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It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a new entry to this community, and I know the comments on the last one have gotten unworkably long. I’m sorry. You deserve better.
There’s been stuff. There still is stuff. I’ll explain in the comments.
But I’d just like to point out that even with my highly intermittent presence, this community has continued, and continued to be a wonderful thing.
I’ll continue to be back as I can. But it fills me with so much delight to see the egg I hatched, the hatchling I fed, grow wings, spread them, and fly.
This is part of the sequence of Dysfunctional Families discussions. We have a few special rules, specific to the needs and nature of the conversations we have here.
Previous posts (note that comments are closed on them to keep the conversation in one place):
So, a brief explanation of my absence, posted with permission.
CW: suicide, self-harm
Spoiler: no one is dead
In October of 2016, my then 12 year old daughter came to me with a note—she couldn't bring herself to say it to me in person—explaining that she was not only depressed (which we knew, but not to what degree), but also harming herself and struggling with suicidal ideation.
The years since then have been spent navigating the various therapeutic options, helping her transfer to a school that might improve things, and riding a difficult and exhausting emotional rollercoaster.
She turned 15 earlier this year, a lovely young woman, with a remarkable artistic talent. And still-crippling depression and impulses to suicide.
The only way out is through. As her parents, we are doing everything we can think of. But it has required me to, with as much clarity and love as I can, carefully control what other commitments I can keep. I cannot promise that I'll be around any more than I have been. I'll try, and I am reachable at this username at this domain.
I love this community. I am, as I said in the OP, immeasurably proud of it and impressed by the people who make it up. My delight that my absence has not destroyed it is enormous.
Much love.
I'm so sorry you and your family are going through this, and hope you all come through to better times.
Our family has been on a similar journey; even the ages match. Much love and prayers, if wanted, from the other side. You can't go back, of course, but the vista does widen again.
Abi (and daughter): witnessing. I remember that age as being extremely difficult, without the added challenge of that level of depression. She’s fortunate to have such supportive parents, and it's only fitting that your focus is there, not here.
dropped off this thread almost nine years ago, when my mom (with whom i'd had a mostly tolerable relationship) showed me that an accusation of racism is much, much worse than, y'know, actual racism. she said a racist thing. i said, whoa, that's racist, and she decided she didn't want me to come visit any more, and took me off her power of attorney, and lordess only knows how she changed the will. she did not invite me to visit for her husband's last days, and i know that pained him.
but i asked myself: if i could repair this rift, would i want to? are the visits not harder and harder (aging bites)? is it not wearing to be always prepared to fly in and fix whatever she's managed to break? do i think sainthood and wearing myself out for the unappreciative is so very inviting?
so i've let it go. we send each other cards on birthdays and holidays. we exchange token gifts. i make sure she has flowers delivered for mother's day and her birthday. other than that? nada. we were always strangers, and now we act like it.
i'm okay with that.
abi, i am sorry to hear of the troubles that have visited your family. i'm pretty sure, though, that being taken seriously, being listened to, being important enough to be taken care of, are all gifts your daughter needs, and that many of us in this thread are still repairing the absence of in our early lives.
holding you all in the light.
::Kermit flail!:: Hi, abi! Your post makes me very happy.
abi: Having now read your update: I can't say how glad I am that your daughter was able to come to you, and that you have prioritized her well-being. I delight in your presence here; I delight even more in reports of your parenting. Best wishes, know you have my support in your ongoing efforts.
My wishes for good fortune and better days to you and your daughter, Abi.
Abi: I'm so sorry to hear of your family's difficulties. I'm glad you've been able to share that with us, and hope that you and yours have light ahead of you.
abi, what Jacque said @7. Glad to have you here, fully understand why your primary attention needs to be elsewhere, wishing the best for your daughter and all your family.
SpawnoftheDevil @5 with the exception of being unable to visit during your stepfather's last days, this sounds like a good outcome. Good for you for identifying what you were and were not willing to live with.
So, since we have a shiny new thread to play in, I have a question:
I have, over the last year, had two cases of that thing where you object to someone's (a man, in these cases) behavior, and they come back with, "Oh, just relax." Meaning they don't like that I'm objecting, and want me/my objection to just go away.
I know there's been lately talk discussion around that and related phenomena, but I find myself strangely bereft of vocabulary around this. Is there a name for this particular behavior? It seems related to but not the same as gaslighting. What are y'all's thoughts?
Abi @OP, witnessing. Your daughter comes first; we'll keep muddling through without you as long as necessary. But it's good to see your pixels, however fleetingly!
Jacque @11, again, this is not quite the right word, but perhaps my flailing will help someone else come up with it.
This behavior seems to me to be inextricably intertwined with privilege. The person doing it simply cannot see the ten thousand microaggressions that preceded his (in my experience, 90% of the time it's "his") comment or behavior, and can't understand why anyone would react so strongly to a "harmless joke".
Catcalled on the street? "Oh, you should take that as a compliment!" Unwanted hug or too-familiar touching? "But I'm just being friendly!" And so forth.
Utterly trivial anecdote; I play D&D in the same mixed-gender group I've played with for thirty years. In one linked series of games, I played a wizard character that was only sixth level while the rest of that particular adventuring party was about tenth level (we all have multiple characters in that world, and we they needed a wizard, however under-powered, for one particular quest); the leader of the group was introducing the party to an NPC and when he came to my character he said, "And this is Seamus. He... tries." It was legitimately funny. We all laughed, me included. But then, every single time I played Seamus, even in situations where he was balanced with the rest of the party, that "he... tries" joke came out. Every. Single. Time. It honestly started to hurt; it felt like my playing, not the character Seamus, was being mocked.
I said this privately to my husband (who plays in the same group) after a game; he'd been repeating the joke himself. "It's just a joke!" he protested, but after I fumbled to explain myself, he apologized and immediately stopped saying it. The other female players noticed my body language in reaction to the phrase coming up again and again and didn't repeat it after the first game where it was, to be fair, appropriate and funny. But the other three male players still say it sometimes, although I know my husband has privately asked them not to. It's made me reluctant to play Seamus.
For weird socialization reasons I haven't felt like I can complain publicly about this to the gaming group. I don't know why. Because I'd be whining? Because it's such a trivial thing to be upset about? Because it'll make me look thin-skinned and like I can't take a joke? Because if I leave it alone it's the character being mocked, instead of me? Until I started writing this post I haven't actually unpacked this....
Like I said, this is a trivial example. It's a game; it's not my parents or my boss or my spouse or anything that truly matters. And these are people I've known, some of them for thirty years, all of them for at least twenty years, none of whom would deliberately hurt anyone in the group. (So why can't I say anything....? I don't know.)
otterb @10 thanks. i admit to channeling elsa at the top of my lungs when the movie came out: LET. IT. GO.
jacque @11: "just relax" unpacked:
"you don't matter. i do."
"my reality is the only valid reality."
"the natural order of the universe dictates that if anyone objects to me, they are the ones in the wrong."
so here's the thing: consequences are a gift. if you are kind enough to point out to somebody that they're being a dick, and they reject your gift, they have told you an important thing about themselves. you get to choose how many spoons they are worth.
when similar things happen to me, my face telegraphs my sudden realization: "oh, i get it: you're an asshole. all right then, move along. we're done."
@Jacque no. 11, CassyB no. 12: SpawnOfTheDevil speaks truth @ no. 13. It's tempting to try to tackle the root of the behavior--to enlighten the person so they won't do that anymore. I shared a gaming group with one of those smirky-berkies myself, though, and I can tell you that as long as one person in the room thought he was funny (or not that bad, or that he would stop on his own eventually, or that I somehow had the power to make him stop by adjusting my own behavior and wasn't using it for reasons)...then he thought he was just the awesomest and anybody who protested being used as his straight man was hilariously square. This lasted until he decided to use the cops, those hilarious squares, as his next straight man, by removing some of the kibble from a cop car while it was parked behind the cop shop. When a judge told him he wasn't funny, it stuck. (The judge told him that the court was not pursuing a felony indictment only because he was obviously too stupid to understand that the world was not his oyster, but that was his one chance to quit clowning around.)
Barring your respective smirky berkies getting a similar slapdown from the Clue Bat, there's really no point in hoping that they will change. So your options are, as SpawnOfTheDevil says, limited to a more immediate response.
When you say no, don't even try to justify it.
"That's not funny. Stop saying it."
"I don't care if you think it's funny. It's not funny. Knock it off."
"I'm sure you think you're funny. Moving on." [Immediately turn to someone else to speak, or change the subject.]
Or, there's always the long, quiet, silent stare. Channel your inner large-cat-confronted-by-yapping-chihuahua.
If they play any card at all--"You hurt my feelings," or "You're just a square," or "Politics time!," your response is the same: "I asked you to drop it. Drop. It."
And if they won't, or if other people start to gang up on you...then it may be time to find another venue to do [thing].
Note that this does not apply if they are in a position of authority over you. In that case, if there's nobody to go to (their boss, for example), your only option besides gritting your teeth is to find a way to get out from under that authority.
Also, @Jacque in particular: In my opinion this is just plain bullying.
(In the first story, X gets her-series pronouns; and Y, he-series -- Z is only mentioned once in the singular.)
I had a friend X tell me about how another friend Y was rude to her. I tried to explain to X that I didn't think that Y intended his actions in the way that X interpreted them. X wasn't having it, even when I used examples of the "shit-talking" between Y and Z; they were best friends, but from the words alone one might think that they were worst enemies. So I decided to talk to Y about it. (In retrospect, not telling X that I intended to talk to Y was probably not the right thing to do, but no harm came to my relationship with X from it.) At any rate, I figured that I could be gentle with Y about it. What I got out was, "You might want to ease off on the joking with X; you've kinda hurt her feelings." What I got in response from Y at that point was "Well, f*** her if she can't take a joke." At which point, I instantaneously gave up on trying to smooth things over between X and Y. It was hard for me to hold in my head that Y was unintentionally offending X when his reaction to being told that he had hurt X's feelings was to verbally aggressively attack the messenger. It is perhaps of interest to note that while I still consider X a friend, I no longer consider Y a friend; and part of it is my perception of a lack of empathy on the part of Y which he revealed that day.
(Forgive my use of the expression "offending party"; I haven't come up with a better short way to express the opposite side to the expression "offended party".)
I have contemplations on acknowledging intention and effects, but I don't know how useful it will be in any of the situations mentioned. I have seen situations where the offended party basically says that offending party's intentions don't matter to em; or worse refuse to accept any explanation of actual intention except that offending party had malice -- I am referring to situations where an honest unawareness of the problem is still a reasonable explanation. While the response of the offending party that I am about to describe is not always a reaction to "demonizing" of the offending party by the offended party, sometimes I think that it is. In contrast to the offended party saying that intention is irrelevant, the offending party takes the position that effects are irrelevant -- only intention matters. My own desire when I am informed of giving unintentional offense is to have my innocent intentions acknowledged, yet at the same time I care about the effects that my actions are causing; and if they are causing bad effects, I want to know this so that I can better achieve the more positive effects that I do want. Unfortunately, I have run in to a few situations where I have felt that the innocence of my intent was not only not acknowledged, but actively rejected: to those "messengers" their view of how social interactions should work is so ingrained in them as "The Right Way" that even considering that others might have differing styles is impossible -- I had to take what I could from the feedback about what effects my actions were having, and ignore their fixed assumptions about the intent behind my actions because they refused to consider even when given my explanation anything other than what they had already decided. Because in my discussion of my own experience I am mostly thinking of where the "messenger" was not the offended party and a third party was involved, I was more willing to filter out the "hostility" and use what was useful of the feedback. Also, a consideration for me is that it seems to me that one of the best ways to demonstrate innocent intent is to change the actions when asked; maybe, even some of the offended parties with fixed ideas about intention will change their minds upon seeing the offending party immediately change eir actions. But I can also see how someone who had innocent intention might be polarized in to the position of not being willing to make the effort to change eir actions for a person who refuses to acknowledge that eir intentions were innocent.
I'm not sure how useful my idea in the paragraph above will actually be: there are too many people who seem to want to do or say whatever they want without consequence to think that it is any silver bullet, but I know I would have felt less "slandered" had some people been willing to accept that the reason that I am choosing a different course of action in the future is that my intentions were never bad in the first place.
As far as,
Catcalled on the street? "Oh, you should take that as a compliment!"
I'm male and I have on a couple of occasions been catcalled by women. Perhaps it's because I'm less confident in my ability to defend myself than the average man, but it's still an uncomfortable situation to me. I tried to take it as a compliment and maybe half-managed, but it felt more like teasing/bullying than anything else.
A dog humping my leg is just being friendly because he likes me. Why should I treat a human any differently from the unwelcome dog?
I don't know how to deal with people, in general, but also this person, in particular:
He seems to want to be my friend. Invites me to things. Sometimes forcefully. "You're going to come to this thing, it will be good for you." Honestly, I'm grateful that someone wants to spend time with me.
He's delighted to find out that we have things in common, until I'm doing it wrong. "You do this thing, but never learned to do a related thing? Oh my god."
He's reminding me of an abusive ex of mine, who was only ok with me if I was willing to apologize for the things I love. I could like Star Trek if I wasn't One Of Those Fans. The bad ones whom he hated. I got sick of being insulted for existing and left him.
Now I have this new person, and it feels the same. Is there a way to deal with this without just ... cutting him out of my life? We have social spaces in common. What's going on? Why is he treating me like this?
Abi: I am so sorry for what you and your daughter have been struggling with. Both of my daughters went through similar experiences at around that age--the elder, with self-harm and suicidal ideation, the younger, with what the psych community quaintly refers to as "irritability", which led to all sorts of destructive acting out, and which was set off by a suicide cluster in her grade that took one of her closest friends.
Older daughter is now almost 30, got married this winter, and is as grounded as a human can be about her ongoing (tho' greatly diminished) struggles. Younger daughter is 23, about to graduate from college, and already working toward establishing herself in the career she has chosen. I note all this to let you know that with love and support, our kids come out on the other side, often stronger at the broken parts.
I also want to witness the terror and rage and helplessness that having a beloved child go through this can bring to a parent. Be as kind to yourself as you are to your daughter.
Courage.
Abi: I am so sorry for what you and your daughter have been struggling with. Both of my daughters went through similar experiences at around that age--the elder, with self-harm and suicidal ideation, the younger, with what the psych community quaintly refers to as "irritability", which led to all sorts of destructive acting out, and which was set off by a suicide cluster in her grade that took one of her closest friends.
Older daughter is now almost 30, got married this winter, and is as grounded as a human can be about her ongoing (tho' greatly diminished) struggles. Younger daughter is 23, about to graduate from college, and already working toward establishing herself in the career she has chosen. I note all this to let you know that with love and support, our kids come out on the other side, often stronger at the broken parts.
I also want to witness the terror and rage and helplessness that having a beloved child go through this can bring to a parent. Be as kind to yourself as you are to your daughter.
Courage.
abi #1: Witnessing. I've had my own struggles with depression (though a few years later in life), and both of you have my sympathies.
Moderators: I think Lobelia Potswallow might have inadvertently left a revealing URL linked on the above comments on this thread, and may want it redacted. Please handle as you see fit.
Clifton@22: thank you! I was just worried about deleting the extra iteration... Typing while morning.
And thank you, Moderators.
abi:
You and your family are in my prayers.
abi: Huge sympathies for what you and your daughter and the rest of your family have been and are going through. My thoughts are with you, and a zen *****hug*****. Take the time you need, be kind to yourself - and many thanks for making the time to start this new thread.
All: I've been rather intermittently getting to the previous iteration and by the time I'd caught up on the comments was always way too far behind to comment. But I have been reading and witnessing.
Jacque @10: definitely a privilege thing. I've been on the receiving end of that myself. Sympathies.
Cassie B.: it's difficult, when there's something like that. I find it a lot harder to call out bad behaviour directed at me - easier when it's directed at someone else.
Abi,
You have been in my prayers for some time now. I will add you daughter and family as well.
I wish I had more to offer you, for making this wonderful place.
@rooster #18: I'm in the grip of a double-whammy sinus & migraine today, so pardon me if I make no sense.
First: I do not mean the sweet codswallop that some lady once told my old child sexual abuse survivors support group, that "we attract toward us the experiences we need in order to grow." That is self-serving bullshit devised by people who don't want to admit that other people freely choose to do bad things to third parties.
That said, it is true that we may subconsciously attract people who are, consciously or subconsciously, looking for somebody who fits certain criteria. They may be self-aware abusers who know how to push certain buttons and so look for them because they get a charge out of it. But usually they're--well, here's speculation about your current friend's thought process: "It's my duty to find and fix people who aren't as honest and forthright and with-it and together and certain of themselves as me." The underlayer of that being, "I am the pattern; people should be like me." And the underlayer of THAT might be, "I only know how to interact with people in the roles of controller or controlee, and I don't like being the controlee."
And that's where you come in. For whatever reason, you subconsciously send signals that to anybody else might mean "I am not an aggressive person, I don't like to argue or lay down the law," but to people who have their controlly pants on, the signals mean, "Aha! Here's somebody in need of the awesomeness that is my wisdom," layered over, "My opinions are best," layered over, "I gotta control somebody and rooster looks like a possibility."
How to get out of it? Explaining all of the above to the person who's trying to force their pattern on you is pointless; they either won't want to hear it or you'll discover that they have a "Please be my therapist and also my uncritical support system" mode and have switched to that.
First, try short responses. Don't explain or justify or argue. Just say the words. If they try to get you to make more words about your words (i.e. provide them with more to study in order to find an opening through which to get at you), say, "I've already said what I'm going to say," or "You asked and I answered, let's move on." If they demonstrate hurt feelings, that is not your problem.
Scripts:
"No, thank you."
"I don't want to."
"I'm not interested, but thanks for thinking of me."
"Nah."
"Not my thing."
"I have other plans." (Don't describe the plans. It's not necessary to actually have plans, other than "not doing the thing.")
If the controlly-pants person won't change out of their controlly pants, and makes a big fuss, and flounces off or comes after you, then you can switch to responses to a jerk, because they are no longer your friend: they are a jerk.
And if other people in your interest group come to you and say not to rock the boat: They started it. You ain't the boat rocker.
Also, it's very common for the signals we sent to come out of experiences in our past. Identifying the event, mapping the patterns the event set, and working on changing them is part of therapy (self- or otherwise).
rooster #18: All of what J said. Additionally, speaking from my Vast Age & Wisdom™, save yourself some time. If he smells abusive, tick the tickey-box & move on. (I just fired a new therapist after two sessions because it "didn't feel right" in some vague ways. Further communications have given me no reason to change my mind.)
If you say simply, "This isn't working for me. I need to move on." and he gets weird about it, that's good information.
If you're not already familiar, Captain Awkward is a gold mine of perspective, scripts, and boundaries around this stuff. The specific tags that may relate to your situation: "Abuse," "Boundaries," & "Darth Vader boyfriend."
J @28: codswallop
Such a great word. I agree that there's no Cosmic Attraction Spirit Energy bringing you challenges for your Spiritual Improvement. It has, however, been my observation that people (myself included) tend to be attracted to other people who will play patterns that are familiar to us, and which hold extra "juice." Often that "juice" is dysfunction that we were trained into growing up. As we work through the dysfunction (like learning to recognize it, in rooster's example above), the juice fades, to be replaced by new, (we hope more functional) kinds of "juice."
@Jacque no. 29, also @rooster: I've also heard it called the normality filter. Our normality filters are calibrated by our formative experiences. We look for situations that fit through our normality filters, even if they are uncomfortable or actually harmful, because our experiences have taught us that these are normal. It isn't that we want them, necessarily; we just figure that that's how the world is supposed to work, like it or lump it. And recalibrating the normality filter is an important part of recovery.
I've certainly experienced that in my own life, particularly in my working life. I actually once quit a job in which I was given respect, dignity, and trust because it "felt wrong" and I was worried that I was "turning into a diva" and "acting spoiled." I immediately got a job that was so bad I ended up in arbitration for unemployment benefits. I freely chose that job because it "felt right." No, it fit into my normality filter. Guess how the people who raised me treated me...The good news, rooster, is that you can change the filter. I have changed mine to the point that the only cow orkers who leave me gaping without immediate response are the ones who do the same to people who have it a lot more together than me! :D
@J: Far more eloquently-put description than mine. Thank you. And I learned a new term today!
Y'all make a lot of sense. Thank you. I don't want to give up the social spaces that we both occupy but I can dial back how much we interact otherwise.
How do you deal with, like, other people's normality filters? When they're like "this thing is not normal" and you're like "yes it is, for me it is." It always feels like gaslighting, to me.
@rooster no. 32: It's useful to consider why the other person thinks that your experience isn't normal. Is it flatware thinking (paraphrased from C.S. Lewis: "The flatware our family uses is the true, proper, and normal flatware and everybody else's is weird and wrong"), or are they concerned because they see that your normality involves you being shortchanged or harmed?
@J
Or somewhere in between: "that's not normal flatware, why don't you use the big spoon/steak knife/whatever for that?" "Well, buddy, this is what I've got and you're right, it would be easier that way, but this'll get the job done."
Phwooooo....
Part of my job involves bookkeeping, providing numbers for the accountant and Big Boss to crunch. I just found out today that Ex-Prez's executive decisions, if they had been allowed to stand, absolutely would have destroyed the non-profit I work for. It's all there in black, white, and glaring red: Our obligations are $N, our cash on hand and emergency savings total $N+X, and Ex-Prez's plans would have cost $(N+X)2. Even the plans she was legitimately allowed to make without consulting anybody, such as figuring out which insurance plan to choose, cost more than they should have.
Because of my limitations, I would have been out of a job, possibly for many months. If they hadn't hired Big Boss when they did, I would be up Shit Creek right now. I made sure to thank him.
Also, thanks to self-help groups like y'all, I did not react to the news with tears or instant gabbling rage. So, thanks.
J, glad to hear that bullet was dodged! Close call.
Yes indeed!
My employer's fiscal year ends on March 31. Before then I had known in a general sense that Ex-Prez's ill-founded plans would have cost about as much as this non-profit has in its reserves, but I hadn't had a full picture of income, expense, obligations, etc. (Under Ex-Prez, the only figure ever checked before a decision to spend money was made was the bank balance--NOT the budget, NOT expected bills to be paid, just the bank balance!) Now I have the figures. Yiiiiikes.
J: Some years ago, we went through a variation on that theme at my HOA, except that the Level Heads came in after much of the damage had been done.
I rejoice in your sense of relief at having dodged a bullet—on more levels than one!
Hey, anybody who might currently be in contact with Arachne Jericho, who posted at these threads years ago: Could you pass on that I'm thinking of her and she has my prayers if wanted? The blog she linked in her comments, and the blog she linked in that blog, were both updated more recently than her latest comment at DFD, but that's still not recent.
Her dysfunctional family has stuck in my mind as one of the most actively malignant, violent, and potentially murderous--counting both soul-murder and physical murder--ever described here. And her description of the way her formative memories affects her self-image sounds like me, cubed.
If you're still out there, Arachne, if you're still breathing in and out, you've won. Every breath a victory.
For anybody in the U.S. who's not looking forward to Mother's Day: Witnessing. I wish I had words to make it better.
Treat yourselves kindly. Give yourselves what you were not given. You have the right to be comforted.
Lighting a candle for Codemonkey as well. It's been about as long...Codemonkey, I hope you got out. And if you haven't, you still can. It is never too late to begin; you just begin from a different place.
I think I found Codemonkey, but I'm not 100% sure it's the right guy. If it is, reading between the lines he seems to be doing okay.
I think this thread (on what happens *after* you escape the dysfunctional family/system/whatever) is really useful and on point for this group.
While frustrating that the "happy ending" of a movie (where the main character escapes the dungeon) is not the happy ending of life, being aware of this is really critical for not reiterating or repeating the patterns you despise. A lesson I learned painfully in therapy, but am incredibly grateful for having learned.
abi: so glad to hear/read you again. I've been missing your online presence lately and hoping you were doing all right. You and your family have my best wishes for navigating such a very difficult place.
Cassy B. @12: I've had RP experiences that led to me crying myself to sleep that night; people can say, "oh, it's happening to the character, not to you!" but that's not actually true. I was thinking when I read your comment that improv works (when it works) because the actors pay close attention to each other, and work with what they each give. It sounds like some of the people in your party are paying that kind of attention to you in this situation, but some are not. Do you have a GM? If so, perhaps the GM could allow Seamus the opportunity to totally pants the next character who disparages Seamus' abilities. Or maybe something along those lines could be arranged with the connivance of those players who understand when a joke has gone stale.
@Chickadee no. 44: I think this is very important to know and I'm glad my therapist told it to me early and often.
There is no reset button. There is only forward from where you are, who you are, when you climb out of the wreckage.
There are some things I don't like about how Tolkien handled the Scouring of the Shire, but the necessity for it? He was so right about that. Also the stories-never-end bit.
@44 and @46 Bujold, from Memory. Miles is getting advice on how to recover from a self-induced disaster, not one imposed by circumstances, but it still applies.
“You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on."
"What do you find on the other side? When you go on?"
She shrugged. "Your life again. What else?”
Abi - I'm reading this a bit late and I'm very sorry to hear about your daughter's troubles. This speaks to me very personally.
When I finally got my parents' attention regarding my depression and suicidal thoughts, I was 14, but it had been going on for two or three years. They were very loving and concerned and they arranged for me to see a therapist—once. Or maybe twice? It was all a blur, but anyway, either they had a disagreement with the therapist or they just couldn't afford him, because apparently nothing more could be done and so I got the impression that what I was supposed to do was wait it out and not talk about it any more. I did, and (obviously) survived, and the year after that was quite a bit better, so we never mentioned it again—until the next time, in college, when I needed to use their insurance to pay for treatment because it had gotten that bad again. There have been many next times after that, which they were mostly unaware of until recently, and we still haven't ever really been able to talk about it. And I think that's more or less because my mother also has had major depression off and on for her whole life, and never had any professional help, and doesn't think she needs it; it's just the family curse, what can you do. Maybe if it had been something completely alien to them, they might've taken it more seriously. But I'll never know.
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that it is terrible to have been fighting this for three years and still see it happening, but as I'm sure you know, your continued engagement and support is incredibly valuable.
Floofcatcher: Your story resonates with mine. I came up before depression was really even in the public consciousness as a formal diagnosis, and my mother's family history made her incredibly twitchy around mental illness in general. I was almost certainly deeply clinically depressed for most of my teenage years (at least), but I didn't dare bring it to her attention. Entirely aside from the likelihood of getting effective treatment (slim), her reaction would have been far more hazardous to my health than the illness itself.
abi's OP makes me fantasize, not for the first time, what it would have felt like to have a parent who was actually and effectively on my side.
Diary entry from the other day: "Today I got two tweens and a teen to feed themselves and get themselves decent to leave the house despite summer-break-itis, shopped for a wide variety of rarely bought items around a large store, helped to prepare a large garden tub for planting and plant out assorted salad starts, made a square-meal dinner for five, made sure that my very sick relative got her supper, did two loads of laundry, worked on next month's events calendar, and looked after the cat. Nevertheless, I feel as though I didn't do enough. Man, my brain is a jerk." That's the first time I ever put it into words. Progress!
@Jacque no. 50: Me too...I was taught early and often that if I reported a problem, I would get one of two reactions depending on who I reported it to and their mood at the time: Oodles of affection and no help, or a cold reminder that nothing that ever happened to me could possibly be a problem to me, although my reaction to it could certainly be a problem to somebody else.
Learned that lesson so well that I had the same doctor for 20 years before I told her about my chronic pain.
From Andrea Bonior's Baggage Check column at Washington Post Express. Second letter at https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/2019/06/03/im-afraid-my-wife-will-need-even-more-me-time-if-we-have-baby/?utm_term=.4a93756ebfb6
I’m guessing that the seeds of self-doubt and hypersensitivity to criticism have grown over time because they’ve never truly been dealt with, and now they’re full-blown shrubbery that necessitates a backhoe to dig out.
I liked the metaphor - try to root things out when they are small, vs. waiting until you need a backhoe.
May be relevant: It's Not a Child's Job to Heal Their Wounded Mother
@Quill no. 53: Definitely relevant. A significant percentage of the posts in the Raised by Narcissists subreddit (ob. disclaimer: is moderated) come from people who are trying to break free from that role. It isn't easy, because they are trying to undo a literal lifetime of conditioning.
RBN cross-pollinates with another subreddit, JustNoMIL (also moderated). JNMIL was founded specifically for people whose mothers-in-law behave like this--for people who feel like the side piece in a marriage between their spouse and their spouse's mother. There are more topics than that at JNMIL now, but "sonsbands," as they often put it, still feature heavily.
This happens a lot, is what I'm saying. It's a classic dysfunction. At the heart of it is the failure of the parent to actually raise the child. No, not every culture expects the children to grow up and leave, or even stop giving their parent(s) a veto--but at some point the child is supposed to at least expand their focus from the tight bond with the parent. (It's not always the mother--although, yes, it's nearly always the mother.) And the parent is supposed to seek interaction with their peers.
I think, though, that the article's explanation of Taylor's relationship with her mother as an attempt by her mother to avoid the pain of abandonment misses something. Plenty of people, faced with being left like that, will pursue rebound relationships with people their own age. Or they'll join groups that offer emotional highs from worship/demonstration/rescue work. Or they'll join exercise clubs to chase a high of another kind. Or they'll hook up in bars, if sex is their high. The point is, they'll attempt to avoid the emotional labor of dealing with it, whatever it is, by seeking the company of their peers.
People who commit emotional incest, though, are looking for something else. They're looking for the security of control. You can tell a child, whose social contacts you curate, any old bullshit, and they won't see through it. You can switch smoothly from needing them to take on the pain of empathizing with your adult issues to needing them to shush and go play now, and they'll do it. The child will never sit down across the breakfast table, look you in the eye, and say, "Honey...we need to talk.
Something has to change." And if, in adult life, they end up at DFD or RBN or JNMIL because the cognitive dissonance between their life with you and the expectations of their peers is too much, and they do try to have that talk? Then you can push their emotional buttons--which you installed.
I read this article and its preceding article the other day, and it hit me like a punch to the stomach.
Kaj describes:
I realized that I had a sense of unease, a vague feeling of shame… as if there was something shameful about me that I knew, but was trying to avoid thinking about. And I knew that I had felt this same vague shame many times before, often particularly when I was tired. […]
… there’s always an underlying insecurity, a sense of unease from the fact that anything might cause your attention to swing back to the [memories of being a terrible person]. You need a constant stream of external validation and evidence in order to keep your attention anchored on the examples [of being a good person]; the moment it ceases, your attention risks swinging to the [memories of being a terrible person] again.
My experiences are not quite as strong as his but it rhymes a great deal. I don't really like myself in a lot of ways and I do frequently feel like I'm avoiding... something...
I think some of it was accidentally exposing myself to an allergen repeatedly over the last week, because I'm not feeling it so hard now, but I did have a miniature emotional breakdown in the middle of Friday after reading those posts. I also realized that for most positive self-concept adjectives that one might use, I have a fairly negative or ambivalent self-concept. I think of myself as not-resilient, not-persistent, not-scintillating, not-dependable, not-particularly-likable. Most of what I have going for me in the self-concept department is that I know I'm intelligent. Hrm.
So, I need to check my behavior.
Newly Teenaged Child had a birthday party earlier this week. One of NTC's guests (who walked to the party) showed up with his little sister, aged seven. No, she wasn't invited. No, nobody told us she was coming. No, the parents weren't there.
NTC informed me that the little girl's parents do this all the time. The mother is occupied with three even younger children and the father...I dunno what he does...so the little girl is dumped on her brother, and the parents expect their oldest to tote this kid everywhere. Even to places where she wasn't invited.
Well, my main interest was in keeping the party going, and NTC's 9-year-old brother was also there, so I handed the little girl a balloon and let her run around.
But then, she started being bratty. Pretended to be hurt as a "joke." Interrupted other people's conversations. Whined and wheedled for a second helping of ice cream cake. Started reaching onto her brother's plate to grab his food.
I never know what to do in these situations, so (as usual for me) I emulated a movie. I put on my best Mary Poppins voice and said, "I'm sure that you can find your big girl manners, which do not include reaching onto other people's plates. I'm sure you have a chair, and you can sit in it."
And she did--but she was dripping tears and wouldn't participate in party games when invited to do so.
Was I mean? What should I do if this happens again?
J @56
My own first reaction is you did just fine. Unexpected guests must know that being unexpected means perhaps having to make do.
My second reaction confirms the first: you were working on a party, true, on the behalf of someone else, but still your house, your rules.
And you let the little girl know that tears were not going to reset the boundaries you have every right to expect, and set, and (as she made necessary) explain.
Thank you for the riff on Mary Poppins - I'll have to remember that, for future reference.
Crazy(and, alas, none of those folks have the excuse of youth...)Soph
J #56: Agreed with crazysoph. Also, in context those tears sound downright manipulative to me. Good on you for not buying into it.
Maybe manipulative, maybe not: if her family is such that a 7-year-old and a 13-year-old are considered an independent unit capable of looking after themselves, there could be a lot of things going on there. It does not sound like she is thoroughly looked-after even if all her basic needs are met, y'know?
Either way, I wouldn't put the tears on J, though. Assuming there was no bellowing or knife-waving involved, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable and even appropriately gentle reminder to mind your manners.
Inge's little girl was spending time with both households she was a part of. At one point, when she was around 5, at Inge's place, daughter started working up towards a tantrum. Inge told her, "Oh, stop. You know that doesn't work around here." Daughter deflated. Inge asked her, "Does that kind of thing work at your other house?" Daughter grinned and nodded.
Children are generally not stupid, and young ones tend to have very self-focused "ethics". They learn pretty quickly what works to get what they want, and apply it.
J, my experience of being in something like a parental role is very limited, but I think you handled that very well.
J: when I was 7 I probably would have cried upon a completely reasonable and gentle rebuke from an authority figure, as yours sounds like it was, and been unable to cope for the rest of the event. But that wouldn't make the rebuke unreasonable or the authority figure mean; nor would it obligate anyone to soothe me. I was just a fragile child (and am still sometimes a fragile adult). Something of that nature could have been going on.
@hope in disguise no. 61: I was wondering the same thing.
In the moment, when I saw her face, I also remembered having that expression when I'd been going along thinking that I was doing something Okay, but then an authority figure used the Big Voice on me and I felt like I was being punished for not magically knowing rules that nobody had bothered to teach me. And I tried to figure out what could have made that better, back then...and just started hurting for that poor kid. I was the overlooked afterthought too.
Ofc. trying to explain that to a 7-year-old would have been either pointless or painful; I just invited her back into the party games, and eventually she started participating again.
What would have made it better, probably, was somebody teaching me (us?) the rules in the first place, in a way I (we) could understand, and gently making sure they really were understood. This would have been a job for parents, or a heroic cause for a teacher or peer to take up. For me, my parents were distracted at best and dysfunctional at worst, while teachers I think did not have the time(?), may have been content with my strong academic performance despite my abysmal social skills, and were definitely not obligated to step in. I don't think I managed to make friends with any socially skilled peers, either, who were willing or able to explain what I was doing wrong and what to do instead.
I'm glad to hear that she did start participating again, though!
J @56: Setting reasonable boundaries is never mean. In fact, if anything, I suspect you did her a favor, as your description of her behavior sounds to me like she's desperate for attention, and that in her family of origin, that means she has to annoy someone before it's forthcoming. The only rec I would offer, if this comes up again, is: try to catch her doing something right, and compliment her on it. Do so as often and as specifically as you can. "Wow, thank you for sitting in your chair! I know it's hard when there's so much going on and you want to take part!"
