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dianthus
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18 Jun 2016, 10:08 pm

I went out to eat for a family dinner, it was so horrible, SO LOUD I felt like the noise was coming right into my brain trying to kill me. I am not used to this, I spend most of my time at home just keeping things quiet. This restaurant was so overcrowded, poorly built, NOTHING whatsoever to help with absorbing sound. Everything just echoed, like being in a school cafeteria. Within a couple minutes being in there I felt like I was going to lose it.

I tried to just tough it out. Then this kid started scraping a chair across the floor. So now not just the noise but the vibrations in the floor. I was starting to feel queasy. I felt like I might go in a rage. So I had to get out of there. I jumped up and said call me when the food is ready. We had waited over an hour just to be seated then there I was right back outside. I figured they would get pissed at me for leaving I just couldn't stand it.

When the food finally came out I went back. There was this guy at the same table as the kid, stomping his foot on the floor. BOOM BOOM BOOM. What the hell, why do people act like this in restaurants? When I mentioned these things to my parents later they hadn't even noticed any of it. They do not understand at all how it makes me feel to be in a place like that. It does not matter how many times I tell any of them they never remember or understand.

I feel like my whole family just looks at me like I'm "difficult" or being dramatic for no reason. I don't know, what is the point of even going through things like this? I just feel like they put me on so many guilt trips over the years for not wanting to do the things they want to do. This whole experience gave me so many flashbacks, either having to do stuff that made me totally miserable then having someone mad at me because I didn't act happy about it, or else refusing to go along and having some huge confrontation about it.

If I felt like they actually appreciated me coming along or like it meant something to them it might be different, I mean I can suffer through a lot if I feel like it means something. But this just feels totally meaningless, I feel like I am invisible to them, I feel like they just want me there in body only.



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19 Jun 2016, 5:45 am

What pisses me off the most is, Aspies are expected to put ourselves in NTs shoes, otherwise we "lack empathy", but NTs find it just as hard to put themselves in Aspie's shoes.

It's just not fair being Aspie.


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19 Jun 2016, 9:42 am

Don't go next time.

See, that's what bothers me about women on the spectrum. They have to deal with both being autistic AND with the expectations of being female. A lot of people don't read feminist literature because it's seems so in-your-face and unpleasant. I felt that way myself. But then I was required to read some things in college and it was an eye-opening experience.

Why were you compelled to go to this torture restaurant with your parents in the first place? Why couldn't you have just suggested another place, or, once you got there and saw how bad it was, suggest you leave and go someplace else? We're socialized to endure. Then as an autistic person you are ALSO socialized to endure. That's way too much enduring.



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19 Jun 2016, 11:04 am

Must confess my first impulse when friends or family does this "let's go out to a noisy, crowded place together" is one of being trapped, as if everybody will hate me if I don't join in and I'll go through hell if I do. I just don't know how anybody can screen out the background horrors in some of those eating places, yet it's clear that many can.

In theory it shouldn't ever be a problem. Surely it's just a matter of telling these folks, who presumably care about us and wouldn't want to hurt us, what we go through in these places? And don't they already know us well enough to realise that and to accommodate our needs by deciding to go somewhere quieter, or even to get a takeaway and eat in instead of out? Yet it seems not. Whether it's us or them to blame, I'm not sure.

I know I'm very reluctant to rain on the neurotypical parade, very loathe to express my needs, because somehow deepdown I feel I just don't matter and that nothing I say or do will get them to understand, I feel I'll just get labelled as the antisocial party pooper. I feel that I'll just let them down by flying in the face of the unbreakable NT rule that these events are sacred. I feel like a closet atheist in a group of radical christians who think my soul will burn if I don't go to church with them.

I think the only way through is to bite the bullet and tell them, as clearly and gently as possible, what the problem is, to give them the benefit of the doubt. I strongly suspect that most people have some compassion, some capacity to trust that I'm not just making it up. I can reassure them that I appreciate their love of these events and that I'd love to join in but that my sensory issues are likely to make it impossible. I can offer compromises, I can negotiate. And if it turns out that they're just a pack of bigots who won't take a single step my way, then at least that will come out, and I can get away from them and hopefully find people who are better for me. But usually it scares me too much to actually have that conversation. My low self-esteem insists that I'm in the wrong, and I shrink from the task. I think it's my upbringing, and rising above that is like trying to swim through treacle. I have no advocate to calmly do all this skillful negotiation for me. So if I'm ever going to make any progress, that's what I'm going to have to do.

