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BreathlessJade
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01 Nov 2022, 4:20 pm

My family member, who spewed very mean words, claim I don't appreciate my family and don't help out enough/ am not successful enough...she does this thing where she makes sure I'm not notified or asked to help and does stuff for the family and insinuates I am not willing to help. Not only that, she uses that silent treatment and the family buries their heads in the sand until something they see from me that's "unacceptable" and quickly jump on me, leaving her free to continue the behavior. Its very unhealthy and I feel targeted because my emotional processing is different. I have to stay silent, think, and write my response or I'll go into fight mode and they use that against me. Its all so calculated...her mom knows very well what's going on and enables this and I'm so sick of it. I have a feeling its gonna be a blow up tonight. Things need to be called out for sure. :x



Dear_one
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01 Nov 2022, 4:35 pm

Bullies and narcissists are very expert at what they do, and it is not a skill I wish to learn to reply in kind. I try to just avoid them, even if getting disentangled is expensive.



BreathlessJade
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01 Nov 2022, 4:53 pm

Dear_one wrote:
Bullies and narcissists are very expert at what they do, and it is not a skill I wish to learn to reply in kind. I try to just avoid them, even if getting disentangled is expensive.

I totally agree



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01 Nov 2022, 6:53 pm

BreathlessJade wrote:
My family member does this thing where she makes sure I'm not notified or asked to help and does stuff for the family and insinuates I am not willing to help. Not only that, she uses that silent treatment and the family buries their heads in the sand until something they see from me that's "unacceptable" and quickly jump on me. Its very unhealthy and I feel targeted because my emotional processing is different. Things need to be called out for sure. :x


This describes my own mom very much. Whenever she and I don't get along very well, she has a fit of anger and often uses exaggerations as a way to make sure I feel bad about whatever caused her to change her behavior towards me. Whenever we do something together (such as gardening or doing chores), I sometimes make a simple mistake and whenever she sees this, she believes I did it on purpose. Even though I tell her otherwise, she's never convinced.

On another note, my bigoted uncles (whenever they visit without calling ahead of time, which IMO should always be common sense) often ask me about school, work, but most of the time about my NT girlfriend. They also always ask my NT sister if she has found herself a boyfriend. She always says "no", but they visited a few days ago. They asked her if she found herself a boyfriend, but she said "no" in an awkward way. Their visit was short and left after about twenty minutes. My NT sister has never had a boyfriend and has no intention on finding herself one.

The next time they visit, I'm going to stay out of the house regardless of what they say about it. In fact, whatever they say I'll just disregard. If my mom or my NT sister throw hissy fits, then that's their problem, not mine.
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BreathlessJade
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02 Nov 2022, 9:53 am

AnonymousAnonymous wrote:
BreathlessJade wrote:
My family member does this thing where she makes sure I'm not notified or asked to help and does stuff for the family and insinuates I am not willing to help. Not only that, she uses that silent treatment and the family buries their heads in the sand until something they see from me that's "unacceptable" and quickly jump on me. Its very unhealthy and I feel targeted because my emotional processing is different. Things need to be called out for sure. :x


This describes my own mom very much. Whenever she and I don't get along very well, she has a fit of anger and often uses exaggerations as a way to make sure I feel bad about whatever caused her to change her behavior towards me. Whenever we do something together (such as gardening or doing chores), I sometimes make a simple mistake and whenever she sees this, she believes I did it on purpose. Even though I tell her otherwise, she's never convinced.

On another note, my bigoted uncles (whenever they visit without calling ahead of time, which IMO should always be common sense) often ask me about school, work, but most of the time about my NT girlfriend. They also always ask my NT sister if she has found herself a boyfriend. She always says "no", but they visited a few days ago. They asked her if she found herself a boyfriend, but she said "no" in an awkward way. Their visit was short and left after about twenty minutes. My NT sister has never had a boyfriend and has no intention on finding herself one.

The next time they visit, I'm going to stay out of the house regardless of what they say about it. In fact, whatever they say I'll just disregard. If my mom or my NT sister throw hissy fits, then that's their problem, not mine.
Regarding relationships, "Love is not the business of anyone else except for the two people who are in love."

