I embraced my perceived weirdness and used it to my advantage too. I did that same stare and even took a picture for art class with that stare because I refused to smile for a picture like the other kids. No one at school deserved my smile.
Up until recently I didn't consider myself as someone who had been bullied in school, after all it wasn't like kids were beating me up or yelling at me and calling me names. It was much more covert forms of manipulation but mostly just flat out being ignored by fucking everyone & never included in groups. I mean I didn't even fit in with the "weird kids" like the emos or geeks. It was so confusing. I was so glad to leave high-school and found Uni a lot better but still pretty isolating. And the same stupid group dynamics happen in all the workplaces I've had the misfortune of working at. Humans mostly suck. So it's refreshing to hear stories like this
I’ll be 40 this year, and I get anxiety being in my niece’s high school for her performances. School was traumatizing. I only realized I’m Autistic last year. I made myself as quiet and invisible as possible to avoid bullying, but it had its own negative effects. I recently drove past my high school, and told my husband (for the millionth time) “you couldn’t pay me to go back.”
My mother died when I was 13. Everyone in the middle school had high school knew and they still bullied me greatly. The teachers too. Because I was weird and didn’t talk and was clumsy and no one knew about autistic kids yet in the 60’s. And 70’s. How could everyone be so mean and cruel to a motherless sensitive girl. No one there was nice to me.
I was so autistic, I had every trait and was diagnosed in my 60’s. I never knew why I was like this and different from everyone else and why no one liked me or wanted to be my friend. I was clueless. Till now
The only "friends" I had were people who took advantage of me. I remember my preschool """"best friend"""" would give me Indian burns, hit me, and make me do things I didn't want to do every single day (obviously things like this continued even after college. I'm honestly not sure what's worse... being bullied by those you don't know or by those you thought you were close with). And she was the only one who would talk to me or hang out with me, so I just let it happen. She went to HS with me, and on the last day/yearbook signing, she stopped me and asked if I remembered if we were """friends""". I just turned around and walked away. Call it mean, but I was SO DONE with that place and everyone there.
I definitely relate to things getting "better" socially as an adult. Kids can be really terrible, and some people should just not be teachers. I don't think acknowledging being bullied is playing the victim, but it's also valid if you don't like to use the word. I was certainly bullied in school, and I don't say that to illicit sympathy - it's just demonstrably what it was. Very importantly - I don't think your views are a prank. I appreciate your videos, and the way you approach these topics and stories with humility and disarming honesty.
I didn’t. In America, people still act like they’re in high school as adults. And sociopaths are rewarded. So that doesn’t help. But you will find some neurodivergent people if you live in a city. A lot of neurotypical women especially bond with each other by bullying and excluding/gossiping about others. But I finally found other neurodivergent women to hang with. We bond by hobbies and interests.
My school experience was... different, to say the least. I'm American, for reference of school terminology, and 30 years old--your years of high school line up almost exactly with my years in (US) college (i.e. UK university). Starting sometime in elementary school (first through fifth grade) I was teased *relentlessly.* Moving to another school between 2nd and 3rd grades didn't change anything. I don't remember much of that time, frankly, other than it being miserable. I'm not really sure who figured it out--maybe my fifth grade teacher--but it was that 2001, when I was 10, that I was referred to a psychologist and diagnosed with what was then called Asperger syndrome. Then, by some miracle, come middle school--6th grade, the very next year after my diagnosis!--the bullying *stopped.* I'm sure the other kids just thought I was a weird dude, but they did me perhaps the greatest service they could: they completely ignored me, and I was mostly content with that. But it was incredibly lonely. For the majority of the time I had literally *no* friends. I felt totally isolated socially from everyone else around me: it was as if I was living in a glass prison cell. Sure, I could see out and they could see in. But no other interaction was possible. In another miracle I got accepted to the county science & math magnet high school. I was around genuinely kind people who were, more often than not, actually *relatable.* It took two years to heal from everything else, but I actually sort of bloomed socially. That was when the core of my adult self was formed, I think, and I'm eternally grateful it was overall a positive environment for that. I have three exceptionally close friends I made in those years that I frequently interact with even now, more than 15(!!) years since we met. College for me was *really* rough. I'd had no choice but to move with my parents to another state immediately after graduating from high school, and none of my high school friends were there. Hell, none of them were even within 500 miles of me. Two of them coincidentally ended up basically incommunicado for the majority of that time too. Otherwise I didn't have (m)any "real" friends. I fortunately managed to fall in with a group that kept me more or less emotionally afloat but, in hindsight, mostly just tolerated me, but through them I did indirectly gain another two very close friendships from those years, so it wasn't all bad. But I think it's also fair to say that I spent the six years after graduating in 2013 slowly healing from that. I think I've only recently gotten to where I was in 2009 from the point of view of emotional health. All that aside, I think the reason that many people go undiagnosed in their school years is *still* a lack of awareness. Autism is invisible, after all. To anyone who's not actively looking for it, we're just the weird kids.
Yeah my high school experience was pretty awful as a diagnosed autistic kid in Australia. I realize now just how toxic some of my friends were, but there wasn't really any other choice at the time. Because I didn't have many facial expressions and got in lots of punch ups (not by my choice), people became pretty scared of me, which helped reduce the amount of bullying I received. The special needs teachers treated autistic kids like babies and it made my life harder, not easier. I joined a punk band and got my anger out by screaming and playing drums. The important thing is that we survived it
Compared to adult life my school days seemed to go well. There was no awareness of autism at all in those days and I was probably just seen as very strange. I had almost no self-awareness and maybe that gave me a level of protection as attempts at teasing, etc, pretty much went over my head. Lack of self-awareness can have the benefit of greater confidence and fewer feelings of low self-esteem which I think particularly attract bullies who seem to scent anxiety and feelings of weakness. However there is also a price for lack of self-awareness and I probably embarrassed myself countless times without realising. Some people in later years like to catch up with former school friends on places such as Facebook but one of the reasons I wouldn't want to do that is fear that my weird behaviour would be brought-up. Also as my adult life has been less than successful I don't want the awkward questions associated with that. I prefer just to draw a line under it and to have "disappeared" from my former worlds.
