Feeling Bad Rambles About My Mom

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

That’s kind of what I’m poking at, trying to figure out where the anxiety is coming from and whether it’s disproportionate to my actual social difficulties, and I think that’s where a specialist might be able to help.

What complicates this is the early instability. Even leaving aside the stuff I mentioned upthread, there was so much instability in my early childhood. Every year or less it was a new school, new family, new chance at stability that never panned out, up until I was ten. The men she dated ranged from harmless losers to outright abusive. I also just remembered my Mom was an alcoholic for a while, but I don’t recall ever seeing her drink, she just told me that her third marriage ended because she wouldn’t get sober.

I don’t recall being particularly distressed by the changes, probably because I had some fixed figures in my life - my mother, my Aunt, my grandmothers. There was only one boyfriend of my Mom’s I remember being traumatized to lose, and weirdly they recently got together again and he became her 5th husband. But I never get to see him again, so, that sucks.

I think because of this experience I am very adaptive to big changes. Whatever the new circumstances, I will make do. I’m also very resilient to not getting what I want.

Whether this exacerbated my social difficulties I can’t say. But I was definitely weird. I was not remotely shy. I don’t recall having any social anxiety. But I was socially inappropriate and took a lot of bullying for it. I also had an obsessive personality. I still do kinda.

I think this early instability is also why I have a hard time letting go of my Mom, because she was the constant. She wasn’t always great, but she was what I had.

I recognize I need to let go. But that is a process.

42

Well, that’s definitely not me, despite having some autistic traits. (My friend with a severely autistic child assured me that I’m autistic, after going through the screening stuff with her son.) I learned that my high school class was holding a reunion a day or two before the event. (They’d did all the planning on Facebook, which I’ve dropped off of, but i ran into a classmate at an unrelated event right before it, who asked if i was going.) I already had plans for that evening. So i showed up really late to my high school reunion. And i had a good time. And i had a chance to say goodbye to a classmate who was dying of cancer.

43

There’s a lot of the ADHD stereotype I don’t fit so I think with this sort of thing, it really depends on the person.

I agree it’s important to socialize. I just hate crowds. I have my writers group, people at the Zen temple, and a few stand-alone friends, so I’m not exactly isolated. My husband’s family is difficult because it is so big and crawling with children so that’s an ongoing issue I have to navigate. I don’t want to withdraw because I like a lot of his cousins as people, but it’s also not comfortable. It’s really sensory overload.

They are fun about it, though. The cousins tease me for being aversive to lots of people. One of them sent me a video of a little girl being interviewed by her mother after a party.

“Did you have fun at the party?”
“Yes.”
“What was your favorite part?”
“Leaving.”

So not long after that they had a Halloween party and on the way out the door, I turned to her and said, “Time for the best part.”

She’s actually the one person who told me she thinks I might be autistic.

I told her at the time “I think I just have really bad social anxiety.”

Now I’m not so sure.

44

As I think about it more, it occurs to me that my husband never makes plans until the last minute, and we have a couple of friends like that too, so I’ve thought plenty of times that it’s a good thing that my kid, despite her diagnosis, is mostly OK with rolling with changes at the last minute (she does protest sometimes, though not any more really than I think a NT kid would do). I never thought about my being okay with it!

I read a couple of parenting/psych books when my kid was growing up – sorry, I can’t remember exactly which ones – that did say that kids who had grown up in abusive situations (I can’t remember if PTSD was specifically cited) looked… looked a lot like my kid. (Now, I absolutely knew my kid wasn’t like this because of abuse – she was the way she was from birth. And the authors were always talking about otherwise NT kids.)

45

There’s also the fact that if you have ADHD or ASD there’s a high chance your parent did too, which increases the likelihood of abuse and general instability. So it’s not always either/or.

I look at my grandfather who was an outrageously abusive husband and father because he never learned what autistic meltdowns were much less how to control them. My mother doesn’t fall far from that tree in terms of interests, mannerisms and behaviors. They are both engineers, both highly meticulous, expected absolute perfection from their children, both prone to fits of rage when things don’t go exactly their way. My grandfather never had friends (“didn’t need 'em” in his own words) and was obsessed with his job. My Mom had friends and lost them easily (complicated by BPD.)

My mother had what seems like the opposite of ADHD and she found me impossible to live with. I understand how I can be frustrating. I know my husband gets frustrated with me sometimes. (My husband is a lot like my grandpa in the benign ways.) I get frustrated with me on a regular basis, because the ordered life I truly desire is not something I’ve ever been able to achieve.

But I never saw my mother do a single thing to try to understand why I was the way I was. She just assumed I did it on purpose and made it all worse.