Well said. Yeah I find that people who are ashamed of their own failures or shortcomings (and picked up toxic behaviors through life) like to deflect them on those they see as weak. My family lacks strong and successful men, so the remaining men put on an overly aggressive, dominant facade. And the ladies tend to show passive resentment to men. And nobody is ever wrong...besides me of course. I miss my mom. She wasn't perfect but she could communicate authentically :cry:



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02 Nov 2022, 8:22 pm

Neurodivergent offspring, often take second place for parents and are seen as a problem, unfortunately. Particularly if parents are not properly educated in mental health/medicine & do not understand neurodivergent behaviours.

This can lead to favoritism on behalf of parents....



BreathlessJade
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03 Nov 2022, 12:59 pm

blitzkrieg wrote:
Neurodivergent offspring, often take second place for parents and are seen as a problem, unfortunately. Particularly if parents are not properly educated in mental health/medicine & do not understand neurodivergent behaviours.

This can lead to favoritism on behalf of parents....

Yes, my folks tend to downplay feelings by comparing ("you think you have it bad...this person has it worse") very invalidating. And it makes me question them even when they are trying to help. Just a muddy situation so I just keep stuff to myself



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05 Nov 2022, 4:32 am



I am no stranger that autistic individual are vulnerable to being manipulated and this really had previously made my life unpleasant from those horrible experiences.


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05 Nov 2022, 5:36 am

are you seeing a therapist? I was trapped in an unhealthy family with patterns like this until I got counseling and learned how to defend myself in healthy ways.

I learned I had choices in how to respond to any individual. My autism would not let me see I could choose to do things differently than the way I had been conditioned by sick family patterns to respond.

A therapist was able to explain new communication and how to make healthier choices in interacting with others, how to defend myself in healthy ways, how to set boundaries and how to recognize and deal with being manipulated and intimidated.

Don't be afraid to reach out to learn new ways to cope with this sort of stuff! Talking with us here is good... but the emotional homework and the hard work of making changes in one's life often need the support of a good counselor or mentor. I got therapy at age 30 and never looked back.

Getting counseling to learn new ways to "do life" saved my life and my sanity and was really the best thing I ever did for myself. keep us posted.


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05 Nov 2022, 9:40 am

blitzkrieg wrote:
Neurodivergent offspring, often take second place for parents and are seen as a problem, unfortunately. Particularly if parents are not properly educated in mental health/medicine & do not understand neurodivergent behaviours.

This can lead to favoritism on behalf of parents....


You've hit the nail right on the head. It's very clear to me that my parents prefer my sister over me. My mum treats my sister like a celebrity and she treats me like some German soldier who's just walked in. She has tender words for my sister and a cold shoulder and cold logical words for me. My dad always had faith in my sister and prepared her for a good future. My dad never did that for me and when I was a 16 year old hippie, he asked me if I ever thought of joining the army.


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BreathlessJade
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05 Nov 2022, 11:04 pm

autisticelders wrote:
are you seeing a therapist? I was trapped in an unhealthy family with patterns like this until I got counseling and learned how to defend myself in healthy ways.

I learned I had choices in how to respond to any individual. My autism would not let me see I could choose to do things differently than the way I had been conditioned by sick family patterns to respond.

A therapist was able to explain new communication and how to make healthier choices in interacting with others, how to defend myself in healthy ways, how to set boundaries and how to recognize and deal with being manipulated and intimidated.

Don't be afraid to reach out to learn new ways to cope with this sort of stuff! Talking with us here is good... but the emotional homework and the hard work of making changes in one's life often need the support of a good counselor or mentor. I got therapy at age 30 and never looked back.

Getting counseling to learn new ways to "do life" saved my life and my sanity and was really the best thing I ever did for myself. keep us posted.

