only situation. I've had someone who was absolutely gigantic, believe me before, at school. It was not a fun time. I did stand up to him at one point and it stopped. But it can happen. And for all intents and purposes, we do tend to be behind in terms of our social, emotional developments, especially around those teenage ages. I'm talking generally, I'm not talking about every single individual, of course. It does tend to be that way, especially when we're using neurotypical sort of social rules in order to make that characterization. It does kind of feel, especially going through school as an autistic child, teenager, that everyone is just kind of developing this weird sort of indirect language that allows them to communicate with each other non-verbally, the sort of different social nuances. It does kind of leave us in this very sort of gray space where we're not really sure what people are trying to communicate with us. Perhaps someone might be making a joke and being really mean to us, but we don't necessarily know if they are or whether they're communicating something else. And if they are communicating that and we think they are, sometimes they're not. So we're in this kind of state of uncertainty a lot of the time. One time, a boy at school at assembly just took a disliking to me and called me the R-word and started to beat the hell out of me. I still don't know why. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be no any rhyme or reason, I think, when we experience things like that. Although it may not happen again sort of during our school experience. The fact that we couldn't predict it coming, we didn't know that it was going to happen. There was no particular signs for us to take notice of before that type of thing happened. We can develop just like this extremely high baseline anxiety throughout our school experience. I mean, there's obviously those social battery aspects and the social and sensory overwhelm which definitely increase our anxiety in that sort of school experience. But it makes us very paranoid and hypervigilant to the point where it can be really, really difficult for us to cope with school. I've had a lot of times where I've taken days of school saying that I was sick and I kind of was sick to a certain degree. I had like a stomach ache and a headache and that was because of all this cortisol, because of all this anxiety caused by an environment that I didn't feel was certain. Basically everything about us kind of screams different. Even if we're masking sometimes we're not that great at it or we don't have enough energy to mask as well as we usually do and they just kind of pick up on something being a little bit different. What I can say is the bullying usually happens with people that you had to be around for a certain period of time. So it could be your family, friends that you hang out with a lot, your team, like if you play basketball or volleyball, co-workers. These are people who usually have enough time to kind of examine you. People who are forced to be around that you didn't choose to be around them. In adulthood it's a little bit easier. I found apart from work there isn't many circumstances where you are forced to be around a person. You can avoid people in adulthood a little bit easier than you would perhaps in childhood. It's kind of closed social environments. Yeah it can be really difficult. I have an opportunity to be just as perceptive. However the thing that kind of sets the bully apart is that they'll actually act on those sort of weaknesses. What it really requires is a sort of awareness of how people are treating you and paying really close attention to that and actually trying to nip it in the bud as best you can. So what does nipping it in the bud look like? I'm sure you know. Telling someone to stop. That's what they tell you in all the kid videos about bullying. But that sometimes makes it worse and that sometimes is not safe to do etc. So what can you do? Well if it is at work you need to talk to HR. You can go through the proper channels but if your managers think it's funny or they don't think it's seriously you can go to their boss because this is harassment. Another thing I would do is document everything in the same way that you would file a police report, time and date and location of what happened and you really want to be specific with how it happened, what they said specifically if you can remember the quotes. There are certain laws and stuff against recording people, audio recording. I don't really know the states where it's legal and also you don't want to be invasive of someone else's privacy. Like if they're not consistently bullying you or harassing you you know maybe that's a step too far because you can kind of get worked up with like kind of going overboard like that's something that you can easily go overboard with. When you have three or four cases that you have written down and you take it to a manager or you take it to HR or you know even general managers whoever you take it to them then they know that you're serious they're like okay it must be really bad for you to document this and you have several instances always be aware of the time if you need to have a watch whatever the case because you don't want to be in a situation where you can't get to your phone for 30 minutes and now you're kind of off with a time. So that is how you would professionally handle bullying and that is one way that you can nip things in the bud is to have a very open conversation with your managers and luckily at one of my jobs the management team took it so very seriously especially because I was a good worker I was always respectful and I had actually gotten really worked up and they knew that something must have been really wrong because I was always in a pretty good