Don't know if you can relate to any of that or not. Apologies if I'm way off base and have projected my own unique problems onto your situation. I hope not.



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19 Jun 2016, 11:13 am

GACK!

I have a hard enough time going to church! At least I know what to expect there and when to expect it. The randomness of the loud noises in a restaurant is what gets to me - babies crying, people shouting, plates being dropped ... EWW!


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dianthus
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19 Jun 2016, 2:16 pm

We were celebrating Father's day, so we went to a place my dad likes and that my grandfather would like. Then again it wouldn't be any different any other time, their preferences would always have priority. What burns me up is my dad would never go along with something he didn't want to do for my sake. My mother has done things with me she probably didn't enjoy at all. My grandfather has been dragged along lots of times on shopping trips or other things he probably didn't want to do.

If people do things for me I like to return the favor. I just don't feel like they understand how horrible it is for me to go to a restaurant like that. It's not like oh it's okay but just not my preference. It's a nightmare. Yeah I could say I don't want to go but I don't like to be left out of things. That feels bad too. I don't know why we can't find something to do that is more mutually agreeable. I could suggest that we go somewhere else, but I feel like if I do that then it's looked at as me trying to get my way. Feels like I am pretty much damned no matter what I do.

We had been to this place a couple of times before and it was tolerable. I wasn't even thinking about how crowded it would be yesterday. When we pulled in the parking lot and I saw all the people standing outside waiting I just felt like screaming. I wanted to say, oh HELL no, let's go somewhere else. But this place was way out in the sticks so there wasn't anything else close by and we had already had to meet up in two different vehicles. Besides none of them really do well with changing plans on the fly.

If I had been alone, I would have whirled my car around and got out of there like Burt Reynolds driving a Trans Am. But instead I was trapped. It's that trapped feeling I hate most of all, like once I've decided to go along I'm committed and there's no changing anything. I used to opt out of things like this a lot more but somehow it would turn into an argument or guilt trip, or else get thrown back up in my face later that I didn't go.

My aunt more than anyone has really worn me down over the years with her spiel about how families are supposed to do things together even if it means you have to suffer. She wasn't even there yesterday but she was in my head just the same. Every time she visits she just wears me down with every little thing, trying to coerce me into stuff, even if I say NO she just keeps at me wanting to know why not.

My dad is much more subtle about it and he will bring something up when you least expect it. Like when I said something about how I'd like to go back to a place where we'd been exploring before, and suddenly he made a snarky comment about how we could go if I would ever come down to the lakehouse. Well why would I want to go, if he doesn't invite me to do something I would enjoy, am I supposed to just to sit there and watch him watch TV? Just the mention of doing something *I* might like to do is somehow offensive and has to be turned back on me like it's my fault.

And this is after I'd heard him complain on and on about how my mother never wanted to go down there (which he's now coerced her back into), but he never said a word about me not going. So all of a sudden I realized he was holding even more of a grudge against me about it but had been holding it back for just the right moment. And although I haven't been to the lakehouse in years I know this is mainly because I didn't go to their little get together this past Christmas. This was one of those times when my aunt kept pressuring me and asking me why don't you want to go. The biggest reason I didn't go was because my parents were having too much drama with each other and it was (and still is) stressful just to be around either of them.

And the craziest thing about it is I don't even feel especially welcome to go do anything with my relatives! I don't feel like they truly want me to participate. Sometimes they don't even invite me specifically, it will just be mentioned in my presence that they are doing something and then kind of like an afterthought they ask if I want to come. If I go, no one really has anything to say to me and I just get ignored and feel invisible. I feel like I'm just treated like an accessory not even a real person. Yet if I DON'T go it will definitely be thrown back up in my face by someone later.

On top of everything my dad's sister and her husband is moving back here, but now they are going to want to do things with us too. It's not that I really dislike either of them, I don't even know them that well, but my dad and his sister have never gotten along especially well and she pisses him off like no one else. So this is going to take things to an unprecedented level of stress, the likes of which makes me want to go running screaming into the night and hurl myself off a cliff. I feel like my head is exploding a million times in succession.



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19 Jun 2016, 2:39 pm

SocOfAutism and Joe90 make excellent points. I used to just automatically abide by whatever was expected because that's who I'd been taught to be. Then we had kids & they turned out to be on the spectrum, too. Suddenly I felt the need to protect them from what I knew was a perceived threat. I now tell even my father on Fathers' Day that no, we aren't comfortable going to a restaurant, but we'd love to see you for a while, stop in and make dessert / bring a cake, whatever...for no more than say, 90 minutes. After a while, my family of origin is used to this and abides by it. We've also had enough conversations about *why*. They aren't convinced but they seem to mostly accept that there is no malice, only what they deem "selfishness".

