Tired of the silent grudge cycle.

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I spent 21 years knowing that my mother-in-law didn't like me, but I had no idea why. Then last year, I had the nerve to pull her other daughter-in-law up for shouting at my daughter for something silly. So, she took this as an opportunity to tell me about all the things that she disliked about me. Well, to say she had a grudge is putting it mildly. I haven't spoken to her since and my husband hasn't spoken to her since before Christmas. The grudges were totally ridiculous (all my family and friends agree) and my husband didn't need to think twice about supporting me.

And I remember having a 'friend' when I was at primary school. She had a an awful home life and sometimes took out her frustrations on me. One day, we were heading for the bus stop, on our way home from school. I said, 'I'll need to hurry home when I get on the bus, because I'm starting my ballet class tonight'. She said, 'What do you mean, when you get on the bus?' I said, 'I meant to say when I get off the bus, oops'. She went berzerk with me, saying that I was always right and perfect. This was completely out of the blue and a weird response to someone making a simple verbal error. A few days later, she was bullying me and had drummed up some support. It resulted in her getting a black eye when I swung at her with my backhand. I'm not a violent person, so she really must have had it coming.

Haha.



Wow, that is truly an epic example of passive-aggressiveness. I have to wonder if NTs pick up on cues here that might defuse things earlier (not that it is our fault for their choice to stew about us until they explode).

This is really an art, and few people have the charm with the intellect to make it a 100 percent go. Look at how may self help books are out on the shelves or all the talk shows on TV about this subject, at how to get what you want, effectively.

It's all about getting what you want out of something or someone, and the sky is the limit.... the more you can do this without offending, the greater yield, the greater the rewards.

An older fellow once told me to be more assertive, he said to me in a round about way to show more "surety" or confidence of control. He said: "otherwise people will bowl you over." He gestured with his hand throwing a bowling ball.

Likely, I'll never develop this into an art, but I stand my ground in all relations, even when down I put forth effort in a fight you could say in this.

Either you are controlled or are the controllee.

It's our nature to test the waters and push it. Look at how your kids will test you out, when you are sick they will try it out to see if it gets by.

In normal day to day living, NT people know the social "rules". In general it doesn't come up to tell someone their behavior is annoying, or their voice is too quiet or loud because in general people know what tone to use in specific situations. I talk to my daughter about this quite a bit...the difference between "regular" folks and her/us. She universalizes behavior. By this I mean her behavior has a hard time changing from situation to situation even when something different is appropriate and called for.

So in moving among adults especially, and even by the teenage years, NT people have a good grasp of social norm. It's hard to understand why someone behaves differently and as humans we gravitate towards "normal" behavior....and it's hard for people to explain to someone who doesn't adhere to those norms. This is why people turn a blind eye or tend to look away/dismiss and stigmatize those who are different. This issue seems to fit that category for me. People don't explain to you because they don't feel they should have to. They think either you get it or you don't, and if you don't it's because you are weird.

I used to talk in a VERY low voice and it was always hard for people to hear me. I still have trouble regulating volume with situation...and will often think back to a situation and feel..."My voice was a bit too loud for that circumstance, and i need to work at regulating that next time. I don't know if you work with an OT...but that might help...or just being more aware of your voice. Because sometimes for me, even just saying, "Hi! How are you?"--comes out way too loud, and I'll get that questioning glance. I've learned to notice people's "unspoken" reactions and figure it out from there...

The thing is, I did pick up on the cues about her feelings about me. I just had no way of knowing what caused her to feel like that and, trying to be polite at all times, never asked what her problem with me was. Here's an example of one of the things she'd been so upset about: At my wedding, we were having photos taken and one was of the closest family members. So, my mum called over my cousin to be in it. He had been orphaned and lived with us. I see him as a brother and my parents treat him as their son, even today and he's 33. So, of course, he's close family and she's well aware of it. But, to her, he wasn't immediate family so should not have been in the photo. And why did I get the blame, when it was my mum who called him over? (not that there's anything to blame) It was 17 years ago and she'd been annoyed ever since (at me, for reasons I cannot fathom). There are a lot more things that she ranted on about, all of them were just as ridiculous.

Im aware of the history.
Having said that this was a generic answer that could have been adressed to anyone and you shouldnt take it as a personal insult

This is SO true. This is also, in my opinion, why many people who think they know ASDs actually don't, because they cannot deconstruct the awkward social behaviours and just actively dismiss the person as "difficult", "testing" or even "manipulative" because they assume that everyone knows not to talk too loud or not to stand close to another person.