mood when I was there just know that that ladder that hierarchy goes all the way up so your boss has bosses if there's bruises or anything like that involved take pictures like do not hesitate you know evidence is everything so how would you handle this without having to go to a boss or whatever you know like in your personal life when you have to stand up for yourself let me just tell you I'm not too great with comebacks now some of you guys are really good with comebacks sarcasm bluntness see the thing is here I want to show you is that we all are able to stand up for ourselves but you may not be aware of the different ways that you can stand up for yourself because on tv they say oh snappy comebacks that'll really shut someone down but there are so many different ways to shut someone down or like what is it disarm them there are so many different ways to disarm someone I'm thinking of of times where I've effectively sort of dealt with bullying in my life both like in in childhood and adulthood I think um drawing attention to what someone's doing can be helpful sometimes obviously it really depends on the circumstance but if it's kind of like it's not like really sort of aggressive like physical bullying and you feel safe enough in that sense and there's like people around like I found a lot of use in being quite a matter of fact in like calling things out I had a situation where I was being picked on quite a bit sort of bullied physically in some in some respects and I remember talking to them and it's the same as how I dealt with it in adulthood I remember talking to them and basically saying something along along the lines of why are you spending so much time harassing us or why are you spending so much time being around us what do you not have like anything else that you can do that's different to this because it's not very comfortable to me it doesn't make me feel very good when you do this um you know obviously like they're gonna continue to be a bit combative but it does sort of sink in a little bit with some people because usually they're not they're not very like cognizant of things they're just kind of getting getting their frustrations out or getting their energy out in some some very harmful way towards yourself or even it can be something along side the the lines of if someone's getting like confrontational like a party or someone's getting confrontational like a workplace or something um you know I've had a lot of a lot of use in trying to like reframe the conversation like just take it to a very sort of open nice place I realized that it might be a little bit different for me compared to most people because I'm I'm six foot three I'm a dude I go to the gym a lot I know how to fight things of that nature so there's obviously going to be some differences but you know just saying something along the lines of you know bar this situation I'm not really enjoying speaking like I would prefer it for us to have like a mature kind of conversation if you don't like something about me we can talk um but at this point you are making the environments particularly like negative for other people as well as well as myself and I don't particularly like having this confrontation you'll be surprised by like how many people can have like positive reactions to that kind of thing like that there'll still be a bit kind of angsty and might might for a comeback or two but if you if you stay strong to like your frame in that situation where you're not being sort of outwardly combative and you're just kind of you're being very stern you're not you're not like rolling over you're not getting upset or or anything but you are stating the facts and saying that you don't want it and it's not a good thing and it's not a good look for them either if it's in like a social context um it can do a lot I think for some people because they they can sometimes be a little bit caught up in their own emotions and they don't necessarily think about the greater context of the situation gray rock um I don't necessarily think that works I think some people can take gray rocking as an invitation to continue in my experience you do have to you do have to somewhat either remove yourself from the the situation or you need to you need to talk and you need to sort of try and keep it to the facts yeah keep it to the facts not too emotional like you don't have to make yourself scary you don't have to like you know it depends on the context of course like in some some situations you know perhaps defending yourself is a good idea um but usually when it's in like kind of like an open public place um taking things to to the facts and and not sort of playing too much into their confrontation their anger and just talking normally to them um you know over over perhaps like a couple of back and forth pieces of dialogue they do they do tend to sober up a little bit from their rage what's gray rock it's when you become almost completely unemotional and you don't you don't you're not reactive in any way to like what someone's saying it can be quite a useful thing when it comes to sort of toxic interpersonal relationships but if it's someone if it's like a leased friend or an acquaintance or someone that you know or someone at school even um i think it's a little bit different like the way that the way that i would handle that and who is um coming at you like that so let's talk about it right so i'm not very good with comebacks i've gotten much better over the years i don't know what happened i was always really good at saying random stuff like i used to say really hurtful things but then i kind of was told like you can't just say really mean and that is definitely um the autism and i don't i don't mean like i was trying to hurt them their feelings but i would just say the first thing