I can live with that balance.


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dianthus
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19 Jun 2016, 3:31 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
Surely it's just a matter of telling these folks, who presumably care about us and wouldn't want to hurt us, what we go through in these places? And don't they already know us well enough to realise that and to accommodate our needs by deciding to go somewhere quieter, or even to get a takeaway and eat in instead of out?


Well here's the thing. When I tell my parents or anyone really how I feel about it - outside of being IN the situation - they typically do the "me too" response. My dad says he doesn't like to be around crowds, my mother doesn't like noise, whatever. To hear them talk you'd think they feel just the same way I do. But when we are IN the situation they are not bothered like I am. They are not having a rage response or wanting to run out of the building or having to go outside to calm down.

On the way home I was mentioning some of the things people were doing to make a racket in that and they both said they hadn't even noticed. Like the kid scraping the chair and the guy stomping his foot. They both sounded surprised that I had noticed those things. My dad admitted he just tunes out all the noise, which is easy enough for him or my grandfather because they both need a hearing aid to begin with.

Now the weird thing is if I go somewhere with my mother, she will say the same things are bothering her that are bothering me. When the noise bothers me, it bothers her too. But with the rest of the family she doesn't seem to be bothered at all. So I don't know if she's just mirroring me when we are together, or flat out lying, or maybe it really does bother her but she's dissociating from it when we are with other people. I don't know what is going on, but it doesn't add up.

And yeah my parents of all people have known me long enough and spent enough time around me to realize that it's a bad situation for me. But my dad is completely oblivious to it, clueless. My mother knows though. I don't know what she thinks is going to happen, she probably doesn't think it through. I don't always think it through either which I guess is part of my own cognitive problems.

Quote:
I know I'm very reluctant to rain on the neurotypical parade, very loathe to express my needs, because somehow deepdown I feel I just don't matter and that nothing I say or do will get them to understand, I feel I'll just get labelled as the antisocial party pooper. I feel that I'll just let them down by flying in the face of the unbreakable NT rule that these events are sacred. I feel like a closet atheist in a group of radical christians who think my soul will burn if I don't go to church with them.


I feel the same way. I don't think anyone in my family is NT or even all that sociable really. But they just seem to get fixated on having to do certain things together and building up this illusion that we are all having a good time. And if another family member felt ill or had a problem they would be accommodated, but not me. If it's me then it means I'm just being difficult and antisocial and raining on their parade.

I WISH I could just go do whatever and not be bothered by things. It's not like my ultimate preference is to just stay home by myself. I like to go out and do stuff and I get really bored and restless when I don't. And I feel really left out when other people do things and don't include me. But the more people are involved, or the more rigid or stubborn those people are, the more I just get swept along into doing things that make me miserable. I just end up feeling trapped.

Quote:
I think the only way through is to bite the bullet and tell them, as clearly and gently as possible, what the problem is, to give them the benefit of the doubt. I strongly suspect that most people have some compassion, some capacity to trust that I'm not just making it up. I can reassure them that I appreciate their love of these events and that I'd love to join in but that my sensory issues are likely to make it impossible. I can offer compromises, I can negotiate. And if it turns out that they're just a pack of bigots who won't take a single step my way, then at least that will come out, and I can get away from them and hopefully find people who are better for me. But usually it scares me too much to actually have that conversation. My low self-esteem insists that I'm in the wrong, and I shrink from the task. I think it's my upbringing, and rising above that is like trying to swim through treacle. I have no advocate to calmly do all this skillful negotiation for me. So if I'm ever going to make any progress, that's what I'm going to have to do.


I feel like I've tried to do this and it just falls (maybe quite literally) on deaf ears. Or else like I said they just do the "me too" and don't really clue in that I'm talking about something unbearable rather than just "not liking" something. And it's like there is no real give-and-take or mutuality in my family. It's like one party or one side always just has to defer to another. They don't really know how to negotiate or discuss things at all. I don't think they are unwilling to do it, it's a real deficit, they really just don't know how.

I was brought up to just be accommodating and agreeable at all times. I learned to do it pretty well, but then sometimes I would be rigid about not wanting to do something where I just did not have it in me to go along. That would typically be when I got hit. So yeah bottom line I got the message they were going to make me do stuff no matter how I felt about it.