5:50, we get along better with older, and younger people, than we do with our peers. In grade school, my idea of a good time, was a trip to the old folks home…or the library. High school was lonely.
You make a good point about teachers picking up on traits. If teachers were properly trained to recognise these kind of things it would surely make a huge difference to helping get early diagnosis and support.
2014 tumblr was a peak time for me haha- I still have my old account that I don't really use anymore but I love going back and looking at all the things I used to post about (remember when everyone liveblogged season 3 of sherlock?). Undiagnosed autism in school absolutely sucks :/
My entire school experience was really messed up. Our school district and the schools in it were a mess and the teachers and staff for the majority were awful and straight up abusive at times, the students were really just treated like cattle if im honest. But my personal experience at highschool was pretty similar to yours, very similar. There was a lot of messed up things that went on at school, and I also struggled with being bullied for my sexuality as well. I feel very comforted that im not alone. I live in the US and i still find it so striking how familiar your story was to me. Theres a lot of trauma from school alone, it was one of the most painful parts of growing up for me. I really appreciate you making this video, although I know its 2 years old at this point. Thank you
High school for me was something great, but I had a huge advantage, my school was tiny. I went to a purely French school in a small English community, so we didn't have many people. My graduating class was 4 people. My high school, grades 9-12, was 6. From K to 12 we had 120 when I graduated. The advantage this gave me was that I didn't have people I wasn't comfortable around. Everyone I went to school with I'd been around since I was in grade 5, that was the last time my class got a new student. The other advantage was that I was really close with my teachers, and I didn't need 1 on 1 help, because I already had it. When there's only one other person in your Calculus class, you're teacher can easily help out. That's one of the reasons I think I've gone so long without being diagnosed. I didn't have the same problems others did. I didn't need to have extra help from the teacher, because I already had it. I didn't get overwhelmed by people because I was really close to the 6 other people I was in school with. Now if we're talking about University, that's a different story. There's a reason it took me 7 years to do a 4 year program, and it took me changing schools. I no longer had the help and support I was used to, I would get overwhelmed by the amount of people around, and things just fell apart. The other problem was that since I had the help I needed in high school without asking for it, I didn't know how to get help in uni.
Dana I know this video is a bit old now ,but only seeing it for the first time, and it's one of the most relatable videos I've seen so far, I'm autistic also and had a similar experience at Secondary School a bit different to yours but the part where you said ,"none of yous like me ,I don't enjoy being around people so I'm not gonna be" - that right there is how I feel as a 23 year old man right now ,and it's right
Although my high school was just the standard autistic experience with a few traumatic experiences here and there, what made my high school experience different from yours is the deep seated loneliness that lingers with me to this day. Yet here I am, still standing to this day.
I was pretty oblivious in high school so really didn't know how people thought of me because they didn't say anything to my face and when certain thins happened that would have hurt most people such as a friend making plans with me and then going out with other friends and were gone when I arrived I didn't realize it was personal. It wasn't until a few years later that I thought "That wasn't very nice." In my 20s and 30s I sold my handcrafted jewelry at festivals and ran into my best friend from high school and asked her why she hadn't contacted me and she said I could have contacted her because she was in the phone book (but she wasn't; I had checked). She gave me her number when I specifically asked her for it, but then realized she hadn't missed me so maybe I was better off not calling and reconnecting with her because it would be a one-sided relationship. Then at another festival (and conference on small businesses) I ran into a guy from high school who was rude to me about one of the speakers being too much of a bigwig to give me the time of day as though I'd be bothering him. I said to him "I don't care how rich or famous he is. Everyone is worthy of respect and my time is equally important." Then the guy pointed out how I wasn't really engaged with other kids in school but that he had it worse because he was bullied. After that he brought up this friend, Diane. He asked me if I was on tranquilizers in high school, and said Diane had told him that. I was really pissed at that point not only for how in my business he was getting when I barely knew him, but also at her for being so gossipy, but I just answered the question honestly; that yes, I was but since I was a minor I had no choice in the matter. I explained I was being "treated" for the wrong thing and had been misdiagnosed. I then said that Diane was my best friend in high school, and he said he didn't know that. That was what clinched it for me. It hit me like a ton of bricks then that she didn't want that known or didn't feel mutually so downplayed our friendship behind my back and even had the audacity to gossip about my personal life to others. She had that little respect for me. I had no idea during high school. I had another friend from junior high who my last contact with was after I'd graduated and she had one year left. I called when I had moved to an apartment that had failed to turn the heat on in 18 degree F weather and asked if I could stay a night or two until it was turned on and she said she'd hoped she would never hear from me again and said maybe I could sleep in her woodpile. Even then I didn't realize she was bein mean to me so just answered matter-of-factly that I didn't think that would work to keep me warm enough. We had not had an argument so I didn't know why she would not want to stay friends. She was from a loving family unlike me, and her mother genuinely seemed to like me. The only thing I can figure as the reason for her treating me this way is that she felt I was a loser and beneath her because she never had to struggle and consider even hearing my struggles a hassle. A few years later when she got married my parents were invited to the wedding but I wasn't. Adult friendships haven't fared much better. The people either lost interest or else got offended by my not being able to read their mind as to what they wanted. No attempt at working it out made any difference because they seemed wedded to their grievance and invested in NOT working things out. I'm now in my 60s and my heart can't take much more of this BS. I've come to the conclusion that nowadays friendships aren't meant to last and that many women just use them as a crutch to get through a rocky marriage or love relationship, and then when that is on the mend they have no more use for you, so I no longer try to make friends. It's too much unnecessary drama. I go into all relationships now except for with my son, viewing them as temporary. Most friendships in my experience last 2-3 years tops, and most carers don't last more than about 2 weeks to a month before they get bored and leave. I don't think of myself as a boring person because I have lots of hobbies and interests and make interesting conversation, so who knows what it is. Being bullied is about the bully; it doesn't make you a victim mentality person or weak. THEY were responsible for their behavior. Nobody made them do it and even if you are different that does not mean it's fair game to treat you badly. It has taken me years to have anger toward those who treated me badly when I was oblivious to it. That anger and acknowledgement of what was really going on protected me from being taken advantage of later on. I know now that I don't just have to take it. I went through it in 5th and 6th grade and it did make me upset, but I realize now it was with good reason that I was upset. Those experiences were so overt I couldn't help but feel it and I could not be oblivious to those. I dealt with it by becoming really tough. The kids backed off when they saw that I had my limit and that I was no victim. I pretty much ate bullies for breakfast and would even defend other kids if I saw them being bullied. The bullies took their talk backdoor and stopped being openly antagonistic because word got around that I was physically strong and could really do them some damage if I wanted so nobody wanted to mess with me, between my standing up for myself verbally and excelling in gym class in soccer and kickball, and towards the end of the second year things got better and some kids broke ranks with the ring leaders and related to me in a nice way and even asked to work on school projects with me. At the dance we had at the end of the year the most popular kid asked to dance with me. It was then I knew I had gained people's respect. The following year my family moved to another state and that school was much better. Thankfully the overt bullying was only 2 years out of my life. I know there are people who go through it for years and are less able to defend themselves.
