Abuse and Ignorance

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I am a fairly recently diagnosed aspie, but I have shown the behaviors my whole life. Before I was diagnosed, I was always yelled at, even hit for this behavior. My mother would constantly bombard me with assorted slurs during melt/shutdowns. As you can Imagine this never helped. Now that I am diagnosed, it is even worse, because she now calls me a ret*d, and threatens to call the police and have me committed. My psychologist does nothing to educate her, even though she knows nothing about AS. She believes I am just a spoiled brat, as she says. I can no longer deal with the anxiety that comes with this. I have had moments were I consider suicide, or running away. She just thinks I am trying to manipulate her with tantrums, and has no respect for my routine. She often disrupts my routine without me having knowledge beforehand. My psychologist is not helpful at all. He always wants me to talk about my feelings, and never supports my thoughts, as if I were a mentally unstable brat. I don`t know what to do. I need to know what I should do. Please provide me with some advice and experience of your own.

This is bad. My mom would get mad at my anxiety too but I bet she was just frustrated so she had no room to care and accommodate so her coping mechanism was to get mad at me about it and yell. I bet that was a shut down she was having. Then I was happy to move out and she was sad but I told her at least I wouldn't be an embarrassment to her and my brothers and they can have all the parties they want. But my mom was mostly understanding.

Sound, hang in there....tough situation for you to endure. Is there anyone else you can trust to talk about your feelings either at school or maybe even a relative?

I was just abused at work on Saturday. Some scum bucket who was in charge used my special interest as a means of attacking me and I don't even talk to that skinhead about The Kinks because I'm scared to do so because I was warned by my supervisor and he already reminds me of the bullies of my generation. A song on his station triggered a flashback and he attacked me. I've only said one thing to that punk about The Kinks because I'm afraid to share that interest with my generation. That man is 37 years old so I have an idea that I might have went to school with him. I had to work with that character this morning. I let him do all the talking and kept my mouth shut except to give yes or no answers. He was quiet around me because he knows that he's in the wrong.

My generation turned its back on me when I was in Grade 6. I turned my back on my peers and my generation when I was in Grade 8. I have no regrets. I didn't miss out on very much, just because I made that decision.

I can't tell you how much I would love to have a face-to-face with your mother and destroy her on her ignorance... I am very sorry that this is who mothered you, you're certainly going through alot but you seem very strong and that is a very important quality in your situation. I know you'll probably hear a hundred people tell you to hang in there... but it's really what you need to do! It's hard enough growing up, especially with aspergers or a spectrum disorder, but to have an extremely uncaring parental figure like your mom coupled with everything... I feel for you. It helps to know though that you are above her level. When she says these things to you try your best (I know it's hard, she's your mom) to put yourself above her and take her comments with a grain of salt. Your smart and strong and she is not. I see that you're 13 and there isn't a whole lot you can do at that age by yourself except asking close family members and so on. But if this ever becomes physical abuse, you need to really seek outside help.

A few things you could do now:

- Try to ethier call or arrange a private meeting with your pyschologst (perhaps with an older friend or family member) and tell him/her how you feel and what's going on. If this person is just as ignorant (which I can't believe), you need somone who is actually good at their job

- Stay away from your mom as much as you can or feel you need to for space. Don't even talk to her if she starts off any social interaction with ignorance or attitude. Let her know you won't take the verbal abuse.

- Also try talking to her about everything aswell if at all possible. If you lack confidence and social skills to argue with her (like alot of us) try writing her a letter explaining everything and how you really feel. Also include detailed information about Asperger's and how it affects you. Offer informational websites for her to read. If she honestly ignores this and continues on without any change then you're going to have to accept that you will have a dysfunctional relationship with her and try your best to develop cooping mechanisims to interact with her. I know it's sad but some people just do not change no matter what you do...

Most of all... you're not alone and don't ever feel like you are. I was bullied my entire life...

I greatly appreciate your advice. I did talk to my psychologist, but he sort of ignored my questions. I will be seeing him tommorow. That bullying must have been tedious, person above me.

My family life is a little different but it can feel a bit overwhelming for me at times.

My dad pretty much ignores that I've got some diagnosis. He's only brought it up once and he was pretty supportive. I'm fine with that.

My mum is a little bit strange... she flips from over-supportive to just plain abusive (or maybe that's a little strong, I don't know). When I say 'over-supportive', she sees problems where there aren't any, calls them out as symptoms of AS and demands that I accept these and try to fix them. Whenever I try to explain myself she explains to me that either I'm denying it or that I don't know myself well enough or something. She's quite patronising about it and there's nothing I can say to change that. The only thing I can think of is to actually prove her wrong. f**k that. I shouldn't have to prove myself all the time. I feel like I'm trapped! That's the only word I can think of at the moment... my opinions seem to mean nothing to her.

The other side to her comes out mainly in arguments, as I guess they tend to do. From my point of view these arguments come out of nowhere. Usually something small will set her off and she ends up bringing up all this stuff in the past that in some cases I wasn't even aware was an issue. It tends to catch me offguard by that's fine on it's own I guess. Most people I know seem to handle things this way. The problem is the way that they do it. My mums 'strategy' when we argue is to either guilt me into doing what she wants and when that doesn't work she belittles me and tries a number of things to invalidate my thoughts or opinion. She often says things like "you don't really care about us", "you're just using us to get what you want" "lazy/useless/etc". Sometimes she calls me a psychopath when my emotions in a situation don't outwardly match theirs or I don't have the answer they were looking for. I often get these spiteful little comments that I'm secretly doing things to upset people purely for my own pleasure. I don't know what that's about.