Anyway I just never learned how to advocate for myself. I've only learned how to negotiate a little because I've worked in sales. It has been impossibly difficult for me to negotiate in a friendship or worse within a group of people. It's such a challenge to converse with people as it is. I have that tendency to just automatically go along with things, or else walk away or isolate myself so I can take care of my own needs. Most of the time I am just isolating myself because I am too overwhelmed and stressed out to be around people.



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19 Jun 2016, 4:15 pm

I have to say this too. That restaurant seems like a real s**thole to me. But it has some kind of mystique about it that makes it really popular and people line up like fools to get in. It's locally owned and way too small for the amount of business they do. The employees look extremely overworked to the point that it just feels unethical to eat there. They just have one person working at the front counter dealing with this mass of people coming in and going out, and they have to take payments too. They are working constantly without even the tiniest pause and I hope they get paid well for it BUT...I bet they don't. Just seeing how stressed out this person looks make me feel like breaking down crying because I cannot imagine having to do that job.

The people waiting on tables look really pressured too and barely come around to see how things are. The food is okay but it's not that great. I just don't understand what the big deal is! Certainly NOT worth waiting two hours to eat there. There are better places to eat, where you get better food and better service, and yeah you might have to pay a little more but I think that is worth paying for. HOWEVER if I say any of that to my family they will just act like I'm being a snob.

This is one of those things I just don't understand about other people. It's like people build up these illusions about something and believe it's absolutely grand wonderful....when it's just really mediocre...and they overlook all the trouble you have to go through for it? or go into total denial when it turns out to be disappointing? or take for granted what other people are having to go through for it? And then no one wants to hear the truth about it. It's so phony and I just can't play along with it.



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19 Jun 2016, 6:16 pm

Meh, loud noises dont come as a shock to me anymore, when i was a kid, any loud noise was a garenteed meltdown but now i just go through sensory overload and shut down in public. I can "handle" public, well better than i used to. Im just a zombie in public- hey like my name, haha!


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19 Jun 2016, 7:36 pm

dianthus wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
Surely it's just a matter of telling these folks, who presumably care about us and wouldn't want to hurt us, what we go through in these places? And don't they already know us well enough to realise that and to accommodate our needs by deciding to go somewhere quieter, or even to get a takeaway and eat in instead of out?


Well here's the thing. When I tell my parents or anyone really how I feel about it - outside of being IN the situation - they typically do the "me too" response. My dad says he doesn't like to be around crowds, my mother doesn't like noise, whatever. To hear them talk you'd think they feel just the same way I do. But when we are IN the situation they are not bothered like I am. They are not having a rage response or wanting to run out of the building or having to go outside to calm down.

On the way home I was mentioning some of the things people were doing to make a racket in that and they both said they hadn't even noticed. Like the kid scraping the chair and the guy stomping his foot. They both sounded surprised that I had noticed those things. My dad admitted he just tunes out all the noise, which is easy enough for him or my grandfather because they both need a hearing aid to begin with.

Now the weird thing is if I go somewhere with my mother, she will say the same things are bothering her that are bothering me. When the noise bothers me, it bothers her too. But with the rest of the family she doesn't seem to be bothered at all. So I don't know if she's just mirroring me when we are together, or flat out lying, or maybe it really does bother her but she's dissociating from it when we are with other people. I don't know what is going on, but it doesn't add up.

And yeah my parents of all people have known me long enough and spent enough time around me to realize that it's a bad situation for me. But my dad is completely oblivious to it, clueless. My mother knows though. I don't know what she thinks is going to happen, she probably doesn't think it through. I don't always think it through either which I guess is part of my own cognitive problems.

Quote:
I know I'm very reluctant to rain on the neurotypical parade, very loathe to express my needs, because somehow deepdown I feel I just don't matter and that nothing I say or do will get them to understand, I feel I'll just get labelled as the antisocial party pooper. I feel that I'll just let them down by flying in the face of the unbreakable NT rule that these events are sacred. I feel like a closet atheist in a group of radical christians who think my soul will burn if I don't go to church with them.


I feel the same way. I don't think anyone in my family is NT or even all that sociable really. But they just seem to get fixated on having to do certain things together and building up this illusion that we are all having a good time. And if another family member felt ill or had a problem they would be accommodated, but not me. If it's me then it means I'm just being difficult and antisocial and raining on their parade.