My mantra during High School was “Everyday is one day closer to Graduation!” (US School) This was over thirty years ago, so no one knew a thing about autism other than the most obvious cases. I was in pain everyday, just being in the school building was painful and then I had to deal with the social crap! The music program was my savior, but I really wasn’t really good at that either, because I was having vision problems trying to read music.
This video has been very helpful to me understanding my daughter, who has recently been going through very similar things in High School. She is now in college & i was thinking she would have a much better time of things in college but it appears so far they treat her the same as school did. For me, college was a major change in my life when I was no longer treated like a child like I was at school. I went to school overseas so I guess things are different in UK. Maybe it will be different when she is 18. The other problem is that they have put her on a course where all the drop-outs are put, so as an intelligent person she is very unhappy. They couldn't cope with her differences in the IT course which she wanted to do, plus she was being teased and bullied by class mates so she spent a lot of time out of class. As long as the system is trying to force everyone to be alike instead of adapting to everyone's differences I don't see any end to the discrimination we suffer.
I was totally withdrawn in middle school. In high school I became the annoying class clown. I relate to what Dana said: I was being weird intentionally so if I was being judged it was for things that I had chosen to do, and not just because "I was weird." In any case, it actually broke me out of my shell, and helped me make a few friends. I didn't get bullied in high school. However, I had a teacher in high school and also a teacher in graduate school who called me "Charlie" pejoratively. My name is Steve. So weird. Both teachers disliked me for asking too many questions.
Another great video Dana! I think you presented your experiences very well and cheers to you for giving advice from your heart to the teens who may be watching "just get through it' whenever I think of my niece my heart just goes out to her because being 14 is a damn struggle (I HATED it) so I may just recommend this video to her. Lots of healing in this one, thank you!
My last day of high school was amazing, the school organised a day full of "fun activities" with my classmates. I just bought some tasty snacks and stayed home playing videogames the whole day, that was a proper celebration.
I felt like my friendship group didn't like me much either. I had 2 or 3 friends then the rest seemed to just tolerate me. In my early 30'a I began to struggle with the things I repressed from growing up. It was so strange that my friend group from high school seemed to come out of nowhere to help me. They accepted me and saw the me that I hid from myself and accepted me back then and I never knew. I think you will one day find out there was more to these friends and maybe even the people who never spoke to you that will surprise and give you so much more context to understand things with.
You are awesome! And an incredibly strong person! Just ignore people's BS. Most people are dimwits. Sending you positive energy. I don't think I'm autistic, but I really hated high school too. It was horrible. Bravo to you. You are BRAVE!
I am AS diagnoised, I acrtually went to a special schoolfor most of high school years, Brondyffryn located in Denbigh, but they did a part integration in Denbigh High School. So I was probably "aware" I was "different" all along. I did find at college even if people were nice enough you were sort of naturally excluded if you didn't fit into their friend group, but I did better making 1 on 1 friendships. Must say I walked out of some college classes because I felt excluded.
I like you, Dana! You actually remind me of some of the friends who seemed to want to actually stick around me in middle and high school 😂 Granted, we were all teenagers and many of my memories of them are hurtful, but looking back i can see that they were going through a hard time. I always felt a kind of kinship with the "weird kids" even though I think i could pass for a little more "normal." At least i think i was a little more likable, which is probably due to the fact that I could go for days at a time in school never speaking a word to anyone, but was masking incessantly with my "giggly" persona which got me through so many tricky and terrifying situations throughout the day. So i never really got many enemies. I think most people either pitied me a little or were just confused (pitied by the girls, i think, and confusion from the boys?), so whenever anyone tried to tease me or anything I'd always have someone step in for me and say "Oh, don't say that, she's too innocent," or "Aw, stop it, she's blushing! (look how cute!)" without asking me what i actually thought. I think that still contributes to how bad i am at defending myself today. I cannot for the life of me fluently express my thoughts 🤦♀ i pretty much tricked myself into believing that I liked school while blatantly ignoring how tense my body was and how anxious i was literally all the time, just so i would have something to say to relatives who would ask how school's going. "It's great, I love it, my favorite subject is English!" is a whole lot easier to get over with than "It sucks and I hate it" because no one asks you to explain yourself. Alas. Trying to get better at that.