I infer that her refusal to join party games may be because, having been rebuked, she didn't know how to do so in an acceptable way. (It could totally also be manipulative—oddly, it doesn't read that way to me, though.) If you had the cycles free, it might have been worthwhile to get down to eye level and ask her what she would need for her to want to play?
@Abi, I am saddened to hear that your daughter is having those experiences, but grateful she has someone like you to support her. I don't know if it can help, but I've had suicidal ideation and self-harm impulses all my life and I've never acted on them - it's scary, but it can be lived with, even quite happily the rest of the time, especially with effective treatment. I'm hopeful your daughter will find her own safe path through this and will hold your family in my heart until that time.
@abi no. 1: I concur with KayTei no. 65. I have intrusive thoughts and other "brain weather" even after a freaking shipload of therapy. My basic pattern is:
1. oh SHIT
2. Oh, that again.
3. Apply therapeutic measures.
4. Go on with life.
The key--and this is where therapy is almost literally vital--is to be able to lean back for a minute, to recognize, "No, this is neither an inextricable feature of my character nor an exterior force acting upon me; this is my brain doing a thing, like a charley horse. And it has passed before, and it will pass again." I had to have an episode in front of a professional who reassured me and handed me the tools I needed.
I want to thank everyone here, and especially abi, for founding this holiday and these threads. My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and my mom is ... difficult at the best of times.
Knowing you all are here is a comfort.
Nancy: Ouch, that's hard. Jedi hugs if welcome.
Lovely, affirming thread over on Twitter (ht: Ana Mardoll)
Jacque, very welcome, and thank you.
Jacque, very welcome, and thank you.
Nancy @67 Oh, my sympathies, that's tough. Wishing you comfort and self-compassion.
I just saw Into the Spiderverse again, and I wasn't happy with a lot of the emotional stuff.
Part of it is watching the heavy father material-- I know it's supposed to be cringeworthy, but it's painful. And (as I recall) the mother handling it as "he means well". Meaning well is better than meaning ill, but it's not a complete justification.
But also, and possibly worse, is the idea that becoming an adult is a matter of will and choice and it's a complete state change.
This is worse than training montages, which at least sketch the idea that you need to learn something.
On the plus side, I'm about 2/3 through Ferrett Steinmetz' On Sol Majestic-- emotional abuse is complicated, and so is recovering from it. It's also a good gaudy science fiction novel, if you can enjoy the kind with very little science in it, which I can.
Jacque @ 69
I'm not crying, YOU'RE crying!!!
Crazy(okay, so maybe I am crying, too)Soph
PS because even if I am pretty firmly cis-het in my sexuality, OMG the support that mother gives her kid. Gave me some good fodder for mining my own childhood (still working on "the places that got hurt", to quote Peter Gabriel)
Hey, so, I read something I shouldn't have and am now having a bad night. Just checking: If your adult son, who lives on his own, calls you in a panic because he's having a cocaine overdose, and you, his mother, tootle over there with your college-freshman and mid-high-school daughters in the car, that's not normal, right?
And if your older daughter then proclaims that she's not going to stay with him and your youngest says that she'll stay with her brother while you go to get help because the phone got ripped out of the wall after your son hung up, and you actually agree to this, that's not normal, right?
And if you then drive away leaving your youngest child to attempt to keep your suicidal raving adult son away from the knives/go frantically over CPR in her mind in case his heart really does stop, and somehow it takes somewhere between 45 minutes and 3 hours (I was too freaked out to remember this exactly) for emergency services to arrive from the hospital that's less than 10 minutes away, that's not normal, right?
And nobody ever talking about it again except for a casual mention that he's in rehab a few months later...that's not normal, right?
(And still feeling guilty, like being either allowed or very strongly hinted to stay was somehow my fault and I brought the trauma and terror on myself...that's not normal, right?)
(I can't remember parts of that night. I may have been the one to summon help. I remember, or think I remember, or maybe I remember trying to get out in order to do this, going to the neighbors and banging on their door after some interminable time stuck with my brother. If it happened, which I'm not saying it did, it would have been a monumental shove against a lifetime of conditioning to do no such thing. Certainly my mother didn't think of knocking on any doors even though you could throw a rock and hit neighbors on either side.)
(Did somebody yell at me for not calling earlier?)
(Did the people in the house have to figure out something was wrong, because by that point I couldn't even talk?)
I'm going to lie down as soon as I can, but right now I don't think I could rest. Damn I hate nights like this.
J #76: I'm sorry for your rough night. And no, your mother's response to the situation was in no way appropriate. Here's the Dysfunction Bingo squares I can see offhand:
(1) In deadly crisis, insisting it must be handled entirely within the immediate family.(*) Before cell phones, asking a neighbor to make a phone call was a thing. Even today, it still is, just rarer.
(2) Dumping the problem and its hazards on the kid who's too young to refuse, not to mention least-equipped to deal with it, and then leaving.
(3) Crisis and brother "disappear" afterwards, and are not spoken of afterwards, let alone any discussion with the kid who was dealing with the situation.
(4) Blaming the kid who was left to deal with it for their own suffering.
* Even (or especially) if the police weren't to be relied on ("911 don't go to Motown" or worse), there should have been some other family, friends, or neighbors.
Thank you.
I think, looking back, that my mother's chief concern was that people might know that cocaine was involved.
Not that the man who could feel his heart trying to leap through his ribs might die, or that he might hurt his little sister during his paranoid/suicidal freakout. Just that people might see and disapprove.
J, trust your voice of reason. No, that wasn't/isn't normal or appropriate.
There's a CBC radio show, "Out in the Open", about things that We Do Not Talk About which we really should be paying attention to. Today's episode is a rebroadcast, "Family Tree" (podcast here) about people who have determined to -- as the show's description puts it -- branch out from the family tree. Interviewees include a guy who is determined to break the cycle of violence and abuse that he suffered ("when did this stuff become 'normal'?"), and a young guy who succeeded in graduating from high school, first one in his large family, despite everyone else telling him that there was no way he could do so. "Nah, you're gonna drop out, you're going to be a father at age 16, ..."
J: Well, first off, let's distinguish "normal" from "appropriate" and "healthy."
Speaking from the perspective of the fam I grew up in (and divorced as soon as I had the means), the cocaine part and the almost dying part is an order of magnitude beyond what I ever experienced. But the rest of it sounds like pretty bog-standard codependency. Especially the bit about "never speak of this again." Denial is not just a river in Africa, wot? I was schooled early that talking about my father's drinking outside the family was strictly Not Done.
Another metric I'd suggest applying: "acceptable?" And I'd say, most assuredly not.
From my generally typical and healthy upbringing, I can say that yes, that's messed up.
J: What everyone else is saying, and it sounds like you know it but just need the backstop: that's not anything that I'd recognize as either normal or acceptable.
@David Goldfarb no. 82 et al: Thanks, and that's what I needed. My old programming ("you are to blame if you are upset or afraid, you are responsible for fixing anything that goes wrong, it's your fault if you can't instantly figure out how to do something nobody ever taught you, any claiming of child-status by child-you is/was horrifically spoiled and demanding behavior") is overwritten, but that doesn't mean erased.
J: Deepest sympathies. I'm going through a variant of that right now with the news cycle. "What do you mean you haven't figured out how to fix the climate crisis!?! You've known about this for forty years! What have you been doing all this time??!??" :-\ I know it makes no sense, but that doesn't help knock it back.
...how do I keep forgetting about this....
Wandered into Ursula Vernon's Twitter feed. SO soul-healing....
Look back at what I wrote @76, I seem to have recovered a slice of memory.
I did go to the neighbors' house. I am so proud of that screwed-up beaten-down kid for doing it. She thought that if she left her brother's house he would instantly kill himself and it would be all her fault. Or if she dared to disturb the sacred privacy of the neighbors with her irrelevant problems (irrelevant because "why aren't you solving them yourself, GOD, such a prima donna, so damn spoiled"--I'm quoting an abuser) she would be told that she was horrible, as usual (note: these people were complete strangers) and they would slam the door in her face, or else attack and beat her without any fear of censure. Or she would see emergency services showing up before she had managed to summon them herself and then her abusers would know and be hugely insulted that she had dared believe that they wouldn't summon help (eventually, when they felt like it, stop being so pushy and demanding, GOLLLL), and then it would be punishment time. And so on, and so on. But she still made it to the neighbors' house.
I still don't remember whether I made that call, or the neighbors called, or what. I do recall praying that they would have a phone just inside their front door with a long cord on the handset, so that I wouldn't have to step into their home and instantly, automatically cue a punishment avalanche.
Damn, I was a mess.
Today I admitted that a late tax return may have been my fault (I cannot confirm this or rule it out) and that I had made a mistake in some research, and did not feel more than a distant ghost of anxiety that I would get picked at. Which, nobody did. There were four of us at the table, trying to figure out if we really were late with the payroll taxes (not connected to the late tax return), and if so how it had happened. And they doublechecked my research to that point (which involved tons of sleuthing and reorganizing things because the filing system before I was hired here oh my goodness), found something I had missed, and passed stacks of paper around until we had correctly identified the issue (which turns out to stem from the last quarter of 2016 although we just heard about it last month).
Y'know, adulting. With adults. Who didn't feel the need to shit all over the nearest convenient target.
Five years ago I would've had the shakes afterward. Ten years ago I would've had the shakes DURING. Twenty years ago I would've cried all night the night before.
God bless therapy and support groups, is what I'm saying.
GNAH! Wrong nick, pretend you didn't see that.
Changed. —Idumea Arbacoochee
@56 -
Given how you were blindsided by the situation, you handled it fine.
But this is likely to happen again, if your child and the older child remain friends.
So you need to be prepared to deal with it. Because the parents aren't actually asking a newly minted teenager to assume responsibility for the younger child. They are assuming you will take responsibility for the child. And if something went wrong, I don't doubt they'd try to sue you.
The most important issue for you now is what will you do the next time the older child is invited over and the younger shows up.
You need to plan a response in advance, or this will keep happening.
If you want to take a hard line...
Send older child inside, keep younger child outside. Immediately call the parents, and tell them that you invited teenager, not young kid. They need to puck up young kid. Now. Because you are hosting a party for teenagers, not elementary school children. And you are not willing to manage supervising a young child while running a teenage party safely.
And if they will not take responsibility for young kid, you will call CPS. Because teenage kid at a party is not an acceptable safe alternative for childcare. And they can't draft you to the job.
The bad behavior here is the parents, not either child.
Wow, I never thought I'd be posting in this thread.
Really, I had a pretty great childhood, growing up as a military (Navy) brat, moving around, but only a few times -- somehow, once my Dad got posted to the office where they literally decided where people were posted (after a few years in the Naval War College), he never had to move again*!
To be fair, his second posting after the personnel office was CO of NAVFSSO (Naval Food Service Systems Office), so it makes sense he'd stay in the DC area.
Anyway, I'm not here to just brag about my Dad. He was an alcoholic (I say was, because in my experience it is not necessarily an ongoing condition -- not to say that for some it is not). My Mom is sad for all the times that he missed with me and my brother. Honestly, I never felt that he was absent from my life. I think, like most people of my time (born 1972), that my Mom was the primary parent, but, well -- that's just how things were done.
Anyway, none of this is really relevant. The problem is that my Dad's sister has been stealing from my Mom for 40 fucking years.
I didn't know any of this until about 3 months ago, when my Mom and Dad finally told me about it.
Just a moment to sketch *my* idea of what my extended family was (all my Dad's family, 'cuz Mom was an only child).
Uncle B--- got divorced (scandal! -- but not so scandalous that I was not allowed at the wedding to his new wife F---) As an 8-10 year old, I really wondered what had happened to Aunt P--. (Spoiler alert: B--- and P-- were spectacularly ill-suited to be married, and both B--- and P-- were much happier in their new marriages.)
Phew -- now we get to the meat of it -- my father's sister J---- married my Uncle R---. They have 3 lovely children and 6 amazing grandchildren, and ain't that the best thing ever?
I feel I must at this point interject into my own story -- my older brother, who was married to a woman I love (because my brother loved her -- I said at their wedding, and I hold to still that I had always had a brother, but never had a sister, and 4 years on, I 'm glad I do), died of ALS 4 years ago. I am asexual/aromantic/dontreallycare.
So. Apparently, Aunt J---- has been stealing from my Mom for 40 years. I love Aunt J----. I still do. But she's been attacking my Mom for 40 years. She's stolen dozens of things from their home (but always things that are hers.) That's tough stuff. Not nearly as tough as some of you have had to deal with, but, y'know tough. One of the things she stole was a large kitchen knife. That's worrisome, right?
But...here's the thing. I could forgive almost anything Aunt J---- did. But. While talking about financial planning, my Mom showed her a book that my Dad had prepared for her in case he pre-deceased her (statistically likely and a perfectly in-character preparation for my Dad to make). It had all the account information and what-not that Mom would need when he was pushing up the daisies.
And she stole it.
So, like I said, this has been going on for 40 years, but that, specifically, hurts. My Aunt was viciously, viciously, attacking my Mom. That's fucked up. The things she'd stolen before that were not especially valuable, but a book that only had value to her? That's just evil.
My Uncle R--- called me last week to see if I could help deal with this situation. It's obvious he believes his wife (Aunt J----), but there's only two possible things here -- my Mom's crazy or Aunt J---- is crazy. Yes, crazy is an unscientific word that doesn't mean anything, but seriously. One of them is crazy, right?
I'm pretty sure it's not my Mom. I honestly don't know if I'm going to have a relationship with my extended family after this.
* Oooh, caught on preview that I almost didn't pay that off! Man, the things you could get away with in the Navy in the '80s....
So, imagine a bunch of mid-level officers drunk off their minds deciding "we should make a video!"
And so they did. It was a sketch "comedy" video that I only remember one scene from:
SCENE: Cramped office
* PHONE RINGS *
Low-ranking officer picks up the phone. Listens, nods....
LOW-RANKING OFFICER: Oh, yes, Seaman Johnson, I have your paperwork right here.
Low-ranking officer opens desk drawer and pulls out a dart. Low-ranking officer throws the dart.
LOW-RANKING OFFICER: Oh, sorry Seaman Johnson, it's going to be Anchorage for you.
Bah-dum-pah! Comedy!
Gregor Mendel @90, disregarding for the moment the emotional component of your aunt doing this (which is what you wrote about), she has a history of stealing things from your parents AND she now has a book with a complete list of account numbers. I think your mom needs to be vigilant about watching for theft from those accounts, perhaps even transfer funds to new accounts. (If we're talking things like the power company, and not financial accounts, never mind.)
Re 56:
I feel with the girl. If I understand your story right, she's constantly being pushed on her brother, resented by her brother, dragged to older boys' events where she has no friends and the activities are far from her seven-year-old liking, resented by her brother's friends, resented by the friends' parents who are burdened by her presence...
No wonder she got upset. (And acted out. Upset children tend to do that. And not realise it.)
I think she's probably getting the rawest deal of all the people involved. (Second place, of course, belongs to her brother.)
I don't think she was being manipulative when she started crying. I think she was lonely, frustrated, overwhelmed, exhausted and humiliated.
I don't have any advice, just this observation.
Gregor Mendel @90: Following on OtterB's excellent comment, once money is moved and is secure, I wonder if it would be worthwhile to make a new book, and also make sure there is a backup to be kept in a trusted location.
Also, it's probably good to track actions that occur in the old accounts, and if any actions occur that Mom or her heirs & assigns didn't perform, that would be pretty compelling evidence against Aunt J, no?
Divizna: I think this is an excellent perspective, and I'm ashamed that it hadn't occurred to me.
UGH this mother.
My daughter's actual agemate was invited to a sleepover here last night. Kiddo usually walks, but this time was driven here. And here comes the mom, asking me, who she's spoken to for less than 5 minutes total over our entire acquaintance, whether we can juuuuust watch the four year old for the afternooonnn while Momma goes on a hiiike. (Duplicating her speech patterns, but cannot duplicate the cute little head-tilt.) Turns out that her big sib was supposed to have been going along too, but would rather go to the sleepover. And now suddenly the little 'un "can't handle" the hike. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
When I said I'd have to ask my husband, she suddenly changed her mind and said that the four year old was just itching to go hiking so they would go after all.
I still have not seen or spoken to this four year old, BTW, and have never heard her name.
She's more and more reminding me of certain divorced parents--although she's married--who proclaim their devotion to their children and show this by arranging to never actually be alone with them. As somebody put it over at Captain Awkward, they pat themselves on the back for watching other people watch their children. Always unpaid people, you understand.
What bugs me about all this, deep down, is that she's letting down her kids, and my instincts tell me "Child in need--help child."
But this isn't a crisis. Her schedule didn't just suddenly blow up. If I let her offload her kids on me, she'll do it more often, and that isn't actually helping. It certainly isn't helping ME.
But she's still doing it, and there is nothing I can do to make her stop. She is satisfied with her solution to this issue.
Another thing: There are buttloads of paid and even free programs around here, all year round, that will watch your kids for you. In particular, two preschools do summer programs for up to age 8, and I know that both of them offer financial aid. If she doesn't want to interact with her younger children without a buffer, she can do so, and get good professional service. But her tween kid doesn't have to be paid and can't tell her she's messing up, so.
UGH this mother.
J, would it be possible to point her at the programs?
And, as hard as it is, good for you for holding your boundaries.
hope in disguise @55: Small world department: a couple of books referenced in the linked post were written by folks local to me, from whom I took my first NLP trainings.
Jacque @97: I did remember that you've talked about NLP before, while I was reading! I actually picked up Transforming Your Self and have done a bit of trying to do the exercises, although I'm not the greatest at pinning down an internal experience (visualization or otherwise) to describeability and repeatability.
I've got TYS on order (it's apparently out of print*) but the one I'm really interested in is Core Transformation. I remember hearing some interesting things about it back when it came out.
Yeah, the self-image stuff is slippery and difficult, and I, too, struggle with nailing it down. But those articles you linked speak rather directly to some of the things I'm struggling with these days, so I think it might be worth having a look.
* I've seen it on Amzn, but I don't trade with them anymore if I can help it.
@Nancy C. Mittens no. 96: I didn't mention before that my daughter's actual friend is trans. I am worried that if I get his parents' backs up by even hinting that they might have done something wrong, that they will react by forbidding him to see my daughter anymore, because they misgender him all the time but they probably have noticed that we don't.
The other day he was rumpusing with my son (I think he digs it because it's all girls at his house) and I snapped, "Boys! Take it outside!" and he just lit up.
Outing my self here a bit, but I've linked to a Twitter thread about a book I just read - Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman. (link in my name rather than in the body of the comment). Such a good and compassionate story starting in a dysfunctional family, and ending in hope.
J @100: "Boys! Take it outside!" and he just lit up.
Awwww! ::grin:: That just fills me with warm fuzzies! :) <3 <3
Chickadee: Very interesting! Thank you for the link! (I've added the book to my TBR pile.) (NB: my library has the capacity to make "lists," so for a miracle, much of my TBR pile is virtual, doesn't take up any shelf space, and doesn't need to be dusted! This is a glorious thing!)
Not relevant to the current topic, but this seems to fit certain past DFD topics very well.
(Warning for drawing of snake-like creature, possibly offensive language)
Quill #103: Yeah, that's the way to do it... ;-)
Yet another annual family reunion this summer, which I went to partly because I wanted to get to know the niblings (the eldest of whom is now about 10) and partly because faaaaaaaaaaamily and parental sadface about how I couldn't come for a few years due to work schedules. While there, I had a lovely chat with eldest nibling, and shortly after getting home from the trip I suggested that we start writing letters and being pen pals. (This was enthusiastically agreed to and we've already exchanged our first letters.)
Dunno about the rest of the family, but there's always hope for the littles. From this distance the best I can really do is model acceptance and kindness, which isn't a complete solution to the casual broad-spectrum bigotry the rest of the family considers normal, but at least it'll be there.
I need another reality check.
Middle Child is 13. Middle child has had a disturbing pattern of behavior from the moment she could put coherent sentences together. On one hand, I'm thinking...it's childish behavior...right? But on the other hand, she is 13 now, and still doing these things...
Group 1: She is doing a thing (stomping around the house, ripping a magazine as she reads it, smacking her gum extra loud, rhythmically banging the arm of the couch, etc.) I say, "Stop [description of thing]." She responds, "I'm not [description of thing]," often while she is doing it. She keeps doing it. If I point directly at the thing, she just insists more and more that she is not doing it, while doing it.
Group 2: I witness a conversation between her and someone else. Someone Else says, "Let's A." Middle Child says, "No, let's B." She starts B. Someone Else shows lack of interest in B. Middle Child says angrily, "Why did you make me do B if you're not going to even do B?" This is one example of many, many times when she remembers being forced to or asked to do something that nobody forced or asked her to do. It is always--somebody--else's--fault.
Group 3: I repeatedly discuss a decision with her, such as going to summer camp or choosing an elective. I can attest from my checked-off task list that I have done this. I proceed according to her stated decision. When the time comes to do the thing, she NEVER heard me talk about it and she NEVER decided to do it, capitals often verbatim, sometimes to the point of screaming fits.
Group 4: Can't seem to remember that other people don't like being grabbed without warning AND cannot seem to learn that when somebody says "No, stop," that means her, immediately.
I did some of this shit when I was a kid, but one sorta-kinda-accidentally-useful thing my abusers did was mash my shame button whenever I, for example tackle-hugged somebody. Middle Child does not seem to have the ability to think, "That was bad and I feel bad about it." I have tried to at least awaken her self-interest by having her consider (for example) whether a joke she plans to put in a birthday card is one that her friend has found funny in the past, because if it isn't her friend may not want to be around her for a while. But I am only seeing glimmers of understanding of that.
The other thing is...there is narcissism in my family. Never diagnosed, but if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and attempts to consume other people like a duck...
Should I worry?
J #106: I'd say that you shouldn't just worry, you should call in the professionals.
It's not necessarily narcissism as per the diagnosis, but it's certainly a Problem, and it's not likely to go away on its own, if its a long-time pattern that has been tolerated through the pre-pubertal years.
J: That all sounds...strangely dissociative. I am no flavor of professional, but that certainly would concern me. Some deep research might at least be in order...?
@107: Not tolerated. I call her on it every single time. And she does do nice things for people without apparent hope of gain, and she does think about ways to live more independently instead of just assuming that everything will come to her like a complete narcissist. And she is doing more of that kind of thing. And in school she is seen as a mature, steady, self-motivated person by teachers and students.
But she's also still doing the other stuff.
@107: Sorry, wrong tense: I have been calling her on it every single time, right from the beginning.
J 109-110: OK, that's good. If she's not showing other signs of narcissism, then indeed, it's likely something else. But if you're not seeing improvements, or even attempts by her to self-correct, then it is at least "something".
And again, I do think this calls for professional expertise -- parental love and concern do count for a lot, but no matter how loving, there are limits to what an untrained person (especially one who's involved in the situation) can accomplish.
I have floated therapy to her on the basis that she can tell or ask a therapist things that she may not want to talk about with us and the therapist will never tell...but she is just NOPE. And she is fully capable of walking out the door and just vanishing for hours if we make her go.
I'll keep bringing it up quarterly.
This is a tough situation. My first thought is, are there any adults outside the family who she respects and responds to? Also, look back at your own memories -- is there any approach besides the abuse you suffered that might have gotten through to you-back-then?
Beyond that, the best I can come up with is to sit down with her when she's not actually doing any of these things, go down the list you provided above, and make a couple of points clear:
First, this talk is not optional, and you're not going to back down and go away just because she says so. You are her parent, and calling this stuff out is part of your job and authority as her parent.
And second, explain that these behaviors are not acceptable, not just to you, but to society in general -- and she's past the age when she gets a free pass for being "just a kid". Tell her flat out that even if she manages to keep on stonewalling you for another five years or whatever, she's about to start running into people who aren't her parents, and who will not-accept-it with progressively more serious consequences: Friends lost, school discipline, lost opportunities and options, getting thrown out of groups, programs, schools, stores and workplaces, and eventually trouble with the law.
In that last vein, you might point her at the Not Always Right site, which is full of stories about people who tried enforcing their personal reality on the world at large, with consequences ranging from the people in their wake saying CWAA, to simply not getting what they want, and onward up to getting arrested or worse.
And a comment about getting help: As you describe, this isn't a "talk therapy" situation, you're going to need someone who can diagnose and treat a likely personality disorder.
I've flat-out told her that she will end up friendless and unemployed if she does not stop that stuff. That it doesn't matter whether she thinks it's okay or not if people who have the power to affect her life think it isn't okay.
Eyeroll. "Whatever." Or denial. Or a freak-out.
Forgot to add...the counselors I have in mind are trained to combine listening with CBT, and I think that hearing the same things that I am saying, but not coming from dumb ol' Mom, would get through.
But physically dragging a screaming muscular 13-year-old through the lobby, into the elevator, and down the hall...would not help. So I keep trying to get through to her about seeing a counselor with words.
J, is there any chance that talking to someone at school (a teacher or counselor) could get some help without making things worse? You say "in school she is seen as a mature, steady, self-motivated person by teachers and students", which suggests that she does have some control over these behaviors, and also that people at school may be able to get her to do things that you can't get her to do. If a teacher sent her to talk to a counselor, and the counselor said "you need to get your parents to make you an appointment with X", would that help? If you're not involved as an authority, but just as Mom helping her comply with a school thing, maybe that would work better?
For some reason I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.
I actually went through some... not-dissimilar denial-of-obvious-reality stuff, at a similar age. (Mostly Group 1, and some modified Group 3, but see disclaimers.)
I'm not real sure what it was about. It wasn't, y'know, actual delusions: I knew I was lying. (In my case, it was generally past events, so there was at least some level of superficial plausibility... But really not much.) I think therapy helped (or else I was aging out of that particular reaction/coping mechanism and therapy helped head off whatever it would have turned into, or most likely a little of both).
In my case, the Group 3 stuff was, I think, mostly about the fact that my mother is/was extremely disorganized and there were plenty of times she in fact had not discussed the decision with me, or I had not decided the way she remembered it. (She has acknowledged this, though she says there were also times I merely claimed that had happened. That's plausible: I don't remember doing it specifically, but I likely did.) It sounds like that's not a factor for you, if you're taking written notes (and then able to find and reference those notes).
But the Group 1 stuff... Dunno. I wish I had a good grasp on what was going on there and could tell you "oh, yeah, it's X," but I don't. I did get through it, and it wasn't schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder or anything, and I did turn out mostly okay.
I guess one thing I'd suggest is looking at context. Are these... tactics being deployed any time for any purpose, or are they defensive responses to negative events (specifically: the imposition of authority, for Group 1; the realization that your friendship strategy didn't work out and you've hurt/annoyed someone you like, for Groups 2 and 4; a plan turning out poorly, for Groups 2 and 3.)
I am not normally a "diagnosis via internet" person.
However, your description of middle child (including the 'capable of up and vanishing for several hours' bit) is remarkably similar to something a friend is going through with their child. They have a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). I offer this as a possible avenue of research and hope it helps.
J, does it make a difference if there's concrete evidence that what she's asserting isn't true? Rather than just your word against hers?
Some years back, I was having "disagreements" with a couple of the other members of the exec for a social group. They were *fiercely* resistant to anything that would provide such concrete evidence that what they were asserting about the past wasn't true, such as recording exec meetings. It became pretty clear that they were conscious of their own obstructionism.
Six years since I last posted on these threads and very little has changed. :(
In fact, in some ways my home situation is now even worse: my sister's original daycare arrangement broke down (it was no longer satisfying her due to the effect of budget cuts, and this caused her to lash out at staff on multiple occasions). She is now at a college specifically for autistics, but due to its high cost to the local authority she was only there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (though starting from this week she's now going on Mondays too). In addition, my mam has had major health issues of their own: in the summer of 2016 my mam had a brain aneuryism of her own (thank goodness her brain functioning wasn't appreciably affected by it, unlike my dad) and later that year also had a radical hysterectomy due to cancer: although this got rid of the cancer it's made her tired and hot ever since. Incidentally I learned another reason why my mam never learned to drive: she isn't just extremely anxious but also suffers from an extremely poor sense of direction (such that I had to take her to her hospital appointments because she'd get lost if she tried to go alone).
I am now becoming increasingly sceptical that my dad was a significant source of pain in my mam's life: rather I now suspect that her abusive behaviour towards him was simply because he was a more acceptable target than the disabled sister that is overwhelmingly the real cause of my mam's anguish. Perhaps this misled me earlier in life: my mam's carping at my dad for not getting a job made me believe that money could give my mam a better life. And perhaps when I got a job and my mam refused to take substantially more money from me (even though I was convinced she'd want it) I believed that she was helping me save for a place of my own (with the corollary that I mustn't spend frivolously for fear of making my mam feel exploited) when the real reason may have been a belief that more money simply wouldn't do her any good!
I spent most of the last few years in a resigned mood, and spent much of my spare time on my Microsoft Flight Simulator development hobby (figuring that if I couldn't be happy myself, at least I could make my fellow flight-simmers happy) – climaxing with a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 instrument panel set with a systems simulation more detailed that many commercial add-ons (although not itself commercial quality due to the lack of 3D virtual cockpit) – I started to feel depressed about my life again at the start of this year (at one point causing my mam to come into my room during the night when my sobbing woke her up!)
It's not all bad news though: after one success of losing weight back in the autumn of 2015 (I ended up putting most of it back on again over the next year or two) I succeeded again this summer: interestingly I ended up using a C25k app as dcb had suggested way back in post 527 on the Sitting and Rising thread. I was pretty much the worst kid in my class at PE and never expected I'd try running as an adult, so I was pleasantly surprised when I ended up being able to run 5k in 27:33 (even if it's nowhere near the sub-20-minute times achieved by some of my work colleagues). Unfortunately, I injured my ankle on July 12th (on the last run of the programme) and haven't run since as now my opposite foot is feeling dodgy. :(
Two things I have been doing this year I have also been doing with a view to facilitating moving out: I have been gradually building up a balance on my pre-pay card (it's now up to almost £500) in case I want to do any big spending without my mam's knowledge, and I have also been trying to get rid of excess possessions, starting with my VHS video collection (now down to less than a dozen tapes: the rest went in the bin as they're so obsolete that even charity shops won't take them now).
Three additional things I'd advise you to read to get an even better handle on my situation:
1. A care review made by my sister's social worker after a visit last October (in my type-up I refer to my sister as "S" rather than her real name): this should give you an idea of just what my mam is up against regarding her needs. I showed it to a close colleague from the flight simulation website where I contribute (after informing him about the sad home situation that gave me so much time for such software development), and he was appalled by my situation.
2. A summary of my life history which I originally prepared in order to show to work colleagues (as well as to a counsellor, after learning that my employer was setting up a counselling service). I decided also to show my mam it so she could understand just what I was feeling, and (perhaps because she didn't see it as I intended her to: my sister found it first and showed it to her) she was so distraught that she vomited and then cried for two solid hours! Perhaps this extreme reaction (plus the fact that in her annotations to the report – which I've reproduced in pink in the linked online document – she outright denied many of her past controlling behaviours) shows that she herself feels terrible guilt for what she is doing to me, but feels like she cannot let me go for my sister's sake.
3. A thread I started on the Carers UK forum (I'm "George_1902" there) &ndas; I'm interested by the fact that I asked "am I a carer" there just as I did here.
Codemonkey! It's great to hear from you. I was rereading some old threads recently and you were one of the people I wondered about.
I haven't read the things you linked for the details yet, but I'm sorry to hear that some things are the same/worse, but glad to hear that some are better.
Incidentally, could our webmaster please fix the "view all by" links as they don't seem to be working at the moment?
Codemonkey (121): Good to see you back! I'm sorry things are still so challenging for you, but glad to hear about the bright spots.
Codemonkey (123): The View All By has been broken for a while and is apparently unfixable.
Codemonkey: Welcome back! Yeah, you've got a hard row (several!) to hoe. Sounds like you're working on changing your circumstances, but do, please, at least give yourself credit for bearing up under incredibly difficult circumstances.
I often agonize wondering if I could have got my mother's approval to move out if I'd done things differently: should I have had more of a social life while at university (braving my mother's questioning that she now denies she ever engaged in), or should I have done more housework (even though I'd have had to learn to keep an eye on the home situation so I could judge just the right moment to offer to do something)?
Mary Aileen @124: Why would View All By be unfixable?
Codemonkey in NE England #126: I often agonize wondering if I could have got my mother's approval to move out if I'd done things differently...
Nope. In the rest of that sentence, you make it clear that trying to "get your mother's approval" was strictly a setup. And still is, given that you're still self-blaming for not somehow managing to satisfy her demands.
Codemonkey in NE England #126: Why would View All By be unfixable?
I have no idea bout the technical issues, but while Martin (and anyone else behind the scenes) have dealt summarily with a variety of other site problems, they have been unable to restore the VAB functionality over the course of multiple years.
Given that this is a Big Deal WRT Teresa's published moderation philosophy ("a commenter's history is their reputation"), I really have to assume that if they could have fixed it, they would have done so long ago.
Here's a Twitter discussion about repairing the VAB from some months back.
I volunteered to try to help (which does not speak to any likelihood that I could help), but with various factors falling out of sync, that possibility hasn't come back around on the guitar yet. I dropped Patrick a Twitter DM a few days ago, but haven't heard back. (And I still don't 100% understand how Twitter works, so that may well have vanished into the void.) I'm loathe to pester them because, you know, life.
~ Meanwhile in other news: I'm struggling to break in some new downstairs neighbors. The sound issue (knock on wood) seems to have gotten sorted. But they like smoke. All sorts of smoke. Cedar & sage & incense. And this new thing I'd never heard of called "dabbing." And I get to share! And, it appears, there are no ordinances, city, state, or HOA, preventing them from inflicting this stuff on me. (Oh, and did I mention? I'm apparently allergic to marijuana.)
We've had four go-rounds already (they moved in over the weekend), and I've already gotten myself labeled "oversensitive." :-\ :'(
I'm going to stop of at McGuckin's tonight and see what's available in the nature of a HEPA air filter, but I'm doubtful how effective it will be, given that I don't have airconditioning and as such need to keep my windows open.
Wish me luck.
Jacque -- re: neighbors, I don't have any suggestions as such. But I'll recount a bit of history, in case it sparks any ideas for you.
For about 16 months, I was living in the top easternmost apartment in a building of about 20 floors. What with warm air rising, and prevailing winds, any time anyone smoked in the stairwells in cold weather, some of it ended up going through my apartment. Building management refused to take any action, even to the extent of putting up no-smoking signs, even though smoking in the stairwells was strictly illegal by city ordinance. The on-site manager herself was frustrated and apologetic; she didn't like the mess of cigarette butts or any of the rest of it, but her hands were tied.
So I cranked up the heaters in the stairwell (they'd removed the knobs, but I had pliers), and any time I smelled smoke, I propped open the stairwell door on my level, and propped open my apartment door and opened a window. This did a reasonably good job of blasting the air through, and cleared the smell in a few minutes.
One possibility that occurs to me, is to build an entirely new VAB system based on an index of comments by screen names. It would lose a lot of joke names and "sees spam" warnings (though substring searching could cover some of that), and would sweep together homonyms, but might be worthwhile anyway just for the "normal case".
I realized that my Stuff may have been coloring my perception of my child's behavior. (The short version: I come from a narcissistic family of origin; certain things still have the power to induce emotional flashbacks.)
I decided to check myself about my child's apparent narcissistic tendencies. I have begun keeping a tally of the times she did things for other people without apparent expectation of reward, gave way to somebody else in a minor matter without flipping her lid, or in other ways demonstrated Ability to Mutually Person 101; vs. times when she did stuff that brings back the bad old times for me.