46

Nobody is 100% neurotypical. We’re each a bundle of traits and behaviors, of which the most common are labeled “neurotypical”. But nobody has only neurotypical traits and behaviors. The human brain is too complicated and too variable for that. Your insight that this is not a one-dimensional spectrum is spot on. It’s multi-dimensional, and once you realize neurotypical is typical but not normative, it is freeing.

As for the original poster, @Spice_Weasel: you know what the correct course of action is. You’ve thought and felt through it, talked about it with your spouse, and discussed it here. It is a difficult process for you, and you are working through it. You will do right and be at peace with it.

47

Yeah. My mom is the same – would just go (still goes) into rages when things didn’t go the way she thought they ought to. And when you have small kids, things don’t go the way you think they ought to A LOT. And she has never been able to understand why we were the way we were in about a million different ways, because she has always assumed that we would be and think exactly the same as her. (I should also say – to be fair – some of this is stress and her reaction to living a life that hasn’t been easy at all. And although she never talks about it, there’s what we would call abuse in her past as well, I think.)

I see a lot of those nascent traits in my daughter (and have worked on them a lot in myself, for that matter), and we have worked really really hard for years on her rages when things don’t go the way she thought they ought to, and have really emphasized with her that other people don’t have the same life experiences and perspectives as she does, and that she has to take that into account in her dealings with people. I’m happy to say that we’ve made a lot of progress over the years and I’m finally at the point where I think she has a good chance to be a reasonable and useful and happy adult someday.

I do wonder about my dad, though, who experienced a lot of emotional and verbal abuse growing up, way more than my sister and I did. (His upbringing was closer to yours in intensity, though without any physical violence.) He has some spectrum-like tendencies – not so much the rages or the meltdowns, he’s actually a very gentle and sweet person, but some issues with theory of mind and social awkwardness and so on. I’d always thought that our autistic tendencies came from him (before it became more clear that it’s more likely to be from our mom), but my second, mostly-NT kid is really very similar to him in a lot of ways, and doesn’t have any issues with theory of mind – I wonder sometimes whether the abuse just did a number on my dad’s brain.

Ha, I laughed here because I was the conceited opposite as a child. I was like, eh, I’m a great kid, and mom, if you are getting mad at me that just shows that you’re completely irrational! It’s true that I was a pretty great kid, as kids go, but now that I have kids of my own, one of whom is a lot like me, I can see more that I must also have been frequently frustrating and worrisome (I know my mom worried a lot about my lack of social ability), and that raising kids in general can be a frustrating process. But I didn’t realize any of that as a kid, which I think was actually good for me, in that it meant my psyche didn’t take nearly as much damage as it could have.

48

Yeah. I was a straight-A student, obsessed with Jesus, going to church and volunteering with my church 2x a week, teacher’s pet in class, involved in every student activity imaginable, functionally incapable of lying, followed all her ridiculous rules, all the things you would want out of a child.

But I had a problem with impulsivity particularly when she was yelling at and insulting me. It was mostly like, “I’m not doing this on purpose” type stuff but she saw any kind of dialogue as “talking back” so there were functionally no lines of communication. It would always escalate into violence and emotional abuse.

And I had a really hard time listening and doing things correctly at home. I still have this problem. Domestically I just have a really hard time. I think maybe I’m overwhelmed by all the potential things to do. I don’t know.

I remember once we got in an argument and I said, “Look, nobody else has all these problems with me that you do. I can’t be that bad.”

And she said, “That’s because they don’t have to live with you. If they had to live with you, they’d know how terrible you are.”

So I did internalize that. But that was kind of around the time I started getting really verbally combative, and by the time I left home at 17, I was so angry with her and felt so wronged that I wasn’t trying to behave anymore. I just wanted away from her.

I took a highlighter to that “ADHD/ASD/Gifted” Venn diagram and highlighted quite a lot for ASD traits too, so I feel less stupid about at least looking into it. I took the first step today and reached out to one place that is waitlisted and also my former therapist that I worked with for helping me parent Miles and navigate his autism diagnosis. She knew a metric ton about autism, particularly in children but I’m hoping she can point me in the right direction for getting a reasonable assessment. I’m not feeling the need for an ADOS or anything, just someone I can talk to who can provide a diagnosis (or not) for my peace of mind/knowing where to go from here.

49

You should definitely not feel stupid for looking into it! You have a lot of ASD traits, even if that ends up not being a hard diagnosis or anything; it makes a lot of sense to look into it. Just make sure that whoever you talk to is used to considering autism in girls – it often looks very different than autism in boys, which I think is part of what is tripping you up.

50

I’m sorry. I can completely relate and I wish these kinds of things didn’t have to have happened.

51

Yes, I found a place, I’m on the wait list, that specializes in ADHD, ASD and PTSD in women, so I think it’s the perfect place.