that came to my mind and so now that i've gotten my autism diagnosis and i'm kind of like just trying to go back to who i was really now i just kind of am more likely to say the things that i just want to say my comebacks have gotten better because i just don't hold back anymore um and um it just has worked out for me but when i was not good at doing comebacks i was really good at um disengaging is it disengaging yes yeah disengaging like so sort of separating myself from the situation um there was this one job where i was actually mistreated a lot a lot of it went over my head i slowly got better at disarming some of the people and it took me like a year to do so um because i was just so afraid i was like i barely talked i did not stand like the whole the whole extreme selective mutism sort of thing yeah i just could not deal with the bullying anymore and so each person was different because i was getting bullied by multiple people actually this one person always every time this person got the chance would say something rude to me yeah would roll their eyes would make me feel insignificant um and when i made mistakes they blew it all out of proportion you know what forget it he i was this whole inside joke and um there was like a few people who were very kind to me despite um how i was being treated and it's just this whole thing like that's a whole different youtube video but essentially i gained the courage to disarm the bullies i noticed that ignoring it didn't work i noticed that being nice didn't work so i started being passive aggressive and i don't know if this is like i don't know if this is appropriate like is it okay for me to give you guys this advice because it seems a little bit like angsty like it feels like brutality yeah i suppose it's it's difficult isn't it because you know there's it's going to be very situationally subjective to like the the person who's involved and who's doing it and the type of situation you know where exactly it is happening i mean to be honest if if being nice and being that way doesn't work and they sort of continue to do it i i tend to just laugh with them and i i have sort of uh yeah again not not giving not giving advice here my my way of dealing with situations like that is to not take them seriously like sort of you know be somewhat sarcastic and like aha that's so funny just you know sort of infantilizing them to a certain degree like i think that's what they're saying about like being passive aggressive i think sometimes that can that can work i mean it has worked for me quite a bit but again i'm very hesitant to offer any sort of advice with like dealing with confrontational bullying because it's it's kind of you know i i have a lot of cards to you know i've got a lot of strings to my bow in terms of being somewhat physically intimidating so it's i imagine that it'd be quite different depending on the circumstance lol oh my god my insults are on point now because i forget to filter yeah yeah i have a very very heavy filter i've never i've never really been one to have no filter but you know it can it can be good in situations like that sometimes i try to equally give it back um what they give me use the tip for tat usually subsides yeah that's not passive aggressive yeah i suppose so i think it's it's it's very much based on like my my indirect communication you know i might change my tone of voice towards them a little bit just to like kind of like i'm talking down to them in a way if they do stuff like that you know somewhat infantilize them to a certain degree thankfully i've not been in a lot of confrontations over the past few years but i do tend to choose who i'm around more nowadays yeah i think that's that that is like solution long-term solution if you can um i suppose like the situations where it may be an issue is if you are a part of a social circle and someone else is part of that too and that could be school that could be work that could be just like a friend group as well sometimes that can be that can be difficult but i know that that we as autistic people we tend to have like we pick and choose our friends very conservatively we pick we're very picky with our friends um are we talking about muggles we are maybe that can we can we start calling people who aren't autistic muggles is that is that a bad thing that's a that's a that's a very interesting way of characterizing it believes want a reaction best to learn to control our emotional response yeah controlling emotional response but not not not gray rocking i don't think i don't think gray gray rocking has never helped me you do have to do something get back here muggle no let's call them pick up pickle neurotypicals i i hesitate from making any funny remarks or jokes towards neurotypicals because i i'm very i'm very keen on many of them let's say like um i have close relationships with them and i know that a lot of people who watch this are neurotypical if you do at all see me remarking in a negative way towards that i'm not talking about you you're great um yeah i'm very hesitant on on sort of doing that in the reverse sort of calling names and all that but um muggles wizards and muggles that that's a really interesting way of like characterizing autism and neurotypical society we should call on harry squatter is harry squatter autistic oh my god aviation i guess the only reason i thought it was so important to make this video is because um a lot of the time people are unforgiving unapologetic i'm sorry a lot of people are not going to apologize oh yeah they will apologize you and they don't see anything wrong with it and it's so damaging to a person to be treated like that especially consistently you just kind of realize how much that can hurt you and the things that it can lead to um there are so many instances