I was anxious going through school too mostly because for the first 3 years of my school career I was bullied mostly because I was fat, slow, and not talking much. I was always looking over my shoulder making sure my back was against a wall so I could watch out for the other kids and not get surprised and I always hung out near the door during break. To cope I started smiling and giggling to the point that I couldn't help it. Thank god I am no longer in school. They say school is the best time of your life. Bollocks to that. I hated school, I still hate it.
I am 47; didn't find out I was autistic until I was 40. I was bullied a lot in school; started around 5th grade. In junior high, puberty was kind to me, and I suddenly became significantly bigger than my peers, so most of the physical bullying stopped at that point, so they doubled down on the public humiliation. Some of the teachers were in on it too. One of my parents took the bully's side (the other was largely absent due to traveling job). I had the opportunity to go to an advanced high school dedicated to science and math for my last 2 years, but my parents prevented it. Found out that I could still graduate normally a year early, and my parent tried to stop that, but for the first time, I rebelled and enrolled myself in the necessary classes which, in order to prevent me from graduating early, they would have to go to the school administration and demand a schedule change for me, which the administration would know would mean my parent is preventing my early graduation, and since my parent only cared about public opinion, they weren't going to stab me in the back so publicly. I finally gained some friends in university, but also had to deal with the extremely mental illnesses from high school on top of my undiagnosed autism and ADHD. Eventually, things turned around reasonably well. Met a wonderful woman to whom I've been married for 23 years. Have a grown child in University who I'm very proud of.
I attended Highschool in the '80's . I also live in a NYC outer borough as well. Lot's of kids found me weird. Fair enough. Some of them would can me the "R" word. I was in the" Emotionally Disturbed "kids class. I'm still traumatized.
Thank you for describing your experience so honestly. ♥️ My time at high school was amazing (because, for the first time, I found people who were "like me") - but I worry that my kids might not be so lucky. I'd love to hear if you have any advice for kids or parents.
I went to HS in the USA and finished about the time you started. There are a handful of times i remember being bullied but if it happened more I don't remember it, I was oblivious to it because I was in my own world, or I socially misunderstood it. I feel like I had to have internalized some bullying at some point because by the time I got to HS I didn't know how to socialize and make friends and had a well established way of avoiding it by reading fiction constantly. I brought my books with me to lunch, got to class quickly so I could read before class started, pulled out my book as soon as I finished the class work (and the homework until the math teacher stopped writing the assignment ahead of time on the board because he didn't like us working on homework in class 😑). I enjoyed school. I liked to learn, I liked the opportunities to read more, but I didn't get much social from it and I was honestly ok with that. I did join some friend groups but it was mostly me just being there listening to them. There were a few I hung out with occasionally because we went to church together and they were also friends with my sister that is a year younger than me. Most of the socialization I got was because my sister brought me into the groups. I was happy to have her or I would have been really lonely. The little socialization I did need was fulfilled because she was there. Otherwise I stayed quietly smiling, to myself, and with my nose in a book.
My son is in the spectrum. And I have began home schooling him. He seems at peace. And ppl feel like he needs to be around other kids. He’s is always around ppl so he does socialize everywhere we go. But my daughter constantly complains of school. She has friends but she still hates it! It’s a smaller school and she still hates it.
A common dream I have is that I'm waking up in the morning and realize that I still have 3 or so years of High School left. Then I actually wake up IRL in a cold sweat or almost screaming in my sleep. Used to happen about once a month, now it's like ~2 a year. Makes sense b/c 8th grade and Freshman 9th was the worst time of my entire life.
The only way i could learn stuff is by myself, the teachers could never teach me how to do something i had to figure it put myself. Bc you know we enjoy learning random stuff
Life begins at 40 😅. I honestly haven’t had friends as good as now. Middle through high school is the worst. Even early college with the immature bullies haven’t been flunked out quite yet sucks. But later college and grad school is better. The. You regress to workplace, which is full of people who haven’t progressed past high school 😅. Then you have to wait until you find neurodivergent people to get real cool friends. Don’t bother with neurotypicals
I have autism, I was lucky I was a big kid. People mostly just left me alone as I would beat them in a fight. I’m 6’4 now as a 22 year old. I was 6 foot at 13. So I was more of an outcast than bullied. Growing up in nz most people don’t really bully you verbally they just try to fight you. So I was pretty much ok. Pretty lonely though, even though I was handsome I couldn’t talk to girls. Got my first gf at 18 19 and she was 22
That bad teacher sounds like the kind of person everyone else at their workplace all kinda agree they low-key hate but they can't do anything about it.
Tbh from the stories you shared, sounds like the teachers probably just recognized many kids are, frankly, jerks (and so is that one teacher), and if you flip out at them, that's because it's a natural human reaction. They had probably seen you as basically just some random kid, albeit a bit odd. If you get at least okay grades, the teachers probably felt they did an acceptable job, and they don't stress about it. They likely hadn't done much research to understand autism on the lighter needs end of the spectrum, so didn't recognize that you needed to look into diagnosis. Or, heck, given all the ABA horror stories, maybe they thought you'd been better off undiagnosed. I also get the impression that rules about not being in certain places are pretty much just there to put a stop to suspected trouble. If they think you're just there to be alone, and you're not the type to do drugs or graffiti or something, they can just not bother enforcing it. If you had a history of shady activity, they can tell you off, and don't need to prove you're up to anything. It's kinda nice that if you have a good reputation, you're basically above the rules, but at the same time, it's unfair that bs rules exist just to give certain people a hard time.
I embraced my perceived weirdness and used it to my advantage too. I did that same stare and even took a picture for art class with that stare because I refused to smile for a picture like the other kids. No one at school deserved my smile.
