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by 205guy
2049 days ago
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Not quite your description of bully becoming the bully, but I knew someone who was bullied who became a needy adult that used emotional abuse in their relationships. The person was high functioning on the autism spectrum and had been taunted and mocked in school for being awkward, different, and unable to defend themselves socially. More importantly, the person also said their parents were socially ambitious and always vocally disappointed in them for not being part of the "popular" kids. As an older teen, this person rebelled against their parents, smoked a lot of weed to self-medicate, but also had serious self-image problems and attempted suicide. Eventually got into programming and earned a decent living in a different country. But when I knew them as an adult, I always found them cranky, critical, and anxious. I later found out from an ex-partner that they were manipulative and needy, threatening to leave or even kill themselves when they didn't get their way. I was friends with this ex-partner who told me it looked like a mild case of borderline personality disorder: and the symptoms and actions seemed to fit. It's often caused by childhood emotional trauma, leads to emotional abuse of others in vain attempt to get the affection they were missing as children (that's a very rough summary). And it can lead to their own children missing the critical affection they need and thus perpetuate. And that made me think that perhaps this person's parents were also emotionally abusive because of a similar situation. And I even wonder if borderline personality disorder isn't a social comorbidity with autism spectrum, not medically related but a social situation that can happen more frequently. |
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Similar experience to your acquaintance growing up (high function autism and related experiences), except my parents only really had academic goals for me, which I was unable to meet completely due to down stream emotional effects of my poor social aptitude and comorbid ADHD(none of this was diagnosed until my 20s). Additionally my parents are very accepting and provided me with little surface to rebel against as a teen, and I've come to realize as an adult (~30 now) that they were very distant compared to the norm, for whatever thats worth.
With regards to violence, the bullying I received wasn't super physical and I received little if any corporal punishment as a kid. Escalating a verbal argument to a physical altercation is something I stopped doing when I was 7 or 8, and I had learned to cope with people enough by that time to just avoid fights entirely.
It took me years to develop my social skills to the degree of being able to get into a steady relationship, and I think if you talked to the first few people I dated they would have described me as needy, unfortunately. However, I would say in retrospect I wasn't terribly needy, just too inexperienced to know when I'm not clicking with someone, and still idealizing the person I'm dating.
Then I got into a relationship with someone who was physically abusive. This didn't have the effect of causing me to become violent, I was a fully functioning adult by this time well into my 20s, however it gave me a profound respect for how far society has come wrt animal training and the treatment of children. Every time I got hit my mind became a little more confused, fearful and upset. Often times I wouldn't even know what I did to get hit when it happened. Eventually I involuntarily grabbed their wrist as they were about to hit me and it managed to leave a bruise, that they then threatened me with and held over my head (my skin doesn't mark, and my ex was nearly a foot shorter than me, a tall fit male). As a result I became extremely fearful of being hit, fearing my own reaction more than anything. Until then I'd have people try and convince me from time to time that I had some underlying anxiety that I just didn't recognize, but this put that to rest, as for the first time in my life I was experiencing visceral anxiety and its symptoms, waking up with with terrible stomach aches everyday and depersonalization being chief among them. During all this I truly believed that if I put up with it long enough and worked on their problems they would get over it. I ended up just being damaged, not to the extent of partaking in direct violence, but by the end of it I was breaking things and slamming around, something I never would have done before, and even now seems like it was done by another person.
Anywho, the relationship and how it developed and ended, along with losing my business about halfway through gave me a severe bout of depression that I'm still struggling to overcome a couple years later. Even with good diet and exercise I'm barely functional (without it I will literally do nothing) and while I could really use medication for the ADHD to help me start getting enough things done that my depression also goes away, and probably some therapy at this point, the type of energy it takes to sign up for social medicine in my country/state is the same type I need for almost every other thing in my life, like a job in software, and the type I'm most short on. It really sucks.