No Support Growing Up

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This is more of a personal crisis I seem to be writing down on this forum. Sorry in advance.

But yer so I grew up in an abusive family with a severely depressed father, with ME and I believe he is autistic. My mum basically collapses when my dad does, has OCD and very anxious type of person. My sister has depression, an eating disorder and has been self harming since she was 9.

Anyway as you can see in this I had no support growing up, in fact I was the support for everyone else. As a child I believe I had meltdowns near daily, and everyone thought they were just tantrums, even I did until recently.

Despite all this I am a relatively functional adult, well as functional as can be expected. I have been wondering if my previous experiences of having to be able to function because my family relied on it would have affected how severely autism affects me today.

I am not sure where I am going with this, so going to leave it there, but interested as to what other peoples thoughts are, and their own experiences.

Wow our situations are very very much similar! My father was also very depressed and as I look back on it now, he definitely was Autistic as well as I and more specifically Asperger's Syndrome for both of us. He was extremely quick to anger and my mother was very much the same. I grew up in a very hateful, angry and fearful household and it wreaked havoc on both my younger brother and I. Abuse came often both verbally and physically.

We were never evaluated by a registered psychologist because my parents didn't care enough as a result we both had heart attacks in our early 30s due to over-stress of being undiagnosed as Aspies.

My younger brother fared better in life than I did but my situation is deteriorating rapidly as I was only diagnosed 3 months ago and I'm 42 now. I've been fired so many times from jobs due to the usual social limitations of Autistics and meltdowns that occurred as well.

Add to that being 6'2" and 225 lbs guy, people see me as a threat right away anyways and as soon as my stimming and Autistic behaviours rear their ugly heads then people become quite fearful of me and I usually get drummed out of my job.

I'm not sure exactly how you're faring in life as a result of all of that but I know exactly what you're going through. This life has been nothing but one excruciatingly painful experience after another and I hope one day I find some peace and I hope you do as well.

Hi! I'm sorry you're going through a crisis, and I hope you can find more support now than when you were younger.
My parents always meant to be supportive, but there was a lot they didn't know or understand and they couldn't always give me the support I needed. I have a lot of problems stemming from being undiagnosed with autism and anxiety at a young age, and I resent my parents a lot for not realizing. I would also tell them about verbal/emotional abuse from teachers and others, but I was also so "overdramatic" about other things that I think it became like a boy who cried wolf, "oh she must be exaggerating" situation. I think it led to me feeling like I was oversensitive and had to get over things, and just be "better" in ways I didn't understand.
My situation isn't much like yours, but I think lack of diagnosis and meltdowns being seen as "tantrums" or being invalidated definitely makes the internalized problems worse. That was part of why I felt like I had to hide it. Sorry if this isn't super helpful, but I think (especially with women and girls) having to be someone or something to other people affects how we see ourselves and how autism manifests in us.

There is something no official medicine recognize but what adult autistic people often mention: the autistic burnout. After coping for years, one comes to a point they can't do it any longer.
You seem to have been playing the Hero role in your family and it's simply exhausting.
What is good, a talk therapy often helps with dysfunctional upbringing. Seek for some. I know a lot of people who worked such things out and then got much better.
What also is good, all the coping skills you have learned are useful. Once you learn to care for yourself, you will benefit using them again.

Oh sheash heart attack at 30 that sounds intense, I often wonder if I am heading that way to be honest. Its strange like I can function outwardly because I had to, but internally I really struggle frequently having shutdowns - meltdowns as a child caused me to get hurt. I feel like I have suppressed a lot of outward signs of autism because they would get me in trouble, and obviously my parents were oblivious to me as a child and as a result I am not even sure how much use they will be when I get a proper assessment.

I didn't work out how to hold a job until someone taught me how to do it, setting me strict rules, and pointing out and correcting any behaviour that would get me into trouble at work. He forced me to learn social skills with clients and basically parented me ahah. I almost certainly would not be where I am today without all the work he put in. Thankfully my job, programming, allows me to act slightly eccentric as its pretty much expected.

I think it is sad that other people who struggle to find a job never manage to get support to help them work out how to keep it, employers seem to have no clue about how to handle it and frequently strange behaviour as well as being put in situations that autistic people simply can't cope with causes them to lose the job within the first year. Learning coping mechanisms and rules for the workplace would be invaluable.

This is super helpful! So thanks! I agree I think that it being invalidated and treated as though it was something I had easy control over, when honestly most of the time all I felt was pure panic. I would blank out and remember very little of what was said and done, and then when I came back I was exhausted and had to go to bed.

I certainly started hiding it, and started having shutdowns instead of meltdowns as they would get me in less trouble. Its funny because my parents thought I was getting better where as really I was just as distressed but unable to show it, so I would dissociate and lose time, also sleep all the time.

I think autistic burn out is almost certainly what is happening at the moment, I am currently seeing a therapist, and have been on and off for 10 years. Its odd because I agree that the coping mechanisms are useful, but I think in some ways growing up in a chaotic upbringing has meant the daily anxiety I live with is that much worse, and no amount of therapy has helped it.

Maybe you don't really match with your therapist. ASD is tricky in that terms, some techniques helpful for NTs don't work on us.
My family wasn't disfunctional per se but my neurodiversity was denied and thus my needs were constantly unmet. I grew something I called The Corset - a stiff set of rules of appropriate behaviors and controlled body language. I wasn't aware it was not normal, I thought everyone do it growing up, so I never mentioned it. Two therapists I tried to work with couldn't even see it, so they couldn't help me much. The third one identified the issue and well, now we are working on dissolving The Corset to be able to adress my real feelings and needs. It's a hard and painful job but my anxiety is now nowhere close to where it used to be.

Roses for Autism has been figuring this out. This organization is run by a father who wanted his son to be able to support himself with a job, so he started a job training organization. They figured out that with proper training, people on the spectrum could do far more than just farming jobs. They now run a "vertically integrated" business, which gives people on a spectrum a large variety of jobs to try until they find one that works for them. They are lucky enough to live on the "gold coast," where there is plenty of money and the proper political climate for helping people with disabilities. Though even they have suffered a backlash. Their community garden was destroyed by vandals. Twice.

https://rosesforautism.com/blogs/test/boy-scout-builds-gazebo-for-roses-for-autism
2 minute video

I've also had no support growing up, though perhaps in a different way.

My parents think they are great parents because people at school say I am a lovely person (students and teachers), and also because I get excellent grades. The truth is, I wanted to die to escape from them since I was very young (about 4), and was actually suicidal and self harming between the ages of 10 and 14. They didn't know because I don't trust them enough to tell them anything.

I was unhappy as a child because my parents do not accept me and my ASD traits. The story about when they decided I might be autistic changes constantly (from 'always' to 'we never suspected'), and my whole life they have thought it easier to ignore the possibility of ASD and instead try to discipline it out of me as bad behaviour. They told me over and over that I am a bad person who is selfish and arrogant and heartless (because I don't know how to interact with others); I am now overly kind to people because I have learned to think of myself as a horrible person. My mother also guilt trips me into trying to be the person she wants me to be (tells me that she provides me with food and clothing and an education etc.).

I don't consider my parents to be family to me; they taught me to hate myself and to mistrust all people.