ISTM that she is at present showing more signs that her brain is maturing along non-narcissistic pathways, than otherwise. But I will continue to keep a tally in a private document so that I can spot any patterns, narcissistic or otherwise, that may suggest need for intervention.
J, good for you, in recognizing that your history may skew your perception, and taking steps to have some objective data. I'm glad to hear it seems things are falling out better than you feared - but either way, solid information helps.
Still reading and witnessing.
I struggle with starting tasks and other executive dysfunction issues, and I often appreciate being able to quantify the qualitative. Thus was I moderately gratified to get the results from the Brown Executive Function/Attention Scales, which my psychiatrist had me self-administer.
For each of the six components, I received a raw score, an indication of which band of 'normality'/'functionality' that score fell into, and a percentile rating (and, like, error bars and stuff). The only component on which I fell into the 'normal' category was Emotional Regulation, which I put down largely to socialization.
Fellow DFDers, I fall into the 97th percentile of dysfunction on task activation and the 93rd percentile for sustaining effort. This is all kinds of validating, honestly. I have a real problem with doing stuff! I am worse at starting tasks than roughly 97% of people! Wow! I'm impressed with myself that I do stuff well enough and fast enough to get a complicated bachelor's degree and hold down a fancy job!
On the other hand, tell me plz, mister psychiatrist, how I can become better at coping and doing things, because I like the outcomes of doing things... ("I don't think this changes our treatment plan, but it's very interesting," he said.)
hope: Starting stuff is hard! It is something I've struggled with, like, forever.
I've finally come up with some hacks that have resulted in my actually getting my chores done over the weekend (even in the face of a nearly innevitable failure condition, yay!). But it has taken me 60+ years to get here. So, yeah, it's totally a thing. (Ironically, for me, stopping is, if possible, even more of an issue. Yes, getting to bed early enough to get a full night's sleep is a good thing! Staying up painting is very gratifying and all, but— :-\ )
Meanwhile:
me @129: Knock on wood, downstairsians have proven to be livable-with over the last week, so yay! I've been reading up on dabbing, and I really really hope they're not making their own BHO. O.O
Meanwhile, I'm hoping one of you-all that speaks Human can offer a clarification:
If I say, "I object to your intoxicant vapors" and I get back, "Yeah, but what about your cooking smells?"—that's what a derail is, right? (I'm still learning the terms and structure of these various rhetorical tactics.)
Jacque @135: I believe in context that is indeed a derail. It might be different if, for example, you cook a lot of fish and one of them is scent-level allergic to fish and your cooking odors infiltrate their living space -- then you would both be negotiating around an allergenic smell. But there is a meaningful distinction between "known health risk" and "obnoxion." (For that matter, it probably wouldn't be derailing if you were regularly processing durian or surstromming or something similarly noxious...) But I'm assuming that your cooking odors are fairly tame and they just want an excuse to make it seem like there's an even exchange going on/they have negotiating leverage/they can demand concessions as well.
hope: Yeah, okay, thanks. That squares up with my sense as well.
The same exchange also included an attempt to mansplain to me about "having neighbors." (Probably just as well I refrained from pointing out that I've had apt/condo neighbors likely since before he was born.)
So, yeah. Thank you!
("Obnoxion." ::giggle:: This would be the single-unit particle that carries "obnoxins." Hee hee. I'm totally stealing that.)
Yeah, I'd drop that in derail territory. Context does matter a bit: I'm not the sort to go bug my neighbors unless they're doing something REALLY obnoxious, and I might well take "can you stop doing X" as a good opening to respond with "Sure, but can you stop doing Y?" The distinction here is that this is not actually a quid-pro-quo, it's two separate issues. (Though of course your diligence in refraining from annoying me is very likely to affect my diligence in return: I just ain't that worked up about making sure you get a good night's sleep when you can't be bothered to return the favor.)
The gripping hand is, stoners generally seem to have a very poor grasp on the difference between "things I, Stoner J, personally like" and "things that everyone in the world regards as universally good." I'm not sure why: drunks seem to be able to remember that not everyone is a drunk, and junkies are generally keenly aware that not everyone is a junkie, but try to tell a stoner that you're on your way to work and could they not smoke in the bus shelter and they get all confused and offended.
hope in disguise #134: Yeah, this is why diagnoses are important.
I just had an accidental epiphany regarding work today myself.
The accident part: Due to my own flub, I came into work today apparently having forgotten that my boss (and implicitly myself) were supposed to be working Tuesday instead of Monday this week. Since I was already there, in the course of sorting out the above, I got permission to stick around and spend the day doing various backlogged jobs.
But... here's the thing. A normal day at work for me is seriously exhausting. Today, I sorted and weeded half the poetry and antiques section, then noticed that we'd acquired a new bookshelf in SF/F, which I promptly filled from the storeroom. (Yay, hardcover space!) Then I walked out... physically a little tired, but nowhere near as dazed and exhausted as I usually am after work.
The thing is, "normal" work for me includes a helluva lot of task-switching, among tasks such as sorting and pricing with Sandy, greeting and directing customers, shelving and weeding (lots of trips up and down stairs), and handling credit-card transactions. Today I got to stick to a single task for hours at a time, with little interaction with customers. (The guy manning the desk today can run the credit card stuff just fine....) Much easier than the usual routine!
Devin @138: try to tell a stoner that you're on your way to work and could they not smoke in the bus shelter and they get all confused and offended
It hasn't been all that long since that was a common reaction of a tobacco smoker under similar circumstances. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's still the case in some locales.
#140, Joel Polowin, #138, Devin:
I wonder if that's because alcohol and other non-smoked drugs don't reach out and affect the people around you.
I mean, it wasn't all that long ago in the grand scheme of things that "secondhand smoke" was recognized as a problem with tobacco. I wonder how long it'll be before pot secondhand smoke is likewise recognized as a problem. (I mean, maybe it's less harmful than tobacco smoke? Or so pot smokers claim. But it's still combustion products and ash particulates, that can't be good for you.)
Devin @138: Thank you, your thinking matches mine pretty well. If I say, "Can you not [____]?" and you say, "Oh, sorry! Let me know if [____] is an issue again!", I am far more willing to put up with at least some [____]. But if you argue at me that it's your God Given Right to [____] (especially if it's specifically injurious to me), then I'm going to be much less tolerant.
this is not actually a quid-pro-quo
Thank you. I finally worked this out, too. My script if this comes up again will be, "I'm sorry if my cooking smells annoy you. We can negotiate about that if you want. But that's a different discussion."
As it happens, I went and bought a HEPA filter over the weekend (which may or may not be effective for this particular concern). But at the very least, I can run it while I'm cooking, so to at least take away that point of argument. (If it even works for that, which...maybe?)
The gripping hand is, stoners...
...Yeah, I got to thinking about that. Given their level of consumption, I remind myself that I'm not talking to the people so much as the drugs. And she's a demonstrated gaslighter. Our complex doesn't allow dogs, but when I went down to talk to them the third time, I heard a dog bark behind the door. When I asked, she straight-up lied to my face. "Nope! No dogs here!" So she appears to be whatchacallit, an "unreliable narrator."
But: Knock on wood, the VOC issue has been entirely tolerable since we had our most recent talk. So: ::crosses fingers:: sorted? Maybe?
Next up: breaking in the new upstairsians. So far, what I know them: a whole fleet (okay, three—but that seems like a lot for a two-bedroom apartment) of shiny black cars. o.0 Anyone wanna help me spin conspiracy theories? :D
the invisible one @141: But it's still combustion products and ash particulates, that can't be good for you.
...and also psychoactive. And allergenic.
invisible one @141: I wonder how long it'll be before pot secondhand smoke is likewise recognized as a problem. (I mean, maybe it's less harmful than tobacco smoke? Or so pot smokers claim. But it's still combustion products and ash particulates, that can't be good for you.)
It's already recognized, though the degree of harmfulness isn't clear. But many of the same carcinogenic substances are known to be there, along with other toxic compounds. It seems to me that for most purposes regarding involuntary exposure to smoke, the two should be treated the same.
Jacque @142: A HEPA filter will deal with particulates (because "high efficiency particulate air" filter). It'll take care of things like aerosolized oil from frying food, and smoke from whatever source. It's not likely to do much for odours from vaporized substances that aren't attached to particles, though if your filter system includes something like an activated-charcoal layer, that may help.
Perhaps your black-car neighbors are investigating your drug-using neighbors. :-)
#143, Joel Polowin:
*Widely* recognized, as it finally is for tobacco. I'm sure that people who study these things know it. I don't even study it and I used simple logical connection. :p
But pot was recently legalized in my area, pot shops are popping up everywhere, and I have no idea if they have the health warnings that cigarettes have had on their packages for a few decades.
#142, Jacque:
I don't know if I'm allergic or not, but I have a pretty bad reaction to pot smoke myself. I've described it as "think of an asthma attack and you won't be too far off."
I hope your neighbours continue to keep the smoke down.
Someone who smokes twenty joints a day is some kind of champion pothead, so the volume of cannabis smoke is considerably smaller than it would be for a similar number of similarly-enthusiastic cigarette smokers. But I don't imagine the health effects are all that different for similar volumes: a little better or a little worse, but not wildly different.
Today's adventure in "having neighbors," presented for your amusement: apparently the folks across the street needed to do a little leafblowing at 10:30PM. I'm really not sure why: I can't personally imagine a circumstance that would require me to spend fifteen minutes with a leafblower at that time of night rather than just getting a broom... but I guess they found one. Fortunately, it was just fifteen minutes and my associate was only on her way to bed and not actually trying to sleep, so whatever.
Were my links too much text for the readers here to check out?
Dave Harmon @127: Nope. In the rest of that sentence, you make it clear that trying to "get your mother's approval" was strictly a setup. And still is, given that you're still self-blaming for not somehow managing to satisfy her demands.
Where did I go so badly wrong with my mother? Were her instructions a test of my initiative (I think when I first started posting on these threads I used a Prussian wargame analogy) where she was actually expecting me to disobey her and I was unable to figure that out (either due to my Asperger's or due to my guilt re her life situation)?
Or do you think that she has indeed been sabotaging my development towards independence not just since my dad's brain haemorrhage in 2012, but for 20 years or more? What reason would she have to do this (given that for most of this period I was 100% not a carer for any other family members – in fact before 2012 I hardly spent any time with my mother because I didn't want her to get too attached to me)? Was she looking at me as my sister's future carer even way back then? (And if so, why did she encourage me not just to go to university but to do a PhD? Did she really think I had a strong possibility of getting a job at my local university? I now realize that if a professor like my supervisor had something like 20 PhDs pass through his group during the course of his career, then only one of those PhDs would end up becoming a professor themselves, and the odds would be even longer for someone who is geographically immobile. One man who studied at the same time as me did his postdoc at a French-speaking Canadian university!)
Once when I bemoaned my lack of career success to my mother she said it wasn't my fault (putting it down to my Asperger's) and mentioned how I'd looked really nervous about a possible business trip alone during my PhD (which ended up being cancelled for reasons outside my control). Didn't it occur to her that my nervousness was actually simply because I had no experience of travelling long distances alone, for pleasure let alone for business purposes? (In fact, when my supervisor arranged for the group to go on the train to York – not work-related at all – my mother while letting me go clearly wasn't happy: she thought it was a waste of money!)
If my second interpretation of your comment is correct, does this mean that at least I no longer spend my time ruing that I didn't get out before 2012, because I would have still faced resistance from my mother even without the extra burden of my dad's disability? I suspect opposition (if it had existed, and given that an argument that I was needed at home would have been less plausible) would have been on the grounds that the money in the bank was mostly really hers not mine, as it was my grandfather's inheritance. However, I can hardly just ask her how she would have reacted as I feel I couldn't trust her to answer honestly, given how recently she denied a lot of the overprotective behaviours that prevented me from socializing at university as much as I would have liked.
@Codemonkey:
Where did I go so badly wrong with my mother?
I was where you are, and I want to cry for you.
The conundrum I have seen you wrestle with from your earliest posts--which is like wrestling a drunken and amorous octopus because it has been present most likely since your earliest memories-- is this: Your mother doesn't want you to be a separate person whose mind, heart, and decision-making processes are not open books to her.
It does not matter why she wants to keep you entwined. It doesn't matter that she is most likely in awful emotional pain or that consuming you drop by drop keeps that pain at bay. It doesn't matter whether or not she deliberately does this or whether she's just reacting to OH GOD NO CODEMONKEY MIGHT LEAVE ME. She has picked the wrong solution to her troubles. And. There. Is. No. Way. For. You. To. Manage. Her. Emotions. So. That. She. Will. Let. You. Go.
That stuff that you ruminate on, the stuff you shoulda-coulda-woulda done? That's your brain trying to follow the pattern she set into it, the pattern of "I Manage Mother." You are her child. This is not supposed to be your job! (It's not supposed to be anybody's job, but that's a whole other rant I won't get into, because her issues? Hers. Not yours. You cannot achieve enlightenment for her.)
The point of you managing (absorbing, siphoning off, mirroring, suffering) her emotions while allowing her to manage (batten on, rain on, depress) yours is that you continue to do so. Asking how to make things go right WITH your mother is like asking how you can fly WHILE standing still. You have to pick one: things go right, or you continue orienting your life with regard to your mother.
The next step is a lulu. I know. You can only take it when you're ready...and you can't take your mother with you.
PS: Not all doors are physical. The one between your thoughts and your mother's ears should remain locked, with the deadbolt on your side of it.
@Codemonkey, I agree with Jenny Islander; I think due to your mother's influence, you're over-constraining your problem space. There's no solution to "Make Codemonkey happy" AND "Make Mother happy", and in fact I don't think "Make Mother happy" is attainable by you no matter what you do. It's not clear to me how much she's doing/has done intentionally, and how much is just the involuntary expression of her dysfunction, but either way it's not your responsibility to "save" her, no matter how much you wish you could.
On the subject of "View all by" (aka VAB), I'd be interested in helping if someone with access wants me to. I probably don't know all of the technology involved, but I'm sure I know some parts, and I've made a career of learning and fixing stuff like that (aka "git grep is my superpower").
Codemonkey,
I read your links. I guess I felt like you were owed an answer of appropriate scope and depth and I sure wasn't up to providing it, but: witnessing.
I don't think your mother was deliberately sabotaging you, and I don't think she was testing you either. I think she had, as Jenny says, some kind of emotional need/pain of her own and that the actions she took to try and fill that hole undermined you. "Undermined," rather than "sabotaged," because I think all along the story she wanted to live was that she was trying to help you be independent.
I'm also seeing a lot of... Well, her responses look awfully familiar to me. There's a lot of "I never told you not to do X, I just wanted to know when you would be back" that, well, I wasn't there and I might easily be projecting but I know I've lived where that was technically true but somehow, mysteriously, the message that I wasn't really supposed to be doing X and why did I insist on causing problems? got across very clearly anyhow.
Is it okay if I drop some advice about "having a social life?" Please please please say no if that sounds hlepy: there is a strong possibility that I am spotting something that looks like one of my roadblocks and assuming you share it... which maybe you do, but maybe not, and my solutions may not be much good for you.
And while I'm asking possibly-intrusive questions that you should feel free to ignore... Do you have a long-term... vision for your sister's care? Because that's one hole I noticed in your writing. Do you intend to take over as her primary caregiver? ("No, I'd be terrible at that and she deserves better" is an excellent answer to this question and would mark you as a wise and loving brother, if that's how it looks from your eyes! There are other ways you can love and care for her besides the exact pattern your parents set. "I don't know what I'll do; I feel like I need to get my own house in order before I can make those plans" is also a great answer. As is "my mother expects me to so right now the answer is 'fuck no' but I'm hoping to get to a place, eventually, where I can have a think about me and my sister without my mother's expectations mattering, and maybe I'll think differently then.")
Codemonkey in NE England: #146: Or do you think that she has indeed been sabotaging my development towards independence
Yes. Jenny Islander has explained than I could have, I'll just add that inconsistency is part of that package, and for us spectrum folks, that just makes it harder to deal with. It's not like she had (or has) a coherent, long-term scheme to bind you, some plan that you could sabotage and it would fall apart. It's just trying to push you into the image in her head of "Codemonkey will take care of the family, because I can't...".
She's just reacting to her own drives and impulses... mostly or often trying to hold on to you, but other times she's probably going "what am I doing to my kid?" and flailing at trying to "undo" -- but not effectively, because that's also a momentary impulse, not an actual plan based on real enlightenment.
@Codemonkey: Dave Harmon #150 made an excellent point. However, I would argue that once you figure out her pattern, your mother is completely consistent, and predictable. It's just that her pattern is not reality congruent.
I recommend Issendai's list of non-reality-based assumptions WRT relationships. While the overall site is about how some people feel driven to cut their parents completely out of their lives, this particular page simply spotlights the non-reality-based assumptions that may drive the behavior of difficult people. In particular:
If I’m attached to you, then you’re attached to me. You can’t consider yourself detached from me until I’ve detached from you.
Take a look at this page: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/dysfunctional-beliefs.html Think about your relationship with your mother. Might any of these explain her relationship with you? Is it possible that, having been raised in that mindset, you also hold some of these beliefs?
THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT: If you spot some, don't show them to your mother. You can't, you can-not, reason her out of such beliefs. You can only decide what you are going to do in response to her actions. She has to want to change, which is a difficult, scary, and seemingly destructive * process. You can't change her, and you can't cause her to want to change.
* If you are fixing a house, you first have to make a huge mess by ripping out the old stuff. If you are eliminating pests in your kitchen, you have to pull everything out of the cupboards first. Change looks like destruction, at first glance.
Someone can be bad for you without wanting or trying to be bad for you. Which doesn't make it any easier to recognize sometimes. And even if someone is bad for you because they are hurting, that doesn't mean you have to endure their treatment or fix their pain, not in any order.
I'm going through a work-flavored Dys Day experience lately, and I am reminding myself that any staffing issues are not my problem.
God Jesus I hate my brain.
TRIGGERS, TRIGGERS, TRIGGERS TRIGGERS TRIGGERS
Last night I was woken up by a nightmare so bad I could not tell my husband. I could not write it in my diary because one of the kids might have a fit of the snoops and be traumatized. I can't even record the details here because Jesus it's that bad.
And I thought, the entire time, that I was awake. Not even the kind of awake-dream that falls apart when you really do wake up. It felt absolutely plausible and reasonable when I was asleep and when I was awake it still felt real. It still felt like something you might read in a true crime book. I could see all of the steps that led to what happened in the dream.
And in the dream I, while feeling how absolutely rewarding and reasonable this was, did something so absolutely evil that if I had actually done it I would have lost my family, my freedom, every shred of respect, and all hope of redemption. I would have been unclean with it for life.
And while I have not had this exact dream before and please God never will again...this is not the first time I have had a dream that involved me doing something absolutely evil and (in the dream) believing that I had the right.
I have to sleep.
I am at least going to lie down, and try to think of something harmless and intricate.
I don't know what will happen. Please, God, just sleep.
Please God no more dreams.
The worst part? For just a moment, at the end of the dream...I suspected that other people knew what I had done.
And for just a moment, as I woke up in bed...I thought the dream was actually my late-night wakeful mulling over something I had enjoyed and my thoughts about how to get out of the consequences of something I had actually done.
I can't. I have to stop talking about it now. I have to sleep.
I have to look my dream-victim in the face tomorrow.
Please no more dreams.
#153-154: Witnessing your pain. Are you currently seeing a therapist? As far as your personal fault, goes, "it was just a dream" does cover -- you are definitely not responsible for stuff you do in dreams no matter how awful.
But "dreams disturbing enough to cause anguish" is a problem in its own right, and likely warrants professional assistance.
@J, witnessing. <hugs> if welcome.
@J, what Dave Harmon said. You are not responsible for your dreams, and you can't extrapolate from them to what you want to do, would do given the opportunity, etc. But dreams causing this level of misery would be appropriate for taking to a professional.
Witnessing.
J: Yow. That sounds harrowing. It sounds like the worst of it is that it shook your basic faith in yourself—?
Thanks, all. A decent night's sleep and better hydration put me on a more even keel.
I have had dreams similar to this since I was eight years old and dreamed that I was planning to torture somebody to death in order to seal a bargain with a demon, sitting there sipping a martini(?!) next to this terrified man who was bound into a stress position and feeling not a shred of remorse. At least that one fell apart when I woke up enough to remember, "Hey, I don't believe in demon-summoning rituals," but I despised myself for much of my childhood for the person I had been while dreaming. I was also isolated, without emotional support other than a dog, and just generally a mess, so I endured that one alone.
I go years without a dream like this and start thinking, "Hey, therapy and self-care and maturation have finally put the kibosh on this crap!" and then BAM I get another one. Night before last was the worst one yet.
Last night I "just" dreamed that my husband behaved toward me in a way he never would and in response I said vile, vicious, hateful, violent things to him that I would never say even if I believed them in waking life, and worst of all our children were within earshot. Two in a row is a new one, but at least I was able to dismiss that one quickly.
I think I know why this stuff happens:
For various reasons, I read grown-ups' id-fic, as we call it these days, when I was much too young to cope with it (Lovecraft, Norman, etc.);
My memory is, unfortunately, highly retentive;
I have hyperempathy;
I have intrusive thoughts in waking life;
I have a very vivid imagination.
But I have never been shaken the way I was the other night. Yes, it made me fundamentally doubt myself, because, most of all, it was a completely realistic dream and I thought I was awake.
The further away I get from it, the more I realize that while I might have become such a person if I had made certain choices, that is true of anyone, and intrusive thoughts are not my fault even if they metastasize into ultra-vivid dreams.
J - You have my sympathy. I have some idea of what you're experiencing. My most disturbing dreams are those in which I get pleasure from doing something violent that abhors me when I wake up. I then spend a couple of hours lying there, stewing: Is that the "real" me, when the brakes come off? If I were to drink alcohol, would that come out? If, later in life, I suffer from frontal dementia, will that be what I'm like?
Rationally, I know that this is almost certainly not the case. In an emergency, I have good reflexes -- or something -- to do the appropriate thing. When I see someone in pain, I don't have to think about trying to help; the higher-level thought that kicks in is "is it actually appropriate for me to try to intervene?" (And given how much time I've spent with Inge in hospital these last N years, there have been a lot of people I've seen in distress.) But that doesn't help much in the wee hours.
@160: Fistbump of rueful solidarity
Brains are just. The worst.
J #159:
For various reasons, I read grown-ups' id-fic, as we call it these days, when I was much too young to cope with it (Lovecraft, Norman, etc.);
My memory is, unfortunately, highly retentive;
I have hyperempathy;
I have intrusive thoughts in waking life;
I have a very vivid imagination.
Well. "Cast thy bread upon the waters...". This rings strongly to parts of my own experience... in my case it doesn't appear as dreams, but I think I did take damage from reading various inappropriate things as a young child.
J: If that was me, I'd be eyeing the day before I'd had that dream, looking for emotional energy that rhymed with the upsetting dream. My particular "demon" is my faith in my ability to support myself. When I get those dreams, I've learned to go look for something in the previous day that provoked that worry. "Trigger" is an excellent term.
My dream is weirdly elegant, because whenever I wake up from one of these, I always review my life as an adult, and remember that I can support myself, and always have.
I wonder if your brain is responding to anxiety about your conduct, and trying to remind you (in its inept, inarticulate fashion) that this is not the kind of person you are?
It's the equinox again, and to all who celebrate this day, I wish you peace.
J, Dave Harmon: I too was occasionally upset by something I read, when I was young, but the worst was when I was 14. We were visiting parents' friends and there was one of those dirty books that kids under 21 aren't supposed to read. I decided to take a peek at what I then thought would be my future--bad move. The very first episode wound up with one partner being injured to the point of screaming, bleeding, and so on, and this was considered normal in that story. I was scared out of a year's growth, and my parents--who prided themselves on how liberal and progressive they thought they were, and how they didn't censor my reading--just waved my concerns aside. I dreaded anyone hurting me and I didn't want to hurt someone else (innocent). It was a very rough couple of years, until I found something in that desolate town that was nice. And realized I was an ace arrow. But I never did get over running onto a sex scene that turns into a bloodbath, however it is explained, and I guess it's just one of a million or so reasons I didn't have kids, to have to nurse one thru the aftereffects of reading something like that. No one should be hurt in bed, when life already serves up enough first aid lessons.
There are lots of scenes of torture, abuse, rape, bullying etc that I skip over if I can, and all I can say is thanks to whoever invented content/trigger warnings. And thanks to all the rest of you who listen.
OK, now that I've copied my VHS tapes of Alec Baldwin's "Nuremberg" to DVD on my dad's recorder (my own VHS/DVD recorder had bitten the dust a few weeks back, and I couldn't just buy it on DVD as I couldn't find it at a reasonable price: perhaps its rarity on DVD was the reason I'd bought it on VHS in the first place!) I have well and truly entered the post-VHS era!
I've also sent to a charity shop the CD/DVD-ROMs (about half of my collection, mostly games) that I didn't want any more. I currently still have a long way to go decluttering-wise, but would getting rid of everything that I wouldn't want to take with me to a place of my own give me more credibility with my mother if/when I bring up again the dreaded issue of Moving Out?
Jenny Islander @147: The conundrum I have seen you wrestle with from your earliest posts--which is like wrestling a drunken and amorous octopus because it has been present most likely since your earliest memories-- is this: Your mother doesn't want you to be a separate person whose mind, heart, and decision-making processes are not open books to her.
I am aware of this – the fact that my mother also seems to be very proud of the fact that she made her life an open book for her own parents just seemed to clinch this – but I have this voice in the back of my head saying to me "how can you be so cruel to your mother that you don't want her to know what you're doing with your life?" I also wonder what the hell I must have done wrong to make my mother so clingy in the first place: what do normal young adults do to convince their parents they are capable of living independently, that I overlooked?
Given my mother's obvious fears regarding my living alone, was I wrong in my own belief (which I'd held pretty much since my teens) that my fraught family situation meant that seeking a relationship was a fool's errand as long as I was living with my parents? While at university, I also though seeking a relationship was pointless because anyone I got involved with would be very likely to end up in a different part of the UK to myself after graduation. One reason I bring this up is that a few months back I was visibly upset (due to envy) when I heard someone talking of their recent wedding – on seeing this my line manager asked me why I didn't register on some dating sites to try to find a partner, but I thought my home situation would prove prohibitive (or worse, that I let myself get too old for online dating, even though I look a lot younger than my age).
Jeremy Leader @148: I had to look up the "git grep" you mentioned, as my work currently involves creating tools that interface with the company's Gitlab repository (though I hadn't heard of that particular command!)
Codemonkey in NE England @166: give me more credibility with my mother if/when I bring up again the dreaded issue of Moving Out?
I have/had the very deep pleasure of watching a truly wonderful/remarkable friend grow from a whip-smart, kind and loving young student to solid, fully-growed-up adult. One of the transitions that was particularly fascinating to watch was his relationship with his father who, even after Friend was fully out on his own, making his own living, was still trying to "parent" Friend. For the first, let's call it eight years of our acquaintance, Friend was still trying to win his father's approval for his rather-different-than-his-father's way in the world.
The day I could tell Friend had Grown Up was the day he and his father had this exchange:
Father: "I was just reading your website. I have some comments. Would you like to hear them?"
Friend: "If they're positive and supportive, sure!"
Father: *crickets*
Friend had stopped seeking approval. Friend had stopped needing approval. Friend's relationship with his father changed fundamentally from that moment forward. But not because of any shift in the father's attitude.
You don't have to have credit with your mother. From everything you've said, you'll never get credit with your mother. Because she likes things the way they are, and has no incentive to change.
Captain Awkward has three posts on strategies for managing/deflecting weaponized parental worry:
The only person whose approval is required to change your situation is you. It sounds like your biggest obstacle is your own feelings. It's entirely reasonable to need/want help making that shift, and I salute your ongoing efforts: in talking it out (here, and also, do you have access to therapy?), changing your physical circumstances by decluttering, and so on.
I also recognize that this is incredibly hard when you want to do right by the people close to you. (And not for nothing, when the people you care about are running an active sabotage campaign against your efforts.*) And to follow through on responsibilities you want to meet. I wonder if you might benefit from doing some deep thinking about what responsibilities towards your family have been pushed on you, versus responsibilities you feel you want to take on.** This, it sounds to me, is the crucial distinction you're struggling with.
But from where I sit, it seems to me that the biggest hill to climb is to cease to require your mother's permission. The only "credit" you need to move forward with your goals is your own.
Good luck, and good strength.
* However unconscious or well-meaning that campaign might be.
** And by that I mean, responsibilities you want to take on, and what responsibilities you can reasonably take on. I'd lay a bet that the first set is going to be larger than the second set.
@Codemonkey no. 166: Young adults from upbringing other than yours do not convince their parents to allow them to leave. They just leave. No permission is required. No approval is required.
Also, off something Jacque said @167: Even if your mother doesn't like the way things are, but is least upset by keeping things the way they are, she has no incentive to change.
And you can't give her that incentive, or help her find it, or help her be happy, or get her to see things your way, or get her permission.
And if you just leave, without even telling her beforehand? I mean, yeah, that would be rude, but it would also be leaving. Anyway, if you leave, and she is very upset and is unable to do things?
That's not your cue to go back. Or even to answer the phone.
If she really cannot conduct her own life without derailing yours, then she needs help that you cannot give, help that you cannot cause her to want.
Jenny Islander @168: Young adults from upbringing other than yours do not convince their parents to allow them to leave. They just leave. No permission is required. No approval is required.
Whoa there, are you telling me that my mother's super-clingy behaviour is actually normal and that most young adults essentially have to fight their way out of their family homes?
Couldn't buy that, especially when when I was at university the overwhelming majority of my fellow students were not living with their parents...
Codemonkey at 169:
I'd interpreted Jenny Islander's point the opposite way than that- people from most families don't have to "convince their parents to allow them to leave" because the parents assume that the children will leave.
For example, I didn't have to request permission to leave home, or seek approval from my parents for leaving- they simply assumed that I would go to university away from home, and that when I left university I would get a job in a different city; through my teens they taught me skills that would prepare me for that independence. (This is partly a middle-class thing, of course, but my working-class schoolmates also had parents who expected that they would leave the parental house when they became adults.)
@Codemonkey no. 169: Jen Birren no. 170 is correct. Young adults who were not brought up the way you were brought up, i.e. the majority of young adults, just leave, because their parents assume that this is going to happen. The only condition that must be met before they can leave is legal majority. Most parents do not imagine that their own emotional readiness or approval have anything to do with it. They may have big feelings about their little 'uns leaving home, or serious doubts about whether they are really ready to do so, but they recognize that these issues are purely personal and do not put them on their children. Because even if the adult children flounder at first, they are, in fact, ready to leave, because adults. And if the parents cannot survive without some other adult helping at home, they do everything they can to make that adult not be their own adult child.
One thing that I noticed is that when (in my teens and early 20s) I asked my mother to teach me various skills that I'd need for independent living, she'd always answered "what do you MEAN you want me to SHOW you how to do X? NOBODY showed ME how to do X – I just figured out how to do it for myself!"
I'd love to know what she actually meant by this (as I'm not sure how to ask her in a way that would lead to an honest response):
1. Did she mean that she couldn't be bothered to show me step by step how to do these tasks, and it was my fault for failing to phrase my requests correctly? (What I actually meant by her "showing me how to do" a task is that she'd ask me to do it at a convenient time, and stand by to pick up the mistakes I made...)
2. Did she mean that she only learned how to do these tasks after moving out (although it would be unlikely given that she lived with her parents until marriage) and that I was wrong for expecting that she wouldn't let me leave until I'd demonstrated my competence to live independently?
3. Did she mean that she didn't think me capable of living independently, because that doesn't just mean knowing how to do household tasks, but knowing how to determine when they need to be done?
4. Or had she already decided even then that she didn't want me to move out, and she was intentionally keeping me ignorant to dissuade me from getting ideas?
@Codemonkey no. 172: You're focusing on your mother again. Focus on yourself. Not yourself through the lens of your mother. Just yourself.
She meant, "I am an inadequate parent, whether or not I recognize it, and don't want to do the work of change; also, I never did the hard work of accepting that my own inadequate upbringing was not an inevitable fact of life, that my family of origin could have done better but didn't." Further explication is irrelevant and a waste of your energy and time.
@Codemonkey
Following up on what Jenny Islander said, you have to focus on yourself as yourself, not through the lens of your mother. Think of her as an unreliable narrator of your situation. There are often times where viewing the situation from someone else's perspective and varying your approach will help, but I don't think this is one of them. I do not think anything you can do will change her into the supportive parent you deserved but didn't get. You can certainly view her with compassion, because it sounds like her background was rough and the situation with your sister is overwhelming. But no amount of contorting yourself to meet her demands will fix that situation. It can only, in the long run, break you.
@173, Your mother was telling you (whether she meant to tell you or not) that she couldn't be bothered to do the basic work of being a parent. The JOB of a parent is to prepare their children for independent living. She excused her inadequacies as a parent by citing her own poor upbringing.
However, there's another unintended message there. She managed without training. SO CAN YOU. Take THAT message to heart, and ignore the rest.
Whatever your mother may think, and whatever she may have told you, in modern Western cultures, GROWN CHILDREN DO NOT NEED TO ASK PERMISSION TO LEAVE THEIR PARENTS' HOME AND SET UP THEIR OWN. Grown children are EXPECTED to leave their parents' home, absent very specific, rare circumstances.
I hope this helps and is not hlepy.
It's also worth noting that in this glorious 21st century we are living in, there are instructions findable online for just about everything. I'd heard the phrase "hospital corners" but nobody ever actually showed me how to make a bed properly: so I looked it up.
And let me add my voice to this chorus: Codemonkey, you do not need your mother's permission to move out and make your own life. (Which is good, because it sounds like you're not ever going to actually get it.)
@Codemonkey, re David Goldfarb no. 176: Indeed! My own mother just sort of expected that I would always be there, like a houseplant, and also assuaged her own guilt over something not relevant to this discussion by excusing me from all chores forever at a very young age. The upshot is that she taught me no practical skills. I had to learn them out of books--but I did learn them out of books, making some hilarious mistakes along the way.
Nowadays you don't even have to find a book. If you need to know how to do anything from gracefully ending a conversation to unclogging a sink, there are how-to guides and discussions all over the Web. No wonder so many of us auties are online!
And the people who post them won't expect you to handle their Stuff for them.
To the emotional-support stuff offered above (which I agree with), I'll also suggest that the stuff that your mother "figured out on her own" might not be correct. I've met several adults who weren't taught how to use washing machines correctly, so as to actually get the clothes clean -- literally didn't know how to load the machine. (And also weren't alert enough to read the instructions printed on the inside of the washing machine lid.) I know one guy who had a small fire because he didn't know he needed to clean the lint out of the clothes drier vent from time to time. I'll second David Goldfarb's suggestion to look things up online.
A small case study: I went to school an hour's drive away from home (and I did not drive, nor did we have an extra car). Therefore, I lived at school but came home for the summers. I also came home to live with my mother after graduation until I found a place of my own.
I did not ask permission to move away, either freshman year or after school. It was the obvious thing in both cases and I simply assumed I would be supported in it. When it was time for me to Move Out For Good I just told my mom I'd found a place and the only ensuing discussion was logistical: when I was moving and what sort of help I might need with the move.
The only time I made a bid for parental approval was when I wanted to move off-campus after living in school housing. And there, my argument consisted entirely of establishing that it would be cheaper and that it was viable: I showed my dad the numbers and told him that lots of other students did the same thing. There was no discussion of whether I would be able to manage this. It was assumed that I would figure it out, or perhaps that I would screw some things up and then figure it out (indeed I did!).
