Shame and autism (NOT a sexual topic)

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I feel a lot like I was brought up to have a well-developed sense of shame. If I say a curse word, I had to swear on the Bible for forgiveness. If I didn't do well or behave right or do things right, I was to be ashamed of myself.


In grade 5 my mother said I had to EARN my RIGHT to choose my own clothes, by making good decisions. For her, good decisions were blouses, skirts, jumpers and dresses. This was a public school with no uniforms. In those clothes I looked like an emotionally fragile little fat,- flat-and-pale-faced sissy wussy girl who was afraid of spiders or afraid to sit on the seat of the school bus or something. It was not my character, it was not me. I was ten years old, not too old to be a tomboy even by most people's standards. But my mother had nothing better to do, so she decided to live through me by expressing herself through MY clothes. As if choosing her OWN clothes wasn't enough. I didn't tell adults because I was too embarrassed to say that I didn't even have control over what I wore. To make me look less like a sissy wussy girl, I always wore my hair tied behind my head. What could she do; try to cut it off? If she did that I would have reason to go to Social Services. I probably could have anyway. Sometimes I wish I had.


I was not to trust myself or my choices or decisions if they weren't the same as hers, if I didn't have the same taste as her and everything. Mummy always knew better than me. I'm telling you, that woman had issues.


Once we were doing French homework together, and we got into some stupid argument and she blocked the door to prevent me from leaving, saying eventually that she'd knock my teeth out if I left. Yet whenever I tried to keep her from coming back into my room when she was mad and screeching at the top of her lungs about how ashamed I should be, even if she didn't say it that way. I did not want to see that ugly angry face. I wanted peace and quiet. But I wasn't allowed it. I was under her custody. When I was older I walked out and there was nothing she could do about that and she wasn't so bad, but sometimes she still did it, even when she was almost 18. When I tried to block her out she screeched to the heavens for me to act my age. I do mean screeched it to the heavens. Like this was the most painful thing that was happening to her; she could not have been angrier or more ashamed of me.


Once when I was caught stimming as a teenager she acted like it's a childish thing you need to grow out of and whined, "You're (however many) years old!" As though she could shame me into stopping. She doesn't know a thing about stimming and why people do it, and this was precisely I always hid it from her. And yes, she had read about stimming before. And she still thought my autism or whatever was immaturity. And then she got upset and scolded me, pleasing to me to tell her if I did it and "face it" or tell her why I did it. "You're lying to Mummy! That's not nice!" Absolutely sickening person. Always accusatory when she asked "You weren't doing that thing, were you?" "No, I'm not accusing you, I'm just concerned!" Sick, deluded creature with a pile of issues she never talked about because she was raised to be ashamed and keep her mouth shut. I shouldn't have to suffer for her stepfather f*****g her. I know it's not her fault her stepfather f****d her, but it's not my fault she emotionally f****d me either. I hope I'll never be like her, the perfect little Christian girl loyal to her family and upbringing, allowing her stepdad to take family secrets to his grave with him.


And then the buying me make-yourself-look-decent supplies like hairbrushes, calling me "behind" in things like fashion. Not every f*****g person or every female in the world has to care about fashion. So what if I was into computers and s**t. She sometimes made these comments about me being a tomboy, like "You know you're a girl, right?" Before that, and this was even worse, she tried to make me think that it was immature and childish and ret*d to be a tomboy. That I was BEHIND in things like fashion, that my disability made it so hard for me to LEARN. That humiliated and tortured the s**t out of me, you know, but I never gave her the satisfaction of knowing I cared what she said and was hurt deeply by the cumulative effect of it, until maybe now. She was basically passive-aggressively picking on transexuals or lesbians or cross-dressers. I'm not any of those, but I could have taken her to court if I was.


And for the record, she may have been better about some things, but the fact remains that she smelled like mortuary sludge. She never showered and only took a bath about once or twice a week. But I never said a word about it. I even held my breath when I was too close to her but never mentioned or let on anything. I found her hair in my food sometimes. So there.