I WISH I could just go do whatever and not be bothered by things. It's not like my ultimate preference is to just stay home by myself. I like to go out and do stuff and I get really bored and restless when I don't. And I feel really left out when other people do things and don't include me. But the more people are involved, or the more rigid or stubborn those people are, the more I just get swept along into doing things that make me miserable. I just end up feeling trapped.

Quote:
I think the only way through is to bite the bullet and tell them, as clearly and gently as possible, what the problem is, to give them the benefit of the doubt. I strongly suspect that most people have some compassion, some capacity to trust that I'm not just making it up. I can reassure them that I appreciate their love of these events and that I'd love to join in but that my sensory issues are likely to make it impossible. I can offer compromises, I can negotiate. And if it turns out that they're just a pack of bigots who won't take a single step my way, then at least that will come out, and I can get away from them and hopefully find people who are better for me. But usually it scares me too much to actually have that conversation. My low self-esteem insists that I'm in the wrong, and I shrink from the task. I think it's my upbringing, and rising above that is like trying to swim through treacle. I have no advocate to calmly do all this skillful negotiation for me. So if I'm ever going to make any progress, that's what I'm going to have to do.


I feel like I've tried to do this and it just falls (maybe quite literally) on deaf ears. Or else like I said they just do the "me too" and don't really clue in that I'm talking about something unbearable rather than just "not liking" something. And it's like there is no real give-and-take or mutuality in my family. It's like one party or one side always just has to defer to another. They don't really know how to negotiate or discuss things at all. I don't think they are unwilling to do it, it's a real deficit, they really just don't know how.

I was brought up to just be accommodating and agreeable at all times. I learned to do it pretty well, but then sometimes I would be rigid about not wanting to do something where I just did not have it in me to go along. That would typically be when I got hit. So yeah bottom line I got the message they were going to make me do stuff no matter how I felt about it.

Anyway I just never learned how to advocate for myself. I've only learned how to negotiate a little because I've worked in sales. It has been impossibly difficult for me to negotiate in a friendship or worse within a group of people. It's such a challenge to converse with people as it is. I have that tendency to just automatically go along with things, or else walk away or isolate myself so I can take care of my own needs. Most of the time I am just isolating myself because I am too overwhelmed and stressed out to be around people.


I'm not making this up, not knowing how old you are I just texted my younger sister to see if she is you. That's how similar our family of origins seem. And yeah, getting hit teaches a child very quickly to simply not fight for themselves - the message is that they are simply wrong. Not "made an incorrect choice", not "morally objectionable", just inherently "wrong", period. It took a long time for me to begin to see that it wasn't the case, and for me it necessarily included a few years of very little contact with them.

And the part about them saying they get it, they are "that way too" but clearly are not to the same degree? I'm convinced my mom is on the spectrum, but to a lesser degree. Not sure what the deal is with my dad, too many defensive layers to ever really know him. But with my mom, well she was able to survive learning proper social behavior even with (much milder) sensitivities so clearly (so she thinks) I must be able to do so, too. I think some traits like this get worse with each generation, perhaps. My daughter is even more triggered than I am.


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dianthus
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19 Jun 2016, 8:06 pm

Edenthiel wrote:
I'm not making this up, not knowing how old you are I just texted my younger sister to see if she is you. That's how similar our family of origins seem.


LOL, well I promise I'm not your sister, because I have no siblings. But I hope if she reads this she can relate to it. I'm sorry if you and your sister had to go through the same things I did.

Quote:
And yeah, getting hit teaches a child very quickly to simply not fight for themselves - the message is that they are simply wrong. Not "made an incorrect choice", not "morally objectionable", just inherently "wrong", period. It took a long time for me to begin to see that it wasn't the case, and for me it necessarily included a few years of very little contact with them.


I know it would probably be better for me if I could have less contact with them, but I live next door to my parents.

I hate to admit it at my age but I am still afraid of my father. Now after my mother physically attacked me last year I'm afraid of her too. I mean it's not like I'm constantly afraid, I realize odds are they are probably not going to hit me, but I definitely do not feel comfortable around either of them.

After I walked out of the restaurant I halfway expected my dad to get mad and yank my arm or push me or something. That's what he would have done when I was little. He would have said something like "that's for that little stunt you pulled." I feel like that's what he was thinking even if he knows it's not appropriate to treat an adult that way. I know it's okay for me to walk out of a restaurant if I feel miserable there but being around my family I feel like they are just going to see it as wrong. I don't feel like I will ever get over this unless or until I ever have a close relationship with someone who does not treat me that way. Most of the people I have ever been close to at all outside of my family have treated me about the same way my family does. So it's really hard not to see this like there is something wrong with me. Not just that what I "do" is wrong but that I AM wrong and being the way I am is wrong. I know none of this is actually true but I still feel like it is.