It didn't even occur to me that I would need to prove that I was competent to live independently. I knew I wasn't 100% competent and that I'd need to figure some of it out, but it was so deeply ingrained that this was an endeavor my parents expected of me that I neither said I was ready nor was I asked.
Specific advice for learning to cook: go to a library and look for children's cookbooks. They don't assume the reader has any knowledge or experience to start with. I like the "Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks" series: https://www.librarything.com/series/Easy+Menu+Ethnic+Cookbooks
Codemonkey, this might be a weird data point, but my last job was working as a paraeducator with disabled young adults. We expected, and the vast majority of parents expected, that all of them would move out of their parents' houses at some point. Not all of them moved into completely independent living, particularly not the ones I worked with, but it was still baseline expected that Adults Move Out. From there, it was a matter of figuring out what accommodations had to be made and what skills developed.
You can develop the skills. You would, if something horrible happened and left you alone. Anyone who tells you you can't function on your own is flat wrong. It's an apartment, not Hatchet.
Jenny Islander @168: Instead of saying "no permission is required", wouldn't "permission comes automatically on legal majority" have been a less ambiguous way to say what you were trying to get across?
Once I recognize that my mother's attitude towards my moving out is indeed not normal, that just leads to the question "what the hell did I do wrong to make my mother cling to me the way she is doing?"
Jen Birren @170: What do you think of the hypothesis that a significant number of the votes for Brexit and for Trump were from parents who resented their offspring for leaving the locality? I just thought I'd bring it up because my mother voted for Brexit while I voted Remain. I suspect in hindsight that it wasn't surprising I failed to change her mind beforehand (especially given that both her parents voted Out in the 1975 referendum) but she now regrets her vote given the chaos it has unleashed in Britain.
Jenny Islander @173, OtterB @174: I know full well that my mother is an unreliable narrator – the fact that earlier this year she denied that she'd ever engaged in the controlling/snooping behaviour (that deterred me from socializing more while at university) just confirmed it for me – not to mention that her denial also shows that (at least now) she knows that she was wrong to engage in such behaviour. (Why did she do it then if she knew it was wrong? Was she compelled to by her fears?)
It's interesting though that you label her as unsupportive: she often recounts proudly that when I was a baby the medical profession was claiming that I'd never even be able to attend a mainstream school, but that she (and I) proved them wrong as I didn't just succeed outstandingly at school, but also learned to drive and went to university! It seems like she's only been unsupportive in the single area of my moving out, and I'm desperate to understand why so I can hopefully do something about it!
Diatryma @181: You can develop the skills. You would, if something horrible happened and left you alone. Anyone who tells you you can't function on your own is flat wrong. It's an apartment, not Hatchet.
I know I can develop whatever skills I currently lack: the skills question is really more about reassuring my mother than anything else.
On the subject of her fears, I'm also wondering why about two weeks ago she went out of her way to show me a ten-minute clip about knife crime in the city where I work? Was she showing me it to encourage me to come straight home after work and not consider doing any evening social activities (now that she's admitted she can't actually forbid me from doing such), or was she (more optimistically) acknowledging that I won't be living with her for the rest of her life, and trying to push me towards a safer place to live (which I'd read as "more rural" – she's very much a country mouse and would find living in even a small city extremely stressful)?
She also brought up my cousin again: he's now flat-sharing in the city where I work and has a job in technical support (which supposedly pays more than my own job, though I'm sceptical on that score), but strangely he sleeps over at his dad's bungalow every weekend, and she suggested that the only reason he flat-shares at all is because he hasn't learnt to drive. (Is she implying that she believes that if my cousin could drive he would move back in with his dad permanently and commute, rather than find a place of his own outside the city? If not, then why mention his weekend sleep-overs at all, and wouldn't there be plenty of places outside the city but much nearer than his dad's place, and with good public transport access to the city?)
She also described how as a teenager she believed that losing weight would solve her problems, only to find that actually didn't make her any happier, and warned me not to develop a similar belief in moving out as a panacea: in that vein she also mentioned that my cousin still hadn't got into a relationship, and that the only time he (briefly) had a girlfriend was when he still lived with his parents full-time!
Also hearing my mother describe (when bringing up the weight loss issue) how she was bullied at school and couldn't seem to make friends causes me to think back to GlendaP's suggestion on the Shooting and Shouting thread that maybe she's on the autism spectrum herself: Is there any test I could give her (that would be applicable for a carer leading a highly restricted life, and also not obviously a test for autism) that I could give her to check out this possibility?
"No permission is required" seems like the most accurate phrasing to me. Just as it would be inaccurate to say "your boss automatically gives you permission to go to the park any time outside working hours," because your boss's feelings are completely irrelevant to the question of whether it's okay for you to go to the park.
You didn't do anything wrong to cause your mother to make the choices she makes. They're her choices. She owns them. (Likewise, many Trump voters were motivated by racism. This does not mean that racialized Americans should have found ways to "be less ethnic" because 1. that's wrong and 2. it would never have worked anyway.)
You are spending an enormous amount of thought on why your mother does this or that, and how you can change her mind. What if you stopped? What if you just spent some time thinking about what might be best for you? (Or your dad, or your sister?) And about the possibility that you might do the things that you judge best even if she says something else would be better? She'd have feelings about your decisions, but those would be her feelings and, as a grown-up, it would be her responsibility to manage those feelings (and not your responsibility).
Just for a specific, minor example: what if her possible autistic-spectrum status was her business and not yours? What if you weren't required to either a) try and screen her, or b) keep her from learning that you think she might be on the spectrum? What if you could just say "hey mom, ever wonder if you might be on the spectrum? You could get screened if you wanted" and that was all you owed her, neither dancing around the subject nor trying to diagnose nor managing her feelings about any possible diagnosis or non-diagnosis?
I wish I thought her "losing weight wasn't a magic bullet" speech was meant to help you instead of just to keep you close. It's a good point: moving out is the beginning (or a beginning) of the process, not the end. But I think her moral-of-the-story is "just don't bother," not "don't stop there."
Codemonkey @182, Once I recognize that my mother's attitude towards my moving out is indeed not normal, that just leads to the question "what the hell did I do wrong to make my mother cling to me the way she is doing?"
The answer is you did absolutely nothing wrong. This is on her, not on you. She doesn't want you to leave, and it doesn't matter what you do or say, that is not going to change.
Let me repeat: you did nothing wrong.
There might be a clue in that speech you relay about doctors saying you won't be independent when you were an infant. Perhaps she's internalized that to the point that she can't not believe it, no matter what the evidence is to the contrary. But that's still not your fault.
Codemonkey, an example of permission not being needed: when I was 30, I decided to move in with my boyfriend without marrying him first. The information I gave my parents was, "I am moving in with my honey." I did not discuss this with them beforehand, or solicit opinions or approval. I stated it as what would happen, and it did.
What would happen if you just ... moved out? Found a place, packed your stuff, and moved? Told your mother this is what is happening, (just before it happened) and left? You will never get her permission or approval, so take action without it to get what you want.
Your mother has raised you so that her reactions, fears, and desires dominate your thoughts and reactions, and are given more weight in your mind than your fears and desires. You should be as important to yourself as she is to you.
@Codemonkey, addendum: The people who described their just moving out? It is very possible, indeed probable, that their parents were upset or did not think they were ready. It is equally probable that the posters did not know it then and may even still not know it. Because their parents' feelings and opinions had zero bearing on the decisions of their adult children, and those parents recognized that, and therefore did not reveal their feelings or opinions to their adult children.
Your mother's permission and approval are irrelevant. She has trained you to see them as relevant, but they aren't.
Also, you don't make her do stuff or not do stuff, because she too is an adult.
Codemonkey #182: As far as the "stuff she's showing you"... that looks to me like she's trying to raise your anxiety level to discourage you from striking out on your own. If not simply trying to infect you with her own fears.
As far as autism, she might indeed be on the spectrum... but the thing is, at this point, it doesn't matter. At this point, her compensations are baked-in; the personality she developed is one that's pulled the world in around herself -- and she's trying to keep you in there with her. You need to think, plan, develop for yourself, and that includes breaking out of her enclosed world.
I can't "just move out" because I have enough stuff (partly because my mother gets a huge amount of pleasure out of buying me things, and gets very upset if I tell her I don't want anything) that moving out would be a major undertaking logistically – why do you think I'm trying to declutter at the moment?
Question: What would happen if you abandoned the stuff? Not being rhetorical here; can you envision the outcome if you, without telling anybody or discussing it with anybody or asking anybody to approve of it, left without most of the stuff and, when asked about it, said, "I don't want it anymore, do as you like with it?" Is that outcome tolerable?
codemonkey: You have a lot of questions/guesses/inferrences about what your mother thinks, feels, and wants. Have you ever actually asked her about any of these things?
Codemonkey: regarding all the *stuff* - I, too, was given many, many things. And I, too, was functionally forbidden to refuse any of them. In fact, every time I tried to declutter, I got the guilt trip of plausible deniability - she wasn't telling me what to do with the things, she was just making sure I thought about how awful I'd feel when I got rid of them. Let me tell you, it's SUCH a relief to be able to give away a shirt I don't like, or to say "no thank you" to gifts I don't want...
Right now, the stuff seems to be a fairly effective anchor holding you in place. Your mother, like mine, has every interest in keeping you at home and no interest whatsoever in you moving out/becoming an independent adult, no matter what she claims.
You should have seen the fireworks when I declared (yes, declared - I'd spent the past 10 years asking permission) I was moving out. You also should have seen how quickly she took over my new apartment and made it functionally hers.
Not saying this is what you need to do, but the thing that finally allowed me to learn what boundaries are (and probably got my new marriage off to a MUCH better start) was moving to a city too far away to drive to easily. For two years. This may feel extreme to you, but you are (and I was) in a fairly extreme situation.
At the very least, consider moving out with only the stuff that (to invoke Marie Kondo) brings you joy.
Codemonkey@ 182:
"What do you think of the hypothesis that a significant number of the votes for Brexit and for Trump were from parents who resented their offspring for leaving the locality?"
I think I don't have an informed opinion. It's not a motivation I've seen mentioned, but it makes sense- maybe as a sole reason for voting for Brexit, or (what seems intuitively more likely to me) as part of a worldview that made it more likely for a person to vote that way.
But I don't have the data on what people said were their reasons, and there isn't any data on people's unexpressed reasons!
I think, @Codemonkey, that your proper focus right now is not Brexit or your mother or being Correct about disposing of your stuff. You're focusing on connections. Try focusing on nodes instead. Specifically, the node that is you. Not you in relationship to your mother or your stuff or as part of a class of persons whose parents may have done something dumb in the past. Just, you. What you, personally, without reference to anybody or anything else, need and want.
It isn't selfish. I promise.
Codemonkey @188: seconding Jenny Islander @189, why not move out with what you can reasonably take? For the rest, either you move it to your own place gradually, or your mother disposes of it if she really wants to.
Note: it's normal for someone moving out to their own place to leave some stuff in the family home initially and move it to their own place gradually. I certainly didn't take everything when I first moved into one room of a shared house. Heck, I'm in my early 50s, I've been in my own place for 20-something years, and there are still bits and pieces of my childhood stuff that I'm now being encouraged (due to my stepmother decluttering) to bring away with me and make the decision to keep/throw/give to a charity shop! Similarly my husband had some stuff (e.g. old skiing gear) that was stored in his parents' loft until they downsized a couple of years ago.
(Many people might move everything sooner, but it doesn't have to be 'everything now' unless she's not going to let you back in the house to collect more later. In which case, so be it.)
Codemonkey #188 -> dcb #194:
dcb: Note: it's normal for someone moving out to their own place to leave some stuff in the family home initially and move it to their own place gradually.
Well, this is true for normal move-outs. I hate to be the one to say it, but: When someone escapes a controlling or abusive family (and your mother is at least controlling!), it's not unheard of for the parent to retaliate against the escapee's remaining possessions; holding them hostage if not throwing them away or destroying them outright.
Rather than "decluttering", I advise you to think in terms of choosing core possessions that you absolutely want to keep, and take those with you. How much stuff fits in that category will depend on your practicalities of how you are actually leaving -- that is, are you going to be filling a car, van, or a moving truck? Happily, I get the sense that you can at least do better than "whatever you can carry as you sneak out", but some folks do get stuck with that. (And now I'm thinking of a sometime regular here. :-( )
@Codemonkey: I agree with Dave Harmon no. 195. I do not want to emphasize the potential unpleasantness of your moving "imperfectly" (with stuff left behind, with Big Feelings in your wake, etc.), but it is possible that you will have to endure some emotionally gross stuff in order to move. And that may include accepting that things that carry emotional resonance will no longer be in your life.
People who are desperate to maintain a level of contact with you that you no longer want may indeed hold some of your stuff hostage, because if you have to keep talking to them about when and where and how you will finally get your stuff...then you're talking to them. Cut the Gordian knot by accepting that you'll never have that stuff again/will never be able to dispose of it properly.
And don't explain what you're doing. Scripts:
"I don't want it anymore; do with it what you think best. I don't need to know what that is."
"I already told you that I don't want it anymore and you should do with it what you think best, without discussing it with me."
"We've had this conversation. How's the weather?"
Apropos Jenny Islander #196: Cut the Gordian knot by accepting that you'll never have that stuff again/will never be able to dispose of it properly.
I'll qualify that: It's by no means certain you'll lose what you leave behind -- but for all the reasons we've mentioned, you need to accept that you may lose it. Aside from being able to face the worst case, that acceptance denies your mother so much leverage over you.
In the category of a Casablanca-style "I am shocked, shocked!" - research recently published shows that children who were lied to by their parents grow up to lie more, and have trouble adjusting to adulthood challenges.
Science Daily summary here
"Adults who reported being lied to more as children, were more likely to report lying to their parents in their adulthood. They also said they faced greater difficulty in meeting psychological and social challenges. Adjustment difficulties include disruptiveness, conduct problems, experience of guilt and shame, as well as selfish and manipulative character."
Thought this would resonate with at least some of the denizens of this thread...
Chickadee: Similarly, ISTR reading that kids whose parents behave in a reliable, trustworthy manner tend to fare better with the marshmallow test.
Jacque@199: Rather. :/
Unrelated: Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend. Not nearly as big a deal as the original DFD, but still...
I'd been down, quiet, withdrawn - generally dreading Sunday. Awesome Spouse helped me to draw out what in particular I'm afraid of. Finally I realized that I was afraid I'd somehow ruin the day - that because of me it wouldn't "go well." We pulled out the definition of "go well." In the end, it involved my extended family not being racist or classist or any other sort of ist - or failing that (because truly, not going to happen), me being sweet and happy and not reacting *at all* to any of it.
Definition of setting myself up for failure, right? I'm not nearly as afraid of Sunday as I was, though still not *happy* about the event.
Putting this out there for anyone else who might be getting caught in that particular trap for upcoming family events.
Chickadee #200, kudos to you and Awesome Spouse for pinpointing the reason for dread and being able to redefine success.
@Chickadee, best wishes for a Not Awful Thanksgiving.
@Codemonkey, sometimes people don't have perfect reasonable and consistent reasons for their actions. When you asked why she showed you an article about knife crime, my thought was this: "Because she had seen it, and was anxious, and sharing her anxiety with you reduced the bad feeling she was having". Maybe she enjoyed feeling like a caring parent who wants to make sure you're aware of everything, maybe she is afraid or anxious - lots of us get scary messages from our parents like "are you sure it's safe to walk to your car in the dark? What if you get mugged?" and it's about their fears, not about a logical and accurate assessment of us or our living situation. Maybe she was just offloading it: she was going to worry all night until she knew that *you* were worrying instead so she didn't have to.
The point is that whatever the reason, it is inside of her. It isn't because of something she's seeing about you that you just don't realize and need to solve. It isn't probably even some grand intentional plan. We are all basically pigeons with levers, at the most basic psychological level. If something has given a reward in the past, it's likely we'll keep doing it, without noticing or planning or even thinking about why. Sometimes the best thing we can do is give up on understanding another person perfectly and instead just shrug and say "oh, that's so Mom."
Also. As a parent, your greatest fear is for your child's safety. Seeing them take risks, even risks that are necessary to make them happy independent adults, is hard. Good parents suppress that and get past it. Less good parents push their kids into "sure thing" degrees they hate, or scare them out of traveling, or encourage them to marry for money, or forbid them from pursuing hobbies they love, or set an impossibly high bar for when the child will be allowed to make their own decisions.
One thing I really hate about family gatherings is how my mom is a survival-chameleon.* I get it - I was one, to a large degree. (through her training, granted) But it's still painful. Especially around people who dislike or disdain those who aren't like them. And she doesn't see that disdain as something to counter, or even as what hurt her so badly when she first married my dad - she joins in!
Thank goodness for the cats being shut downstairs (to keep them out of the food on the kitchen table), so I had the excuse of going to comfort the kitties. Also, the excuse of clearing the table and loading the dishwasher between supper and dessert. Awesome spouse handles it better than I do, but even he escaped to the kitchen to help me wash dishes... Oh, and we couldn't even escape politics. Yay kitties in the basement...
Note: there were genuinely good parts. Like when we were all talking about how good the food was, or when we were talking about safe/neutral topics.
In any case, it is over.
re: lasslisa #203: "Less good parents ... scare them out of traveling, ... or set an impossibly high bar for when the child will be allowed to make their own decisions." It me. Codemonkey, it's a trap. And for me, it took being forcibly removed to a different city (spouse's grad school requirements) for me to even see it.
*takes on the views and opinions of the perceived powerful around them, and talks as if those have always been their views. See my mom around people who think all men in turbans are scary terrorists, vs. my mom talking to me. Also, sadly, see Mom slagging her *friend* to join in the mockery of a certain group of people. :(
Correction to the preview: I knew darn well it was a trap before I moved out. I just thought it was an inescapable one. It's not - it's just very, very hard.
Devin @183: Just for a specific, minor example: what if her possible autistic-spectrum status was her business and not yours? What if you weren't required to either a) try and screen her, or b) keep her from learning that you think she might be on the spectrum? What if you could just say "hey mom, ever wonder if you might be on the spectrum? You could get screened if you wanted" and that was all you owed her, neither dancing around the subject nor trying to diagnose nor managing her feelings about any possible diagnosis or non-diagnosis?
The reason why I'm wondering whether my mother is on the autism spectrum is that one of the things that I'm finding especially depressing is seeing work colleagues marrying and having children of their own, even though when I first started posting on these threads (over 6 years ago) I believed it would be better if I didn't have children due to the risk of having a disabled child like my sister. If her situation (and mine to a lesser extent) resulted from the genetic misfortune of having two parents on the spectrum, then that would suggest that I could minimize it by ensuring that any partner was as neurotypical as possible.
Incidentally, when taking my mother for shopping last Saturday I told her again how depressed I felt still having to live with her, and this time she responded "don't you realize how vulnerable you are? (because of my Asperger's)" and pointed me to a recent case where a teenager's clumsy attempt to make a friend resulted in a sexual assault conviction.
I guess fears like this may explain why she talked me out of going to that dance class over 7 years ago: she also told me on Saturday that when I was diagnosed (at the age of 10) her whole world fell apart as it meant I would almost certainly never marry or have children – seeing people posting on the Carers UK thread (which I linked to further up) that this isn't necessarily an insuperable obstacle, plus my awareness that my mother suspects my own father was also on the spectrum (if it didn't stop him, why should it stop me when I have various advantages over him: being far better educated for one) is just making me feel even worse!
Surely the main obstacle to improving my life is not my Asperger's but my mother's overprotective behaviour?
If you choose to call it overprotective behavior, that's a working label.
Frankly right now I am very angry at your mother, who is about my age IIRC. How dare she put her anxieties on you. How dare she do that to you. How dare she tell you that you were born unable to start your life. You were a child! You are her child! She has no right to put that stuff on you. It is a parent's responsibility to find peers to tell this stuff to. What she did instead was turn "I am anxious and I give up" into "You should be anxious and give up." (I could add a paragraph here about whether she meant to do it or not, but that would involve more looking backwards, and solve nothing.)
Look. My journey through life has not been a neurotypical one, and I have had to accept that certain neurotypical goals are so far off my life path that I would drown trying to reach them. I have had to lay those dreams aside.
BUT.
I am married; I have three children, a job, a volunteer position, a driver's license, a modest list of publications, professional respect, and common-law part-ownership of a house.
Did I screw up a lot? Yeah. Waste time pursuing goals that were unattainable or worthless? Yes. Take longer to do pretty much every "milestone" thing than the rest of my cohort? Yes.
But I'm here. And also autistic. Which I always will be.
And did I have a mother who was in many ways like yours? Yes. And did I have to leave her behind, even though it made her very sad that I would no longer let her into my heart, and I could do nothing about that sadness? Even though I felt horribly guilty because I never did manage to save her from her self-destructive behavior? Also yes. Did I also feel guilty about the dependents I left behind me, who were supposed to be her dependents but somehow ended up effectively mine? Yes. Would she have consumed me and worn me away, bit by bit, if I stayed? Yes. Could I actually have helped her or changed her one bit? No.
TL;DR: Yes, it's your mother.
Codemonkey in NE England @206: Surely the main obstacle to improving my life is not my Asperger's but my mother's overprotective behaviour?
Surely this is the case. But it is very very hard for people to see and accept that they are making someone's life difficult whom they love.
Over Yom Kippur, we had a little discussion group at synagogue around a selection of poems, and I found these lines from Chaim Nachman Bialik very striking:
Beneath the burden of your love,
Bowed down, I cannot lift me up!
When I read that, I immediately thought of this community and our work to lift each other up from beneath the burden of others' love.
It is hard for somebody who wants to remain in relationship with the person whose love is burdensome to read those lines and relate to them. I suspect it is much harder for somebody who makes their love a burden on others to read those lines and relate to them. Of course your mother believes that your Asperger's is the primary obstacle. She loves you and wants you to be safe and happy. But she is not able to see why, how, or that her love could be an obstacle at all, because it's extraordinarily difficult to look at ourselves and think, oh, I am the problem in this situation.
Above I said that surely it is true that your mother's overprotective behavior is the main obstacle to your improving your life. That's not quite true. The main obstacle is your inability so far to prevent her overprotective behavior from keeping you stagnant. It's okay for this to be very hard. We are trying to give you supports to use to help unburden yourself, and I hope that we are putting those supports in useful places. Together we are all stronger than any one of us alone, even if we never meet except pseudonymously here.
@Codemonkey 206: What Hope in Disguise 208 said. It is succinct, deep, and eloquent and should be kept where you can refer to it regularly.
It's really hard to walk when someone's hugging you.
It's really hard to walk when someone is shielding you with their body, even if the threat is real.
And as far as knowing your potential kids' genetics... is it stopping you from moving forward with what you want to do, whatever that may be? The folks here are pretty staunchly 'get out of the house it is full of bees' which is certainly a goal. And it's okay to use your mom's potential genes as a distraction while you pack.
Jenny Islander @207: It is a parent's responsibility to find peers to tell this stuff to. What she did instead was turn "I am anxious and I give up" into "You should be anxious and give up."
She's told me that she had few if any friends at school (and was bullied): not only was this another data point that suggested that she might be on the autistic spectrum herself, but it also explains a lot about her subsequent behaviour.
(Incidentally, one non-autism impediment to my making friends as a teenager was that my parents fought to get me into a secondary school outside my immediate local area. While this was probably my salvation educationally as it got me out of a toxic anti-intellectual local environment – in primary school bullies would attack my mathematical talent by shouting sums at me in the playground – it also deprived me of opportunities to socialize with my age-peers as my classmates were all at least two bus rides away, made it impractical for me to see them outside of school hours.)
She was always extremely close with her own parents (to the point that she visited them every day, and when I was a baby she moved back to the village where they lived even though it meant living in an inferior house) and I suspect that she views me in some ways as a substitute companion for her mother (who died in May 2011).
Jenny Islander: Look. My journey through life has not been a neurotypical one, and I have had to accept that certain neurotypical goals are so far off my life path that I would drown trying to reach them. I have had to lay those dreams aside. BUT. I am married; I have three children, a job, a volunteer position, a driver's license, a modest list of publications, professional respect, and common-law part-ownership of a house.
Which "neurotypical goals" are those?? I would have thought that finding someone to marry and raising children with them, would have been amongst the greatest challenges imaginable for anyone on the autistic spectrum!
Another thing my mother mentioned (to get you thinking): she said that even though she always wanted children when growing up, if she was young now she'd be very hesitant given that she wouldn't want to be raising children in today's world (she mentioned both knife crime and climate change).
I'm not sure what love is, but I'm pretty sure a lot of what passes for love is just wanting the other person around regardless of what it does to the other person. I think of this as using a person as a teddy bear.
Nancy Lebovitz @212: ... oof. I gotta take that home and think about it.
Nancy Lebovitz #212 Agree. If you say you love me, but you are far more invested in (a) what I make you feel without any regard for my feelings, or (b) what you imagine I am like or should be like without regard for what I am actually like then ... that's not love.
Of course, people being complicated, there can be some genuine love (concern for me as a person and wanting to facilitate my wellbeing and develop a genuine relationship with me) mixed in with the fool's gold love. That, I think, is part of what makes dysfunctional relationships so hard. There once was or even still is real love. It is now overshadowed by not-real-love, but the memory lingers and creates a hope that if only you could say the right thing or do the right thing, real love would be unlocked again.
Dysfunctional workplace comment with applications to family relationships.
In a letter to Ask A Manager today, someone had resigned to take a job with better pay and benefits, which they found because they began looking during a restructuring when they were afraid their job might be eliminated. Now the boss and coworkers in the job they are leaving keep telling them how awful they are, how it will be their responsibility if the company goes under without them, etc.
A commenter nailed it in one: "People who weaponize guilt should never be rewarded for doing so."
OtterB @214: Grounds for one particular break-up. Also: If I can't say 'no,' then 'yes' is meaningless. For some, this is a foreign concept.
@215: If the departaure causes the company to collapse, sounds like there are...management issues...? D:
Further, look, everyone feels that teddy-bear love. No matter how healthy and wonderful the relationship. It's not either-or, it's "can you act on the better impulses even though you feel 'em both?"
Jacque @216 If the departaure causes the company to collapse, sounds like there are...management issues...? D:
Yeah, there were a lot of comments about that. To go along with the don't-let-the-guilt-you and "the company wouldn't have hesitated to lay you off; you shouldn't hesitate to jump ship." The commentariat at AAM can come on a little strong but are on target more than not.
@Codemonkey, I would like to give you some perspective on attempting to explain the past in exact terms.
I know the following to be true:
*I did not meet my half-brother, or even know that he existed, until I was in college;
*When I was very small, my family lived in a house by a lake;
*When I was less small than that, we moved up the street to a house with a big yard;
*Then the lake house burned down;
*And then my father died.
All of these recollections are tied to important events in my journey through PTSD and away from my family of origin.
Yesterday I happened to meet a woman who said that she had babysat me, at the lake house, while my half-brother was living there, after the death of my father.
Here's the thing: It does not matter whether she is wrong about the past, or whether I am. The central events--loss of home, loss of parent, that moment when I was told that I would be staying in the home of a complete stranger while I waited for freshman dorms to open up because shared genes--are still true even if I cannot be sure about the granular detail.
You don't have to get all the details right. The question that breaks stasis is not, "This happened to me. How and why?" The question is, "This happened to me. What am I going to do next?"
OtterB @214: I think that was was motivating me a lot while at school and university – "if I stick in with my studies and get myself a good job, I'll be able to get my old, nice mother back once I've given her some money so she can have the life that my dad was too lazy to work for".
I didn't realize that however much my mother was carping at my dad for not getting a job, lack of money wasn't the true source of her pain. She told me the other night that she didn't envy people who were materially better off than her: rather she envied people that were part of close-knit extended families where everyone helped one another.
Jenny Islander, what you told me about your past didn't answer my query regarding which "neurotypical goals" you had that you had to accept you wouldn't be able to achieve.
Codemonkey @220 lack of money wasn't the true source of her pain
Exactly this. Not to understate the problems that lack of money can cause - sometimes that really is the root issue - but what what you've said of your mother, it's not the central problem here.
@220:
At various times in my earlier life:
* "You're so intelligent, you should go into management"
* "You're so intelligent, you should pursue a four-year degree"
* "You're so curious about the world, you should put aside money and travel"
* "This highly social group activity is relevant to your interests, you ought to join it"
* "You write so well about things you're passionate about, you should do a lot of public speaking"
Jenny Islander @219
The question is, "This happened to me. What am I going to do next?"
that: rings like a bell, strums like a harp, echoes like trumpets.
i'm fixing to embroider that into a motherforking sampler.
@223: I should qualify what I said, however.
"This happened to me. What am I going to do next?" is true only if this = the actual problem. That is, if you think the problem is "We're an especially close family, and I keep picking relationship partners who can't understand that" you will never solve the problem "My parents make decisions for me and pester me at all hours of the day and night and I expect my relationship partners to submit to it along with me."
Another data point re my mother's anxiety: she told me that back in September 2016 when my employer moved to a city-centre location (which meant that instead of parking right outside my office I'd be parked 10 minutes' walk away) she felt as worried as I visibly was two months later when I heard that Trump had won the US presidential election!
Chickadee @191: Not saying this is what you need to do, but the thing that finally allowed me to learn what boundaries are (and probably got my new marriage off to a MUCH better start) was moving to a city too far away to drive to easily.
At least I wouldn't have to go that far as I'm the only person in my family who can drive...
Jenny Islander @222: Thanks: of the five goals you mentioned, only the last two seem to me like things that could have been impaired by autism.
I'd love to have the chance to travel as well, but bringing the issue up with my dad gave me the impression that my mother would strongly object (perhaps because she doesn't think she'd cope in my absence, or perhaps because she fears I'd go hungry because I'm such a picky eater).
@223, also @225: I also wish to point out that "This happened to me, what am I going to do next" is not necessarily the same as "This happened to me, what am I going to do about it." Because sometimes there's nothing you can do about what happened, because it cannot be undone. But you can decide what to do after what happened, with the resources available, even if they are not the resources you would prefer to have or think you should or could have.
I thought about this a lot, because on top of autism I've got PTSD and a bunch of other stuff, and there is no reset button for any of it. I cannot identify the precise point at which the person I am now branched off from the person I might have been. Even if I could, I can't will myself back to that point mentally, and travel down the other timeline instead.
Jenny Islander @226: "I cannot identify the precise point at which the person I am now branched off from the person I might have been. Even if I could, I can't will myself back to that point mentally, and travel down the other timeline instead."
iow: any advice requiring the use of a time machine can be safely (and summarily) dismissed.
Captain Awkward, who is one of my favorite internet people, has put up a post of resources and advice for people with difficult families. There have been several letters lately on this topic.
Relatedly, a friend & I watched Raising Dion over the weekend, and several story threads make me strongly suspect that one or more of the writers are regular CA readers.
@227: It's that, yes, but also: I found myself ruminating, sometimes, that if I could just figure out where and when and how I [chose or was pushed along] the turns that led me to be the kind of person who [did or didn't] [thing I wanted to stop or start doing], then I would be able to mentally go back to that point and become the kind of person I wanted to be.
But of course, that's not possible.
I eventually realized that it is important to know what is ailing your psyche, in the same way that it's important to know whether you've got chicken pox or flu--but trying to find the exact edges of the thing, as if identifying its precise causes and parameters could help you, is useless. You don't need to know how many varicella particles are in your bloodstream; you need to know where the oatmeal bath mixture is and when you can safely take your next dose of fever reducer. You already know you're sick.
So I started thinking instead, "OK, so this is who I am now. I want to change [thing I want to change]. Is that feasible, and if so, how do I get there, as this person who I am now?"
#230 ::: Jenny Islander
I'm applauding. Getting to the point where you want to do what is relevant for you is a big deal.
Jenny Islander re the turns that led you to be the kind of person you are
Timothy Zahn's novella "Cascade Point" won the 1984 Hugo. I remember reading it when it was first published and have gone back to it a time or two. In that world, a spaceship pilot going into jump space (or whatever it was called) sees a line of alternate-them, representing the ways their lives might have gone differently at key transition points. As I remember it, the main character flies a small starship and regrets that he doesn't fly for a large company. So the line he sees going into jump space sometimes includes himself in the uniform of a large-company pilot (meaning some choice he made missed the turn that would lead to that), but there are also some vacant spaces in the line (meaning the choice he didn't make would have killed him). I don't remember details of the plot, though I remember liking the story, but the idea of a visual representation of the way your choices continually diverge has stuck with me all these years.
Jenny Islander #230: I eventually realized that it is important to know what is ailing your psyche, in the same way that it's important to know whether you've got chicken pox or flu--but trying to find the exact edges of the thing, as if identifying its precise causes and parameters could help you, is useless.
As it happens, I just picked up a little book titled "Springs of Greek Wisdom" from the shop, and it offers this quote from Pythagoras:
If you have a wounded heart, touch it as little as you would an injured eye. There are only two remedies for the suffering of the soul: Hope and Patience."
I'm not sure about the last bit -- we've been working on a few more remedies here -- but the first part seems pretty reasonable.
I just saw a piece of advice involving a time machine that's actually not completely useless!
Nancy Lebovitz @Open thread 222/608: Yes, this definitely belongs here. Thank you so much for the pointer.
God damn.
"Spectacular" hardly seems to cover it. Harrowing and hilarious and wrenching and healing—I hardly know what to say.
In the interests of efficiency for everyone, I'm reposting:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177950/chapters/47807593
This is a novel-length account by Crowley's therapist, and a spectacular piece of work.
I read it because siderea recommended it as the best portrayal of a therapist she's ever seen.
https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1550852.html
Dramatic healing effect of the show:
https://medium.com/@airaplaysgames/how-good-omens-changed-my-life-cured-my-depression-and-fixed-my-posture-2919e85a04dc
236/237 Absolutely!
238 This moose wishes he'd noticed the 'novel-length' comment.
(Looking at the clock and seeing 02:30 came as something of a shock.)
Having recently obtained the DVD, I know why the "Redacted" chapter is redacted, and it was an absolutely beautiful twist.
My only regret (from memory) is that the original "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me" scene didn't make it - they used it in the intro IIRC, and that Aziraphale's "Gosh, am I on Television?" scene was omitted entirely.
But it's a GLORIOUS piece of film, amazingly true to the book, and the the AO3 'piece' is also a masterwork.
Bravo Zulu to all involved in it.
Nancy Lebovitz @238: Now onto that author's other fics (the first one, specifically), and—it's just delicious. Particularly (if you'll pardon me), the beef stew recipe.
Cadbury Moose: the "Redacted" chapter
Could you remind me please (rot13 any spoilers)? I watched it long enough ago that I can't pull back the reference, and I don't have the capacity to watch again (though these fics are making me want to).
Jacque @240 -- I've just reached the point in the fic where "[Redacted]" is first mentioned. It refers to the highly-significant bit of plot that was in the adaptation but not in the book, near the end.
I've read the script book but have (so far) watched only the first episode. I have mixed feelings about that addition. I think I'd have found it more emotionally satisfying if they hadn't had to do what they did, so to speak.
Codemonkey @182,
While I haven't posted here recently, I've been seeing your posts. Advice I gave to someone else might be applicable. Paraphrasing myself:
When it comes to setting up an apartment, AirBnB provides a helpful shopping list: what a budget "whole place" has is what you ought to have. And browsing it helps you see setups and designs you like and can use.