I’ve been hit with a one-two punch of trauma and sensory burnout. I am taking the next three days off work. I have a neurodiverse skills workbook I’m working through.

I’m trying to think about all the ways I’ve ignored my sensory needs until this point. I think I’ve never really treated myself fully like a neurodivergent person. Just kind of trundled through life trying to put up with things and to endure it.

I ordered some Loop Switch earplugs. Probably should have done that a long time ago. I have an extremely loud child.

Was talking to one of my many Aunts about my history, she didn’t know, and she says I’m a warrior. I told her the problem with legally emancipating and graduating Salutatorian and getting a full ride scholarship is you spend the rest of your life holding yourself to that ridiculous standard.

I’ve just been thinking about the time in my childhood I considered “the good years.”

-constant moving in with random men
-changing schools all the time
-was sexually abused by her second husband at age three
-Mom became alcoholic

Those were the good years.

And I’ve just come to realize, those weren’t really good years. There was never really a point where my Mom put my emotional needs ahead of her own. Ever.

And it’s okay. It’s a part of letting go.

Right now I just need to focus on recovery.

I was hoping to never need therapy again, but that’s life.

52

Oof. I’m sorry. That’s a… lot of hard realizations to come to.

blinks Huh. I’m going to have to take that and think about that for a while with respect to myself and my sensory needs (not the same as yours, but also not NT).

I do think that people have thresholds/limits for all kinds of things (physical, sensory, emotional, etc.) and if you get near but not above the threshold it can be good for resilience, but if you get above it you can break something. Like exercise, if one is exercising up to one’s capacity it can be great, but if one pushes oneself too hard past one’s limits, especially constantly, it leads to burnout. (And it’s really easy to get there with a kid who inadvertently pushes past one’s limits. I’m SO glad that I wasn’t a stay-at-home mom, it would definitely have done a number on my mental health.)

I’m so sorry. That sounds like a very hard epiphany to have.

I feel like it’s very, very common for kids who have come from abusive backgrounds to go around for a long time saying, “My parents/caregivers were so, so great, I was so lucky to have them even though, ok, they might have been awful in this one particular way,” and only realizing that wait, no, they weren’t actually all that great years later. It’s a “fawning” defense mechanism, I think, backed up by being told often enough that they are great and we are terrible.

My husband, whose parents actually were amazing and great, says about his parents, “They had their moments like anyone else, but overall they did a pretty good job,” which I think is indicative of a much more healthy relationship.

53

Yeah, my beautiful child is LOUD as hell. I realized I’ve just been living with that for years and not really doing anything but enduring it. And what else has been that way?

Posted this in mini-rants:

I’ve never experienced this prolonged extreme sensory sensitivity before. But I realize it’s the cumulative effect of a long time ignoring my needs, particularly sensory. So I bought a pair of fancy Loop ear plugs, a weighted blanket and I’m listening to burnout recovery YouTube videos while I stitch (sometimes I just listen for the sound of their voices… Some are very soothing, especially the Nords.) I tried putting my legs up a wall. Right now I’m lying in a dim room doing nothing.

It’s been interesting watching Sr. Weasel process all this. We were at our Aunt’s and Wee Weasel was going nuts at like, optimum squealing pitch, and I kept telling him to keep his voice down. Husband turned to me and said, “This isn’t just social anxiety, is it? It’s sensory.”

“Yup.”

Then last night: “All this time I thought you were just an introvert.”

“This is what I thought introversion was!”

54

Update: I start therapy for an evaluation on June 16th! Didn’t have to wait long at all. She is neurodivergent and specializes in ADHD, trauma and helping autistic people. Bonus points for doing existential therapy.

I always feel weird after submitting intake paperwork. I probably give too much detail. Good luck making sense of all that, lady.

55

Started seeing the therapist. She asked me to create a timeline of my trauma. Not a task I was looking forward to, but I put it in a spreadsheet, it took about 90 minutes. I felt shitty, but not as shitty as I thought I would. I didn’t even miss any sleep.

But here’s the thing. That spreadsheet was so fucked up that I realize I now have a comprehensive document that I can reference every time I want to resume a relationship with my mother. Feeling guilty? Read the spreadsheet. It really paints a clear picture of a massively unstable batshit insane person who had no business being a parent. And it’s not stuff you can wave off with “I didn’t know any better.” Like there’s no conceivable excuse.

So I guess that turned out to have an unexpected benefit.

56

If they are a good trauma therapist that benefit is not unexpected to them.

Hugs from afar, been there, done that therapy.

57

I vote that it’s a terrible idea to contact your mom.

Nobody is entitled to be in your life just because of who they are, without regard to how they behave. If you catch yourself thinking that way, think again.

FWIW I always enjoy you here.

– 100% Estranged for 37 years

58

Thank you, that’s very kind!