Up until recently I didn't consider myself as someone who had been bullied in school, after all it wasn't like kids were beating me up or yelling at me and calling me names. It was much more covert forms of manipulation but mostly just flat out being ignored by fucking everyone & never included in groups. I mean I didn't even fit in with the "weird kids" like the emos or geeks. It was so confusing. I was so glad to leave high-school and found Uni a lot better but still pretty isolating. And the same stupid group dynamics happen in all the workplaces I've had the misfortune of working at. Humans mostly suck. So it's refreshing to hear stories like this
I’ll be 40 this year, and I get anxiety being in my niece’s high school for her performances. School was traumatizing. I only realized I’m Autistic last year. I made myself as quiet and invisible as possible to avoid bullying, but it had its own negative effects. I recently drove past my high school, and told my husband (for the millionth time) “you couldn’t pay me to go back.”
My mother died when I was 13. Everyone in the middle school had high school knew and they still bullied me greatly. The teachers too. Because I was weird and didn’t talk and was clumsy and no one knew about autistic kids yet in the 60’s. And 70’s. How could everyone be so mean and cruel to a motherless sensitive girl. No one there was nice to me.
I was so autistic, I had every trait and was diagnosed in my 60’s. I never knew why I was like this and different from everyone else and why no one liked me or wanted to be my friend. I was clueless. Till now
Sorry you went through this 😢
The only "friends" I had were people who took advantage of me. I remember my preschool """"best friend"""" would give me Indian burns, hit me, and make me do things I didn't want to do every single day (obviously things like this continued even after college. I'm honestly not sure what's worse... being bullied by those you don't know or by those you thought you were close with). And she was the only one who would talk to me or hang out with me, so I just let it happen. She went to HS with me, and on the last day/yearbook signing, she stopped me and asked if I remembered if we were """friends""". I just turned around and walked away. Call it mean, but I was SO DONE with that place and everyone there.
I know how you feel
I definitely relate to things getting "better" socially as an adult. Kids can be really terrible, and some people should just not be teachers. I don't think acknowledging being bullied is playing the victim, but it's also valid if you don't like to use the word. I was certainly bullied in school, and I don't say that to illicit sympathy - it's just demonstrably what it was. Very importantly - I don't think your views are a prank. I appreciate your videos, and the way you approach these topics and stories with humility and disarming honesty.
I didn’t. In America, people still act like they’re in high school as adults. And sociopaths are rewarded. So that doesn’t help. But you will find some neurodivergent people if you live in a city. A lot of neurotypical women especially bond with each other by bullying and excluding/gossiping about others. But I finally found other neurodivergent women to hang with. We bond by hobbies and interests.
My school experience was... different, to say the least. I'm American, for reference of school terminology, and 30 years old--your years of high school line up almost exactly with my years in (US) college (i.e. UK university). Starting sometime in elementary school (first through fifth grade) I was teased *relentlessly.* Moving to another school between 2nd and 3rd grades didn't change anything. I don't remember much of that time, frankly, other than it being miserable. I'm not really sure who figured it out--maybe my fifth grade teacher--but it was that 2001, when I was 10, that I was referred to a psychologist and diagnosed with what was then called Asperger syndrome.
Then, by some miracle, come middle school--6th grade, the very next year after my diagnosis!--the bullying *stopped.* I'm sure the other kids just thought I was a weird dude, but they did me perhaps the greatest service they could: they completely ignored me, and I was mostly content with that. But it was incredibly lonely. For the majority of the time I had literally *no* friends. I felt totally isolated socially from everyone else around me: it was as if I was living in a glass prison cell. Sure, I could see out and they could see in. But no other interaction was possible.
In another miracle I got accepted to the county science & math magnet high school. I was around genuinely kind people who were, more often than not, actually *relatable.* It took two years to heal from everything else, but I actually sort of bloomed socially. That was when the core of my adult self was formed, I think, and I'm eternally grateful it was overall a positive environment for that. I have three exceptionally close friends I made in those years that I frequently interact with even now, more than 15(!!) years since we met.
College for me was *really* rough. I'd had no choice but to move with my parents to another state immediately after graduating from high school, and none of my high school friends were there. Hell, none of them were even within 500 miles of me. Two of them coincidentally ended up basically incommunicado for the majority of that time too. Otherwise I didn't have (m)any "real" friends. I fortunately managed to fall in with a group that kept me more or less emotionally afloat but, in hindsight, mostly just tolerated me, but through them I did indirectly gain another two very close friendships from those years, so it wasn't all bad. But I think it's also fair to say that I spent the six years after graduating in 2013 slowly healing from that. I think I've only recently gotten to where I was in 2009 from the point of view of emotional health.
All that aside, I think the reason that many people go undiagnosed in their school years is *still* a lack of awareness. Autism is invisible, after all. To anyone who's not actively looking for it, we're just the weird kids.
Yeah my high school experience was pretty awful as a diagnosed autistic kid in Australia. I realize now just how toxic some of my friends were, but there wasn't really any other choice at the time. Because I didn't have many facial expressions and got in lots of punch ups (not by my choice), people became pretty scared of me, which helped reduce the amount of bullying I received. The special needs teachers treated autistic kids like babies and it made my life harder, not easier. I joined a punk band and got my anger out by screaming and playing drums.
The important thing is that we survived it
Compared to adult life my school days seemed to go well. There was no awareness of autism at all in those days and I was probably just seen as very strange. I had almost no self-awareness and maybe that gave me a level of protection as attempts at teasing, etc, pretty much went over my head. Lack of self-awareness can have the benefit of greater confidence and fewer feelings of low self-esteem which I think particularly attract bullies who seem to scent anxiety and feelings of weakness. However there is also a price for lack of self-awareness and I probably embarrassed myself countless times without realising. Some people in later years like to catch up with former school friends on places such as Facebook but one of the reasons I wouldn't want to do that is fear that my weird behaviour would be brought-up. Also as my adult life has been less than successful I don't want the awkward questions associated with that. I prefer just to draw a line under it and to have "disappeared" from my former worlds.