For cleaning [or other skills], consider finding a cleaner on Craigslist [or local equivalent]. Hire them specifically with the stated goal of you're going to learn from them. You'll offer to pay extra because your questions will take up time. Large numbers of people reach adulthood without various skills, and learning by watching over someone's shoulders is fine if they're good with it.
Ditto repair skills: not everyone enjoys teaching but some do. If you can, find a Youtube video that shows you what to do (if it's feasible and you have/ can easily buy the tools). If not, call several people until you find a repair person who won't mind you watching to learn.
Variations over Thyme @242: My problem isn't that I lack confidence in my ability to look after myself, so much that I don't know how to convince my mother that I am capable so that she will allow me to move out. (That is, if my supposed incapacity is an actual factor as opposed to a pretext.)
When I try to look at things from my mother's perspective, I suspect a major reason why she's so terrified of my moving out is that she has good reason to believe that my sister (who idolizes me and will eagerly tell anyone willing to listen about all the things I do for her, and has also suffered from even worse anxiety than my mother over the past year) would completely go to pieces if I did.
Codemonkey, I recently ran across a quote from Bujold's A Civil Campaign and thought of you. I know Ekaterin's experience has been discussed in these threads before. But this seems relevant.
"Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste . . . years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just . . . take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that's hard.”
The situation with your sister makes it more difficult, of course. It's perfectly reasonable to try to plan things to make it easier on your sister, since people with autism often have a difficult time with change. But if you plan regular visits and/or video calls she may adjust to the new normal.
@243: I'm going to be autistic-blunt at you, so feel free to skip this post if you are not feeling emotionally ready for blunt instruments at this time.
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You have perfectly encapsulated the problem.
The solution to the first part is to go without your mother's permission and without managing her emotions. This is simple to say, but not simple to execute. It will be messy and painful and probably cause a lot of anger, guilt, and other extremely unpleasant emotions. There is no way to do it neatly.
The solution to the second part is also to go, without managing your sister's emotions. Again, this is simple to say, but not simple to execute, and will probably trail a lot of painful emotions behind it.
You can't actually help them with their anxiety. There are treatments for anxiety. You are not a treatment. You're a Band-Aid on an abscess.
And the fact that your mother wants to stick with a Band-Aid (and wear it out, BTW--she's wearing you out) does not mean that you have to stick around. She will either get treatment, or not. Not. Your. Responsibility.
As for your sister: If she is legally responsible for your sister, and fails to care for her after you leave, are there protective services you can call? Yes, this will cause more emotional mess, which you cannot fix, but do such services exist?
@243 "I don't know how to convince my mother that I am capable so that she will allow me to move out. "
More bluntly:
You don't have to convince her.
She does not have to allow it.
You can just move out.
the invisible one's @DFD: Think of the Children/521: I've been going through some Stuff in the last year or so, massively aggravated by recent changes at work. I was searching around on the DFD threads for the word "Trauma" (looking for that vid I posted a while back to find the name of the presenter). In so doing, I ran across a link to Trauma Typology in cPTSD in the invisible one's
@521, and finally read it more carefully. The author lists out the different reaction types (fight, flight, freeze, & fawn) and says:
Those who are repetitively traumatized in childhood however, often learn to survive by over-relying on the use of one or two of the 4F Reponses. Fixation in any one 4F response not only delimits the ability to access all the others, but also severely impairs the individual's ability to relax into an undefended state, circumscribing him in a very narrow, impoverished experience of life.
This part struck me hard:
The Freeze Type and the Dissociative DefenseMany freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the "off" position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - "the lost child" - who is forced to "choose" and habituate to the freeze response (the most primitive of the 4Fs). Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type's defenses develop around classical dissociation, which allows him to disconnect from experiencing his abandonment pain, and protects him from risky social interactions - any of which might trigger feelings of being reabandoned. Freeze types often present as ADD; they seek refuge and comfort in prolonged bouts of sleep, daydreaming, wishing and right brain-dominant activities like TV, computer and video games.
This is a really accurate description of my whole life. And it explains so much.
One irony is that, especially in the last year, I've become extremely conscious of the importance of social contact to my mental well-being. Which, of course, is the thing I'm least equipped (actually averse?) to seeking.
I spent the morning pondering this, and realized that one consequence is that I've gotten myself cemented into a whole tangle of interlocking obstacles blocking any attempt to change or improve my life or my resilience.
The good news is that I've spotted some point fixes that might at least unlock some of my barriers. First and foremost, having people over to my house is blocked because my house is so dirty and ill-suited to guests that I'm really uncomfortable inviting people in. (Which, you know, is maybe be not a coincidence?) Making my house even minimally guest-worthy feels like a massive (paralysing) undertaking. (Deep breath: how do you eat an elephant?)
Another major obstacle is money: basically, going out to visit friends almost invariably involves at least enough money to buy coffee, and I'm feeling—not poor, right now, thank Ghu—but my margins are so narrow I hate spending any money I don't absolutely have to.
...As I write this, it strikes me that this "freeze" defense actually goes a hell of a long way to explaining the difficulties I've had improving my financial position beyond bare minimum maintenance. Which suggests that if I can ever treat this effectively, there's maybe some hope there, as well. (Which is ironic, since this is the single topic that has driven nearly all of my—numerous, and nearly universally failed—attempts at therapy.)
In the TX ("Treatment?") section, he also lists out pretty accurately the difficulties I've had around therapy. Which gives me some hope that this-all may eventually be soluble.
It's amazing how putting a name to something can make it so much easier to tackle. Well, not easy. Possible?
Has anybody here gotten treatment for their cPTSD? I'd love to hear any comments or thoughts (or warnings) you might have on your experiences.
My anon nick is part of my cPTSD resolution. I spent so long knowing that to be noticed was to be a victim, that being able to cut off parts of my life is freeing. I can provide access to this circumscribed part of me, but refuse access to all of me. (Even though experience has shown that people here do not take vulnerability as an opportunity for fun.)
So, obviously, I still struggle with cPTSD ideation. Things that I have found helpful:
*Cognitive behavioral therapy. Spot the patterns, examine them, and work on setting new ones.
*Allowing myself to be "abnormal," because I cannot un-have my formative experiences. Note: Am also autistic, so that is part of why I chose this belief. From a cPTSD perspective, accepting "abnormality" means that I will always feel safer alone, that my first impulse in the face of real or assumed authority will always be to freeze. OK, that's who I am. Now, what do I do with it?
*Choosing to remove or limit parts of my life that are not vital and that set off my cPTSD. This is a big part of why I skip class reunions. I know I'll feel horrible if I go, and I lose nothing by not going, so why go? Because it's "normal?" Not a good enough reason.
*Choosing to practice in situations that tend to set off my cPTSD within limits that I control. I did this with a part-time job that I did not absolutely need. I kept it because I only saw my boss a few times a year, so I could psych myself up for it (remote worker); because all encounters with other employees on site were pretty much scripted (they knew that I was a merchandiser on the clock, with no time to chat); and because my "office" was a company-issued Samsung Galaxy, so I could break down from nerves in the solitude of my car.
*Kept records of times when my cPTSD brain weasels were wrong. One big example for me was the time that somebody else messed around with my display and put defective stuff that I had removed back onto the shelves. I had to tell somebody in authority at the store. I carefully wrote down how I was not blamed, and how I was not assumed to be lying when I said it wasn't me, and how they listened and let me go on with my job instead of screaming at me about how horrible I was for magically causing the problem to happen when I wasn't there. I referred to it often.
HTH
#247, Jacque: Wow, I had forgotten about that post. Interestingly enough, I very recently read that author's book on complex PTSD (surviving to thriving) and found it illuminating. Will go through it again soonish to see what more I can get from it.
I seem to have drifted away then back toward the cPTSD information. First learned here, now in a fb group on the subject, books (also The Body Keeps The Score), and finally recently started therapy. I made sure to ask in the first session about trauma; turns out developmental trauma is the subject of my therapist's thesis! Talk about luck.
Therapy would be really neat, but I get the strong sense that I've got considerable work to do before I can realistically think about that. Interestingly, this essay also succinctly maybe explains why I've never been able to make therapy work:
...[F]reeze types are the most difficult 4F defense to treat. First, their positive relational experiences are few if any, and they are therefore extremely reluctant to enter the relationship of therapy; moreover, those who manage to overcome this reluctance often spook easily and quickly terminate.
J anon @248: I get the sense that you have been working with your stuff for a while and have developed a (for lack of a better word) relationship with the issues, such that you can largely navigate around them in day-to-day life?
the invisible one: I already have both of those books in my TBR list at the library. Your comment (as well as the linked author's own story) gives me hope that spending some time reading is a viable approach to start with, at least.
I'll be fascinated to hear anything you care to report from your therapy experience; I realize the only concept I have of what therapy would entail is the Good Omens fanfic Nancy Lebovitz's @238 linked.
@Jacque 250: I got some time-wasters (the one who thought that the cure for depression was to bellow at me comes to mind) and some people who simply weren't a good fit. I struck gold with the person who was willing to sit silently with me for 50 minutes when I showed up unable to verbalize why I was there, even to myself. (Thou Shalt Not Tell was one of the Greatest Commandments of my upbringing.) When you do decide to pursue therapy, give yourself permission to fire a therapist who doesn't fit you. And you can start whenever you feel you've got the spoons, whether you know what you want or not. You don't have to be This Together to take the Therapy Ride.
I have noticed--mind you, this has taken years--that I am navigating relatively easily through situations that would have made me tense for days five years ago, or driven me to tears in the bathroom ten years ago, even though I haven't had formal therapy in a very long time. Part of that is the lasting effects of CBT, but part is simply experience.
Memory is the foundation of self. I strongly urge you to write down what actually happens in your day, especially the situations that set off your brain weasels. Even the situations that do not end well for you very rarely go in the direction your brain weasels predict--unless you're in the presence of your abusers of course. You can refer to your written notes when you are psyching yourself up for something difficult.
I also suggest--this is based on personal experience--that instead of a goal of "getting better," you work on identifying less overarching goals with measurable results. One I wish I had pursued earlier: Learn to clearly identify assumptions inculcated by my childhood so that I could avoid, for example, deliberately leaving a workplace that provided unfamiliar and therefore disturbing trust and respect...and going for a job with somebody who sent lots of "I am going to bully you" signals during the interview, which my childhood had trained me to regard as normal.
#250, Jacque: as I recall, one of the points made in that author's book was that for many people, starting with reading is the first step in being able to face therapy at all. Also that if humans are too much a source of trauma, animals are often a source of caring and linking emotionally that can help the healing process.
For myself, this place - specifically getting used to articulating the things that I fear, that bother me, etc, and also getting used to being heard instead of dismissed - was a key part of being able to go back to therapy. I tried once, a decade ago, pushed by Crappy Ex; that therapist was terrible and if anything made things worse by buying into CE's narrative that I was broken and needed fixed instead of realizing that I may be broken in some ways, but CE was also being a shit and exacerbating my issues.
#247:: Jacque
Speaking as someone who freezes and who has a very untidy home, I think freezing can lead to difficulty with tidying.
Tidying involves making decisions and moving things, not to mention claiming space.
Speaking of freezing, here's a message to anybody who's facing a U.S. Thanksgiving that will be hellish for their nerves.
It's okay to not go and not explain why. The repercussions from whoever makes your Thanksgivings awful may be bad, but it is still okay if you choose to do so.
It's okay to not go and lie about why. You're sick. Your dog is sick. There's a thing in the pipes and you have to be there to let the plumber in. Car trouble. Whatever. Again, the repercussions may be bad, but that does not make your decision bad.
It's okay to decide that this is it, this is the very last one, you'll grit your teeth and get through THIS one and then immediately start planning ways to not be there next year.
It's okay, if the fuckery is coming from inside the house, for you to deliberately plan a way to check out mentally. Perhaps you could turn the things you know are going to happen into a game of Bingo. See if you win.
You don't have to make Thanksgiving go right. You can bug out, and let the dysfunction and emotion dumping go on without you.
Well! I am thankful that yet again I have had the benefit of a happy Thanksgiving with the in-laws, in which my most reclusive child actually voluntarily joined in the traditional tabletop game (and skunked us all). We have loads of leftovers, including some made with my new dietary restrictions in mind. I have had a couple of spells of the usual brain-weasel bullshit since we came home ("Remember that innocuous moment? It wasn't really innocuous. No, it was heinous, and shameful, and you should be horrified that they saw and heard you do that. And you are not fit to be around people. Blah blah blah.") and I could shake them off. And I allowed myself to just sit and decompress and let my to-do list go because I am just the type of person who gets mentally fried by a dinner party, even one I enjoyed, and that's that.
Here's to progress, non-linear as it may be! I hope y'all in the U.S. have been or will be all right.
Thank you folks for you kind words of wisdom.
J @251: Excellent map for general navigation. And I've already made use of the "write it down" trick. Had a call linking up with an old friend. After angsting all week that they couldn't possibly want to be bothered with me after all this time, not only were they enthusiastic about a catch-up chat, but they called me.
the invisible one @252: Thank you for the reassurances wrt starting out with reading. I've already pondered some interesting points by the author of that linked blog post.
WRT animals: heh. Maarten just finished a course of antibiotics, which meant she got (forcibly) snuggled twice a day for the duration. Post-medicine, I have been informed that the snuggles are apparently still required. :)
Nancy Lebovitz @253: That's...really on the nose. So it seems I've got a couple (several?) levels of "freeze" running. Thanks for pointing that out.
@255 & 256: Yay for progress, indeed!
I just got off the phone with the woman who trained me not to report sexual assault.
Backstory: I was bullied nonstop starting in first grade, in a school system that ran on the axioms "academically successful children have no personal problems" and "the one who makes the noise gets the punishment." By third grade, I was desperate. The teacher--I'll call her JN--had assigned a writing project. We were supposed to write about a wish. I wrote that I wished that [name] and [name] would leave me alone. JN was furious. She dressed me down in front of my entire class, made me stand there while they jeered, blamed me for the bullies' hurt feelings and commanded a public apology, and ordered me to sit in the dark classroom all alone while the rest of the class went to a scheduled fun activity. By the time the lights went back on, I had come to understand my place quite well, and I was as quiet and invisible as I could be for the rest of my time in public school, except when I was performing academic excellence correctly. That didn't protect me from the bullies, of course, but the teachers quit punishing me for not being happy.
And when I was sexually assaulted on campus for the first time, by fellow students, I obeyed my training and said nothing at all. I just swallowed the shame and rage, and slept less.
JN is a little old lady who lives in a different time zone, but she had a reason to contact my employer today. And I was professional and polite, and she had no clue who I was; as someone said, for me what happened in third grade had been one of the worst events of my life, but for her it had been just another forgettable Tuesday.
I suppose it's a sign of personal growth that I am not going to save her number, call her, and rip her a new one for what she did to me. But God I want to.
J (258): Witnessing.
I'm not sure how the bullies' feelings were supposed to be hurt by a private writing assignment; if JN hadn't shamed you in front of the entire class, how would they have even known you wrote that?
We were supposed to read them out loud. So I did. Grown-ups help...right?
I didn't so much grow past her training as run out of give-a-shit about it. When the second assault happened, in high school, I snapped and went after the guy in a public place. I was astounded when he was punished--expelled even--instead of me. Later, I walked out of a chemistry class taught by a man who did not prepare lessons ahead of time and would not use the safety equipment, spent that class period in the library for the rest of the year, and still got a B. I was punished for that one, but at least I was angry about it, not heartbroken.
But I have to get back to work. Dammit, JN, couldn't you have picked some other way to have your question answered?
J (260): Argh! Many sympathies, for then and for now.
J, witnessing. Sorry this ever happened, and that the wound has been poked.
J: Yeah, having people from The Past turn up At Work is...a thing. You have my admiration for handling it professionally.
J: Witnessing. Ouch.
Were you the only victim of that kind of abuse, or was it part of a broader pattern with that teacher or school? A friend of mine is part of the suit against Grenville Christian College. Her description of her experiences is appalling. The school was run on the principle that "God can only love you if you have no sense of pride or self-worth". (Is that a "standard" Christian heresy? C.S. Lewis brings it up in The Screwtape Letters.) So any kind of accomplishment led to ritualized humiliation by staff and classmates. My friend is a talented musician and performer, but she's got a long way to go to get over her terror of being in situations where people's attention is on her.
@264: I don't think that the administration knowingly abetted it. I know that when they caught one of my middle school teachers molesting students (not me), they brought the hammer down; and they expelled the BMOC who groped me. The sexual assaults, from my perspective, were more a side effect of "the one who makes the noise gets the punishment" and "smart kids only have social problems that they themselves cause." There's a lot that a bored child without a strong moral compass can find to do, in those gaps. Especially with like-minded buddies along.
Also note that, as somebody bleakly noted in another forum, people who talk compassionately about special-needs kids and the less fortunate among us can turn right around and sneer at weirdos and people who can't seem to groom themselves properly. Some of the bullying I got was from people of all ages who had decided that I was deliberately annoying them by not acting properly, although they were nice and compassionate folks to those who, in their minds, were making an effort. (I am autistic and I was a victim of neglect; I also entered the school system with PTSD and developed C-PTSD as time went on--both of which make a person act "weird.")
From rox-and-prose on Tumblr, quoted here because yes, this:
Sometimes having mental illness is like living paycheck to paycheck but with your brain.
@Codemonkey: Something prompted me to go back over my exchanges with you upthread. I noticed something in one of your October posts (#182):
Instead of saying "no permission is required", wouldn't "permission comes automatically on legal majority" have been a less ambiguous way to say what you were trying to get across?
There is a fundamental assumption here that is thoroughly wrong and that, I think, is influencing how you read and respond to the posts in this DFD thread. You are assuming that permission is relevant. That you must perceive that somebody else is giving you permission--if not your mother, then the culture--in order to make this change.
But there is no question of permission. Rain falls, adults set up their own households, and trees grow; and permission is equally irrelevant to all of these processes.
If you must feel permitted in order to make this change, then think about this: It's you. You give you permission. Purely, 100 percent, entirely, without any exceptions, you.
#267, Jenny Islander & #182, Codemonkey:
About permission, since I have also identified "needing external permission" as a thing I'm dealing with, would it help if an outside person gave you permission? Because that helps me.
Codemonkey, you sound like you've got a good enough handle on most things, the ability and willingness to learn those things you don't know yet, and the resources to maintain your own home. I give you permission to move out of your mother's home and into your own space!
my @250, cont'd: ...with a side of "fawning." :-\
I'm noticing it's really hard to talk about this stuff, because I'm terrified I'm going to flood the conversation and drive my listeners away, so I have to stop myself from going into paroxysms of apology. Anybody else experience this? How do you deal with it?
@269: If you mean talking to a therapist or in a support group, it's OK to begin by saying, "I have a reflex of apologizing for, like, everything when I'm stressed, so I'm warning you in advance." You can even add "Sorry" with a smile.
If it helps, this is a very common problem. When I was active in the Raised by Narcissists subreddit, I identified a general pattern of introductory posts.
1. Apology for bringing something irrelevant to the subreddit;
2. Description of a highly relevant memory or situation;
3. Apology again, for taking up the subreddit's time [by using the subreddit for its intended purpose];
4. Offhand remark that contains a buried lede [example: body of post is about difficulty planning Christmas, but offhand remark is about the time the difficult person locked the poster out in subzero weather without a coat or shoes as a child] with self-blame for the situation [typically "How can I get over this?" with an implication that the poster is at fault];
5. Yet another apology, this time for the length of the post [which typically is not long].
Forewarning: A common next step, after the poster realizes that what they need most to get over at the moment is the impulse to apologize for having been harmed...is anger. Lots and lots of deep, intense anger. Or sometimes it's grief. Whatever negative emotion you weren't allowed to show in response to maltreatment, you may find it really billowing up when it sinks in that you are free to feel it now.
did not call the fam today. considered it. i recognize that such calls are almost always uncomfortable/unpleasant both for me and for my mom and brother. if i don't call, she gets to be mad at me for not calling, which is, i've decided, a kind of present for her. a kindness, even.
hope everybody here got through the day intact. i had my traditional fuck-the-patriarchy grilled cheese sammich. it was great.
I had a migraine all day, but everybody else went to the Christmas party and left the house to me and the cat, so I could adjust the sound level, lights, ventilation, etc., to exactly what hurt the least, which was nice. Plus, the cat administered medicinal cuddles. The fam packed up my favorite foods from the party and I had them for dinner. (Green bean casserole, mmmmm.)
@271: I think it was a lovely present. You picked the best one available off the short list of gifts she would accept.
(Aside: If somebody just loves potato chips even though they complain about "the potato sweats" every time they eat them, and won't hear that "the potato sweats" are a sign of an allergy, you aren't obliged to eat chips with them--especially if you get "potato sweats" too!)
Siiiiiigghhhhh
So... someone in my hiking group is hitting my "people don't actually like you they're just too polite to say anything" trigger pretty hard right now.
The core group is me and three people who I will call A, B, and C.
A and I are close friends, and do a lot of stuff just the two of us.
B and I have done a few things just the two of us, but are not particularly close, and B is, on some subjects, rather invalidating. "Anxiety? Oh yes, I worry a lot about [worrying/stressful thing] too!" for example. A good part of the hiking group, but there are some very personal subjects I prefer to avoid because of that. Pretty much any subject outside of mental health or things that benefit from having a mentor looking out for you seem to be totally fine to discuss though. B is also one of those people who wants something and gets it, and is quite certain that their read on a situation is the correct one. Strong personality, I guess you could say.
A and B are also very close.
C is not a particularly close friend; a good part of the hiking group, have chatted, but haven't done anything just the two of us.
B and C are also very close.
So twice now, B has organized a hike and invited A and C and did not invite me. The first one, there was a plausible reason; I had felt like I was coming down with a cold, and A assumed I wouldn't want to go because of it. If it was a cold, it turned out to be about the mildest cold in existence and I would have loved to hike that day. Told A that I would appreciate an invitation even if there was reason to assume I wouldn't be able to make it. I usually do go.
The second one, A noticed having invite privileges on the fb event, and invited me. B then told A that A shouldn't have invited me because B was trying for a specific mix of people for this hike... which clearly didn't include me. (Most of the people included, I have met and hiked with before!) B replied with a like to my statement of attending on the fb event, and normal sounding positive words when I said I would be driving and how many seatbelts I had. A told me what B had said about inviting me. On hike day, B appeared happy to see me, and acted "normal" although because of all this I couldn't help but notice that I was the only person to whom B *didn't* say it was good to see me there as we finished and headed our separate ways. As far as I know, B isn't aware that A relayed what B had said about not inviting me.
I know I should probably talk to B about this. I talked to my therapist about the first instance.
But that second one is 100% "I don't want you here and deliberately left you off the list but I'm not going to tell you that now that you know about the event, and I'm going to be all smiley to your face so you don't know that I would rather you weren't here," and this time I *know* about it, it's not my anxiety reading things into something that may or may not be there.
It's complicated because I don't want to be particularly close to B due to the invalidating crap, just maintain a "hiking group" that we all enjoy, much the level of relationship I have with C. But it looks like B thinks the group should just be A, B, and C, without me. Prior to this, the hiking group was the four of us, and whatever 2, 3, or 4 of us could make a given hike, went, but we were all invited each time.
Not sure what, if any, advice I want. Definitely wanted to vent. (It's hard to vent about this to A, because A and B are quite close. We have discussed it some.)
One of the things I am trying to work myself up to is finding other hiking buddies. Meeting people is SO HARD. And hiking buddies requires compatibility on so many different things all at the same time: fitness, bush legs, moving speed, how ambitious a hike is desired, how much time spent chilling at food breaks, photo breaks, conversational topics and quantity... but having more hiking friends will probably make it easier to let the concept of that hiking group as a "core group" go, keep hiking with just A and occasionally the other two as well, and go hiking with other people.
the invisible one: That majorly sucks. I'm fighting a variant of that particular trigger a lot lately, too. And the whole find more people to [activity] with—really hard. ::solidarity::
Thank you, and everybody else, for being here.
the invisible one @274 Sympathy! Is it possible A is misreporting at least the tone, if not the specific details, of B not inviting you? It might be worth discussing your concerns with A, since you say you're close with them. I don't know whether it's worth asking B about it, that could make things better, or worse.
From what you say it's not clear how large the 2nd hike was, or whether the other participants all had something in common that you didn't share (a fandom, a career thing, an educational background, ethnicity, whatever) that B was trying to draw them together around. It might have been B saying to A "I'd intended this as a hike for people who X, but now that you've invited Invisible, that's fine, it's not like I don't like hiking with them."
One other thing that occurs to me is that B might be more insecure than you realize, but suppresses it better than you do, and maybe your willingness to talk about your own anxiety makes them uncomfortable about their own unacknowledged insecurities? The invalidation might be an unconscious defense mechanism (which doesn't make it any more pleasant, of course!)
Whatever the motives, it really sucks that a jerktape in your brain is getting evidence that it's right and you're wrong. I'm sorry. I hope it all resolves in your favor rather than the jerkbrain's.
Alas, no. A asked for details relevant to whether not inviting me was a one-time thing for that specific hike or a general thing, and got the message that B doesn't like being around me. Can't remember if the word A used was "stressful" or "annoying" but either way we agreed that what we had both thought was the core 4 hiking group is no longer.
#276, Jeremy Leader: It's possible that B isn't comfortable with (or with how) I talk about my anxiety, whether that's due to insecurity or not.
On the plus side, the anxiety medications mean I'm disappointed at the group changing, annoyed that B couldn't talk to me but made A into a go-between which is totally not fair to A, but not completely losing my shit and panicking about this.
I mean, there's a certain amount of "what am I doing that's annoying???" worry along with "does A also find that annoying?" but that isn't the dominant thought. I kind of do want to know what I do that B finds annoying though, if for no other reason that letting me filter out people who find that annoying before getting invested in stuff with them.
the invisible one @278:
I kind of do want to know what I do that B finds annoying though, if for no other reason that letting me filter out people who find that annoying before getting invested in stuff with them.
This is entirely reasonable. if it turns out to be not possible, perhaps you can use the litany against a broken heart I used when I was dating. "Huh. I thought they were a person of taste, but they don't want me. I guess I was mistaken. It hurts my pride that I was mistaken. Moving on."
#279, SpawnOfTheDevil: very nice way of thinking about it! Even without being broken hearted (since as I mentioned, I was already limiting how close we could be due to B's invalidating responses to parts of my reality) it's good to remind myself that probably this says more about B than it does about me.
Kind of debating with myself whether I should call out B on making A into a go-between for communicating this, or just drop it. B is very good at making people do what B wants them to do, which A also finds kind of frustrating. I am resisting the passive-aggressive fb posts about "people I thought were friends" though... :)
the invisible one #280:
It may be time to plan a hiking trip with A and C, but not B.
the invisible one @280 et al:
I think you're handling this admirably! I wouldn't bother calling out B directly, since it doesn't sound like you have a relationship worth the effort of confrontation. If A wants B to change, that's probably up to A to attempt to influence B, and it's unlikely that intervention from you will have any beneficial effect.
#281, Dave Harmon: I think so!
#282, Jeremy Leader: I suspect you're right. That's a large part of the argument on the "don't call B on it" side of my internal debate.
It's been a very long time.
So here are the Cliffs Notes, for those who don't remember me and those who do remember me but need some catching up:
1985: I am born to a conservative couple in their 30s, in southern Alabama. This pretty much sets the tone for the rest of my childhood.
1985 - 2011: I live with my parents, and am alternately praised in front of their friends, and treated like I am a lazy good-for-nothing when my ADHD symptoms sabotage their plans for me to become a wealthy surgeon. I obtain a teaching certificate.
2011: I move out on my own into a nice little condo. Life is good. Just me and the dog.
2013: I move in with Fiance. Parents are pissed off because this isn't How Things Are Done and I am now, essentially, a Fallen Woman. My mental health is horrible, and I start gaining weight from stress-eating.
2014: Fiance is upgraded to Husband. We spend just enough money to have A Nice Wedding. His parents, and both our extended families, show up. My parents don't. Everyone has a good time regardless.
2017: I start to notice that my sexual orientation is shifting. Until this point, I'd been mostly interested in men; now my bisexuality was starting to focus more on women.
2018: The stress of trying to Stay Interested In My Husband causes me to need ADHD medication again for the first time in years. I desperately need therapy, but Husband is between jobs and I can't justify the expense. This, as you can imagine, doesn't help matters.
2019: Husband gets another job. I silently hope that this will decrease the amount of stress I am under, as I am just barely able to feign normalcy at this point. I get a gym membership, which both helps me let off steam and helps turn some of those extra pounds into muscle. Towards Thanksgiving, I make a therapy appointment. The next opening is near the end of January. I scream internally.
2020: I am officially Still Bisexual, but very much lesbiromantic. The last vestiges of romantic feelings toward Husband are gone; I can remember what it felt like, but can't make myself have those feelings anymore. I know that we need to get a divorce, but he still loves me and doesn't want to lose me. His still-undiagnosed depression has reached the point where he's pushing away our friends, and I don't want to pay the penalty for that when I don't even know what to call my current feelings toward him anymore. I do a fair bit of sewing.
Which brings us to the present. All the Little Things that never bothered me when I still loved Husband are now intolerably annoying; Bush (the band, not either of the former presidents) was right. I start my "second job" volunteering at the Renaissance Faire in a few weeks, which sounds like it should add a whole new dimension of stress, but really I just need to finish sewing a few things.
And, because the Powers That Be love to kick you when you're down, I fell off a rickety old stepladder when it started to collapse, and twisted my ankle. I can't walk for a couple more days. What a way to learn all the little ways in which my workplace of nearly a decade really, really isn't ADA complaint.
So there's my life, Internet. Hope the rest of you are doing well.
@The_L1985, sympathies. Witnessing.
Thank you. A large part of this is trying to figure out how to tell Hubby that I want Out without upsetting him any more than possible. Since I'm very much a "freeze and fawn" type, and felt that I had to hide a lot of important things from my parents as a teen/young adult for my own safety, just communicating how dramatically my romantic orientation has shifted feels like a Huge, Horrible Thing.
Thanks for being there, everyone. Your advice in the past (and my seeing how similar y'all's "issues" are to my own) were what made me feel safe coming here again after all this time.
Reading and witnessing.
The_L1985 @ 286: Oh no :( that does sound very hard.
I am currently going through something similar with Partner except instead of romantic orientation it's gender identity - and he's not attracted to men... and ditto on the freeze/fawn and also the partner depression.
Witnessing.
The_L1985, witnessing. Do you have the therapy appointment for the end of this month? Because this sounds very much like something that could be helped by talking it through with a therapist.
The_L1985: witnessing. That sounds so hard... Seconding OtterB on the therapist.
Yes, I do have the therapy appointment. And since they're at the same location as my psychiatrist, I'm gonna see about making a 2nd appointment when I go there this weekend for refills on my meds.
OK, this is something I need to talk about. We've had friends who were an awesome engaged couple--call them Lucy and Jorge. We were all pretty close, had at least one Saturday a month (sometimes more) that we'd all have a Game Day together at our house, and if you'd asked me back then, I'd say that we'd probably stay super-close friends for life.
Until July. An old friend's grandmother, who was almost family to us, passed away. The same week as the funeral, Hubby had some conversations at work that led him to believe (thankfully, wrongly) that he might lose his job soon. And then, that Friday, the night before a Game Day, he was out playing his usual Friday night TTRPG with some friends at the local game store, and one of them was being super-annoying. We were both emotionally exhausted, on edge, and just wanted to relax and enjoy the social equivalent of "comfort food" with Lucy and Jorge.
And then, at Game Day, Lucy saw a cat she wanted on social media, and in a playful, high pitched voice, said "Ooh, I want the kitty!" Jorge says "We'll discuss it later, ok?" Then he has to go to the bathroom, and while he's gone, Lucy's quietly saying "Kitty, kitty, kitty" in the same playful sing-song.
Hubby goes OFF. He tells her about the week he has, but he over-explains it in a way that sounds like he's mocking her, and I'm so shocked that I can't even think of anything to say while this is going on. Finally he stops, and I just say, "[Name], what the FUCK?" because it's all I can think to say. Lucy is on the verge of tears, trying to hold it together. Hubby doesn't apologize for upsetting her, or even seem to realize how badly he did upset her.
For the next 2 hours, Lucy was clearly just...broken. She was obviously trying to hold back tears and enjoy herself. Jorge kept asking "what's wrong, mi amor?" because he missed what had happened and just wanted to help her feel better. I tried joking around to try to cheer Lucy up, because that's how I usually try to break social tension. Hubby is...oblivious. He later describes Lucy as "sulking." The couple ends up leaving around 3PM, instead of like 9PM the way they usually did. Lucy tells Jorge what happened. He is Not Amused.
Jorge and Lucy had wanted Hubby to be his best man, with me as a bridesmaid. After this, Hubby was uninvited to the wedding, all future Game Days were off, and Jorge had said that it was OK for me to hang out with our mutual friend group, but he didn't want to be around Hubby anymore.
I was told that I didn't have to come to the wedding if I didn't want to, but that Lucy still wanted me to be a bridesmaid if I really wanted to.
For the last 6 months, that Game Day has been a constant source of strife. Hubby says that as his wife, I should take his side in the issue. He refuses to admit that he did anything wrong, continues to conflate his behavior that day with his emotions, saying that "Lucy seems to think that I'm not allowed to have feelings," and "I'll apologize for upsetting her when SHE finally apologizes for annoying ME."
This past Saturday, I went to the wedding as a bridesmaid. I still love this couple as dear friends, and wanted to celebrate their love with them. It hurt me deeply to go without Hubby, but he was so clearly in the wrong in this instance that I didn't want his foolish stubbornness to stop me from attending an event that would only happen once.
(Splitting this into 2 comments so I don't end up posting a novel.)
So while I was at the wedding, Hubby wrote me a note (I'd started telling him the Hard Things through notes, since i have trouble actually saying them in person), and hooo BOY is it gaslight-y.
Here's the gist:
"You've really hurt me over the last few months. When the incident happened with Lucy you never once asked me how I felt or how it hurt me. From the moment she texted you about it it was always about what I had done to her, never about me. You and Lucy have been gaslighting me. You never once said that I had lashed out until after reading what she said." (Not true, but OK.)
"You should know by now that I rarely, if ever, take out my anger on people, unless I'm yelling at the TV about the Orange Fascist. When I point out that you're using a loud or patronizing tone, you always say you don't realize it and don't mean to sound like that. But when I said I was just annoyed, you and Lucy keep telling me that I'm supposed to feel the way YOU told me to feel, not the way I actually felt." (Um, no. I literally have said, dozens of times, "You had every right to be upset and annoyed. You just don't have the right to be an asshole about it.")
"Since then I feel like you have never once defended me." (False.)
"And while you're at that wedding, not wearing our wedding ring or showing any signs that you're even with me, I'm here in pain because it feels like you've abandoned me."
"For months, maybe years, you have tried to convince me that I am depressed." (I said that I was worried that he was, and that he should please see a therapist just to make sure.) "The last time I saw a therapist, she said I was fine." (Ok, but when was this? And if it was recently, why didn't you tell your wife, who's been deeply concerned for you to the point of nagging you for six years, so she won't be worried anymore?!)
"You keep telling me I have to change, but if you really want to make this marriage work, you have to be willing to meet me in the middle." (I have put ALL of my mental energy into holding myself together so I don't become a burden on him, and on trying to bring the love I had for him back. I've stopped singing loudly when he's around. I've stopped burning incense because it bothers him. I don't wear green often because he hates the color. I don't think it's asking much to say he needs to make an effort too.)
