I just need to cry for a really long time

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A few weeks ago I left home with the intent of leaving for good, having written a note explaining to my family why I had left.

The note having been left on my bed and my door closed, I had only left for 5 hours and were thankful that no one had opened it because when I was out there on the streets, pretending to be homeless, thinking I was actually homeless, in the dark, experiencing the cold air and the noisy roads in the suburbs, I was feeling uncertainty, doubt and was looping around the neighbourhood aimlessly with the question swirling around in my head, where do I go next?. I had visualised going away, walking to the nearest train station and getting off far away but I never even set foot next to the road it was on, I walked down unfamiliar roads setting off my anxiety which in turn made me think irrationally, walking across roads without looking where I was going, bumping into people, I didn't and never had the capacity to cry myself but I felt the never ending shaking and that the only way to stop this was to go back home and pretend it all never happened.

The aggression and the overwork sounds familiar. I think it was an expression of desperation on his part. All these things got a lot better after I got diagnosed and got on track with education. It helps to have older kids, too. Is there any way your daughter's diagnosis can lead to you guys getting some kind of help? I didn't get anything like that, but I'm the aspie here and my daughter seems to be NT.



Have you tried meditation music off of youtube? It does the trick around here. Very not politically correct, but everybody sleeps.




There is quite a big smear campaign directed at Norwegian Child Protection Services. I think it started when they removed a group of kids from their Romanian parents after physical abuse. I think it was wrong to be so drastic, and in any case the kids were returned, but the case quickly became international because the parents were part of a Christian sect with members in many countries, and that sect preached beating kids.

What I will say is that we are a very insular culture with a very low tolerance for alcohol abuse and beating kids, and a high tolerance for emotional neglect. Only recently a study was released that showed that actions by Child Protection Services were pretty evenly distributed among ethnic groups, based on number of members. That said, different cultures have vastly different standards, and I think there is a huge breakdown in communication. We have a Viking drinking culture and a Puritan attitude to drinking - very messed up. I'm sure I could find lots of 'experts' who would argue that your kids are now traumatized for life because of you getting hammered, but I don't believe it. I believe that as long as there is some family member available who is taking care, the kids are fine. If they were correct, then all kids who have a sick parent would also be traumatized for life, and that simply isn't the case.

I think that a lot of the people working in those services have too little education to make the decisions they have to make, and sometimes it goes really badly. What happens is usually that parents lose their kids because they get drunk regularly and beat up the kids and don't take care of their health, and then the parents go to the media and say they lost their kids for getting drunk on a couple of occasions. Meanwhile, Child Protection Services can't legally comment, so this is the story that gets told.

Then you add Russian money to the mix - there was for example a Lithuanian or Latvian university professor who was paid to write that the Norwegian state is encouraging adults to have sex with children, because the Russian regime is keen to promote the idea that Western countries are destroying families. It's very hard to find the truth in these chaotic conditions.

Sorry about going off topic, but I actually think it's an important question.

Your time in Berlin is what resonates with me. I just want to be somewhere by myself for a while. I keep envisaging this alternative reality where I am in the hills somewhere in a temple having taken a vow of silence and get left a basket of food at the edge of the forest.... you get the picture.

Whatever can be achieved in the here and now is going to be minimal.

My toddler, 3, is actually fairly low maintenance as it goes apart from never stopping speaking. It is my 8 year old who needs a lot of support, scaffolding, mediation and reassurance - day and night. She is amazing. But I imagine it to be a little like raising a mini Van Gogh!

The reason why it got so bad for me is that I was struggling with health issues that caused a lot of pain and sleeplessness. In true aspie fashion I was unable to communicate to the doctors what was wrong with me and how much pain I felt, so it got really bad before it got better, and taking care of a toddler and looking for work on top of that was too much.

My husband tells me I'm a sucker for luxury, because I like hotels and restaurants, and I'm like, who doesn't like outsourcing the cooking and cleaning to someone else?

Magz, that sounds really hard work with your husband. It is so hard when people are not able to see themselves, isn't it? My husband does need and deserve down-time and I will try to give him that foremost as he has to work all day non-stop and he works 6 days a week during term time. I guess we'll never see eye to eye totally on the parenting front. I am much more nurturing and forgiving and accepting whereas he will get bothered and hold people to, what I feel, is too high standards. I put self confidence and feeling good about oneself much higher than manners. For better or worse.