where there's just been so much pain um that was caused by a person who was just just hurting so badly and of course you know you think what would drive them to it but you know it can start out really really small you know it's important to stand up for yourself um and it's um something that you absolutely have to learn how to do especially it's i find i find that the way that the way that it progresses usually is through small reaches and boundaries being broken like people will push your boundaries very very very slowly over a over a large amount of time especially in adulthood i found so if you find that someone is being sort of outwardly negative in that way or is pushing your boundaries and what you like in a certain way what they were saying about nipping it in the bud is a good way of going about it because if you express like some some level of resistance against them pushing against your boundaries um it's in my experience it's likely not to escalate much further um you just have to kind of keep them in check if that makes sense like you just got to be very firm about what your boundaries are what you what kind of behavior you accept what kind of behavior you don't accept i think that's a good way of going about it um because once you once you start letting them slowly slowly sort of push your boundaries further and further um you can get yourself into a tricky situation because they feel like those things that they're doing are safe for them to do and so they can continue pushing the boundaries there's an autistic person because this can continue into your adulthood um because we don't really typically get this naturally and if we do it's delayed um you know people were standing up for themselves when i was like in second grade and i didn't learn until i was like out of high school i told you i started being passive aggressive so he would speak to me sometimes no pretend not to hear him god this is so bad um it's not bad it's really not bad because of how bad like the number of nights i went home crying then of course it was another guy and he would just like stare at me like just like stare like i would turn around he'd just be like glaring at me and i'd be like are you okay and i'll like turn into a joke and he would be like oh yeah i'm fine i would just ask him he would do it all the time i'd just be like you good bro like are you okay um i think that what really helps is kind of being able to joke about it what that does is it kind of takes you out of the situation you can kind of step outside of that and kind of see that the person who's talking to you is either hurt it is the it's the reframing i think the reframing is like a really good tool i would say you know i was talking about before about if someone's being aggressive if you kind of reframe it and you stay strong to your frame and god i'm talking like one of those um stoic bros kind of people but um staying staying staying true to your frame and not letting people push push boundaries or at least offering some retaliation to your boundaries being pushed in an effective way i think can be can be useful jeweler says hello thanks for doing what you're doing i've learned much from your channel i'm really glad jeweler's thank you for coming on i was severely bullied in elementary school i tried ignoring it fighting back going to teachers principals my mom the parents of my bullies i even tried making myself look weak and pathetic to make it seem less fun for them there is no way to handle it that leads to positive results in many cases yeah if they're not having a good time if they're not having a laugh in the little group of people um that's definitely a deterrent i would say i'm sorry for your experience yeah sounds awful i'm sorry dev not i'm sorry hurting or insecure unhappy and you just kind of say i can handle this you know and then you kind of come back and you say well that wasn't very nice it kind of throws them off because what they really want is a reaction it's so interesting but it's also the nicest way to respond you didn't give them what they wanted and it's really important to remember that they're trying to get something from you all they want from you is to hurt you don't give it to them or at least don't let them see that you gave it to them do not let them see it's definitely strong to be able to manage your emotions like most people just kind of let their emotions fly out and anger and rage and insecurities getting flung onto other people you know it would it take so much strength to hold that inside and still be a compassionate person and so that's what i really want you guys to know is that you know you're going through this stuff use it as strength start sort of build armor you know over time and it this isn't something that happens overnight and this is not something that you need to pressure yourself with it takes so much time and then a lot of you guys have already gotten to that point where you're just fed up and when you're fed up you have to make the right decisions because it's very possible you could make the wrong decision and you don't want to do that you want to um be so in control of yourself and kind of take a break and make the right decisions i highly recommend reading books about this watching videos about this um i watched charisma and command for a very long time bright side has like so silly bright side has like some videos um about psychology and like body language so so so so helpful for people on the spectrum even though it's not necessarily made for people on the spectrum hmm yeah um i think a lot of people to this would say like why are you trying to teach us to mask i don't think that's the case i i think that there is nothing wrong with trying to understand neurotypical communication i don't really consider that to