I was horrified, because I can see an abusive mentality forming here, and I didn't want to see or believe it until now. I wrote him a response letter in which I state my case and clearly and constantly state that I have never once wanted to hurt him, that all I wanted was for the feelings we had when we got married to come back, that I'm trying too and I can barely hold it together.
I already know this is going to be Very Bad, even though it's as Fawning a note as I can write. I'm keeping a copy of both letters to bring to the therapist, and I'm going to start making Plans so I can stay at my parents' house for a few months while I try to work things out. I was hoping that, at worst, we'd have an amicable divorce and still be friends. I'm not sure that's possible anymore.
Sympathies, The_L1985. That sounds very hard.
That sucks, L. I'm sorry you're going through that.
The_L1985 @286: trying to figure out how to tell Hubby that I want Out without upsetting him any more than possible.
Captain Awkward has pointed out, many times, that your responsibility and your right is to Say Your Truth. It is not your job to manage the feelings of others. And, really, you can't, not in any practical sense.
I can tell you from my personal experience that, whatever else is going on in the relationship, if I'm given a choice between hearing the truth straight out, and having it waffled around and left to me to Figure It Out, I'll take the former, every time. Speaking for me, personally, the former is far less painful.
& @291: I have put ALL of my mental energy into holding myself together so I don't become a burden on him, and on trying to bring the love I had for him back. I've stopped singing loudly when he's around. I've stopped burning incense because it bothers him. I don't wear green often because he hates the color.
I can't find it right now,* but there's a wonderful passage in Bujold's Komarr** where Ekaterin is thinking about how she is constantly having to make herself smaller to protect her husband's ego and their relationship. Your description sounds a lot like that.
It sounds like you are coming to a place where you can unapologetically prioritize your own well-being, and let your husband accept grown-up responsibility for his. Or not, as is his choice. This a good thing. Which is not to say that it's not also very difficult. Jedi hugs, if welcome.
* Any other Bujold readers know the passage I mean?
** I think? Could be A Civil Campaign?
@286: Jacque #295 is wise. And also--
Not only is it not your responsibility to manage your husband's feelings, it is not possible to do so.
And--
You do not have to prove that the relationship is over. It's over because you say, "It's over." Even if he doesn't think it's over, it's over. Even if you think you should feel any other way, it's over. Even if there are things you coulda-shoulda-woulda done in the past to make it not be over now, it's over. Even if you can't see any way out that is not messy, painful, and full of self-doubt, it's over. There is no way to do this thing neatly and exclusively with the correct emotions. It's gonna hurt, and there will be bits left hanging. Lancing an abscess tends to have those effects.
And furthermore--
The book Jacque is thinking of is indeed Komarr, and it's highly relevant to your situation even if you have never and never do read any other Vorkosigan book.
@Jacque and Jenny, #295 & 296: After I posted that, he said "We need to talk." (my response: "After reading that little note of yours, we damn well do!")
Apparently, those little things I had stopped doing because they bothered him were not actually things that he wanted me to quit doing altogether, he just didn't want to hear me singing right then, or smell that particular fragrance of incense, and he didn't mind me wearing green just because he hates the color and would never wear it himself.
I also hadn't realized that he still needs sleeping pills every night. He says he never had a problem falling or staying asleep before we moved in together, but that ever since--even after the weighted blanket he bought me made my breathing much quieter--my "snoring" keeps him awake. I did try to go through all the proper channels a couple years ago to get tested for sleep apnea, so that hopefully my insurance would cover me getting my deviated septum FINALLY fixed. Despite me specifically getting a referral to the sleep-study people, in exactly the way my insurance said to, I was told that it wouldn't be covered because "you didn't get a written referral" and would cost over $300 for JUST the sleep study alone. Since I'm not the sort of person who can handle pushing back against this stuff (even when it's justified), I told Hubby, and basically stopped pursuing it because no way in hell am I asking my parents for money if I can at all help it.
So that's a thing. Apparently, it's a thing that he's still VERY sensitive about, which I can understand. I'm not sure which of us is being unreasonable about that one, or if it's just both of us, but I'm sitting here like, "If you haven't gotten a good night's sleep in 6 1/2 years, then why are we still living together?"
Yeah. I know now that I have to break it to him about my orientation still being pretty firmly in the "ladies" column, because otherwise it's not gonna be fair to me (hiding my Truth) or to him (leaving him bewildered at what, exactly, is behind All This).
The_L1985 @296 - It may not be a thing sufficient to destroy a relationship, but it isn't a thing that should have been suffered in silence for all that time. Would it be feasible to sleep in separate rooms? Alternate who sleeps on a sofa, something like that? My sweetie is a very mobile sleeper, and I'm a very light sleeper; sleeping in the same room, much less the same bed, isn't remotely an option, at present.
To clarify, perhaps: In North America, we have a cultural trope that people who love each other must literally sleep in the same bed (not to be confused with the "sleeping together" idiom for sex). Otherwise, something is Shamefully Wrong. I gather that other cultures think that this is a weird notion. Notwithstanding that you and your Hubby do have a lot of stuff to work out (and I'm sorry to hear what you're describing; it sounds awful, and you have my sympathies), needing to sleep separately doesn't indicate anything more than that your sleep needs aren't physically compatible. Many people with happy relationships have that, and it isn't a shameful thing.
We get as much cuddle time as we can, time and spoons permitting. (Even when Inge's in hospital, which has been way too much of the last seven years. If the nurses think it's weird, that's their problem.) But we sleep apart.
This just came across my feed, and it's kind of mind-blowing to me that this needs saying.
"So a woman's idea of being friends is being friends?"
Great discussion below the screencap.
I've been really lucky in that I have had multiple male friend-friends throughout my adult life. I guess this is not...usual?
@JP #299: Cuddle time. CUDDLE TIME. We haven't cuddled, even, in weeks. Evenings where we used to watch TV or a movie together on the couch used to be several times a week, and it was easy to cuddle. But in the last few months, TV time has become more and more "let's make ourselves angry by watching the news!!" and I can't even handle being in the same room when the Racist Cheeto starts talking (and Hubby knows this). On top of that, he's spent a lot more evenings in the other room (his at-home office, of sorts) playing computer games instead. At least, when I'm at home in the evenings; this term I'm working nights and don't get home until it's time for bed.
@Jacque, #300: I've had several actual friends of a variety of genders, but all as adults (insert ADHD problems here). And yeah, a lot of men are socialized to just never talk about their feelings or be vulnerable with anyone. It sucks.
Jacque @295
I can't find it right now,* but there's a wonderful passage in Bujold's Komarr** where Ekaterin is thinking about how she is constantly having to make herself smaller to protect her husband's ego and their relationship. Your description sounds a lot like that.
Found it. Thank you for inspiring a re-read of Komarr. :)
First, the one I think you're referring to, last page of chapter 7:
"If I grow much smaller, trying to keep my height under his, I believe I must soon disappear altogether"
Later, as she's trying to put her life back together: (Chapter 13, first paragraph)
"Ekaterin seated herself at the comconsole in her worksroom and began to triage the shambles of her life It was actually simpler than her first fears had supposed - there was so little of it, after all. How did I grow so small?"
Chickadee: Thank you. That (those?) passage(s) loom larger in my mind than that modest word-count would have suggested.
There's also the bit where Miles is telling her about his exes, and she's struck by how their command in life expands—maybe not as a direct result of their association with Miles (because they clearly have the capacity), but clearly at least influenced by Miles.
#303, Jacque: I was most struck by how Miles was clearly happy for his exes in their accomplishments, instead of what Ekaterin and I were both used to, which was having our accomplishments downplayed, suppressed, discouraged, or blocked by the men in our lives.
Jacque @303: Me too, and also yes!
I seem to recall Ekaterin thinking something along the lines of how a particularly difficult task was easier in Tien's absence than a simple one had been in his presence, but I can't find it in the book.
Total topic derail here, but I was delighted to pick up Bujold's latest Baen book, which is comprised of the first three Penric novellas. Probably what accounts for my comparatively benign mood, today.
I think Miles's romantic career shows the difference between somebody who is oblivious and somebody who is actively toxic. He wants people to grow. He wants them to excel. He wants them to be happy! He just...doesn't stop to ask them what they want. Tien, on the other hand, wants six impossible things, all of which appear to require his nearest and dearest to be tense, small, quiet, and predictable.
Getting back on topic: The Mileses of this world can and do learn. The Tiens are best left behind.
CodeMonkey at 243,
I had an epiphany recently that reminded me of your situation. I'd been reading about cognitive biases on if and how we update our beliefs. I'd then remembered a summary in a book read a few years ago about how we also don't update our emotional responses.
The book gave an example of a homeowner's associations that hires guards to stop a rash of, say, car break-ins. The group had a strong and understandable emotional response to this crime. However, if six months later those crimes vanish, the group rarely lays off the guards. Instead, they'll have the guards focus on smaller crimes which replace the larger crimes in their connected emotional memories. Eventually the fear can be transferred to happenings that aren't crimes at all. But they feel just as scary, because the same toolbox of emotions, or lens of emotions, gets transferred over and over. Each individual transfer feels fine, but over time there's a huge drift in what the emotion applies to even as the people feel they're still consistent.
If it's applicable to your situation, I'd imagine your mom has a set of emotions—here of fears— which years ago may have been understandable. Small children or early teens can make terrible mistakes, for example. Until and unless she herself actively shrinks or throws away this particular toolbox of emotion, you can't change it. It felt appropriate and real to her back when applied to your potential bad choices ('[her flash of emotion]No! No running into traffic!'). Now it can still feel appropriate and real to her for neutral or positive choices you make ('[flash of emotion]No! No moving into another home!').
Similarly you'd have an emotional response toolbox. '[your flash of emotion]Touching the electric plug | running into traffic | childish impulse could have hurt me: she's right! Better listen to mum!' At the time it was an appropriate tool. Now it isn't, but it might still feel correct.
@Jenny, #309: If it helps, Hubby is very much a Miles, not a Tien. He genuinely loves me and wants me to be happy; I have no doubt of that.
Unfortunately, his personality is perhaps not the best match for someone who's still trying to unlearn her early conditioning to "be small; remain unnoticed; don't be a burden; never tell more than you have to, for your own safety."
And...he kissed me this morning when we woke up. I tried to make it feel the way that our kisses used to feel, but it didn't. It felt...empty. Like we'd just sort of pressed our palms together over and over instead of our mouths. I think he saw the stricken look on my face about it. I know I need to tell him. I want to rip the Band-Aid off. But it's so damn HARD, and to make things worse, they had to re-schedule my therapy appointment, so I haven't been this week like I'd expected to.
@Code Monkey: Seconding Variation's explanation in #310. The coping skills you need as a child aren't always the same ones you need as an adult, even when toxic and/or abusive relationships aren't involved. Sometimes it can be very hard to break old habits that helped you to get along in the past, in order to make new ones. I've spent the last decade working on that myself. But it is so, so worth it. Every little change makes things so much better. Witnessing and hoping for the best.
Jacque #300: While I'm wary of getting too far into this... no, it's not usual, and bluntly, the demand for that can be deeply unfair, ranging to emotionally abusive. Yes, that's based on heterosexual norms -- but you know, norms are called that for a reason, and the rest of this post is based on that frame.
As inner quote there points out, men don't normally have a lot of intimate relationships. More to the point, by both stereotype and long tradition, they associate emotional intimacy with physical intimacy.
When someone pulls that sort of "just be friends", the sort that men swear about, they're starting with someone who was already interested in a classical relationship -- boyfriend/girlfriend with hopes of husband/wife. And instead, that guy is getting someone who wants their full emotional output -- again, intimacy -- without "completing the circuit" by answering the guy's original goals.
And then they take offense if the guy hasn't permanently and forever dropped the idea of sex: "all this time they were just trying to get into my pants?" No, there's no "just" there. They wanted the other half of an actual romantic relationship, and that's what they wanted from the beginning. They were even willing to put in time and emotional effort to try and build intimacy, and they don't deserve to be dismissed because the woman was happy to have their needs met without giving back something that they don't give to multiple female friends.
If that seems harsh -- well, back in my 20's, I basically got broken by this, because I didn't recognize the warning signs and walk away when I should have. I've only ever had a bare few close friendships at any one time -- it seemed natural that one of those would be with a lifelong romantic partner. But that wasn't how she saw it....
Bah, here's the link for just that song.
@Dave Harmon no. 312: The other end of this is somebody who goes along being friends with this guy, as in, listening to him, helping him out, venting to him, asking for his help, inviting him to stuff, accepting invitations to stuff, tossing links his way that seemed RTHI and opening messages from him expecting same...only to be accused of being selfish and mean and stringing him along, because the whole time the guy figured that the really important thing was getting access to the intimate parts of her body. And if he can't have that, the relationship is over.
But he can't actually say, "Hey, I think you're super hot and I want to be your sex partner," because she's supposed to just...do it. Without being asked.
It's happened to me, and it made me feel sick. The whole time I thought I was building a relationship between two people, but from his perspective the most important part of me was something he could get from a fleshlight, and the stuff that I thought mattered to us both was just sand in an hourglass to him.
Maybe I'm being too aspie about it, but it sure would be cool if people had, like, Betan earrings, or something. "Hetero, looking for sex partner" meets "Also hetero, not looking" and they both realize that coffee and a smile is as far as this is gonna go. Much upsetness avoided.
Dave Harmon @312: someone who wants their full emotional output .... the woman was happy to have their needs met without giving back something that they don't give to multiple female friends
The thing is... it's not obvious to women in this situation that they're getting, or asking for, the man's full emotional output. They are giving a percentage of their emotional output that is comparable to the amount they would give to a female friend, and expect that they are getting only a friend-quantity percentage of the man's emotional output in return.
In a primarily homosocial/heterosexual society, where homosociality is enforced by these kinds of misunderstandings, women do not know about this complete difference in expectations and capacity, or about the perceived inequity they are setting up by trying to have the same kind of friendship with a man as they would with a woman. Even though I know about it intellectually, it seems very strange to me that this is how anybody would run their life. I could not function in the world without a network of friends, male and female and nonbinary, with whom to give and receive emotional effort. Am I supposed to magically intuit which men will understand how to have a friendship that is never expected to become romantic or sexual? Am I supposed to never be more than shallow, surface-level friends with men? Am I supposed to freely accept that I'll be periodically accused of taking someone's entire emotional output and giving nothing in return...? I'm not socially competent enough for this shit. (Which is why I mostly hang out with queer nerds with a sprinkling of ASD.)
J #314: Agreed, "expecting it to just happen" is problematic. But on the flip side, asking should not be cause for offense. And yet it is -- it's "common knowledge" among men (at least of my generation) that if you do have a non-sexual friendship with a woman, trying to shift it to something more, will either succeed, or end the friendship. On the one hand, part of that is that if the guy wants to try, that's a pretty good hint that he at least is already feeling sexual tension in the relationship. On the other hand, for each of the successful friendships I've had with women, the sex thing got brought up fairly early and explicitly ruled out -- after which we maintained boundaries with each other. Still friendly and even supportive, but not intimate. In contrast, the relationship that broke me, didn't maintain those boundaries. In particular, she was projecting massive sexual tension and encouraging emotional intimacy, while neither accepting nor firmly refusing my advances. At the time I had neither the maturity nor the self-knowledge to parse what was going on, or to deal with it effectively. (In particular, it would be another 15-odd years before I found out about the autistic spectrum.)
hope in disguise #315: To some degree that used to be handled by traditional social relations between the sexes, with "common advice" being passed on through the generations. But those traditions have largely broken down (just about over the course of my own lifetime), and the associated advice is now seen as quaint, sexist, gender-essentialist, etc. Which is true as far as it goes, but those structures did serve a purpose, and their lack makes things "that much more difficult" for those who do fit among the most common sexual/romantic patterns (that is, the ones that were coded into those traditions).
If the Sexual Revolution holds -- that is, if we avoid society collapsing back to a more sexually constrained condition -- I'm sure that new traditions will develop (perhaps they already have among the youngsters, I'm kinda out of the loop ;-) ), and then be passed on to later generations. But it was my misfortune (and apparently yours as well) to be a spectrumite growing up through a time of social change, when the old ways couldn't guide me....
J #314: Also, while I understand the frustration behind the "Betan earrings" idea, I'm pretty sure you already know why it wouldn't work, namely: "Looking for a partner" does not equal "open to all applicants", and conversely, "not actively looking" does not equal "no interest possible".
There's also the point that extremely attractive people would have a serious problem, amounting to DOSing any non-sexual interactions (with "matching candidates"), or preemptively forestalling any sexual possibilities. Even non-beautiful folk will have a variety of constraints on who they might be interested in, many of which will not be visible on first glance. Thus, the traditional "getting to know you" phase.
Note that traditional dress codes did cover at least some of the "earring info"... but that had its own drawbacks, and anyway when lingerie became streetwear, that all went out the window. ;-)
Whereas I have had a number of good female friends, and was not looking for anything more than some degree of emotional intimacy. And a few relationships that got blown up because the women assumed that I was looking for sex.
I was in my early 20s, I think, when I heard that a female friend of mine had had a messy break-up with her boyfriend of the time... an ass who treated her badly. She and I had gotten together from time to time before that, just to hang out. So I gave her a call and left a message: if she'd be interested in doing that again, maybe see a movie, just as friends, I could use some company; I'd been feeling a bit socially-deprived of late. I never heard back from her. I left a couple more messages. Nada. Finally I went to a friend of mine, who was another of her exes, and asked him if he knew what was up with her; I told him about what had been happening. He told me that the problem was that my approach -- "let's get together as friends" -- was exactly how he and she had started their relationship, and which she now interpreted as "I want to get into your pants".
There have been a couple of cases where I've been fairly up-front: I'd like some quiet cuddling. It didn't occur to me at the time that I needed to explicitly say that I *wasn't* looking for anything more than that. So there was the clash of expectations when the women assumed otherwise. Several times, women have told me that they thought I was gay but in denial about it, because I ignored or turned down their advances.
I have previously described the disastrous mess of my one relationship before my current one. How I was looking for emotional intimacy before significant physical intimacy, while my then-gf wanted things the other way round.
I assume that the Betan earrings encode the distinctions between "not actively looking but might consider" and "not interested, full stop", and the various forms of "looking". The whole point is clarity on such matters. Kareen Koudelka's earrings were described as
[...] the style that said: Yes, I’m a consenting and contraceptive-protected adult, but I am presently in an exclusive relationship, so please do not embarrass us both by asking. Which was rather a lot to encrypt in a few twists of metal, and the Betans had a dozen more styles for other nuances; she’d graduated through a couple of them.
For years, I expected that if I ever got into a relationship, it would probably be with a long-standing female friend who had either been widowed or had her previous long-term male partner start treating her badly. (Lower probability: a woman who had very specific criteria that I happened to match, or one who was so socially blind that she failed to see that other men were interested in her.) Inge turned out to be that long-standing female friend. We had met in university doing medieval/Renaissance choral and dance stuff; she was already married. We continued doing that music stuff in the same groups for most of the next 20+ years. Then while both of us were quite ill, and after she had been dumped by her ex, we started hanging out, just for company. It took me months to realize that, hang on, this was the possible relationship that I'd been looking for, all that time. "So get in there and do not blow this chance," I sez to myself. And here we are.
But I wasn't involved in friendship-relationships with women because I hoped or expected that I would someday be able to take advantage of their becoming available.
Joel: Both counterexamples and gender-flip there.
It occurs to me that a big part of the problem with both public signals and "setting the rules up-front", are expressed in the concept of demi-sexuality. And there is an inverse, though AFAIK it's not properly reified in our culture. People's feelings can change over time, and sometimes that's a problem.
Dave Harmon, I think that you have a bit of sampling bias: most of my friends are women, and everyone has had the 'crush on friend, what do' feeling at some point. Everyone settled into 'do not break the friendship' policies, basically, with meta conversations about how we always say we'd confess a crush but then realistically never do.
I'm also wary of the 'more' way you describe sexual relationships. They're different, but it's not like you can sketch out a continuum from 'never touch' to 'sex' and expect relationships to follow that in closeness. My relationship with my spouse isn't more than that of my closest friend. It's different. I support them in different ways, and they support me in different ways.
Diatryma #321: Sampling bias, surely -- mine was a pretty small sample. But I note that your "'do not break the friendship' policies" aren't a contradiction, but a confirmation of my comments in that regard.
it's not like you can sketch out a continuum from 'never touch' to 'sex' and expect relationships to follow that in closeness.
I think that's likely to be a very gendered statement -- that is, a lot more men than women will see a continuum, pretty much like that. I'd further guess that particular difference is likely to show up young, perhaps even before puberty. Touch among boys is more likely to be aggressive than purely affectionate -- indeed, there's a lot of overlap between the modes, as "friendly roughhousing". At least some of that is surely cultural, but it does take hold early.
In my own case, that was certainly "enforced" by me being on the spectrum (and I think the "supermale" interpretation of ASD refers back to the above). Long before I knew about the spectrum, casual touch was always awkward for me. Even now I almost never touch other people unprompted¹ (handshakes get a pass because they naturally include warning). And yes, in retrospect not doing/understanding casual touch was one of the big problems with my youthful attempts at romance.
¹ It was only in my late college years that I learned to offer and properly accept hugs with family (including close friends), and I'm still kinda awkward at it. I don't freak out at the occasional unprompted hug from non-family, but I do find it disconcerting and aggressive, and I certainly don't have the emotional response that huggers seem to expect.
I have certainly run into the expectation from men that emotional intimacy necessarily leads to sexual intimacy. These have not generally been men I've been inclined to become involved with at all, since IME, these men also have a harder time with the concept of "no," either in the moment or categorically.
Jacque #323: On careful consideration, I think that for me to continue this conversation, in this forum, is not likely to lead anywhere good. Accordingly, I need to bow out now.
Dave Harmon @324 I respect your need to bow out of the conversation. Thank you for expressing a viewpoint I hadn't heard, that gave me something to think about.
324 and its predecessors: This is a fraught topic, but then this is the thread for fraught topics, isn't it?
Dave, you are not alone.
There are women in my past who were (or appeared to be) perfectly content to accept what was, from my perspective, an unbalanced relationship. Indeed, they may not even have seen it as unbalanced, though I cannot speak for them.
I do not know if there is any way to learn to set boundaries other than experience, and some of that experience is perforce painful.
OtterB #325: Thank you.
Doug #326: This is a fraught topic, but then this is the thread for fraught topics, isn't it?
One thing about opening up, is that occasionally a live wire gets exposed. I've learned to shy away from those.
... from my perspective, an unbalanced relationship. Indeed, they may not even have seen it as unbalanced, though I cannot speak for them.
Yeah... what it comes down to, is that the Golden Rule is not enough. In particular, it assumes symmetry, and fails badly when two people have different needs and vulnerabilities.
Digressing: It occurs to me that the Golden Rule's insufficiency is a near-mirror to the problem with "an eye for an eye etc.". In the former case, the problem is thinking that the Rule is is a complete recipe for goodwill. In the latter case, the usual mistake is to think of the rule as a mandate, rather than the limit that was intended. In both cases, the error is more-or-less taking a boundary as a center point.
Dave Harmon @327 I think the problem with the Golden Rule comes when you [generic you, not you personally] make it about the details of what you would have the others do unto you. Instead of "I want others to respect my individuality, and therefore I will respect their individuality," it becomes "This is how I prefer to be treated, and therefore I will treat others this way whether they like it or not, and they are supposed to be happy about it."
Like so many forms of human communication, fails at this range from the mildly annoying to the completely toxic.
Dave & Doug: Whatever the merits of each particular attitude, I feel a particularly important take-away from the linked discussion above is: be conscious that other people may be operating from base assumptions and expectations that are crucially different from your own. And, for me (coming as I do from Ask culture), clarify those assumptions and expectations as early in the relationship as possible.*
The Golden Rule, in its original form stands, I think, on much the same base Guess culture does: that everybody shares basic cultural values and practices. It can fall apart spectacularly in heterogenous contexts.
The hack I fall back on is (and what I think I see shaping up in Internet culture) is "Treat others as they would wish to be treated, in the way you would ask them to treat you as you would prefer to be treated." (E.g. asking/telling pronouns.)
This isn't nearly as nifty a sound-bite, and requires much greater overhead, in terms of asking, listening, code-switching, and behavioral adjustment. (Much more awareness & flexibility.) But (at least when people are in resourceful frames of mind and acting in good faith) seems to be at least somewhat serviceable.
* A friend of mine has found himself, an Asker, living with a bunch of Guessers—such dedicated Guessers that they will not Ask until stuff has gotten really really bad. He and I scratch our heads over this. Me, I would (and have) exit stage left without a backward glance, but he's sticking it out. Go, him. I couldn't do it. I had my fill of landmines growing up.
OtterB #328: Which is exactly my point: The original Golden Rule, "Treat others as you wish to be treated" is insufficient -- it needs to be extended to account for difference.
Jacque #329: "Treat others as they would wish to be treated, in the way you would ask them to treat you as you would prefer to be treated."
Which is a Ask-elaborated version of what I've occasionally heard called the Platinum Rule. Exactly, an extension of the GR.
I suspect that Ask culture represents a potential subculture for the "broad autistic phenotype", but IME it's not so widespread as to be reliably available. My own origin-family was mostly Guess culture despite being pretty clearly BAP for at least one generation behind my parents.
The big catch for spectrumites is that there is so much we don't see, that all the asking can become burdensome for both parties. And there are prominent situations where needing to ask is essentially a fail.
Even in the best case, it adds cognitive load to interactions, and in fact requires additional interaction. Given I already have some speech-production difficulty, not to mention alexithymia....
Part of the problem is that someone who's been inculcated in Hint culture *really* doesn't like to make things explicit. I'm not sure how to handle this kindly.
I suggest Hint rather than Guess because I think Hint is more like what the culture feels like from the inside.
Nancy: When I first told my friend about Ask/Guess, in the context of some conflict he was experiencing with his family, there was a long, very thoughtful pause. And then he responded with, "Why wouldn't you want to go with Ask? It's obviously so much easier!"
Well, except: he's somebody who grew up with a lot of training around mindfulness and explicit self-expression. Not everybody (!) gets that. And it's a skill set.
I get Dave's concern about added cognitive load but, speaking for myself, that load pays for itself many times over in avoided anxiety and miscommunication.
Jacque #332: speaking for myself, that load pays for itself many times over in avoided anxiety and miscommunication.
If you can pay up front, that is. Which leads into "spoon theory", but instead of going that way, I'll point out that Hint (I do like Nancy's phrasing) has an even worse hazard for spectrumites: It depends on "standard-issue human empathic perception", which turns out to have the same failing as the Golden Rule.
Specifically, AFAICT the famed human capacity to model other humans, is in fact a derived ability: Normal humans implement that by starting with a self-model, and modifying that according to feedback from their perceptions. When the self-model is already non-standard, and the perceptions are dubious... well, that gets a lot harder.
Here's an update on a situation I ranted a lot about last year.
To recap: I work for a nonprofit that has an all-volunteer guiding council with an elected head (Prez) and a paid chief executive (Ultimate Big Boss, UBB for short). However, when I was hired, they had no UBB, and they didn't get one for almost a year. In the meantime, I reported directly to Prez.
Prez was...hmmm. A short list:
* Had a repeated habit of being excited about something, spending organization money on it, discovering that it was both unusable and non-returnable, lather rinse repeat
* Jumped in and did anything she found interesting or important, whether or not there were volunteers or employees already tasked with it
* Had a habit of not putting things to a vote and being so matter-of-fact and grandmotherly about her decrees that people forgot that they were supposed to be voting
* Removed and destroyed or sold organization property because she didn't see a use for it (the money went back to the non-profit, but still--!)
* Almost drove the organization into bankruptcy by unilaterally committing to a ruinously expensive fix to a problem that didn't exist--but UBB was on board by then and cut her off
So anyway, I started the job by periodically panicking because I had been programmed from a young age to expect to be blamed and punished for anything that went wrong, and stuff constantly went wrong at this job, which I need very much. I was also dealing with daily exasperation because Prez's dysfunction combined with a previous [my job title]'s dysfunction to create a long list of things I was supposed to just do every day.
Many of my tasks turned out to be redundant or nonsensical when UBB, who is way ahead of me in my field, took a hard look at them; the rest were unnecessarily complicated. When that was fixed, I acquired a new set of tasks, i.e., things that should have been done all along but weren't. So my job is much more useful and satisfying now.
Better still, Prez, although she did not do anything that was grounds for removal per Organization's porous bylaws (which are being rewritten, huzzah!), has been Ex-Prez for some time due to UBB's determination. In fact she is not on any committees whatsoever. All she can do is annoy UBB by, for example, tittering and whispering to her cronies (she only has a few left) at periodic meetings of the entire volunteer body. (The latest thing? The roads are terrible due to record snowfalls, so prep for the annual Springtime Fun Thing for Community Kids has been changed from an all-hands potluck and work party to "y'all are here anyway, so take some of this stuff home before it gets dark out there, and bring it back to Organization during office hours before $Date." Oh no. How unsociable. We never used to do it that way. Titter titter, whisper whisper.)
Best of all, I haven't had an oh-God-my-job-I'm-going-to-be-punished-for-stuff-going-wrong attack in...huh. Can't remember when. And I once had to spend most of an inheritance on therapy so I could walk out the door of my own apartment without a protective cloak of dissociation.
I still can't sit with my back to an open door, but that's just a manageable PTSD thing.
Recover is not linear, but it trends upward!
J: That is all excellent news. Could you send some of that energy this way?
I've recently concluded that for the last couple of years I've been suffering from something which, if not actual cPTSD, will certainly do until the real thing comes along. I finally broke down and started therapy, and through some collateral channels started a (free!) online variant of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-based stress reduction program, which has been...weirdly helpful...?
I just had a therapy session last night where we finally broached the Issues I'm having at work, and it took most of the hour just to lay out the history. Becoming less vulnerable to the local managerial dysfunction, and getting some of that "more useful and satisfying" would be Really Great.
J @334, that all sounds great! All hail your new UBB who seems to be making things much more functional.
Jacque @335, good for you for pursuing therapy. Wishing you the best with it and with the mindfulness program.
@335: I wish!
I think that one long-term benefit of all the therapy and support group-ing is the ability to sorta...stand beside myself? My Stuff includes people deliberately mashing my buttons all day every day for laffs, or because making me miserable distracted them from their own misery. And asyouknowbob if you mash somebody's buttons often enough they're gonna stay mashed. And therapy is partly prying the buttons back up with a butter knife.
I haven't done Kabat-Zinn, so I don't know how it compares to my journey:
* Identify what was done
* Assign responsibility for what was done (not mine)
* Assign responsibility for fixing the problems (mine)
* Study and practice of functional responses to stressors
* Practice practice practice practice
From what I've seen so far, the mindfulness stuff seems to be mostly about keeping the physiology in equilibrium, a) generally and b) in response to specific stressors. (Which is great! Don't get me wrong. But seems...incomplete.)
My situation seems to be more parallel to yours while Prez was still in power and before UBB had arrived, though possibly not quite as explicitly toxic.
Welp.
Missed a meeting at work Monday because I thought it was next Monday, and upon realizing that I had a sudden MASSIVE wave of depression hit. I was still at home, and I remember swearing at myself, crying, and calling myself all kinds of horrible things. Aloud. Well, not just aloud, but loud enough that I'm sure half the neighborhood heard me. ._.
I went to work, tears streaming down my face the whole way, simply because I've been that far down before, and I knew I had to be in public around people again or I'd get to...That Point (the one that starts with an S and ends with -idal), and I'd managed to not be there for almost 15 years.
I managed to avoid things getting quite that bad, but ye gods it was a close one. I remember specifically thinking "Hubby doesn't deserve me. He deserves someone stable. Someone who can have his children and be an actual mother to them."
So now, the depression's settled back down to a quiet murmur, leaving me to wonder if that particular thought in my subconscious has been part of my desire to leave all along. And also, how much of it might actually be right, just exaggerated in that horrible way that depression likes to exaggerate the negative side of everything.
OH! And on top of everything else, I've had disturbing dreams about something that I'd managed to successfully ignore since I was 10, and was hoping to be able to just...keep ignoring. Which means I have to tell a therapist about that one incident, which I don't even want to tell to y'all under a pseud.
Fuck my brain right now, you guys. -_-; Oh well. Made myself a little corded bracelet with evil-eye beads, and doing so helped calm me down a bit. I know it's superstitious AF to pretend that the bracelet is protecting me from the Bad Tapes until I can see my therapist, but as long as no one's hurt by it, that's what matters right?
@J, #334: Go you! Always good when karma and good bosses catch up to toxic co-workers and supervisors. :) I'm so, so glad you're in a better mental place. I also like your description of therapy as "prying the buttons back up." I may have to use that one myself.
@Jacque no. 338: One missing piece may be changing the stressor.
Like my summary upthread, this is an extreme simplification of a multi-step process. Steps involved may include, but are not necessarily limited to:
* Realizing that you are under stress, that you're not just reacting wrongly to things
* Identifying stressors
* Categorizing stressors as controllable or uncontrollable
* Identifying options for controlling controllable stressors (remove stressor, leave vicinity of stressor, replace it with something that doesn't mess with your health, modify it somehow--?)
* Choosing options
* Making achievable action plans
* Following them
* Concurrently identifying and practicing self-protecting responses to uncontrollable stressors (and to controllable ones until they can be dealt with)
I didn't like the mindfulness-based stress reduction course I took, but it was very much an 'if it doesn't work for you, you're not trying hard enough' class vs 'take what is useful, discard what is not'. It turns out that some meditation can cue anxiety in me.
L1985, I'm glad you know how to avoid some of the depression spiral with being in public. I hope things improve for you soon.
J: It's that "identify options" step that I keep hanging up on. I hope the therapy &assoc. may expand my thinking/resourcefulness/resilience on that score. My current status as an older worker who is very narrowly specialized in a skillset I was burnt out on decades ago Is Not Helping. OTOH, the Universe does seem to be stepping up with resources as I manage to identify needs, so there's that.
Diatryma: I've found most types of meditation I've encountered stress-inducing! I like the Palouse program because it's far more easy-going than anything else I've encountered, and in fact actually addresses many of the "doin' it rong" concerns explicity with "yeah, that's fine, it's totally a thing, don't worry about it." Except when it's "Yeah, that "fail"? You're doing fine; that's actually what has the desired effect."
Example: you're meditating, and your attention drifts. That happens! Like, a lot! Noticing when that happens is the objective. Not the keeping the attention focused. Returning your attention to the focus, that's the "lift" (i.e., the strengthening part of the exercise).
Another difference for me that has actually made it work is that I've also been encountering a lot of collateral resources that have helped it make more sense to me. And also The Burning Need for it to work. That starts-with-an-S thing The_L1985 mentions above? Yeah, that.
@ The_L1985 no. 339: Is it superstition, or is it tangible proof that you are here, in the material world, making things with your fingers, instead of lost in the interior world or the past? Finding (or making!) something that is very obviously not from then in order to keep my foothold in now was one of the first coping techniques I learned for PTSD.
Rueful fucky-brain fistbump of solidarity. Here's to the upward climb.
@Jacque, #342: That does sound like a good course! I had trouble saying "no" to a very nice journal I saw at the craft store. I think I'm going to make it my mindfulness journal.
And I'm sad to hear that you've been in the Pit of Despair lately too. :( Solidarity and e-hugs. We'll get through this.
@J, #343: That would explain why crafting things, even really silly stuff like those mini embroidery kits for young children, makes my seratonin do the Thing. :) However, the fact that I specifically used evil-eye beads is more what I meant by the whole "superstition" bit.
