Dealing with nosy neighbors

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Hi everyone, I've been having issues with some of my neighbors ever since I had to move back into my parent's house. One of the rules was I wasn't allowed to talk to the neighbors. My dad would come home from work and I'd be trapped in my yard by one of my neighbors, and I'd try to tell them I wasn't allowed to talk to them but they just insisted and kept getting incredibly nosy. Once I started putting out bird food for the wild birds, they started trying to talk to me about bird watching. I don't understand why they can't read my body language and understand I do not want to talk to them. I think I have PDA autism because socializing is a demand I feel like I have no control over, so I avoid it. I stopped wanting friends when I was 8.

Immediately after back in moving in, any time I was outside my house my neighbors would try to talk to me and if I ignored them for any reason, they'd get more aggressive in their communications with me. I would regularly break down in tears begging my parents to make the neighbors stop. They're boomers, and always try to act like a second set of parents or something. It's hard to put into words, they treat me like I'm still a child but I am actually 30.

I had a falling out with one of the neighbors (they're sisters that live together) on facebook because she said that someone who was killed by the police deserved it. I unfriended her and she got really aggressive about it and kept asking why I couldn't be friends with someone that had different political views than me. She actually had the audacity to call my mother and tell her I was being rude/mean to her! I was 18 or 19. If I was outside at the same time as them, they'd try to stop me and tell me about a place that was hiring. I got fired from my second job ever and never completely recovered from it, and that's one of the reasons I had to move back in. I was not looking for a job, and they would make me not having a job their business. If they weren't stopping me to tell me about a job that was hiring, any time I went to my car they would say something snide like "going to work?" and I just do not understand how they can think that the way they've acted is okay.

It got to the point that the one I unfriended online would *run out in front of my car so I would have to talk to her.* Again, it was nothing important. Just them telling me of a place that is hiring. This has resulted in me feeling social terror any time I need to be outside during the day. I've cancelled important doctor appointments because I couldn't make myself leave my house because they're not the only nosy neighbors I have problems with.

I'm trans and after I started to visibly get facial hair, my next-door neighbors started harassing me. Forcing me to talk to them outside any time I went there. At one point any time I went into my backyard I'd hear their grandchildren yell "Hey lady" trying to get my attention. My garden died because I just could not make myself go outside anymore. I told my parents I was going to tell the people next door to leave me alone, and to stop harassing me. My dad threatened to kick me out of the house, and reminded me I'm not allowed to talk to them. But then if I'm rude to them he screams at me.

And then when I was 18 and fresh out of high school, another set of neighbors would stop me on my way to the car and ask me why I wasn't dating people or having sex and insinuated some very unsavory things about me because I had no interest in sex. I'm asexual, and my dad keeps telling me he thinks there's something wrong with me because I'm not dating or anything like that.

I really don't know how to handle my neighbors. It's gotten to the point I feel like I can't even exist in my own house because the next-door neighbors watch me and then tell my dad things I've been doing which makes me really uncomfortable. I am not comfortable with going to the police about this because I've already tried to get help and they just don't care.

I had to have lessons from a therapist to learn how to set boundaries and to enforce them. (social boundaries). I had to learn how to say no in healthy ways, how to recognize when I was being intimidated and manipulated and how to stop it... it has been so helpful.

It is something everybody can learn, and it has been very helpful for all interactions I have with others.
It sounds like that might help in your case, too. Learning new ways to set limits on what you will tolerate or how you will interact in healthy ways is a very useful tool.

I don't find therapy to be useful, they're always telling me to do things that make no sense. Like when someone is as unreasonable as my neighbors, they want me to do things that I know will never work because I know the people well enough to know that they're incapable of change. People like that will not respect boundaries. It's not a boundary issue, it's a they see me as a child issue and think they know better. Boomers suck and can't grow or change.

Therapists vary a lot. Some are good, some are bad. Some make a real effort to understand the specifics of their clients' lives, while others just give one-size-fits-all formulaic advice.


Sorry to hear about your neighbors. Nosy neighbors suck.

But please don't over-generalize about boomers. People of any given age group are not all alike.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 20 Aug 2026, 10:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What is your dad's reason for not allowing you to talk to them?

Has your dad, himself, asked them to leave you alone? If he has not done so, how have your parents reacted when, as you say, you "would regularly break down in tears begging my parents to make the neighbors stop."?

Seems to me it would be rather unfair for your parents to forbid you to talk to the neighbors, but without also asking said neighbors to leave you alone.

I wasn't given a reason, just dad saying "I don't want you talking to the neighbors" and then any time I got caught outside talking to them, my late mother (dx with NPD) and him would threaten to kick me out for going against their rules. It didn't matter how many times I explained to them that I was not talking to them, they are talking to me, my parents kept threatening to make me homeless over it. I've been homeless 2 times in my life, and it was incredibly traumatizing. If my mom saw that I had briefly talked to the neighbors at all, she would stop what she was doing and call my dad, who would then try to start a fight with me when he got home from work. She was terminal and I was taking care of her, which is why I ended up in this mess.

At the time of this post I don't think I had gotten my SSI money yet, but I got SSI the first time I applied for it. I can't afford to live on my own so to be told I'd be homeless again and again over something I have no control over was incredibly distressing, not to mention constantly dysregulating. They said if I told the neighbors I couldn't talk to them that I'd be kicked out, if I told them to leave me alone, they'd still threaten to kick me out. The first time I was homeless was because I told my dad no for the first time, the second time happened after my parents wouldn't respect my boundaries after I got outed as trans to them. When I started being more rude about ignoring them, suddenly I was being told "I'm going to kick you out of you're rude to the neighbors!" and now he's the one telling me I need to leave them alone. NPD runs in my family, and my dad is old enough to be displaying dementia like behaviors, so it could be any number of things that motivated him to act like this.

It wasn't until recently (like this year) that my dad told one of the more problematic neighbors that he needed to leave me alone because I was having panic attacks over not being able to go outside without being stopped for conversation. I didn't want to get kicked out. Now, I could sleep in my car if I had to, so I'm less worried about being kicked out. But it's still something I think about constantly

Good grief.

Frankly, it sounds to me like your parents were trying to maximize their power over you by cutting you off from anyone else who could conceivably offer you any help.

Either that, or your parents were paranoid about the possibility of you saying anything to the neighbors that might make them (your parents) look bad to the neighbors.

In any case, it sounds to me like your parents were generally abusive towards you, and one classic sign of abuse is attempts to cut the victim off from contact with other people as much as possible.