Anna Kennedy wanted to interview me about bullying. I invited her to send me 6 questions. Here’s our interview.

ANNA KENNEDY:
1. How would you define bullying?
DONNA WILLIAMS:
Repeated intimidation/abuse on a physical, emotional or psychological level by someone in a more powerful position than oneself. Now that can be by someone the same age or size if you don’t have the ability to stand up for yourself, tend to freeze, break down, dissociate. It can be someone younger or smaller than you who has been put in a position of power over you. It can be done directly or online. It can be done by those you know or by strangers, by those you can identify or those hiding their identity. It can be done through photographing the person without their permission, through publishing details of their home information for the purpose of building hatred or inciting others to abuse them. Bullying generally involves isolating the person being bullied, gaining power over them. It’s often a narcissistic act by those who have weak self esteem and artificially puff up their egos through bullying others. Those who incite others to join the bullying may have even weaker self esteem or more insatiable egos in that their own bullying antics are not enough to satisfy their lust for power so they prop this up with inciting others to join THEM.

ANNA KENNEDY:
2. Were you ever bullied at school because of your autism and if so how did it affect you ?
DONNA WILLIAMS:
I was bullied at school from grade prep but didn’t understand it was bullying. The first bully would pretend to be a good twin then go around the shelter sheds, come back and be the bad twin and pinch, shove and slap me. I learned by my teens there were no such identical twins at the school. Essentially, I think kids like this are exploring boundaries, their own power, their good and bad sides and who they are or want to be. I think kids like this are morally and emotionally underdeveloped. They are often very intelligent but emotionally and morally, they are backward. I also think they have narcissistic tendencies or are in fact narcissistic and this may be because they were over indulged or the opposite. I feel this particular girl was intrigued by my severe face blindness and my complete lack of questioning of reality. She was waiting to see how far she could go, when she’d get caught. I think it was obviously unfair play, but it reflects more the lack of awareness about autism and lack of advocacy re teachers helping mainstream children to understand things like meaning deafness, face blindness… neurological differences. I also think there’s an assumption that all woman, young girls, even children in general are somehow flawless, that they can’t do cruel, deranged, even evil things.

In grade 1 & 2 I was pulled down from the monkey bars and kicked by a particularly narcissistic queen bee who was very proud of being the most popular girl in the school. She would line up her friends and count them off in ratings of popularity. She had girls competing to be her friend. I think she bullied me to impress her friends and because I didn’t admire or idolise her as other girls did. I think she was unnerved by realness. I think my autism perplexed and irritated her. Her brother had been friends with my brother until one day he said to my brother ‘is your sister one of them spastics’ and that really destroyed my brother’s ability to see me as human and equal, it socially isolated him, he became ashamed of me. But it also shows the social milieu of this girl, that she grew up in a family where the children were allowed to think of themselves as superior, special, talented compared to those with disabilities. The girl in particular had no problem with being exceptional. She was attractive, intelligent, fashionable, did dancing lessons and passed for ‘talented’. I just think some children are their parents’ ‘narcissistic object’ and so they haven’t learned to relate well human to human, not really. I had something she didn’t, something she could never have or be. She may have felt superior, but I believe deep down inside she was a hollow human being.

In grade 3 I was stood out in the corridor for around 1/3rd of my school year by my teacher because I had Tourette’s tics. In grade 4 I was stood in the rubbish bin by another teacher who threw chalk at me for the entertainment of the class. Being bullied by teachers was degrading, particularly the second one who utilised the class to increase his power of ridicule. I know these people were frustrated by my tics, echolalia, constant inattention, meaning deafness. I feel ignorance is part of that and they lacked training in how to not take my autism personally and strategies to manage my issues respectfully and constructively.

