Iron-clad REJECTION

The same oddities that cause a schoolboy to be bullied can cause one to be underappreciated, misunderstood, and often humiliated throughout adulthood.

It's an old story about the school kid who is tormented because he is too fat. Bashers used to go after homosexual men with baseball bats. "Kids can be cruel," it is often said. But adults also have done things to me that they would consider unconscionable if done to anyone else.

Every facet of life is affected by being marginalized and devalued, from making friends to finding a job and being treated fairly by the legal system. The loneliness can be unbearable; and for the young man with a strong libido, sexual deprivation can bring intolerable physical pain.

The cause can be any one of many different conditions, like autism, gross obesity, or a speech impediment combined with partial deafness.

Anyone so afflicted and has lived independently has, in all likelihood, developed some extraordinary insights and survival skills that he/she was never given credit for. In most cases it's done on a subconscious level; so the purpose of this discussion group is to discuss what we have learned in our lifetime of coping.

possible approaches to the discussion

1. organized by the different facets of life - - This outline might help.

2. If you had a certain time in your life to live over, what would you do differently?

3) What were the events that made you what you are today? What events changed your behavior or your outlook on life?

What other approaches would you possibly recommend for the discussion of what one has learned in his/her lifetime of coping?

benefits of said discussion

1. Self-affirmation is the idea that one can feel good about him/herself no matter what the rest of the world thinks of him/her and no matter what other people do to him/her. If this is true, then what better self-affirmation could there be than becoming aware that s/he has developed extraordinary skills?

2. giving each other some good pointers,

3. self-esteem benefits from having people interested in what one has to say, and

4 better tolerance for our differences as a result of people having some respect for our skills and insights.