You have to take a step back and not assume that the person on the spectrum necessarily knows a particular skill. Yes, it will take some work to pinpoint what social skills an individual will need work on as all of the NT's skills will have been learned already, but the fact is, without this deconstruction and ability to identify skills, the person with an ASD has no way to learn these skills.

And then people wonder why I don't stand up for myself. It's because I know I will get this. They will think I've gone all huffy, so they will act huffy back, and the whole atmosphere would make me feel really awkward.

I suppose that's better than what I do. When someone upsets me, I still laugh and let myself be walked over and treated like that again and again, because I'm too afraid to tell them that they upset me because of being ''too sweet''.

This explanation makes a lot of sense.



I used to be really quiet and I recall "Stop mumbling" was one of the things I was yelled at for growing up. I learned to project in high school drama, but then I started projecting all the time and became too loud. One of my roommates (who later accused me of planning to not pay the rent and stealing money out of her bank with her checkbook when I was 20 miles from any branch of said bank) berated me so much for that I ended up back at too quiet, and I spent years trying to modulate away from "too quiet." I thought I had found a happy medium, but now I hear I'm too loud again.



I meant cues as to what was annoying. I can tell people are annoyed sometimes, but I am not always sure why, and my guesses are often wrong. And sometimes I'm wrong about the annoyance.

And that seems like a really strange thing to get angry about. Why did she even care?



I didn't take it as a personal insult. I took it as factually incorrect.

Since Poke not too long ago incorrectly described something I said as:



Referring to the possibility of my flipping out when told that something I have done or am doing is annoying seems unlikely to be a general comment. But, I have no further interest in discussing this with you or anyone, so I would appreciate it if you'd drop it.



^^^^ Yes, I agree with this so much. Even with the ability to deconstruct and identify skills, a person with ASD won't necessarily be able to apply this information in real time - I keep tripping over this.



I've done the letting people walk all over me and it's not pleasant. Trying to be "nice" all the time means a lot of compromise, and for me at least, I built up a lot of "niceness" fatigue just from the effort and the compromises I made to do so.

That's not advice. I just mean I sympathize.

Putting quotation marks around autistically blunt shows that even you understand that it's just a sterilized, responsibility-absolving euphemism for "confrontational".

And the flip-out comment was mostly directed toward Baris10.

If two phrases describe something equally well, and one of them is insulting and the other is not, why use the insulting one?

This is a good question, and it has several important answers. Maybe this question deserves its own thread. I'll give it a shot later.

dp

Last edited by Surfman on 20 Oct 2011, 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know the consequence is confrontational, and I don't claim I'm not responsible for what I say, so I'm not sure why you think that description is "responsibility absolving." If anything, it's helped my understanding of several social faux pas I've made that I didn't understand in the past and sometimes helps me avoid them in the present - except that Zoloft has made that avoidance harder in some way.

I used quotation marks because I wasn't sure if that was the best way to describe it. It has nothing to do with intended secondary meanings.



Okay, then. Thank you for clarifying.

I meant cues as to what was annoying. I can tell people are annoyed sometimes, but I am not always sure why, and my guesses are often wrong. And sometimes I'm wrong about the annoyance.

And that seems like a really strange thing to get angry about. Why did she even care?
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I've no idea why anyone would care about such a thing as it's unbelievably trivial, especially as she doesn't even look at photo albums. Nevertheless, she's hurt me a great deal, as she was being dismissive of how much my cousin means to my parents and I. She even said I'd no reason to worry about him when he was in Afghanistan (he's in the army), as he isn't immediate family. Very strange woman.

I'm like you when it comes to the annoyance of others. I remember my school days and some of my friends suddenly becoming quite negative towards me and I'd no idea what was up. The first day after the summer holidays, a couple of girls were like this me as soon as we approached one another. I only said 'Hi' and smiled, I hadn't seen them in 6 weeks and we had left in good terms. I never found out what that was about.

I had a friend decide I was her worst enemy because she asked me an invasive/personal question at her wedding reception and I said "That's way too personal". Apparently, she felt humiliated because I said I wouldn't answer.

And that is really hurtful - totally dismissing relatives. Why shouldn't you care about anyone you want to care about? What does it even matter to her?



Yeah, I hate when this happens.