In grade 5 I was being taunted by the popular girls and this continued into grade 6 where it escalated to being encircled with chanting of ‘zombie’ and being shoved. By then I realised others were also bullied… for red hair, for having body odor, for having crooked teeth, for having a strange face or head shape etc etc… I was just getting it for being meaning deaf, meaning blind, lacking simultaneous processing of self and other, going into dissociation when confronted… I was the rabbit in the headlights. It perplexed these kids. They were unnerved by what they didn’t understand, were testing the boundaries, how far they could push, they were also struggling with their own narcissism and banding together with other narcissists to feel better about their own lack of humility, integrity, humanity… these were their disabilities. At the time it was very scary, more of my own disabilities than of them, my inability to get my mouth and body to respond. What happened though was it did respond after the events and these children found themselves suddenly picked off one by one when they (and I) least expected. They were suddenly pushed down stairs, shoved into the wall, had their hand grabbed and the desk lid slammed on it. So delayed processing counted for something and Exposure Anxiety may have frozen me when confronted but once it had lowered it was the bullies who were in trouble. The reputation for unpredictable retaliations meant they came to fear me (I was already deemed crazy). But the reaction of staff was that I was the one who was crazy, dangerous, and they couldn’t find out what the others had done to me to result in my progressive sudden violent outbursts.

In high school I was instantly set upon by one kid after another. At that point my father wrapped my fists in tea towels and trained me to box. I became an extremely good fighter, then I was harassed into fighting others, I was encircled and other kids were shoved toward me and if I didn’t hit they would just knock me out.

How did it effect me? I understood cruel humans existed. My own parent was extremely abusive on every level, so I started school aware of a very harsh world. So in a sense I took it in my stride. I didn’t cower because I wasn’t used to being protected. I also didn’t fixate on the bullies. I gravitated toward those who were kind, gentle, quiet kids. I found my own space or hung on the peripheries watching others. I climbed trees and spent my time up there. I was fairly content being the observer. I think my experiences made me quite the anthropologist. I do feel glad none of it was a shock. I feel glad I already knew harshness because this made me see the bullying in context, see the good people who were not bullies, see that bullies were a minority.

ANNA KENNEDY:
3. How do you stop bullying in mainstream schools and in the community?
DONNA WILLIAMS:
I think narcissism needs to be addressed. Why do we presume that constantly inflating people’s egos is the best motivator? Why do we fixate on who is winning, superior, gorgeous, exceptional, most talented, fashionable? Why do we rely on and promote extrinsic rewards? Why do we encourage children to identify with their expensive goods, their clothing brands, the hair style/tattoo/piercing they have, the drink can they prefer? Why do we emphasise heros instead of becoming the person we could most trust? Why do we overvalue pride and specialness and and confuse it with self esteem which comes with integrity, humility, a sense of our own equality? Why do we pander to the tantrums and whims of out of control egos? Why do we confuse overcaring/co-dependency and the learned helplessness it promotes with real caring and love (which is empowering)? Why do we hypocritically promote being ‘different’ then encourage fads where everyone competes to be the same version of different? Why do adults model blame politics or turning a blind eye on anything that might otherwise be ‘another burden’? See without looking at the broader context we can’t address the moral, emotional, mental, personality health of children. Sure, we can address ignorance about autism, promote equality in difference. But without looking at the illness of our current values, it is hard to change what happens in the world in general. How do we stop bullying? We challenge the values of society itself. We enlighten human beings not just about autism, but about their own issues.

ANNA KENNEDY:
4. How do you teach your child when to ignore and when to stand up to the bullies?
DONNA WILLIAMS:
There’s a game I use to help kids desensitize to insults. Its the insult-compliment game. You brainstorm a list of random potential insults and a list of compliments. Cut each out from the list and put them into a hat, a top hat is fun. Take turns drawing out and reading these in turns with each other or in a group. What happens is then when the person hears some of these at school, they are ‘just sentences’, plus they can then imagine a compliment/affirmation they could then give themselves privately to balance up the insult they heard.