Try biting your finger to not fall asleep! It sometimes works! I had a horrible time sleeping as a kid. I was very scared. Had lots of intrusive thoughts and then sleep walked. It is not fun this way and I know some people might rightly think I am making life harder for myself but I am not going to leave my daughter alone with her demons quite yet. Like you describe she sees menacing things everywhere and a lot of her fears and worries become big and looming. There really is no arrangement that will help. I have tried everything (and I really mean everything apart from just leaving her to cry) for the past 8 years and she will only sleep well next to me.

That sounds really intense for you. I'm sure it was no small decision to leave and it can't have been easy to go back home. I might be wrong but it sounds like you felt returning home was safe though and it would make you feel better. Did it?

May I ask why you wanted to leave? And would it be possible to speak to your family about why you wanted to go and maybe getting some support and help if you want to leave again?

I am terrible at asking for help and the few times help has been useful it really feels quite amazing and I wonder why I didn't seek it out before.

I'm actually very interested in finding out. There are lots of legends around about the Child Protecting Services and I always welcome trustworthy information. I read some more on a case of Polish family where a child had been removed and then they took the child out of the foster home and fleed to Poland. What I really read into the story were lots and lots of misunderstandings of each other's actions between the child's mother and the social workers.
Well, I guess when someone becomes violent when drunk, it is a big and serious problem. Or when the children become neglected because the only babisitter was knocked out. We are very careful to avoid these things. But we both got knowledge of dealing with alcohol from our parents and we think it's better than pretending alcohol didn't exist and then leaving the children to experiment on themselves without any guidance once turning 18 or 21, or whatever.

Well, we are not that different with my husband but his family is much more controlling than mine and I think he sometimes may feel insecure with my attitude of relaxed trust. But the real problem is, he's having mental health issues he is unwilling to adress, even if he admits that it's wrong

I don't mind falling asleep in my kid's bed if it ends with a full night of sleep
And yes, I understand, my older used to have a lot of nightmares and I always came to her, I didn't want her to be alone with her fears. Luckily, she's better now.
Oh, by the way, did you try leaving for a few minutes, then coming back? Sometimes when I go to a bathroom, the girls fall asleep waiting for me.

From any branch of “child protective services” in any country, you will always read of lurid (and exaggerated) stories which emanates from them.

It’s a tough business being a family social worker. The turnover is extremely high. And it seems to bring out the “worst” in people.

Yes, I've noticed. I recently met this woman who is a foster mother. Initially, I think that's an admirable thing to do, and the child in question definitely had to be removed from their biological family. However, this woman struck me as the worst kind of judgmental NT, my-way-or-the-highway kind of woman - and the child has some neurological issues. It can't be easy.

Last edited by underwater on 16 Mar 2018, 10:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is slightly different but I know this to be true. In Sweden girls of Somalian origin that the school knew has gone back to Africa on a recent holiday were forcibly removed from their classrooms by police and given a gynaecological examination to ensure they had not undergone genital mutilation during their holiday. This was against their parents wishes.

I don't find it very humanitarian... even potentially traumatic. And kind of racist. Were they asked what were their wishes, by the way?

It certainly wasn’t medically necessary.

Completely off topic, but I just realized I missed you guys so much recently. Since New Year I've been busy studying, and I've had so many changes in my life that I just wasn't able to keep track of what was going on on WP. But I remember how you gave me such good advice, Magz, about the therapist question.

Sometimes the only people who understand are autistic people. I love my family, and I have a couple of great friends, but there are so many topics that only you guys can relate to. Other people, even though they think they have experienced the same thing, really haven't. I had to talk to someone I didn't know very well recently, about some personal stuff. And although he was very nice about it, it was so obvious he didn't understand much at all. How can you ask advice of people who really don't understand what the problem is? I don't know one single person living in my area who I could ask for advice on life questions, because there is not one bloody person who understands. Only you guys living in different countries!

/end rant

Totally traumatic. I think they were 13 or 14. Their wishes and their family wishes were to not be examined. That is 10 years ago though when I was doing my research, I doubt it would happen now.