5:50, we get along better with older, and younger people, than we do with our peers. In grade school, my idea of a good time, was a trip to the old folks home…or the library. High school was lonely.
You make a good point about teachers picking up on traits. If teachers were properly trained to recognise these kind of things it would surely make a huge difference to helping get early diagnosis and support.
2014 tumblr was a peak time for me haha- I still have my old account that I don't really use anymore but I love going back and looking at all the things I used to post about (remember when everyone liveblogged season 3 of sherlock?). Undiagnosed autism in school absolutely sucks :/
My entire school experience was really messed up. Our school district and the schools in it were a mess and the teachers and staff for the majority were awful and straight up abusive at times, the students were really just treated like cattle if im honest. But my personal experience at highschool was pretty similar to yours, very similar. There was a lot of messed up things that went on at school, and I also struggled with being bullied for my sexuality as well. I feel very comforted that im not alone. I live in the US and i still find it so striking how familiar your story was to me. Theres a lot of trauma from school alone, it was one of the most painful parts of growing up for me. I really appreciate you making this video, although I know its 2 years old at this point. Thank you
High school for me was something great, but I had a huge advantage, my school was tiny. I went to a purely French school in a small English community, so we didn't have many people. My graduating class was 4 people. My high school, grades 9-12, was 6. From K to 12 we had 120 when I graduated. The advantage this gave me was that I didn't have people I wasn't comfortable around. Everyone I went to school with I'd been around since I was in grade 5, that was the last time my class got a new student. The other advantage was that I was really close with my teachers, and I didn't need 1 on 1 help, because I already had it. When there's only one other person in your Calculus class, you're teacher can easily help out.
That's one of the reasons I think I've gone so long without being diagnosed. I didn't have the same problems others did. I didn't need to have extra help from the teacher, because I already had it. I didn't get overwhelmed by people because I was really close to the 6 other people I was in school with.
Now if we're talking about University, that's a different story. There's a reason it took me 7 years to do a 4 year program, and it took me changing schools. I no longer had the help and support I was used to, I would get overwhelmed by the amount of people around, and things just fell apart. The other problem was that since I had the help I needed in high school without asking for it, I didn't know how to get help in uni.
Dana I know this video is a bit old now ,but only seeing it for the first time, and it's one of the most relatable videos I've seen so far, I'm autistic also and had a similar experience at Secondary School a bit different to yours but the part where you said ,"none of yous like me ,I don't enjoy being around people so I'm not gonna be" - that right there is how I feel as a 23 year old man right now ,and it's right
Although my high school was just the standard autistic experience with a few traumatic experiences here and there, what made my high school experience different from yours is the deep seated loneliness that lingers with me to this day.
Yet here I am, still standing to this day.
I was pretty oblivious in high school so really didn't know how people thought of me because they didn't say anything to my face and when certain thins happened that would have hurt most people such as a friend making plans with me and then going out with other friends and were gone when I arrived I didn't realize it was personal. It wasn't until a few years later that I thought "That wasn't very nice." In my 20s and 30s I sold my handcrafted jewelry at festivals and ran into my best friend from high school and asked her why she hadn't contacted me and she said I could have contacted her because she was in the phone book (but she wasn't; I had checked). She gave me her number when I specifically asked her for it, but then realized she hadn't missed me so maybe I was better off not calling and reconnecting with her because it would be a one-sided relationship. Then at another festival (and conference on small businesses) I ran into a guy from high school who was rude to me about one of the speakers being too much of a bigwig to give me the time of day as though I'd be bothering him. I said to him "I don't care how rich or famous he is. Everyone is worthy of respect and my time is equally important." Then the guy pointed out how I wasn't really engaged with other kids in school but that he had it worse because he was bullied. After that he brought up this friend, Diane. He asked me if I was on tranquilizers in high school, and said Diane had told him that. I was really pissed at that point not only for how in my business he was getting when I barely knew him, but also at her for being so gossipy, but I just answered the question honestly; that yes, I was but since I was a minor I had no choice in the matter. I explained I was being "treated" for the wrong thing and had been misdiagnosed. I then said that Diane was my best friend in high school, and he said he didn't know that. That was what clinched it for me. It hit me like a ton of bricks then that she didn't want that known or didn't feel mutually so downplayed our friendship behind my back and even had the audacity to gossip about my personal life to others. She had that little respect for me. I had no idea during high school.
I had another friend from junior high who my last contact with was after I'd graduated and she had one year left. I called when I had moved to an apartment that had failed to turn the heat on in 18 degree F weather and asked if I could stay a night or two until it was turned on and she said she'd hoped she would never hear from me again and said maybe I could sleep in her woodpile. Even then I didn't realize she was bein mean to me so just answered matter-of-factly that I didn't think that would work to keep me warm enough. We had not had an argument so I didn't know why she would not want to stay friends. She was from a loving family unlike me, and her mother genuinely seemed to like me. The only thing I can figure as the reason for her treating me this way is that she felt I was a loser and beneath her because she never had to struggle and consider even hearing my struggles a hassle. A few years later when she got married my parents were invited to the wedding but I wasn't.
Adult friendships haven't fared much better. The people either lost interest or else got offended by my not being able to read their mind as to what they wanted. No attempt at working it out made any difference because they seemed wedded to their grievance and invested in NOT working things out.
I'm now in my 60s and my heart can't take much more of this BS. I've come to the conclusion that nowadays friendships aren't meant to last and that many women just use them as a crutch to get through a rocky marriage or love relationship, and then when that is on the mend they have no more use for you, so I no longer try to make friends. It's too much unnecessary drama. I go into all relationships now except for with my son, viewing them as temporary. Most friendships in my experience last 2-3 years tops, and most carers don't last more than about 2 weeks to a month before they get bored and leave. I don't think of myself as a boring person because I have lots of hobbies and interests and make interesting conversation, so who knows what it is.