I also think that bullies often crave attention and may be dramatic-histrionic, so whilst ignoring them often makes sense, sometimes ignoring them inflames them so they’ll escalate to the point of violence to ensure their ‘fix’ of a response. One thing is certain, they are seeking power, so degrading them usually won’t help, they are probably fairly experienced in their bullying and can simply take it up a level. So if ignoring them inflames them further you can agreed to ‘negotiate’. This should be with a mediator in a safe and supervised setting. There you can hear them out, why are they so uncomfortable? Could it be they are uncomfortable in themselves but they instead project this onto the person they bully? How can people help them to feel better about themselves without bullying? Are you really doing something that annoys or perplexes them? Are they lacking some awareness that could help them get over that? Are there things you can healthily do to reduce what’s annoying them? Having a negotiator respectfully talk to a bully about their own self esteem, about narcissism, about boundaries, can help them become a healthier person. The negotiator can also help the person with autism gain insight about how their own stuff is perceived, model advocacy skills, help them understand new strategies to reduce behaviors which may inadvertently perplex, embarrass or annoy others.

ANNA KENNEDY:
5. What support should be given to a child that has experienced bullying?’

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Bullying is often traumatic so those who have experienced significant bullying need treatment for trauma. But this doesn’t mean an overzealous supercarer needs to don a cape and fly to the rescue because their precious disabled child was slighted in some way. Life is full of surprises and knocks and great times too. We need the crap to illuminate how wonderful the good stuff is. Wish away every negative experience and you have someone who can’t measure how good anything is, takes it all for granted, has no contrast, and with that contrast often comes motivation. We need to help children to realistically measure the degree of what they’ve been through, what they’ve learned from it, the strategies they are missing or need to develop. Running from every knock and negative will not help someone’s development. Sooner or later we are all on our own to fend for ourselves, even if we’re 45, in nappies, in a residential care unit or day centre. All of us will ultimately fend for ourselves. The sooner we healthily empower children to do this, the better off they will later be. It won’t be a paint by numbers controllable life, but it will be an active, engaging one in which one is a more empowered (albeit perhaps still disabled) human being.

Sometimes just getting an overprotective/co-dependent carer to learn how to instead empower their child is really helpful. Carers who constantly fear on behalf of their child train the child to feel incompetent in a world of constant threats. An empowering carer recognises the potential threats but never loses sight of the benefits and actively works not on bolstering ego type pride but on more integral self assertiveness skills, even training in boxing or martial arts with which the person can have faith they can, if necessary physically defend themselves.

ANNA KENNEDY:
6. If the child with autism is the bully and does not appear to understand their actions how do you support them?
DONNA WILLIAMS:
It depends on what drives the bullying. Kids with Exposure Anxiety can strike the child they wish to greet because of involuntary self protection responses. Some kids are averse to intimacy and so fascinated by inciting carers to counter control them which gives them an enjoyable reinstatement of social distance. Some are drawn to the power of effecting a carer through attacking someone the carer protects (psychopathy). Some will torment or bully someone because they are playing out what they’ve seen on a DVD or game. Some will have sensory fascinations with hair and pulling it. Some will have Tourette’s tics that cause them to involuntarily slap objects, people or themselves. Some will have visual perceptual disorders where they can’t see the person’s face or body as a whole so may strike out just to gain space. Some will have language processing disorders that make them aversive to those using torrents of blah or certain voice tones that grate on them so they’ll target those with these things. Some will have PTSD associations which spill over into new experiences where a child reminds them of something that happened in another time or place. Some will have sadistic or narcissistic personality disorders in addition to their autism and confused with their autism. Some will have behavioral issues associated with pain, disorientation or imbalanced brain chemistry associated with gut, immune, metabolic disorders and resulting in mood, anxiety, compulsive disorders that spill out into targeting particular easy targets. So the strategy to help them understand their actions and support them depends on the range of underlying causes in each case.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

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