be masking but i know that some people might might might say that to to what aniva said um but definitely like learning how other people work and how to understand things can be helpful i also think if you're using masking as a protective mechanism i don't necessarily think that's a bad thing i think if you're using it to protect yourself in confrontation or in in very very difficult circumstances it can definitely be applicable you know you do what you need to do to to keep keep yourself safe you know i was bullied badly i'm sorry cherries like i've told you before my daughter is still getting bullied at uni she was bullied all through secondary school i was bullied too but then i found myself in friendships with bad power dynamics makes me really sad to hear around it's so awful i hate this stuff my god they don't understand like how much of a negative impact it can have on people they don't take it seriously that's that's like one of the worst things it's just like seen as like a joke and some of it that's humorous or some of it that's like entertainment it's it's crazy and then they can have such massive impacts on our mental health in the long term since that majority of us have been bullied yeah yeah it's very very common for autistic people sadly we don't have to go through a lot i wish it wasn't the case these body language videos have helped me so much to realize what's going on in my environment because i had no idea the things i was missing out on and the cues that other people are aware of having to do with people facing you and what it means if they're facing the way from you that means that they're disinterested and this is something that we don't realize on our own and so we have to sort of teach ourselves these things help us recognize bullying early on because that's when you want to act on bullying um but of course you need to like watch some videos on appropriate responses because i know that i can have very inappropriate responses to how someone is treating me i think that's all i have for you guys today i hope that this video was a little bit more helpful um and a little bit more insightful i guess um bullying is really tough it's really hard to deal with it and it takes a lot of practice standing up to it and it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of studying so if you are on the autism spectrum or you just found my page randomly or you just enjoy watching my videos please do leave a like and subscribe and i really appreciate you guys you guys are absolutely fantastic and i think that's about it thank you guys so much for watching and bye really um let's have a look at some of the comments here oh that's not what i want to do sad fact is the human resources department of a company is often there to protect the company not the victims if the HR debt department refuse to take victims seriously i would strongly suggest going to a workers union representative and filing a complaint against the bullies such bullies bullying sadly never ends some people are still stuck in high school people will be all happy joking being good for each other but when you are around they become serious not laughing disinterested and harsh towards you like what you've been doing here talking to us kind of speech i don't think that's necessary bullying i think that's i mean it can be but i think that's more along the lines of like isolation i just don't understand why people think it's okay to pick on others who are different about what is it about some others that is so different some people just pick on pick up on it right away i think there's there's a lot of it's it's usually like the indirect communication you know and and sometimes we can take quite a while in terms of processing some people pick up on that processing delay and think that we're like slow think that we're easily sort of we're kind of vulnerable they do have a knack for for picking up on vulnerability in people and um i definitely displayed a lot of that when i was younger sometimes bullies will make a formal complaint of bullying against you if you stand up to them what's happened to me repeatedly yeah um that's been a really really good video from an either i think one thing that wasn't particularly delved into too much was kind of the less apparent sort of aspects of like what you describe as like discrimination of autistic people socially um you know sometimes it can come across in the ways of harassment or bullying sometimes it can be a little bit different it can be related to hovering you know perhaps exclusion um lots of different ways that people can treat us differently which do have negative impacts on ourselves which aren't sort of outwardly sort of negative in this way and there's just a lot to do with like the inner workings of the social world and other aspects that i think is worthwhile mentioning is mate crime you don't know what mate crime is it's when someone befriends a disabled or autistic person or a vulnerable individual in order to take advantage of them happens quite a bit i saw it in school i've seen it in adult life um i've experienced it to some degree highly recommend looking into the concept of mate crime i do also have a podcast with joe lee um my autistic wings we talked about unintentional gaslighting um also within that episode we were talking about mate crime something that's quite considerable sort of threat to us you know some sort of taking advantage of us especially if we're in like quite a lonely sort of isolated place highly recommend you look into that and if you have enjoyed this make sure to like subscribe for more content like this and go over and check out an either's page give the video harassment and bullying autistic adult like drop or subscribe and uh set for a comment let me know that i that i sent you