Often our arguments used to end up with my mum doing that 'imitation' thing.. where um, she'll copy my body language or voice in a patronising way. Do you know what I mean? For example I may have something to say and they (both parents, really) will simply repeat it back to me word for word as if what I said was the most stupid thing in the world. And I'd end up doing the same to be honest... lately I've stopped reciprocating there because I think it's stupid and I'm a little bit ashamed of doing it at my age (almost 19....). A couple of other dismissive things are denying examples I bring up ("I don't remember that..") even when I have witnesses(!) and actually claiming that my brain rewrites things to suit my story (wtf?).

haha, my post is already so long and I haven't talked about my siblings yet. Anyway the point is my parents have created this environment for me where my opinion is worth nothing. It either gets dismissed outright or turns into an attack on my personality. Lately as I've gotten older they've started to threaten to kick me out during these arguments. It's incredibly stressful. They've done it 4 times now and I can't tell if they mean to do it at some point or not. I'm a student so if they kick me out I probably have to drop all of my studies just to support myself.

@Dr. Cheeba: "Don't even talk to her if she starts off any social interaction with ignorance or attitude". I tried this once. I saw where the conversation was going, told her I didn't want to talk her when she was like that. As I turned around to walk away she actually shrieked at me (lol). A high pitch shriek telling me not to walk away. Scared the s**t out of me it was so loud. She seems really crazy sometimes... I wasn't prepared to find out what would happen if I left the room so the argument continued.

Anyway I'll leave it at that for now. Soundless, I don't know if you're having joint child-parent therapy sessions or what. I would recommend you visit one on your own if you can and make sure they know what they're doing. They shouldn't be telling you outright that your thoughts are wrong, especially without a damn good explanation. Could you provide a bit more detail please?

I will reply to storm tomorrow, when I am less busy. Thank you. I will attempt to provide you with further information.

Hi to S.A., & [I suppose] – welcome to the club! The crap treatment you describe – unfortunately seems to come with the differently-brained package. Sorry about that. But on the other hand, if you have any philosophical proclivities, you might wish you contemplate the really swell stuff that also comes in your package. For a start, you are not a cow, as the nt’s commonly are. You are very keyed into your environment [both inside & outside your cranium], and have insight that no nt is capable of. And there’s more. But I digress. Your therapist is a wanker to be sure.

take paper and pen and write down how it is for you is bad situations, meltdown, not understood..
read 2x
then take nother paper and write again in short, half page at most
write at top of paper the word IMPORTANT
add lines under word

hand paper to mum
hand paper to shrink

pray

Just replace your mom with my dad, and be slightly younger. That's pretty much me. My dad also hid my homework because "If I'm such a genius, I shouldn't have to do homework."

No, it's not just something that 'comes with the package'. I'm mildly autistic and my parents have never accused me of being a psychopath or deliberately trying to upset them, or pick on anything even slightly atypical in my behavior. That kind of thing is abuse, and being autistic doesn't mean you have to put up with abuse. You can find people who accept you and care about you, if not in your family then among friends or maybe a romantic partner. You don't have to accept abuse as inevitable - it may be more common among AS individuals, but that doesn't mean it's inevitable. And most importantly, if your parents are verbally abusive to you about your AS, that's a problem with them, not with you. Just like if a homophobic parent abuses their gay child, the problem is the homophobia in the parent rather than the sexuality of the child.

My advice to the OP would be to get a different therapist (one who recognizes the seriousness of verbal abuse) and to minimize contact with parents as much as possible. Are you still living at home? If so, I'd recommend figuring out options for moving out of home soon.

Get rid of your psychologist. NOW. He's clearly clueless about Autism. Find one that has experience dealing with the autistic peoples. Psychologists with no practical training or experience on handling autistic people are WORTHLESS to autistic patients.

I know what you mean about you can't just walk away when your mother INSISTS on arguing. I have the same problem.

I've been helped far more by the psychologists I had who didn't have autism training than the one who did. Their prior experience isn't necessarily the best indicator of a good psychologist.

A good psychologist, in my experience, is one who focuses on the issues that are important to you, rather than the ones they think you should deal with, and believes that you know yourself and your opinion should be taken seriously.

Knowing autism helps, certainly, but if they don't listen to you then all their knowledge of autism is worthless.

This maybe true. I have been dealing with a psychologist who does testing who doesn't see any issues with my behavior. I guess the saying about romantic partners is somewhat true about doctors as well. "You need to kiss a lot of toads, before you find your prince." Granted this is somewhat sexist as well as only focuses on romance, but I have seen a lot of shrinks over the years & most of them have not had a clue what my real issues are. I've also been misdiagnosed as being bi-polar (I'd have known that through prior testing 10 years ago). I know my quirks...it's just frustrating when people try to tell me they know me better than I do. Not sure how that's possible because none of these people have ever seen me before or spent time around me observing my behavior, quirks, & stuff I go through daily . I keep plugging away hoping I will find someone who can understand & help me deal with my issues.

Sounds like your mom should have never given birth to you. Harsh, yes but not nearly as harsh as your treatments.

Here's an idea: try moving out of the house, if possible. If not, try finding a job.