I feel like if I don't do something big, it's going to take me 20 more years to un-shame myself and just be normal.


I hope she's reading this, and I hope it hurts like hell. I hope it keeps hurting her so bad until she's twitching and moaning on the floor. But at the same time, as sick as she makes me, I love her and want to remember all the good things. But it's the bad that I always remember. The bad things are more memorable and bigger, it seems.


Should I have stood up to her? To prevent MYSELF from being bullied?

You should have gone to social services, and you should find some way to have no contact with her, as she is just hurting you.

I would recommend a therapist too, as you should not feel ashamed if you want to swear or wear your own clothes.

This was many years ago and I still can't get over it. I was 10 and didn't know better. My mother always made me think they'd side with her. I hate her. I want to do something, but I don't know what. I'm overaged now and not living with her anymore. But I still somehow feel like I should do something. I need to feel closure or something. And she probably needs to feel closure about how I treated her too.

Why don't you ring her up and talk to her?

Should I ring her up and make her read my posts?


WP is the best therapy I ever had. When you tell one person, it can go in one ear and out the other for all I know and it's all a my-mind thing. Also, I want it to be up with more permanence so that I can keep it written somewhere until I find someone who will read it ALL and talk to me about it, someone who's genuinely interested, or they find me. Also, I want to continue a relationship with her and that's a reason I want closure and I can't if she might treat me like s**t or a half-wit dog she's forcing to wear a sweater or something. So I want her to talk to someone too. How can I get her to? Without making her feel bad or hurting her in any way?

I think that if you really want closure, the best thing to do is talk it out. If you feel that if she reads your posts it'll help then let her read your posts.

I just want to make a correction; she was dirty for years in the too-depressed-to-have-it-in-her-to-shower way, but she took sponge baths; I don't know how often. I was gross myself many times because I didn't want her to think I was obsessive compulsive by showering every day. Was everyone in the rural area where she grew up and was f****d by her stepdad like that or was it just her and a few people? She had never heard of that before or something. When someone on TV said they showered every day she said "Hey, that's just like you!" So yeah, I went to school unshowered and gross sometimes and other students would comment. I know that's really gross but at least I'm not as gross as her. I don't know why, but when she saw that other people showered at the YMCA when we lived there a few months ago, and that there were no bathtubs, she started showering and also showered more often when we were living in a hotel.


Just another gross thing about me and my life.

Okay, this is really scary. Why does she want me to erase it when NONE OF YOU KNOW HER NAME OR WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE?

Hon' after reading that, it sounded to me like a disturbing thriller flick- the likes of Misery. No one deserves that type of torture. Don' be ashamed of your AS. Yer mommy was nuts- sorry to be so blunt but...well, we Aspies are, face it, blunt...and because I think it should be said.

And it's funny that you're asking if you should call her up, as I was just reading a piece on Rush Limbaugh's website- contacting people from your past, who wronged you, to make them apologize, will NOT fix things for you. You're just gonna have a victim mentality from it. The best revenge is to live a happy, and successful life.

Remember, you can't change the past- you can only learn from it so your life will be better now. You've only got one, so don' waste it on the past.

the calling people back whom you've wronged (or who have wronged you) is one of the 12 steps in a 12-step program. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I have to agree, your Mom stepped right out of a Southern Novel. I have to wonder why someone would chide you for not being mature, when she calls herself 'mummy' (?!)

Maybe you could write a novel about her. No one would believe it was fact (except us, but we have the inside scoop). You could bring it all out, deal with it, then make a tidy sum out of it.

Your Mom also displays a lot of symptoms of deep depression. My wife was abused by her stepfather, and she carries issues to this day over it. I might cut her some slack on that, but the truth is, you reach a point in your (Mom's) life, where you hit bottom, and there's nowhere to go but up.

You have a story in you, I hope it turns out to be a happy one.