My mindset on most superstition is that the placebo effect, while not as good as something that Actually Fixes Things, is still something when you don't have much else to work with, and if it does nobody any harm, why not wear that one bit of jewelry or knock on wood or suchlike? It can't hurt, and even if it only helps your mood a wee bit, that's still something.
MEANWHILE: My mom's been having cluster headaches lately, and she's in the hospital now. They've done CAT scans and an MRI, so she should at least be able to find out what's wrong soon. Thoughts and prayers appreciated; I keep remembering one relative who died of an inoperable brain tumor years ago, because my brain has decided that the worst possible outcome is the one I should focus on. GDI, anxiety.
...and meanwhile, I'm working on a document done last year by a (technically scarily competent) now-former coworker...and it was...apparently never copy-edited. Or looked at. At all. It's...embarrassing. Like, scrambled and incomprehensible. And this thing has been up, accessible to the public, for over a year.
Oh.
mygod.
Good news is that...nobody noticed...?
My experience is also that making something (even something trivial) is an effective treatment for depression.
But, y'know, superstition is fine. Look, if our brains were perfectly calibrated rational engines, producing only correct evaluations of the objective universe, we wouldn't be having depression. So if your brain can be distracted from being wrong in the one way by being wrong in another... good?
(Mine can, though not in that exact way, and you'd better believe I take advantage.)
The_L1985 My mindset on most superstition is that the placebo effect, while not as good as something that Actually Fixes Things, is still something when you don't have much else to work with
I think of it as priming the pump. Placing your intentions before the universe, or at least before your subconscious. Yeah, I don't think you can do that and then sit back and let the magic work. But I do think that intention matters and will work below the conscious level. It's similar to the way that many writers say that they think about a plot problem and then go to sleep or go for a run, and boom! the solution comes to them.
Creating helps, and being in the physical world helps.
Wishing good things for you.
Re making amulets and such: Magic is not about how the universe works, it’s about how people work. We're all people here, and the universe doesn’t fit at the table. ;-)
Local human has broken up with partner, is surrounded by friends, is very sad :( it was necessary, and part of me is relieved, but the rest of me is going to spend a long time feeling very sad. (As one of the people I am staying with said, I am permitted to feel multiple ways about a thing.)
Kip's sonnet in the open thread is apt and timely...
@hope in disguise, congratulations, condolences, and witnessing.
@349: Another support forum uses "congradolences" as the response to posts about the ending of something bad that used to be good. So, congradolences, and I hope things become easier soon.
hope in disguise #349: Witnessing.
J #352: "Congratudolences"... It feels like there should be an extra "D" in there, evoking not just Congratulations and Condolences, but Graduation...
@Jacque no. 345: Sounds like my boss's reaction when he discovered that Organization's money-handling procedures could have gotten us into so much legal trouble, including with the I.R.S., but nobody noticed--for years--until he did.
I know the saying about never ascribing to malice what can be put down to stupidity, but I think the real issue here was that nobody involved knew what they didn't know, if you get my meaning. They weren't accountants, so they had no idea which accounting standards they were violating, and furthermore, they had no idea that the accounting standards existed. I certainly had no idea, and I was horrified when I learned that I had been taking part in things that could have gotten us shut down. (UBB, on the other hand, is an accountant and does know the standards, and he shook all that dangerous stuff out of Organization's procedures right quick!)
So in the same way, your colleague may simply not know that they are that bad at expository writing. Likewise, the people reading the document may not know that the topic it's supposed to explain isn't really that opaque.
J: I wish it was as simple as expository writing. That I could forgive. (This isn't like the gibberish my direct boss put out on a Really Truly Official Document—which one could sort work out what was meant, and if not, call our office? Which many did....)
This was a table of economic data where...two lines of the same column head were lined up over...two different columns—? Stuff like that. Like multiple cases. On one page. Just...astonishing.
@357: Yikes! How deep does the carelessness go here? Is it something that looks all right when viewed using one program, but not when viewed with others? Or is it one of those image files that's supposed to look the same no matter what? I mean, "failed to check their work" applies to both, but the proportion of "didn't know" to "didn't care" changes, KWIM?
J: The good news is, to quote one of my more colorful colleagues is, "We're not saving babies here." It is of very low consequence, and the fact that I have heard nothing (zip, zero, nada) about this in the year-plus that it's been up is suggestive that nobody actually even looks at this stuff, and the particular thing may also be a manifestation of "banner blindness." The data on the page 90% layed out properly, and entirely legible and comprehensible. Those top two rows (that are a separate table) though:
It's not until you actually try to read it, and take several tries to realize it makes no sense at all, that it becomes clear that it is resolutely borked. And it's a PDF, so versioning is no excuse. The person who actually put it together is one of those types that is by turns frighteningly brilliant and astonishingly spacey, and their supervisor is renowned for Having No Time To Notice Anything, so I guess it's not all that surprising. A lot of people slapping things together too quickly, and no additional pairs of eyes to do a last check, is my best guess.
But like I said, it's embarrassing.
(TBF, it went past me, too, to put it up on the web, but it's Not My Department, and I just assumed (heh) they had it sorted. It's only now that it has come to me to replicate the document for this year's version that I really looked at it. So, okaaaaayyyyy, I guess I share some of the blame. ::redface:: Note to self: maybe actually look at the stuff being shoveled across your desk?)
In a weird, sideways way, the current unpleasantness has created good feelings about my decision to cut contact with my siblings, even with the sibling who is nice to me (although still without any respect).
My family of origin has not sent me a single message. Not one.
I could say, "Yes, but I haven't contacted them either," but...I have kept in contact with my husband's family. I have done so because I know that I don't have to carefully adjust what I show them so that they won't suddenly snap into a ritual of putting me down into my place. They don't even have those rituals. They are under considerable stress-two in full quarantine, one with tiny children and no income, one immunocompromised and disabled--but I never have to brace myself when I communicate with them.
No more wondering what's the next thing I can't do that I will be asked or ordered to do and then blamed for not being able to do.
No more realizing that while I am trying to talk to a fellow adult, like an adult, they are talking to a barely reformed spoiled child who doesn't know anything about real life.
No more realizing that I am talking to people for whom the past that is contained in my core memories, the past in which they feature heavily, just...did not happen, or does not matter.
No more tiredly rebuffing, yet again, an attempt to get me to play along with a script in which we've all had lives of milk and roses and puppies and it's time for us to be sunshiny friends and for me to send them pictures of my children.
No more weary recognition that no matter what I do, I'm doing it wrong, because that is my assigned function.
I mean, I'm sad that nobody but an elderly widowed uncle-by-marriage who isn't quite sure which nibling I am has bothered to contact me for months, but I'm also glad that these people are leaving me alone! I have a family. It's here. It's not them.
J @355: I've been working from home since the 17th (my 40th birthday ☹️) due to the Covid-19 outbreak – not very nice (especially since I don't have the most reliable of internet connections at home), although the group leader does have a Zoom session at 09:15 each working day to check up how we're managing.
I restarted Couch to 5k in mid-December and completed at the end of January – to speed my progress I skipped the first week (as I felt I still had a wee bit of fitness left from last time) and ran every other day. I finished (with no injuries this time 😀) at the end of January and started with Bridge to 10k (although I didn't finish it: I missed a few runs due to stormy weather, and then of course the Covid-19 hit!)
I'm a bit worried though I may put back on much of the weight I lost over the last year or so (I went from 196 to 168 lb), as I'm no longer getting out to walk or run: my mam dissuaded me from running as soon as I was working from home, because she worried I'd catch cold easily due to being sweaty in cold weather (previously I did it in my lunch break at work, which meant my mam wasn't really aware of it) and she dissuaded me from even going for a walk a week later when the lockdown started a week later, saying that no-one should go out except for essential shopping. And when I did take her for groceries after finishing work on Friday, she was shaking with dread and went in the shop alone with rubber gloves on (sending me off for a walk while she shopped: I was very grateful for the opportunity as I hadn't had fresh air for a week!)
Perhaps I ought to exercise in my bedroom as my sister does, even if what I can do is severely limited by the lack of floor space?
Cassy B @184: Let me repeat: you did nothing wrong.
Perhaps the reason why I self-blame so much is because I'd rather see myself as a failure than as a victim? I know once my mam was very upset when she heard me calling myself a "useless piece of shit" under my breath (she said the description would be far truer of my dad than of myself), and got even more upset when I said that I felt that way because after all these years I still hadn't figured out how to get her blessing to move out.
Codemonkey, do you have an idea of what people will say about getting your mam's blessing to move out?
@361: Are you not going "Bye, mum! I'm going for a walk, because the official directives say that we're safe doing that as long as we stay 2m away from other people!" because the emotion storm your mother would both experience and unleash would impede your ability to do other things that need done?
Also, do you see how she's just, to be absolutely blunt, not well? Do you see how most other people her age are not shaking with fear when they go shopping in rubber gloves?
Is it possible that you'll never get her blessing, not because you haven't figured out how to earn it, but because her unwellness makes her incapable of giving it?
You are not a failure, and you are not stupid. I think, based on what you've posted here, that you really, really want things to go right. It's just that--again, to be blunt--the vision you have expressed here of things going right requires your mother to be somebody she isn't.
As I posted earlier...her blessing is not actually required for your departure, or indeed for anything at all. You are, unconditionally and absolutely, an adult, fully equal to her in all ways--even if you don't feel it. You don't know less than she does, and her authority no longer applies to you.
And--this may be very hard to read, so take a breath before you go on...
....
....
...you cannot, you can not, make her feel better. Her unwellness is demanding things from you and the world and from her that are not congruent with reality.
J: Wow. Nothing like an A-B comparison to bring into high relief the difference between functional relationships and...not. Go, you for filling your world with people who care about you and treat you well!
Codemonkey @361: Well done completing the couch to 5K. Have you done a parkrun yet? If not, I highly recommend getting registered and starting running with one of your local parkruns (there will be one, or more!) every Saturday morning once they restart (suspended at the present, alas). Please do NOT be derailed now on your journey to 10K. Running is fantastic and you should keep doing it!. Can you get up early, go for a run first thing? I've been running anything from 1 to 4 hours a day since this started (except on my weekly rest day.
Home exercises: there are lots of online routines. Here's the one I'm using, that requires no/minimal equipment:
- Step-up x 10 each leg (can increase to 15, and/or start holding weights while doing the step-ups (I weigh 48kg and I'm doing x10 each leg with a 5kg dumbell in each hand now) I do this literally on the bottom stair.
- Side plank (low, i.e. on elbow/forearm) 30-45s each side
- Squat (start at 8, gradually increase) - and again you can add weights
- Front plank (low plank, on forearms) 45-60s
- Lunge 8-12 each leg (build up, add weights)
- Bridge: start at e.g. 8; increase reps or progress to one-legged
- Clams (bent-leg side leg raise: your feet stay in contact with each other, while you open out the upper knee as far as you can, with control), preferably with a resistance band (start at 10 per leg, increase)
- Side leg lifts - try 5 with the food turned down (towards the floor), 5 with it horizontal, 5 with the foot turned up, to use different muscles. Then the other leg.
- Single-leg heel lifts (stand on a step, on one leg (touch a wall for balance), lower your heel below the level of the step then up as far as you can). This kills your calves at first so start with just say 5 per leg and work up.
S- eated rotation (Russian twist) - V-sit with bent legs (lower legs are parallel to the ground). With a weight in your hands (can be a dumbell, held in both hands, touch the weight to one side then the other
- Press-ups
- Dead bugs: lie on your back, arms vertically up over your shoulders but slightly bent at the elbow, and maybe with a light weight in each hand, and legs up but knees bend (knees over hips, lower legs parallel with the floor). Keeping your back flat on the ground (this really works your core muscles), lower your left arm to the floor behind your head at the same time lowering and extending your right leg so your heel just touches the floor (or keep legs bent to do this at first). Bring them back up, then do the other side.
I do three sets, with no breaks. It takes me about 35 minutes. I suggest having music or a podcast on, if you don't actually like strength training. I hate strenth training but I've been doing this twice a week since November now and it's definitely making a difference - you could start at 3x/week (I only do two so as not to have sore muscles when I'm doing hard run sessions).
Codemonkey: Also, being fit, with good lung reserve - which you can get and improve with running, is beneficial to coping if you get COVID-19 and may be essential to survive more severe forms! So you are protecting yourself by continuing to run.
Codemonkey, being sweaty in cold weather does not give you a cold. Viruses give you colds. If you stay a good distance away from other people while you're walking/jogging/running/exercising outdoors, you won't be exposed to any viruses and you won't catch a cold.
#366 ::: dcb
Do you have a source for fitness improving outcomes for COVID 19? It seems reasonable that it would, but data is better than reasonable.
Cassy B. @367: Where does the notion come from that being out in cold and wet conditions causes colds then?
dcb @365: My local weather forecast is for the temperature to reach as high as 17 °C on Sunday, so perhaps I might get for a run that day as my mam will no longer have the "it's cold" excuse to worry about me. However I think 10K will be too much as we're not supposed to be out exercising for more than an hour during this lockdown, and I am still incorporating the 5 minutes each of warm-up and cool-down as is the case for C25K and B210K sessions (I wasn't far off finishing B210K when the Covid-19 hit).
I hate strength training too (though I am sorely in need of it) to the point that I doubted I'd be able to motivate myself to do it, so in my last days at the office I had been scoping out a gym about 10 minutes walk away with a view to joining. Perhaps my lack of leg strength may be why my running pace is so poor relative to my cadence? My 5K time is usually about 28 minutes, for a cadence of between 170 and 175 steps per minute (I use a metronome app on my smartphone to maintain it). I'd love to be able to run the distance in under 25 minutes like the members of my workplace running club (mostly) do!
I still sometimes think back to Valentine's Day 2019, when by pure chance I encountered my company's most glamorous (but unsurprisingly very much married) female employee when walking to the office from the car park across the river. Along with the cousin I've earlier mentioned on these DFD threads, she's one of the two individuals who drive me to despair wondering "what did they do right that I did wrong?", and she isn't just a member of her local gym but apparently uses a personal trainer every time she attends! I don't know how she can afford that, given that she's a mother of two small children and is also buying a 4 bedroomed house! Incidentally (given that you mentioned your own weight of 48 kg – which I'm guessing makes you most likely a rather petite lady yourself) I found out that she is 165 cm and 54 kg. Of course I wouldn't normally ask a woman her weight: I did so because a photo she posted on social media with her new baby's pram made me fear she was borderline anorexic (and when I showed my mother the picture, she estimated her weight to be less than 44 kg!) Perhaps it was the muscle weight from all that gym work she does that deceived me into thinking she was underweight when she wasn't?
She's a UI/UX designer so I wouldn't expect her to be on vastly more money than myself: maybe her husband (a project manager) is very well paid? She also somehow managed to graduate debt-free from university in 2008 even though – as a (Christian) Indonesian immigrant who only became a British citizen a year after graduating in multimedia design – she would surely have had to pay at least £10k a year in tuition fees! Perhaps that just compounds my own despair as I feel she would have had to have been living with her parents in order to pull this off, as there's no conceivable student job (unless she took advantage of her great looks to do modelling?) that would have allowed her to pay both those high tuition fees and accommodation expenses? As she married only 3 years after graduation I expect she probably met her future husband while at university: was my critical error that I didn't look for a relationship then (either because I was too scared to share a social life with my mother, because I believed my family situation would be an automatic deal-breaker, or even just because I never had any warning that my mother would enforce a "no moving out without a relationship" rule)?
Nancy Lebovitz @368: There's a peer-reviewed paper regarding patients who are obese being more likely to need advanced care and more likely to die: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.22818 - for the UK, data from the Data from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) found that 70% of those in ICU were overweight, obese or clinically obese.
While High BMI does not -have- to be associated with low fitness levels (and acknowledging that BMI has flaws as a measurement, and for example extremely muscular people may have high BMI), in general people with high BMI also tend to be more sedentary and less fit* (yes, I'm generalising - that's necessary in population-level calculations. No, I'm not fat-shaming and I have friends who are obese and run ultramarathons).
Other than that: it affects the lungs and those with pre-existing lung conditions are more likely to be severely affected (and see also re obesity and lung function**). I am making the logical assumption, therefore, that those with greater aerobic fitness, such as from running, cycling or swimming regularly, who have greater reserve lung capacity, are more likely to be able to cope with reduced lung function due to COVID-19 - whatever their body weight.
[On the other end of the weight scale, the severe sore throat with many cases of COVID-19 may limit eating and drinking, so you don't want to be severely underweight going into the disease, either]
* e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38075002_The_Relationship_Between_Obesity_Physical_Activity_and_Physical_Function_in_Older_Adults
** "The disproportionate impact H1N1 Influenza and now COVID-19 in patients with obesity and severe obesity is not surprising given the impact of obesity on pulmonary function. Obesity is associated with decreased expiratory reserve volume, functional capacity and respiratory system compliance" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.22818)
Codemonkey @369, the notion that being out in cold damp weather causes colds comes from the miasma theory of disease, before we understood that germs, not weather, cause disease.
It's a very old misconception, like the one that "bad air" caused malaria (malaria literally means "bad air") when we now know that it's caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes and transmitted by mosquito bites.
It takes time for science to replace "folk wisdom", alas.
Also, being cold and wet is stressful, and stress impacts one's resistance to disease generally, so there's likely some folk-correlation going on there, as well.
Also when it's cold and wet outside, people are more likely to stay indoors more, where they're more exposed to other people in closer proximity and thus germs spread more easily.
Lots of factors that make illness show up more.
Codemonkey@369: Do get out for a run at the weekend! Then keep it going. It would be good for you on so many levels.
Regarding 'my mother would enforce a "no moving out without a relationship" rule' I'm afraid that's another of those artificial blocks she's putting up to stop you leaving. Most people nowadays in the UK do move out from the family home without being in a relationship (I certainly did!)
Codemonkey in NE England #369: Regarding your co-worker, from what you've said I would strongly suspect she has family money back home in Indonesia.
And I concur with dcb that "no moving out without a relationship" is utterly artificial -- in fact, if she (as opposed to your fears) actually said something like that, I'd call it calculated -- picking a standard that she knows you cant meet, especially when you're still living with her so she can chase off any potential suitors. Including but not limited to declaring that anyone you do come up with is "not good enough for you her".
@Codemonkey: I moved out when I was in a relationship, but I only slept at his place until I could find my own apartment. I loved it! My own space, my own time. Figuring out what I actually liked vs. what I was just used to. Figuring stuff out that I had not done before, like maintaining a clean home, without somebody hovering over my shoulder either carping at me for Doing It Rong or anxiously commanding me not to get hurt or make a mess. I would recommend it to anybody.
Jenny Islander @376: I agree. I am very happy now in my marriage. But having some years in my own space, just me, with nobody else to consider in my choice of decor, or if I wanted to stay up reading until 2 am on a Friday night, or in choosing where I put what in the kitchen cupboards, or what I was going to eat for dinner and when, or whatever, was important.
Jenny Islander @363 Are you not going "Bye, mum! I'm going for a walk, because the official directives say that we're safe doing that as long as we stay 2m away from other people!" because the emotion storm your mother would both experience and unleash would impede your ability to do other things that need done?
Also, do you see how she's just, to be absolutely blunt, not well? Do you see how most other people her age are not shaking with fear when they go shopping in rubber gloves?
When I took her shopping this Friday evening (in which I walked around the shops with her, instead of wandering off elsewhere myself as I did last time) I did feel a bit uncomfortable myself, most likely due to the social distancing measures now in force. I'd asked her why she was so extremely anxious and she said it's because she feared what would happen to my sister (who is now at home all the time because her day centre has also been closed since March 17th due to the Covid-19 outbreak) if the infection had her unable to look after her. In fact it seems like fears for her daughter are a big factor in my mother's anxious and/or controlling behaviours: I'm sure she (my sister) would unleash an emotional hypercane were I to move out (especially if without warning), and that may be a big factor in my mother wanting to prevent this at all costs.
Jacque @372: I wonder if stress from our living conditions may also be why my mother and I have had colds for the better part of 6 months now? At least my colds aren't anything like as nasty as they were two years ago when I was fat: one reason why I decided to make the effort to lose weight!
Perhaps stress may also be why it is so difficult for me to get rid of the last of my acne?
dcb @374, Dave Harmon @375: What actually happened was that I was bringing my mother home with the groceries one Saturday (back in 2014) when I let slip that I was unhappy to still be living with my parents, at which point she said "if you were leaving home because you'd found someone and you were getting married I'd be over the moon, but why the hell would you want to live ON YOUR OWN!?"
I was inwardly furious at the time, thinking "if you didn't want me to move out until I was in a relationship, why didn't you let me know that when I was a student?" I'd also remembered how she'd lamented (not long after I'd started working, so maybe 2009) how I had no social life and spent almost all my spare time online, and I was thinking "won't socializing now stress me out because I'd be wondering what questions you may ask, as well as costing money that will delay my moving out", but I was too scared to say that to her openly.
The obvious question regarding this statement is whether she was OK for me to move out (if not now then before my dad's stroke) but was just legitimately afraid of what living alone may do to my mental state, or whether it was made in bad faith because she'd had no intention of letting me go even before my dad's stroke (either because she wanted to keep me at home to ultimately become my sister's replacement carer, or because she suspected that my dad would imminently have a debilitating medical emergency of his own due to his unhealthy lifestyle).
While my instincts (like yours) suggest the latter is more likely, it still pains me thinking "is there any mistake I may possibly have made that is preventing me from living like a normal adult?" Was my mistake in believing that seeing my family (including a father who hadn't worked for decades, and an autistic sister with a mental age of 6) would be a deal-breaker for almost any prospective romantic partner? Or was such an instinct justified?
And while my beautiful co-worker denies it, "rich family" may indeed have been a possible reason how she could lead such an envy-inducing life (what made you suspect this by the way Dave, in the absence of further information?) That would not only explain why she mentioned on her profile at uggcf://jjj.snprobbx.pbz/ivxninaghly/ that she was a Conservative supporter (which is extremely atypical of course for a non-white immigrant millennial in the UK!), but also come in very useful as a way to help kill my unfortunate crush on her! And even more so when I now realize that her family's 1999 arrival in the UK was not long after the fall of Suharto: maybe she's from the same kind of socioeconomic stratum as (to take a US-centric example) the Miami Cubans?
Codemonkey @378: I think several of us have already answered the 'why would you want to live on your own?' question. There are umpteen good reasons for you to move out. Your mother is clearly hell-bent on preventing you from doing so - but her reasons do not (from my perspective) include the slightest consideration of what is good for you. It's quite probable that she wants you to stay at home to ultimately become your sister's replacement carer. And yes, the constant colds are probably a sign of stress.
Codemonkey #378: First of all, a loud "Amen" to dcb #379.
it still pains me thinking "is there any mistake I may possibly have made that is preventing me from living like a normal adult?"
That is a question that has haunted me for a long time. At the same time... for most of my early life, I was simply doing the best I could, and wondering why the paths that normal people could use (especially, to find love) simply weren't working for me. Then too, I've always had less of a sense of "free will" (agency?) than most people seem to -- apparently, that is a spectrum thing, but surely aggravated by my upbringing.
In my case, that period ended with a series of traumas (broken heart, father's death, burned out by an abusive workplace) that left me simply broken. Over the next few years, a therapist gave me quite a lot of insight into how my own childhood had left me damaged even before that.
My mother isn't as bad as yours, but she has both serious anxiety, and a narcissistic streak (not vicious, but still very bad for the child I was). My father was... every other weekend, and even then we had to share him with my stepbrothers and stepmother, who brought their own flavors of dysfunction into the mix. And then I found out about the autistic spectrum -- and that explained almost everything else. That didn't help me be "normal", or even unbroken, but over the decades since then I've healed a little and made an uneasy peace with my life, such as it is. Now as then, I do as best I can. I'm "underemployed" (my most lucrative talent lost to burnout) and mostly living on disability, but I do live independently, as I have since college years.
what made you suspect this by the way Dave, in the absence of further information?
I think "Indonesia" pinged a bell. Over the years, I've heard stories about similar immigrants from Indonesia (and some other bits of Asia) to the West. If her family came after the fall of Suharto, they probably were in his circles -- not necessarily intimates, but surely part of the elite that his power supported. Of course, with him gone, things would get a lot less comfortable for them, with dangers that wealth without power can't protect from. So, the traditional response: Take what they could, and flee for someplace safer.
Jenny Islander @363: Is it possible that you'll never get her blessing, not because you haven't figured out how to earn it, but because her unwellness makes her incapable of giving it?
You are not a failure, and you are not stupid. I think, based on what you've posted here, that you really, really want things to go right. It's just that--again, to be blunt--the vision you have expressed here of things going right requires your mother to be somebody she isn't.
I decided yesterday – after confirming with my mam that my sister typically woke up no later than 7 am, even when not going out – that if I couldn't motivate myself to exercise at home after working hours (because I'm very eager to eat then: more due to stress built up over the working day, than to actual hunger) that maybe I could exercise before work. It didn't work out (mam still stopped me on grounds of noise: perhaps she was concerned about neighbours?) but she ended up inviting me into her room to chat with her.
After chatting about how much we are all getting depressed due to the lockdown, (and also telling me again how wrong I am to think of myself as a failure, or useless) I decided that she might not react adversely if I decided to clear up once and for all what she meant when she said that no-one showed her how to do housework (as I mentioned @172). Repeating the possible options I mentioned then:
1) Did she mean that she couldn't be bothered to show me step by step how to do these tasks, and it was my fault for failing to phrase my requests correctly? (What I actually meant by her "showing me how to do" a task is that she'd ask me to do it at a convenient time, and stand by to pick up the mistakes I made...)
2) Did she mean that she only learned how to do these tasks after moving out (although it would be unlikely given that she lived with her parents until marriage) and that I was wrong for expecting that she wouldn't let me leave until I'd demonstrated my competence to live independently?
3) Did she mean that she didn't think me capable of living independently, because that doesn't just mean knowing how to do household tasks, but knowing how to determine when they need to be done?
4) Or had she already decided even then that she didn't want me to move out, and she was intentionally keeping me ignorant to dissuade me from getting ideas?
I decided to ask her how much housework she actually did just before she moved out of her parents' home, and she told me that she did almost none, except re-ironing her clothes if she'd crumpled them up in her room (which was as untidy as you'd expect from a teenager) – she also recounted to me just how inept she was at housework just after she got married. This suggests that contrary to my expectations it was my option 2) which was the correct one after all! For a long time I'd been wondering if my key failure was that I didn't do enough housework, leading my mam to think that I couldn't manage independent living. Some of her comments about how eager my cousin had been to do stuff for his parents had made me think that I'd thus failed to "earn" my way out of the family home (as you put it and as I've often thought of it), but this answer has just destroyed that hypothesis of mine.
dcb @379: I think several of us have already answered the 'why would you want to live on your own?' question. There are umpteen good reasons for you to move out.
My mam does have a good point there, in that living alone is not a desirable end-state in my view any more than it is in hers (and it would be especially depressing during this Covid-19 lockdown!). Indeed, the main reason I want to move out is because I believe (rightly or wrongly, please advise – especially if the latter) that I have no chance of finding a romantic partner for as long as I am living with my parents: both because it creates an impression that I am incapable of looking after myself, and because having disabled family members would make a prospective partner suspect that I just wanted someone to serve as a carer for me. A secondary reason for wanting to move out is that I've longed to travel since I was a teenager (and haven't been outside North East England for about 10 years now) but always believed that that it would be immoral for me to spend money on this for as long as I am living with my parents (and at my mother's insistence only making the bare minimum of financial contributions to this!)
Your mother is clearly hell-bent on preventing you from doing so - but her reasons do not (from my perspective) include the slightest consideration of what is good for you.
Once I established this morning that my mam wasn't stopping me moving out because she didn't think me capable of managing housework, I asked her "it's obvious that you're absolutely terrified of me leaving home: why is this?" Her response was essentially the same as that mentioned back @206: that I'm too vulnerable for her to be comfortable with my moving out. And when I responded "what should I do to make myself less vulnerable then?" she replied sadly "you're realizing that you're asking me if I can cure your Asperger's, right?"
Given that the reasons for not wanting to me to move out seem to change over time, it has me wondering which of them are genuine, and which of them are fake (perhaps reasons that she's made up mainly in an attempt to convince herself that she isn't abusing me). One reason which I've suspected in my darker moments (and which she obviously wouldn't want to mention even if it were actually the case) is that she is afraid of my tastes in women, and particular of the potential for culture clash!
It was back in 1994 (on an end-of-year school trip to the local amusement park) that I saw the first woman (in a bright pink sari) who really captivated me with her beauty, and another (even more problematic – needless to say I never told my parents) example was the black woman in a white hijab and dark blue abaya (perhaps a Mexican would have thought of Our Lady of Guadalupe if he'd seen her?) which I saw once in the university library when doing my PhD. Maybe it was a good thing that I never plucked up the courage to try speaking to her, as she was most likely a fairly devout Muslim and wouldn't want to talk to a strange man?
Over the years, I've heard stories about similar immigrants from Indonesia (and some other bits of Asia) to the West. If her family came after the fall of Suharto, they probably were in his circles -- not necessarily intimates, but surely part of the elite that his power supported. Of course, with him gone, things would get a lot less comfortable for them, with dangers that wealth without power can't protect from. So, the traditional response: Take what they could, and flee for someplace safer.
Perhaps the fact that they were a Christian family in a Muslim-majority country also added to the sense of discomfort that drove them to the UK? And perhaps my own sense of discomfort that she made me feel, is in part because Asians in general stereotypically live in very close-knit Inherited Obligation families, which she seems to have made work but which I am seeming to find too onerous?
Codemonkey in NE England @381,
Once I established this morning that my mam wasn't stopping me moving out because she didn't think me capable of managing housework, I asked her "it's obvious that you're absolutely terrified of me leaving home: why is this?" Her response was essentially the same as that mentioned back @206: that I'm too vulnerable for her to be comfortable with my moving out. And when I responded "what should I do to make myself less vulnerable then?" she replied sadly "you're realizing that you're asking me if I can cure your Asperger's, right?"
This, right here, is all you need to know. She will never give you permission to move out, because at a fundamental level she doesn't think you will EVER be capable of living on your own.
She's wrong. You are capable. And you do NOT need her permission to leave (which is good, because if that's how she feels, you'll never get it).
Codemonkey, I cannot stress this enough. You are a smart and capable adult human being, and you do not need your mother's permission to have a life. Unfortunately, practically speaking, you may have to wait until the current emergency eases before you can start looking for your own apartment, but please, please, please, give yourself permission to do so when it is possible again. Your own permission is all the permission you need.
#381 ::: Codemonkey in NE England
It seems to me that having a clear conversation with your mother instead of trying to figure out what she's thinking is quite a bit of progress. Am I remembering correctly?
So the one sibling whose voice and face cause PTSD flashbacks emailed me an invitation to celebrate Easter morning via Zoom. First communication from her since the photo Christmas card. I haven't sent her anything in more than a year. This was supposed to be a "Cousins Easter," in which I would be seeing and speaking to people I have wondered about for a long time. I can remember wanting a real family, wanting to know these people, so badly it made me cry. I can remember being too terrified to reach out on my own because I more than half believed that after five minutes of knowing me every last one of them would condemn me, just like my immediate family. I can remember my rage when I found out that this one sibling had said that she would pass on an invitation to a family reunion and decided not to because she thought I wouldn't be interested. And now, now she wants to play Big Happy Family?
I deleted it without replying. I'll call my real family on Easter morning. The one I found here.
The irony here is that assorted sibs have repeatedly asked me to put it all behind me and move on. And I have. It's just that they mean "pretend that you don't have PTSD and allow us to define who you are," and I mean "quit trying to have a relationship with them that they don't want to have with me."
J @384/385: I'm so sorry. Virtual hugs if welcome. And also so very glad that you have both found a real family, and found a real way to put the past behind you.
J, that's very insightful about finding your own way to put it all behind you.
Thanks, past me, for being so smart! I woke up puking on Easter morning. (Not a disease; I get sinus blockages.) So nice not to be dreading that Zoom call on top of everything else.
Codemonkey: your mother is simultaneously saying that you can't move out because you have Aspergers and keeping you home to be your sister's future carer. If she doesn't think you can look after yourself how on earth are you supposed to look after both yourself and your sister, in the future?
I totally agree with Cassy B. @382. I also know a number of people who have Aspergers and are living full lives, away from their parents, several being married and most of those having their own kids. To my knowledge most if not all of them lived on their own before they had partners.
J: sympathies, but well done you for recognising the 'their terms' trap and declining it.
Codemonkey: And perhaps my own sense of discomfort that she made me feel, is in part because Asians in general stereotypically live in very close-knit Inherited Obligation families, which she seems to have made work but which I am seeming to find too onerous?
My limited understanding of such Obligation families, is that while they can be oppressive by Western standards, still the pattern of obligations has a certain coherence, with a basis in tradition, at least some reciprocity and a definite sense of purpose.
Reading your accounts of your situation with your mother... I'm just not seeing any of that. I don't think it's fair to yourself to justify your mother's attempts to bind you in perpetuity as "Obligation family" stuff.
Hmm, I just came up with a "line" in another forum, not sure how seriously to take it:
: The dark message of modern psychology is "yeah, captain of your soul, but it's a riverboat".
Except twice now, I've typed out "society" when I meant to type "psychology", that has to be significant somehow.
...and now the I-will-not-accept-your-PTSD-and-anyway-I-need-you-to-remember-something-different-from-what-actually-happened sibling wants to chat.
It's getting easier and easier to read and delete this stuff.
sigh
I read it, and it was just about how she and her husband and adult children are handling the pandemic, and how "everybody" is wondering how we're doing here and wants to help.
I found myself responding in kind. Not with fakey-fake stuff about how I care, but just facts about how we're doing OK. It was still too much, because I was thinking about how I would feel (have felt) if somebody who I didn't realize didn't like me did not respond to my asking if they were OK.
But I can respond to the next one, if there is one, with "We're all fine here." Or not at all.
Cassy B @382: Codemonkey, I cannot stress this enough. You are a smart and capable adult human being, and you do not need your mother's permission to have a life. Unfortunately, practically speaking, you may have to wait until the current emergency eases before you can start looking for your own apartment, but please, please, please, give yourself permission to do so when it is possible again. Your own permission is all the permission you need.
I think "my mother's permission to move out" for me may be a euphemism for "reassurance that my mother will not commit suicide after I move out". The situation is no doubt desperate for her as I'm the only person in her life that's capable of holding a half-decent conversation with her.
Nancy Lebovitz @383: It seems to me that having a clear conversation with your mother instead of trying to figure out what she's thinking is quite a bit of progress.
Not quite, as while my latest conversation has (at least in my view) refuted my belief that I failed to "earn" my way out of my family because I didn't help out enough around the house, it doesn't answer to my satisfaction why I can't seem to get her OK to move out.
While my mother is currently saying that I'm too vulnerable to move out (and while I do view myself as somewhat vulnerable I believe this is more due to my overprotected upbringing than due to my Asperger's) before 2012 her stated objections were financial: she didn't want me to move out until I could buy a house outright, because she feared I'd be made redundant at some point (and presumably find it extremely difficult to find another job due to my Asperger's) and end up homeless. After all something similar did happen to my (albeit less educated) cousin!
dcb @389: Codemonkey: your mother is simultaneously saying that you can't move out because you have Aspergers and keeping you home to be your sister's future carer. If she doesn't think you can look after yourself how on earth are you supposed to look after both yourself and your sister, in the future?