Being bullied is about the bully; it doesn't make you a victim mentality person or weak. THEY were responsible for their behavior. Nobody made them do it and even if you are different that does not mean it's fair game to treat you badly. It has taken me years to have anger toward those who treated me badly when I was oblivious to it. That anger and acknowledgement of what was really going on protected me from being taken advantage of later on. I know now that I don't just have to take it.
I went through it in 5th and 6th grade and it did make me upset, but I realize now it was with good reason that I was upset. Those experiences were so overt I couldn't help but feel it and I could not be oblivious to those. I dealt with it by becoming really tough. The kids backed off when they saw that I had my limit and that I was no victim. I pretty much ate bullies for breakfast and would even defend other kids if I saw them being bullied. The bullies took their talk backdoor and stopped being openly antagonistic because word got around that I was physically strong and could really do them some damage if I wanted so nobody wanted to mess with me, between my standing up for myself verbally and excelling in gym class in soccer and kickball, and towards the end of the second year things got better and some kids broke ranks with the ring leaders and related to me in a nice way and even asked to work on school projects with me. At the dance we had at the end of the year the most popular kid asked to dance with me. It was then I knew I had gained people's respect. The following year my family moved to another state and that school was much better. Thankfully the overt bullying was only 2 years out of my life. I know there are people who go through it for years and are less able to defend themselves.
My mantra during High School was “Everyday is one day closer to Graduation!” (US School) This was over thirty years ago, so no one knew a thing about autism other than the most obvious cases. I was in pain everyday, just being in the school building was painful and then I had to deal with the social crap! The music program was my savior, but I really wasn’t really good at that either, because I was having vision problems trying to read music.
This video has been very helpful to me understanding my daughter, who has recently been going through very similar things in High School. She is now in college & i was thinking she would have a much better time of things in college but it appears so far they treat her the same as school did. For me, college was a major change in my life when I was no longer treated like a child like I was at school. I went to school overseas so I guess things are different in UK. Maybe it will be different when she is 18. The other problem is that they have put her on a course where all the drop-outs are put, so as an intelligent person she is very unhappy. They couldn't cope with her differences in the IT course which she wanted to do, plus she was being teased and bullied by class mates so she spent a lot of time out of class. As long as the system is trying to force everyone to be alike instead of adapting to everyone's differences I don't see any end to the discrimination we suffer.
I was totally withdrawn in middle school. In high school I became the annoying class clown. I relate to what Dana said: I was being weird intentionally so if I was being judged it was for things that I had chosen to do, and not just because "I was weird." In any case, it actually broke me out of my shell, and helped me make a few friends. I didn't get bullied in high school. However, I had a teacher in high school and also a teacher in graduate school who called me "Charlie" pejoratively. My name is Steve. So weird. Both teachers disliked me for asking too many questions.
Another great video Dana! I think you presented your experiences very well and cheers to you for giving advice from your heart to the teens who may be watching "just get through it' whenever I think of my niece my heart just goes out to her because being 14 is a damn struggle (I HATED it) so I may just recommend this video to her. Lots of healing in this one, thank you!
My last day of high school was amazing, the school organised a day full of "fun activities" with my classmates. I just bought some tasty snacks and stayed home playing videogames the whole day, that was a proper celebration.
I felt like my friendship group didn't like me much either. I had 2 or 3 friends then the rest seemed to just tolerate me. In my early 30'a I began to struggle with the things I repressed from growing up. It was so strange that my friend group from high school seemed to come out of nowhere to help me. They accepted me and saw the me that I hid from myself and accepted me back then and I never knew. I think you will one day find out there was more to these friends and maybe even the people who never spoke to you that will surprise and give you so much more context to understand things with.
You are awesome! And an incredibly strong person! Just ignore people's BS. Most people are dimwits. Sending you positive energy. I don't think I'm autistic, but I really hated high school too. It was horrible. Bravo to you. You are BRAVE!
I am AS diagnoised, I acrtually went to a special schoolfor most of high school years, Brondyffryn located in Denbigh, but they did a part integration in Denbigh High School. So I was probably "aware" I was "different" all along. I did find at college even if people were nice enough you were sort of naturally excluded if you didn't fit into their friend group, but I did better making 1 on 1 friendships. Must say I walked out of some college classes because I felt excluded.
I like you, Dana! You actually remind me of some of the friends who seemed to want to actually stick around me in middle and high school 😂 Granted, we were all teenagers and many of my memories of them are hurtful, but looking back i can see that they were going through a hard time. I always felt a kind of kinship with the "weird kids" even though I think i could pass for a little more "normal." At least i think i was a little more likable, which is probably due to the fact that I could go for days at a time in school never speaking a word to anyone, but was masking incessantly with my "giggly" persona which got me through so many tricky and terrifying situations throughout the day. So i never really got many enemies. I think most people either pitied me a little or were just confused (pitied by the girls, i think, and confusion from the boys?), so whenever anyone tried to tease me or anything I'd always have someone step in for me and say "Oh, don't say that, she's too innocent," or "Aw, stop it, she's blushing! (look how cute!)" without asking me what i actually thought. I think that still contributes to how bad i am at defending myself today. I cannot for the life of me fluently express my thoughts 🤦♀ i pretty much tricked myself into believing that I liked school while blatantly ignoring how tense my body was and how anxious i was literally all the time, just so i would have something to say to relatives who would ask how school's going. "It's great, I love it, my favorite subject is English!" is a whole lot easier to get over with than "It sucks and I hate it" because no one asks you to explain yourself. Alas. Trying to get better at that.
I was anxious going through school too mostly because for the first 3 years of my school career I was bullied mostly because I was fat, slow, and not talking much. I was always looking over my shoulder making sure my back was against a wall so I could watch out for the other kids and not get surprised and I always hung out near the door during break. To cope I started smiling and giggling to the point that I couldn't help it. Thank god I am no longer in school. They say school is the best time of your life. Bollocks to that. I hated school, I still hate it.