Quote:
And the part about them saying they get it, they are "that way too" but clearly are not to the same degree? I'm convinced my mom is on the spectrum, but to a lesser degree. Not sure what the deal is with my dad, too many defensive layers to ever really know him. But with my mom, well she was able to survive learning proper social behavior even with (much milder) sensitivities so clearly (so she thinks) I must be able to do so, too. I think some traits like this get worse with each generation, perhaps. My daughter is even more triggered than I am.


I do think my mother is autistic, and her father and brother, and at least one of my cousins. My father has a lot of autistic traits too but I don't think he's actually autistic, however I would not be surprised if it does run on his side of the family too. Yeah I can see how the sensory problems might get worse with each generation, or maybe it can skip a generation. I think in a way they are less sympathetic because they are able to sympathize with me...I mean yeah they get it but I guess they think I should just be able to deal with it like they do. I just don't think they see me as a worthwhile enough person for it to matter that much how I feel.



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19 Jun 2016, 8:39 pm

I'm in two minds about making this post because of the weight of the matter. I've read your replies carefully, Dianthus, and I concur with much of what Edenthiel has said, the pressure your family puts on you looks to me as if it would be very hard, and quite likely impossible, for you to get them to understand. It seems to me that they've conditioned you not to rebel against them, so even though there's not a lot they can do to you any more if you stand up for yourself, I wouldn't be surprised if you found that you just couldn't get this issue fixed. As you say, your dad can be subtle - I sense some slippery guilt-tripping going on there. I'm not saying that they ever deliberately set out to put you in this position of course, I doubt if they know what they've done or what they're still doing. Only you can know how much you can stand. I think if I were you I'd seriously consider putting more distance between you and them, if things are as bad as I think they are from what you've written. It's a shame you live next door to them. I should own that I found myself distancing from my own family a long time ago, though I didn't consciously decide to do that, I just sensed we were too different in perspective, I couldn't grow in their soil any more, they weren't really invasive but they'd have worried an awful lot if they'd known much about my chosen lifestyle, so I guess I chose the lesser of two evils. I kept in touch here and there but I became the black sheep of the family, I got closer to them again after a long time but it never got back to where it should have been. Anyway, that's just me. I hope you make the right decisions for you to get the pressure off. Hope I've not been too melodramatic.



dianthus
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19 Jun 2016, 9:54 pm

Thanks ToughDiamond, I appreciate your reply. I think you are right that they don't realize what they are doing. They really just don't know any better. My mother gets it sometimes about the others but then she might just say something like, you know they are not going to change and kind of shrugs it away. Other family members have distanced themselves and I can really understand why. It's way more than them not understanding how I feel in a restaurant. My dad was talking about me in the third person on the way to the place. It's pretty typical for me family to talk about me like I'm not there. It makes me feel like I don't exist.

I don't know how much more I can distance myself but I think I just have to accept that they are never going to be able to relate to me any differently than they do now.



Edenthiel
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20 Jun 2016, 3:14 am

dianthus wrote:
Thanks ToughDiamond, I appreciate your reply. I think you are right that they don't realize what they are doing. They really just don't know any better. My mother gets it sometimes about the others but then she might just say something like, you know they are not going to change and kind of shrugs it away. Other family members have distanced themselves and I can really understand why. It's way more than them not understanding how I feel in a restaurant. My dad was talking about me in the third person on the way to the place. It's pretty typical for me family to talk about me like I'm not there. It makes me feel like I don't exist.

I don't know how much more I can distance myself but I think I just have to accept that they are never going to be able to relate to me any differently than they do now.


Having gone through it, that is an excellent step - just recognizing. You should feel proud of it.


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SocOfAutism
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20 Jun 2016, 9:54 am

I agree with Edenthiel and ToughDiamond wholeheartedly. Feel proud of how far you've come and keep going!

I'm looking at your signature line there, and even that looks to me like people are not listening to you. Your "official" diagnoses look to me like superficial forms of what you have concluded on your own are really going on, which are, admittedly, harder things to diagnose. You're figuring things out for yourself really well.

I think you just need to keep being firm in standing up for yourself. If your family doesn't want to accept your boundaries, they can simply accept less of your attention. The better they treat you, the more of you they get.