I agree and yes I willdiscusd his further with my therapist. I'm gonna have to find another place to live also. Its just hard to with my income



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05 Nov 2022, 11:22 pm

This is just classic Machiavellian divide and conquer.

i thankfully have not had a lot of this in my home but helping particular people occasionally with projects - a job you could have easily done yourself, with them as lead and needing to work 'with them' forces you to be as useless as a child because they don't communicate and then it becomes a game of them treating you like you're useless - because they won't tell you whose doing what or when. It's a game of jamming up and damaging other people's ability to apply their own competence and there's tons of that in the NT world.

I was talking to a guy on the phone a night or two ago who was working for the local city and talking about how he wanted to get promoted but there was a catch-22 that he had to learn to do something, he had to practice it to learn it, couldn't learn it without supervision, the guy complained that he'd have to hold his hand after hours, whatever the things are in question probably aren't that difficult at all but the more covert reasoning behind that kind of behavior - those tasks, the pay related to doing them, 'status' - the rare precious material that everyone's fighting for and there's never enough to go around, and all of this in a world where few people really get to have much money or status until their hair is graying (ie. gerontocracy), this is the kind of crap one has to deal with.

I realize some of that is side-tangent but it's the same themes, ie. people running interference and preventing you from showing competence or interest to then claim that you neither have the competence nor interest. These are small people playing zero-sum social climbing games. It's belligerence, which sadly works well in nature and getting one's genes into the next generation (nature being amoral / psychopathic in its mechanics) but makes societies miserable.


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06 Nov 2022, 12:12 am

CockneyRebel wrote:
blitzkrieg wrote:
Neurodivergent offspring, often take second place for parents and are seen as a problem, unfortunately. Particularly if parents are not properly educated in mental health/medicine & do not understand neurodivergent behaviours.

This can lead to favoritism on behalf of parents....


You've hit the nail right on the head. It's very clear to me that my parents prefer my sister over me. My mum treats my sister like a celebrity and she treats me like some German soldier who's just walked in. She has tender words for my sister and a cold shoulder and cold logical words for me. My dad always had faith in my sister and prepared her for a good future. My dad never did that for me and when I was a 16 year old hippie, he asked me if I ever thought of joining the army.


It's not uncommon for parents to reject neurodiverse offspring or treat them badly because they aren't achieving like their peers.



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06 Nov 2022, 12:22 am

blitzkrieg wrote:
It's not uncommon for parents to reject neurodiverse offspring or treat them badly because they aren't achieving like their peers.


This is not entirely their fault. My older, NT sister never wanted to share the insufficient parental attention that was available.



BreathlessJade
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06 Nov 2022, 6:43 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
This is just classic Machiavellian divide and conquer.

i thankfully have not had a lot of this in my home but helping particular people occasionally with projects - a job you could have easily done yourself, with them as lead and needing to work 'with them' forces you to be as useless as a child because they don't communicate and then it becomes a game of them treating you like you're useless - because they won't tell you whose doing what or when. It's a game of jamming up and damaging other people's ability to apply their own competence and there's tons of that in the NT world.

I was talking to a guy on the phone a night or two ago who was working for the local city and talking about how he wanted to get promoted but there was a catch-22 that he had to learn to do something, he had to practice it to learn it, couldn't learn it without supervision, the guy complained that he'd have to hold his hand after hours, whatever the things are in question probably aren't that difficult at all but the more covert reasoning behind that kind of behavior - those tasks, the pay related to doing them, 'status' - the rare precious material that everyone's fighting for and there's never enough to go around, and all of this in a world where few people really get to have much money or status until their hair is graying (ie. gerontocracy), this is the kind of crap one has to deal with.

I realize some of that is side-tangent but it's the same themes, ie. people running interference and preventing you from showing competence or interest to then claim that you neither have the competence nor interest. These are small people playing zero-sum social climbing games. It's belligerence, which sadly works well in nature and getting one's genes into the next generation (nature being amoral / psychopathic in its mechanics) but makes societies miserable.

That was very helpful!



BreathlessJade
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07 Nov 2022, 11:47 am

Aspie With Attitude wrote:


I am no stranger that autistic individual are vulnerable to being manipulated and this really had previously made my life unpleasant from those horrible experiences.

I enjoyed that video