I found this so relatable that i got sad and had to stop watching. 10/10
I am 47; didn't find out I was autistic until I was 40. I was bullied a lot in school; started around 5th grade. In junior high, puberty was kind to me, and I suddenly became significantly bigger than my peers, so most of the physical bullying stopped at that point, so they doubled down on the public humiliation. Some of the teachers were in on it too. One of my parents took the bully's side (the other was largely absent due to traveling job). I had the opportunity to go to an advanced high school dedicated to science and math for my last 2 years, but my parents prevented it. Found out that I could still graduate normally a year early, and my parent tried to stop that, but for the first time, I rebelled and enrolled myself in the necessary classes which, in order to prevent me from graduating early, they would have to go to the school administration and demand a schedule change for me, which the administration would know would mean my parent is preventing my early graduation, and since my parent only cared about public opinion, they weren't going to stab me in the back so publicly. I finally gained some friends in university, but also had to deal with the extremely mental illnesses from high school on top of my undiagnosed autism and ADHD. Eventually, things turned around reasonably well. Met a wonderful woman to whom I've been married for 23 years. Have a grown child in University who I'm very proud of.
I attended Highschool in the '80's . I also live in a NYC outer borough as well. Lot's of kids found me weird. Fair enough. Some of them would can me the "R" word. I was in the" Emotionally Disturbed "kids class. I'm still traumatized.
Thank you for describing your experience so honestly. ♥️ My time at high school was amazing (because, for the first time, I found people who were "like me") - but I worry that my kids might not be so lucky. I'd love to hear if you have any advice for kids or parents.
You’re awsome, I would have loved to have a friend like you in high school. I was also an undiagnosed autistic girl growing up.
I went to HS in the USA and finished about the time you started. There are a handful of times i remember being bullied but if it happened more I don't remember it, I was oblivious to it because I was in my own world, or I socially misunderstood it. I feel like I had to have internalized some bullying at some point because by the time I got to HS I didn't know how to socialize and make friends and had a well established way of avoiding it by reading fiction constantly. I brought my books with me to lunch, got to class quickly so I could read before class started, pulled out my book as soon as I finished the class work (and the homework until the math teacher stopped writing the assignment ahead of time on the board because he didn't like us working on homework in class 😑). I enjoyed school. I liked to learn, I liked the opportunities to read more, but I didn't get much social from it and I was honestly ok with that. I did join some friend groups but it was mostly me just being there listening to them. There were a few I hung out with occasionally because we went to church together and they were also friends with my sister that is a year younger than me. Most of the socialization I got was because my sister brought me into the groups. I was happy to have her or I would have been really lonely. The little socialization I did need was fulfilled because she was there. Otherwise I stayed quietly smiling, to myself, and with my nose in a book.
My son is in the spectrum. And I have began home schooling him. He seems at peace. And ppl feel like he needs to be around other kids. He’s is always around ppl so he does socialize everywhere we go.
But my daughter constantly complains of school. She has friends but she still hates it! It’s a smaller school and she still hates it.
A common dream I have is that I'm waking up in the morning and realize that I still have 3 or so years of High School left. Then I actually wake up IRL in a cold sweat or almost screaming in my sleep. Used to happen about once a month, now it's like ~2 a year. Makes sense b/c 8th grade and Freshman 9th was the worst time of my entire life.
F high school!
Just have to say- you are awesome. Wish i knew you in high school.
🎶 High school never ends 😖
School was traumatic, my teachers were the worst of all.
The only way i could learn stuff is by myself, the teachers could never teach me how to do something i had to figure it put myself. Bc you know we enjoy learning random stuff
Life begins at 40 😅. I honestly haven’t had friends as good as now. Middle through high school is the worst. Even early college with the immature bullies haven’t been flunked out quite yet sucks. But later college and grad school is better. The. You regress to workplace, which is full of people who haven’t progressed past high school 😅. Then you have to wait until you find neurodivergent people to get real cool friends. Don’t bother with neurotypicals
i want to show you my favourite art gallery and chat about feelings stuff there makes us feel. have no Idea why
I have autism, I was lucky I was a big kid. People mostly just left me alone as I would beat them in a fight. I’m 6’4 now as a 22 year old. I was 6 foot at 13. So I was more of an outcast than bullied. Growing up in nz most people don’t really bully you verbally they just try to fight you. So I was pretty much ok. Pretty lonely though, even though I was handsome I couldn’t talk to girls. Got my first gf at 18 19 and she was 22
Same 4 me
I'm a supernatural fan girl too 😊 definitely how I cope with being an audhd adult 😅
That bad teacher sounds like the kind of person everyone else at their workplace all kinda agree they low-key hate but they can't do anything about it.
Tbh from the stories you shared, sounds like the teachers probably just recognized many kids are, frankly, jerks (and so is that one teacher), and if you flip out at them, that's because it's a natural human reaction. They had probably seen you as basically just some random kid, albeit a bit odd. If you get at least okay grades, the teachers probably felt they did an acceptable job, and they don't stress about it. They likely hadn't done much research to understand autism on the lighter needs end of the spectrum, so didn't recognize that you needed to look into diagnosis. Or, heck, given all the ABA horror stories, maybe they thought you'd been better off undiagnosed.
I also get the impression that rules about not being in certain places are pretty much just there to put a stop to suspected trouble. If they think you're just there to be alone, and you're not the type to do drugs or graffiti or something, they can just not bother enforcing it. If you had a history of shady activity, they can tell you off, and don't need to prove you're up to anything. It's kinda nice that if you have a good reputation, you're basically above the rules, but at the same time, it's unfair that bs rules exist just to give certain people a hard time.
I had a horrible teacher in high school too. She killed my interest in photography because of how shitty she was and her terrible teaching style.
Great video dana. Sad that britain is still that bad. Ans homophobic. Arg terrible.