My mother has never explicitly said that I'm expected to be my sister's future carer – it was a deduction which I made as to the most likely reason why she's clinging to me so desperately. I suspect she'd deny it if I highlighted the contradition which you've just mentioned. Another possible interpretation of what she's said is that what she really believes is that I can't be trusted with freedom: a freedom which I would inherently lack were I to be caring for my sister.
Dave Harmon @390: My limited understanding of such Obligation families, is that while they can be oppressive by Western standards, still the pattern of obligations has a certain coherence, with a basis in tradition, at least some reciprocity and a definite sense of purpose.
Reading your accounts of your situation with your mother... I'm just not seeing any of that. I don't think it's fair to yourself to justify your mother's attempts to bind you in perpetuity as "Obligation family" stuff.
The fact that the Inherited Obligation families you are imagining as a comparison almost certainly don't include someone with learning difficulties as severe as my sister's is probably the reason for that.
Cassy B @382: Codemonkey, I cannot stress this enough. You are a smart and capable adult human being, and you do not need your mother's permission to have a life. Unfortunately, practically speaking, you may have to wait until the current emergency eases before you can start looking for your own apartment, but please, please, please, give yourself permission to do so when it is possible again. Your own permission is all the permission you need.
I think "my mother's permission to move out" for me may be a euphemism for "reassurance that my mother will not commit suicide after I move out". The situation is no doubt desperate for her as I'm the only person in her life that's capable of holding a half-decent conversation with her.
Nancy Lebovitz @383: It seems to me that having a clear conversation with your mother instead of trying to figure out what she's thinking is quite a bit of progress.
Not quite, as while my latest conversation has (at least in my view) refuted my belief that I failed to "earn" my way out of my family because I didn't help out enough around the house, it doesn't answer to my satisfaction why I can't seem to get her OK to move out.
While my mother is currently saying that I'm too vulnerable to move out (and while I do view myself as somewhat vulnerable I believe this is more due to my overprotected upbringing than due to my Asperger's) before 2012 her stated objections were financial: she didn't want me to move out until I could buy a house outright, because she feared I'd be made redundant at some point (and presumably find it extremely difficult to find another job due to my Asperger's) and end up homeless. After all something similar did happen to my (albeit less educated) cousin!
dcb @389: Codemonkey: your mother is simultaneously saying that you can't move out because you have Aspergers and keeping you home to be your sister's future carer. If she doesn't think you can look after yourself how on earth are you supposed to look after both yourself and your sister, in the future?
My mother has never explicitly said that I'm expected to be my sister's future carer – it was a deduction which I made as to the most likely reason why she's clinging to me so desperately. I suspect she'd deny it if I highlighted the contradition which you've just mentioned. Another possible interpretation of what she's said is that what she really believes is that I can't be trusted with freedom: a freedom which I would inherently lack were I to be caring for my sister.
Dave Harmon @390: My limited understanding of such Obligation families, is that while they can be oppressive by Western standards, still the pattern of obligations has a certain coherence, with a basis in tradition, at least some reciprocity and a definite sense of purpose.
Reading your accounts of your situation with your mother... I'm just not seeing any of that. I don't think it's fair to yourself to justify your mother's attempts to bind you in perpetuity as "Obligation family" stuff.
The fact that the Inherited Obligation families you are imagining as a comparison almost certainly don't include someone with learning difficulties as severe as my sister's is probably the reason for that.
(for the gnomes)... ...
Could you please delete my duplicate message (#395) and correct any references in any other people's messages (posted after #394) that are changed by this deletion?
De-duplication if practical?
Codemonkey, weird thought experiment here, based on my own failure modes:
If you had a button to push to fix everything, but you'd never understand why things were the way they were-- never understand your mam's motives, never understand her emotions, never understand her reasoning-- would you push it?
I sometimes tangle myself up in laying out what the problems are, why they are problems, what caused them, how systemic they are... and then I don't do anything to fix them because (I pretend) understanding them fully must be the first step. But it doesn't have to be. People knew how to prevent and cure scurvy centuries before they understood vitamins.
Codemonkey in NE @ 395. I come from an Inherited Obligation family and I strongly agree with Dave Harmon. The situation you describe with your family would not be considered acceptable according to our norms. Your sister having severe disabilities does *not* change that assessment for me.
If you decide this situation is acceptable for you, that's up to you. I can only tell you that, as described, it violates multiple social norms in my (quite strict) Inherited Obligation family tradition.
@394, if you truly feel your mother would be suicidal if you moved out, you should get her professional help as quickly as practical. If she's holding the threat of suicide over your head, you're not her son, you're her hostage. But it seems to me to be a false choice; moving out DOES NOT MEAN you will never talk to her again. You can talk to her daily if you both wish it.
Hope this isn't hlepy.
Venus, could you explain in more detail exactly what about my own family situation would be unacceptable from the perspective of the tradition in which you were raised?
Codemonkey: If her committing suicide is a real option for her, well I concur with Cassy B. that would just be blackmail -- yet another control hook. But... has she even brought up the idea of committing suicide? Or is that something you're projecting onto her, trying to explain your own sense of guilt and obligation? Also:
The fact that the Inherited Obligation families you are imagining as a comparison almost certainly don't include someone with learning difficulties as severe as my sister's is probably the reason for that.
I'm not buying that. A lot of families throughout human history (and especially before the modern era) have included a "broken" person: "the crippled/sickly/blind/etc. one", "the family/village idiot", "the crazy aunt in the attic". What with modern medicine, a lot of the conditions involved have gotten much rarer -- but even so, there's still a few short straws waiting for somebody to draw one. I've met a few of them over the years, and heard of others via their carers.
What they do with that person depends mostly on the resources of the family and their community, and even today, sometimes it's not pretty. But often enough, people just do their best to take care of "the one who needs help" -- because they are, after all, family (or even just a member of the community). But then and now, it doesn't have to mean somebody gets drafted to give up their own life in favor of taking care of the one person. Institutions can be nasty, but there are also good ones out there. Care staff can be hired, too. As a computer programmer, you will have more recourse than most to hire care or pay for a decent environment -- but not if your career is kneecapped by your having to personally care for your sister, regardless of your own abilities or potential.
Your mother is drowning in her own fear (and likely, guilt¹) -- and she's trying to drag you down with her. You may not be able to save her, but you can at least save yourself.
¹ Because her kids came out of her, and they came out flawed. Come to think of it, part of her issues may be an inability to separate your sister and yourself in her mind. You can't be independent because your sister can't, but your mother is bundling the two of you together as "her children".
Diatryma, yes I certainly have the issue you describe of desperately wanting to understand my mother's thought processes: I think one reason is that I missed out on socializing and/or travelling because I believed my mother wanted me to be as parsimonious as possible with money (and that once I had a job an an income, that she'd want me to use my money to give her a better life) only to find out once I did have money to offer her that she didn't even want it!
Dave Harmon, back in 2013 my mother said to me "if you leave home you might as well stick a knife in me before you go, I'd kill myself if I was left alone with him!"
@403, Codemonkey, that was seven years ago, and your father (I assume it's your father she meant?) is no longer there. So it's not a current threat to her.
Anyway, that's blackmail, pure and simple. If she makes a suicide threat to you, CALL SOCIAL SERVICES. I assume there's a suicide prevention hotline in your area, or something of the sort.
@403: I think that a need for routine and consistency is a hallmark of our condition--furthermore, that a tendency to project that desire for routine and consistency is a common characteristic. We tend to look for patterns, so that we can follow them.
But the only internal consistency I can see in your mother's actions is constant flinching away from whatever is prodding her tender spots--even if that makes her contradict what she said and did yesterday.
Jenny Islander @363: You are not a failure, and you are not stupid. I think, based on what you've posted here, that you really, really want things to go right. It's just that--again, to be blunt--the vision you have expressed here of things going right requires your mother to be somebody she isn't.
Another thing that accentuated my recent feeling of failure recently was learning from social media that 7 years ago one of my work colleagues (only 27 at the time) had taken her mother on holiday to Barcelona: it got me thinking "why couldn't I have done something nice for my mother like that?"
At the time I had assumed (based on how much she carped at my dad for not getting a job) that as soon as I got a job and started earning money that she would come to me to make suggestions for what I could buy for her to make her happy, and I didn't have the presence of mind to realize that she'd be too proud to do this.
I now feel like I'm being punished for not wanting to talk to my mother (because I found it too stressful): I believed at the time (erroneously) that my relations with my mother were like an overcentre locking mechanism, where my mother's pleading with me to talk to her more just made me more resistant (as I feared she was just looking to use me as an emotional punchbag) and that material gifts might be the side leverage that would unlock the mechanism...
dcb @379: I think several of us have already answered the 'why would you want to live on your own?' question.
Actually you haven't – what you really answered is "why would you want to live away from your parents?" The distinction is crucial as I suspect that my mother views me as undateable (most likely due to my Asperger's and/or my acne, but the reason doesn't really matter here) and thinks that living totally alone (especially during the current outbreak) would be even worse for my mental state than my current living arrangement.
Cassy B. @404: Codemonkey, that was seven years ago, and your father (I assume it's your father she meant?) is no longer there. So it's not a current threat to her.
My dad's still very much here: what made you think he wasn't? I still think that my mam is using my dad as a scapegoat because it's more acceptable to blame her awful life on him than it is to blame her disabled daughter.
Jenny Islander @405: But the only internal consistency I can see in your mother's actions is constant flinching away from whatever is prodding her tender spots--even if that makes her contradict what she said and did yesterday.
It would be a great help if I knew more about what these tender spots were!
@406, Codemonkey, I sincerely apologize; somehow I'd thought that your father had passed away in the interim. I am very truly sorry for the error.
@406: But it isn't actually your job to know what her tender spots are, because it isn't your job to adjust the external world to match her internal dysfunction. Doing so would require, and has required, massive alteration and diminution of your own world. This isn't not mentioning spiders to an arachnophobe, or not setting off fireworks next door to a veteran. This is attempting to accommodate a continually mutating and burgeoning mental virus. That is not how you handle viruses in adult who are not incapacitated. You lean way back and you tell the sick person to call the doctor already and quit putting the virus (and the homemade doctor hat) on you. But I have strained that analogy too far, and should stop.
Like Cassy B., I was under the impression from your posts that your father was long gone in some way. Just to refresh my memory, can you re-describe your household?
It's a credit to my therapists and support groups that I had another dream last night in which I was the kind of person who would happily do something so monstrous to another person I know IRL that I cannot even write it in my diary...and the minute I woke up I was thinking, "Oh, this brain bullshit again. Hiya, brain bullshit, so not pleased to meet you." And then I went on with my day with only a brief freakout in the shower.
Jenny Islander @408: Like Cassy B., I was under the impression from your posts that your father was long gone in some way. Just to refresh my memory, can you re-describe your household?
My dad had a brain haemorrhage in 2012 which horribly damaged his short-term memory and left him functionally illiterate, and I also have an autistic sister who is 32 but has the mental ability more or less of a 6-year old.
If you want more info then my first post here may be of help...
codemonkey: I was just reminded of a Captain Awkward letter you may find relevant.
The Ottawa Hospital's "on-hold" phone recording has a message along the lines of "We pride ourselves on providing the same level of care we would want for our own loved ones."
Considering some of the crap they've been putting Inge through... some of the doctors and nurses must really hate their loved ones.
Ooooh Jacque @ 411
The same one that has a great follow-up of a recovered life!
Crazy(and still going)Soph
J @409: Well done you, your therapists and your support groups!
Joel Polowin @412: Sympathies to you and to Inge.
Codemonkey @406: I said @377: "having some years in my own space, just me, with nobody else to consider in my choice of decor, or if I wanted to stay up reading until 2 am on a Friday night, or in choosing where I put what in the kitchen cupboards, or what I was going to eat for dinner and when, or whatever, was important." Leaving aside problems of solo living during the COVID-19 times, living on your own allows you to work out what is important to you in your living space. Taking on the responsibility for your own space - including organising, cleaning, paying the bills and so on - can also be rewarding. Personally I think it's really helpful to have that period by yourself. It also helped me to compromise when my now-husband and I did finally move in together, and he felt the same - we'd each had our own place, but now we were getting 'our' place and that was different. (Thankfully we had large similarities in preferences of decor, for example, but my flat was vegetarian, no meat allowed (which was important to me), but he's an omnivore, and we do have meat in our house (but I don't cook it and he wouldn't ask me to, and he doesn't contaminate vege food with utensils that have meat on them, and he doesn't cook bacon in the house because I hate the smell and it does permeate and linger).
Cassy B @371 (et al): maybe the folk wisdom about cold weather causing respiratory ailments has something to it after all?
The key is that (in order to spread as effectively as possible) respiratory viruses evolve to infect the nose and throat areas while avoiding the lungs and other internal areas that would incapacitate the host. The mechanism the viruses use for this is temperature sensitivity, as the nose and throat areas are amongst the coldest parts of the human body (as are the toes, which is how "Covid toes" come about).
This means while the weather has little effect on how likely you are to be infected, the virus lies dormant most of the time, and is more likely to start reproducing (making you ill) when the body is chilled.
This also explains why workers in slaughterhouses and meat packing plants are especially vulnerable to such viruses (as they are close together, unable to move around much, and also deliberately chilled in order to minimize infections in the meat itself).
415: I'm thinking this discussion maybe best moved to the Open Thread?
Venting here because I can't vent about this anywhere else.
My husband: chomps and smacks handfuls of Skittles so big he can't close his mouth, washes the Skittles down with Pepsi, thinks adding a couple of deep-fried veggie spring rolls to a massive order of a sugary Americanized Chinese chicken dish makes it healthy, has a literal shopping bag full of candy on one side of his favorite chair and another literal shopping bag full of chips on the other, keeps them full
Also my husband: stays up until ridiculous o'clock in the morning watching shows he can't even remember the next day
Also my husband: won't reinstall the cat door because it wastes heat, so constantly gets up in the night to attend to our cat's need to go out and come in again, bounces out of bed so fast that even if I also get wakened up by the cat I can't take care of it, does this even when he works the next day and I don't
Also my husband: "I don't know why I always feel so un-energetic and muddleheaded or why all of my days off amount to me sleeping or watching TV even when I planned to do projects or have fun."
J: *snort* The sentiment generally around the world these days: "Why are humans?"
Dave Harmon @369:
Regarding your co-worker, from what you've said I would strongly suspect she has family money back home in Indonesia.
And I concur with dcb that "no moving out without a relationship" is utterly artificial -- in fact, if she (as opposed to your fears) actually said something like that, I'd call it calculated -- picking a standard that she knows you cant meet, especially when you're still living with her so she can chase off any potential suitors. Including but not limited to declaring that anyone you do come up with is "not good enough for you her".
Last night I saw a picture of her on her Instagram story with her now-husband back from March 2006 when they first met (she was 19 and he was 18): I took the opportunity to ask her if she'd been in student accommodation at the time, or living with her parents. She confirmed (the first time in ages that she actually replied to a message from me) that it was the latter, and moreover that she'd lived with her parents until a few months before she married in 2011 (when she and her husband bought a 3-bed house).
While learning this suggests she may not have been blessed with rich parents after all, it also caused me to start sobbing again in the morning (to the point that it woke my sister up: admittedly both she and my mother are very sensitive to sound), thinking "did I throw my life away because I was too PARANOID and COWARDLY to share a social life with my mother when I was at university??"
What do people here think? (And what should I say to my mother if she asks me why I was so upset this morning?)
I think that it isn't your mother's business.
"It's handled, Mom."
"Too complicated to talk about. I'm handling it."
"Had a bad moment, no need to discuss it, it's over."
"Just grown-up stuff. You know." (Has the double benefit of reminding her that you are an adult and hopefully distracting her by getting her to talk about her own troubles.)
@419: Other possible scripts:
shrug "Eh."
"Horrible dream. Don't want to rehash it. I'm just glad it doesn't feel so fresh now."
Or bring this up on your phone and say that just REMEMBERING it made you break down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J4k32LhTNw
(It's "The Best Day of My Life" by American Authors, except it's a video that follows a dog's first day home from the shelter, except you don't find that out until halfway through the song...BAWWWWWW)
TL;DR: De-emphasize, deflect, distract, and disengage. It's not a conversation you two should be having, for the sake of your own mental health.
A thought, occasioned by looking back at the old threads: AFAICT, The first three of those threads lack daisy-chain links to the next thread; That practice doesn't begin until the Tangled Emotions thread. At this late date, would it still be possible to add such links?
Dave Harmon @422: Given that my duplicate message at #395 is still there, I'm worried that our gnomes have died on us.
Codemonkey: The gnomes are, in fact, thin on the ground, these days, but they also have not traditionally removed duplicate messages.
Dave: I believe adding those links retroactively is technically possible. That it never got done suggests A Decision Was Made (presumably by abi) to let that be water under the bridge.
Jacque #424: I believe adding those links retroactively is technically possible. That it never got done suggests A Decision Was Made (presumably by abi) to let that be water under the bridge.
That is sad, as I have recently had occasion to recommend them to someone, and the daisy-chain links would make it rather more likely for them to continue reading through based on a pointer to the first one. The index in this post is... a little intimidating.
I wish we could get the View All By fixed, too. Various folks (including myself) have volunteered the time/labor to do these things.
My only conclusion (corroborated by other data) is that none of the mods has the time/spoons/bandwidth to be able to make this a priority.
I agree; I am sad. ML has been and continues to be a valuable/cherished influence/resource/community in my life.
Codemonkey @419: thinking "did I throw my life away because I was too PARANOID and COWARDLY to share a social life with my mother when I was at university??" Two things about this:
1) Your mother lived the end of her childhood/early adulthood some decades ago. The world has changed. Moreover, you are different people. What might have worked for her back when, with her parents & family situation, wouldn't necessarily have worked for you, more recently and with -your- parents and family situation.
2) Solutions that require the use of a time machine are not solutions. (I find it useful to remind myself of this when I start going down the 'but what if I had done/said X' rabbithole.) You can only start making things different NOW, not in the past.
Just saying, Mary L. Trump's book about her uncle Donald, Too Much And Never Enough, is very much a DF tale, and a warning about what happens when the dysfunction is backed by great wealth.
And some of the shrapnel from the Marion Zimmer Bradley disaster seems to have reached pop culture, wherein the show Last Chance U features MZB's grandson:
Could the gnomes remove #430 for me?
Could the gnomes remove #430 for me?
Unfortunately the gnomes are not paying close attention nowadays. If you have an email address for one or more of them, that might be a thing to try.
Can someone do me a solid and email a gnome? not sure of addresses now
Abi is @evilrooster on Twitter.
I've sent a message to Abi via Twitter... I think. I'm not knowledgeable about how that's supposed to work.
Comment is unpublished.
I'm not here much (I've explained why; it's ongoing), but I can be reached at my name above at this domain.
(Thank you to the people who reached out.)
Thank you . . . noted for future.
Crisis defused. Several people getting therapy, but not one who needs it most.
I need to vent.
Damnit, damnit, damnit.
Pathetic manipulative procrastinating flake has parents stressed out, siblings terrorized. Sleepless nights, and days filled with dread for the arrival of next cheery excuse or convoluted make-work reason for not getting things done and moving on. Congratulating themself on avoiding the rat-race while utterly dependent on friends and relations toiling in the rat-race for housing and medical care and who know what other hand-outs. I am so goddamn tired.
Thank You.
Temporarily Psuedonomynous @438: Listening. Witnessing. Sympathies. {{{{{HUGS}}}}} if helpful.
@438: I am as much for getting out of the rat race as the next person, but I find myself seething with anger at people who look right past the people who support them and instead credit Providence, or themselves, or the impersonal and endlessly obliging universe, for the things they have.
It's as infuriating in a relative playing the grasshopper as it is in a corporate baron who insists that he worked hard for his inheritance and family connections.
And at both ends of the scale, they blithely scatter trouble in their wake and expect everyone else to clean up their messes.
Rant away; this is the place.
Thank you.
I'm furious and wrung out and worried and also close to being out of fucks to give about this person, who recently verbally savaged the people most able to offer help.
I in particular can't cut off contact. At least until a thing happens. Part of my current dread is waiting for the next excuse not to make thing happen.
Someone suggested bipolar disorder, or ADHD. If this weekend turns out well, the next hurdle will be a "get help or don't talk to us again" conversation.
Temporarily Psuedonomynous: Witnessing.
Tmporarily Pseudonymnous: Also witnessing and sending good vibes your way.
Frack, frack, why does it have to be this way?
Witnessing, and utterly sincere sympathies.
Witnessing.
I was recently discussing with old friends the remembrance of our 20s, when we had undiagnosed ADHD or bipolar or similar. At the time we were attempting all sorts of self help books and practices because we didn't like our unreliability or whatnot. We weren't very successful, but we worked at it.
(If you have ADD, you possibly don't know what success feels like until you try a medication. Sure you can do better, but getting intermittent moments of better isn't the same as predictable all-day functioning. Once you know what it feels like, then you can work on ways to maintain that without medication. My 20s were in the days when they barely accepted that adults could have ADD, or that there were different ways it could appear: daydreams instead of hyperactivity).
Perhaps this person had undiagnosed ADD, which can explain part of emotional regulating problems. But not wanting to change, or apologize, or figure out patterns? That's not the ADD.
WHEW.
OK.
Situation at least temporarily good. Maybe good for a while.
Now need to find out best ways to tell someone they need to get therapy. Because, actually, honesty, something in the neighborhood of a mood disorder would explain *so* much, going back years. Decades. A lightbulb moment. And would give shouted-at people an avenue for forgiveness.
Gee cripes.
Thank you for listening!
@Variations: Yes, in addition to possible attention deficit (why haven't they finished so many promising projects?) there is a lot of . . . I was going to say *learned dependency,* but *learned entitlement* would be more accurate. Someone who knows how to press buttons and milk accommodating situations. And failing to get something can lead to *fury*.
Eventual intervention would have to involve examples of hurtful behavior, and of so many abandoned opportunities.
God.
I hate childishness.
I hate immaturity.
I hate it adults when speak in "baby talk" to anyone but a baby or maybe a pet.
I hate it when adults use the tactics of teenagers to deflect blame, deny responsibility, and lash out. Even if it hurts people.
I hate it when adults refuse to give up on, well, motivational happy talk. "Follow your bliss and the money will come."
/vent
Temporarily Psuedonomynous, generally: witnessing, and very sorry you've ended up on the short end of the stick for what seems far too many times.
Temporarily Psuedonomynous,
Heard and witnessed.
It is hard to take care of other people, and harder yet when they don't appreciate it.
Temporarily Psuedonomynous @448: *learned entitlement*
I've encountered that. Had a houseguest that turned out to be a professional freeloader. Slicker manipulator than your case sounds like. But—yeah.
Nancy: harder still when they expect and demand it as their "right" and "due." :-\
Thanks, all.
The most frustrating things are:
I'm not sure they think/know they have been freeloading. Just "a little help and time until they finish this project," which has happened over and over.
They were not *getting anywhere*. All the help just seemed to keep kicking the can down the road. A person their age and of their talents should be on a stable career course. Not still looking for ways to make it.
A lot of *hard work* does get done on these projects, but they don't go anywhere. Thus, the thoughts about ADD.
It is possible that recent events will finally result in a promised job-hunt. Maybe the tantrums were an extinction burst. Fingers crossed.
T. Psu @453
How large is their self-help library? Physical or ebooks, classes, workshops, etc. = Systems and practices to improve.
Asking because when I look back on my early 20s, ahead of the ADHD diagnosis, I knew something was off. I has several books/ systems for how to be organized, for how to study, for how to stay relaxed. Everything I was doing that irritated other people, I was working on. The books and systems helped a bit-- one or two steps forward for every four back. ADD meds were four steps forward.
Possibly this person tried so hard that they went all the way through learned helplessness to full on denial. I'm trying to imagine how I'd be if I'd never been diagnosed: maybe I can imagine being like this person. Maybe I'd build a wall of denial to block off despair?
But what I read sounds like this person has started and ended in denial. It doesn't sound like there's some subset of their behavior they have been trying to fix.
For everyone who was dreading U.S. Thanksgiving but is relieved that COVID is the perfect excuse not to see certain people...
For everyone who was looking forward to peace and quiet on Thanksgiving but had to quarantine with exactly the wrong person...
For everyone who had a lovely Thanksgiving planned and then COVID canceled it...
I hope you have the best day you possibly can.
I wish that everybody who blames themselves for their own abuse could have a trusted friend who would ask them this question.
@456: Immediately bookmarking and passing on. Thank you!
@456 Yes, this was excellent.
I'm a fan of this whole comic, by the way - been following it from the beginning. This plot thread is the only one specifically addressing abuse, although there have been signs of this situation earlier. Friends & found family are a constant theme. Plus, y'know, ghosts and werewolves and so forth.
@456 Briefly delurking to thank the invisible one for drawing my attention to this comic. I've now read through the entire archive, and inserted it into my roster of regular reads.
(I set aside a chunk of Friday for webcomics, reading the past week's updates (if any) of each one: the list now comprises about 30 currently active titles plus half-a-dozen fallen into limbo that I hope might eventually resume.)
the invisible one @456: MANY thanks for that link. That page is amazing and I'm enjoying the whole comic. There's so much in there about growing up and everyday relationships alongside the ghosts and werewolves and so on!
Echoing. I've burned through the entire comic for the story, and soon I'll reread it to better appreciate the art.
Posting to make sure this important thread doesn't go too far down the comments.
Possibly relevant to the interests of the commentariat: from @qikipedia on Twitter, via Captain Awkward's timeline:
Word of the Day: ARIGATA-MEIWAKU (Japanese) - a favour someone does for you against your wishes, which will inevitably end in disaster, but for which you must thank them anyway.
"I know you're vegetarian, so I got some veggie dogs for you! They're there on the barbecue beside the steaks!"
Getting splattered by grease. "Uh. Thank you!"
Been there.
Joel Polowin @464: OH yes, been there indeed! And usually with the same utensils being used to turn them. Isn't it lovely (if still rather rare) when someone says "so I got some veggie dogs for you, and they are set up on a separate little barbecue* and I scrubbed a set of tongs and have them laid aside just for the veggie stuff."
*single use or scrubbed.
I had an ovo-lacto vegetarian visit for a few days, and I made sure to prepare her morning eggs in a different pan from the one that bacon had fried in (which had eggs frying in bacon grease. Mmmm, bacon ...) which was cooking eggs for everyone else. It just seemed like common sense. I mean, she's vegetarian and bacon grease isn't....
We usually grill the veggie stuff first, then contaminate everything with the meat.
Some friends of mine regularly host a Canada Day party, with barbecues set up. They generally offer to let me go first, but I usually tell them that I'm fine with just microwaving my stuff rather than holding everyone else back.
But I really appreciate that they make the offer.
Thinking of everyone in this community for whom Mother's Day is fraught in one way or another, and wishing you peace.
Cassy B. @466 "It just seemed like common sense. I mean, she's vegetarian and bacon grease isn't...." You would think so, but years ago I spotted at a UK diner chain, that the mushrooms I had ordered - labelled 'vegetarian' in the menu were being cooked in the pan with the bacon. They offered to heat some in the microwave for me since I was so 'picky' but didn't appear to grasp the basic problem.
Some years back, I went with a group from my local SF club to a Chinese buffet. I wasn't enthusiastic about it, since I don't generally eat enough for buffet prices to justify. And at most buffets it's hard to be sure that dishes are vegetarian to begin with, plus there's the cross-contamination problem from people using the serving utensil from one dish to handle other items. But that was the collective decision.
When I asked one of the restaurant staff which items were vegetarian, the told me that there was a vegetarian option. I could choose three items from their list of vegetarian dishes, and they would prepare a plate of them. That, plus the dessert buffet IIRC, would be my meal.
I found bits-o-critter in two of the three items on my plate.
When I objected to the waiter, and then to the manager, I was told that they re-used their cookware for multiple dishes without cleaning it in between. And that anyway, most of the food items were parboiled initially in big pots of boiling water, without changing the water. Total cross-contamination. And if I was that fussy, I should have told the person at the entrance, and probably shouldn't have tried to eat at their restaurant.
I contacted the city's health department. They investigated, and determined that because the signage told people with allergies that they should talk with the staff, the restaurant was not in violation of regulations.
I later discussed the matter with a friend of mine who's a professional chef. He told me that all of this is NOT normal practise.
That restaurant became the usual post-meeting destination for the SF group, so I stopped eating with them.
The other day I had occasion to look at my birth certificate. I discovered that I had been wrong about my mother's age when she gave birth to me. I had thought that she was older, but actually she was the same age that I was when I had my youngest child.
It's given me some new perspective. I also have partially immobilizing chronic pain that shapes my family's daily life: for instance, there's a parade on and I'm not there with the kids. I also have to carry the burden of managing the household alone: my husband had a stroke in February that has permanently disabled him, hers had a stroke that killed him on the spot when I was six. She also had to humble herself and beg for help: my childhood church bought her a new Chevette, a GoFundMe got us a 10-year-old Escape, both because the family cars were no longer roadworthy.
So I can sympathize with her more.
On the other hand, I am not an alcoholic denial-dwelling child molester. So there's that.
J @472: Empathy is good. Understanding where you have somewhat similar circumstances is good. But so is recognizing what (of her behaviour and yours) is choices - and you have made SUCH better choices than she ever did.
Hoping your brain weasels don't pick up on this and try to put some sort of equivalence between you two. I know mine try to tell me I'm such a hypocrite when I find equivalences between me and Mom, because "how dare you judge her..." - totally spurious, but brain weasels hurt.
Jedi hugs!!!
@473: I look eerily like my mother, so I've had to deal with the parallelism before. 's part of why I grew my hair as long as it would go without split ends, and why I refuse to wear certain styles.
Stupid brain weasels. (But my husband likes my hair, and there are other valid reasons not to wear those styles on this body.)
I hear you about looking alike... All of the women in my mom's family look alike to the point that I couldn't tell my aunts apart when I was little. We also sounded a lot alike, before I was in hospital with a tube down my throat in ICU for several days... (dropped from sop II to alto I!)
Fortunately, as with you, hair is easy to grow (mine: long, straight, hers short, permed) and we have ENTIRELY different tastes in clothing, and always have. (major source of conflict growing up, let me tell you - I was her clone and I wasn't cooperating!)
As I've aged, I look more and more like my mother. I mind it less because one of my friends commented that it was amazing how similar we looked, but were such different people.
@475: Her clothing choices for me were more like "I have depression, and you can too." This was the '80s, when sweaters for girls approached Landsknecht levels of flamboyance, but she put me into sad, dark colors. I still can't wear maroon; it gives me emotional flashbacks.
Turns out that pastels such as lavender and ice pink, and jewel-toned blue and purple, and true red all look good on me. But she did such a number on my head that I felt like a traitor the first time I wore something nice.
@476: :)
I am in despair.
My province has decided that it can end the pandemic by just... not counting cases any more. I kid you not.
As of now, all restrictions are gone, we're in the early exponential phase of round 4, maybe 66% of *eligible* people are fully vaccinated, schools will be fully open in the fall, and, worst of all
- asymptomatic testing of direct contacts is no longer happening
- as of the end of August, no testing will be available unless you're in hospital for the severity of your symptoms
- people with positive COVID tests will not be required to isolate, or even inform the people around them (eg daycares, schools)
Oh, and my parents think they're bullet-proof because they're vaccinated. Even though Mom is now on immunosuppressant drugs.
I just...
How do I handle the despair? The certain knowledge that people will die, the possibility of people I know and love dying, and (selfishly) the fact that medical procedures I need will probably be delayed (again, again...) because the hospitals will be full?
Oh, and our Premier is bent on fully privatizing our (Canadian) health care system, and is CUTTING NURSES' PAY, and we've got a MASSIVE doctor shortage which is only getting worse...
I just about fucking DIED (no hyperbole here, blood clot in the lung and near-exsanguination, within a few days of each other) in December, and was saved because of the awesomeness of my medical team. I see the system that has saved my life being gutted by a selfish caricature of government.
As a side note, I have no faith in my employer handling things well, either.
Oh, and we're having to keep the windows sealed because BC and California are on fire, and yet climate change? what is that?
I don't even know how to begin to deal with this, aside from ranting. And we're all so tired of ranting.
Help?
Chickadee -- I'm sorry; I don't have anything to offer but that I'm listening.
My reaction to hearing that a couple of the western provinces were scrapping their policies was somewhat like yours, diluted by distance (Ontario). Yesterday evening, I saw a couple of videos from conservative U.S. states: crowded groups of maskless people demanding that mask mandates be scrapped. Super-spreader events in the name of "free-dohm", their worship word which has lost almost all meaning.
Joel: thank you. It helps to be heard.
My province has now been called out internationally (Dr. Eric Ding). There were protests today. This has made our government back down from some of its more... ill-advised decisions. I sincerely hope it'll work for this.
Re: 478… Chickadee,
I wish I had anything other than hearing you. You’re not wrong to be furious and exhausted by these people.
In general, my counter to despair is to get granular — focus on the most immediate actions and policies you can develop to protect yourself and your close intimates. Because you can’t affect the Premier or anyone determined to take the fool’s path, but you can stock your own lifeboat, and crew up with people you trust, and hitch up with another lifeboat when possible.
When you find you are angry, ask your anger if it has a suggestion for what to do to change the condition. Sometimes you’ll get something you can do. Most of the time you won’t, and it’s okay to be angry. That is the appropriate reaction to injustice. And it’s more than okay to be angry!
I’m not saying be passive, I’m saying mutual aid. Dig into your communities and find the people who have the same expectations of a shared lifeboat. That’s your trust molecule. And set your own limits — you are healing & dealing with trauma. That’s exhausting and takes more energy than it deserves.
It really is okay to resent the ones who will cause more harm, but since you can’t stop them in their foolishness, you can either waste energy on them, or just avoid them. If it’s a relationship you might want in the future, fine, you can get back to it then, if it’s even possible, but for now, it’s on hiatus.
One last: if you can, try to convince despair (there is nothing I can do but wail) to comb its hair and wash its face so it can transform into exasperation. (I don’t know what I can do with these yokels, but wailing isn’t helping.) Even of only for a few minutes a day, as a practice. The Jedi have it wrong — despair is the mind killer.
And know you’re not alone. So very not alone.
Chickadee: Also here, hearing and witnessing. You are not wrong to be angry.
CZEdwards: What excellent and wise advice. And I really wish I were able to resist saying "That's not the Jedi, it's the Bene Gesserit" but unfortunately such strength is not in me.
Chickadee @478: Listening, sympathising. And you're far from alone: I'm feeling the same way about the -UK- government's mishandling of the COVID-19 situation, attitude to the NHS, and totally inadequate response to the reality of climate change.
Thank you all.
CZEdwards: I read what you posted right away, and have come back to it several times. I found the shared lifeboat/mutual aid imagery particularly useful. Thank you. Also, I laughed out loud at telling despair to comb its hair and wash its face. *g*
David Goldfarb: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” (looked up the Dune quote ;)
dcb: So many sympathies!!!
*sigh* Alberta's chief medical officer of health is sorry that she caused "confusion, fear or anger". Not that this has in any way changed her plans. Essentially, it's "no, we need to move on, there's other stuff to work on"... which feels remarkably on-topic for this forum. She asserts that enough people are vaccinated that her province no longer needs COVID-positive people to isolate. The actual stats, province wide, are that 76% of people 12+ years old have had at least one shot, and 66% have had two, *far* too few for herd immunity. And the numbers will vary significantly within the provice; some cities and regions are far more conservative, and inclined to listen to right-wing nonsense, than others.
A case could be made for loosening some restrictions. But dropping requirements for isolation by people who test positive? That's just *stupid*.
Again, Chickadee, I'm sorry.
My American friends: for what little it's worth, it's not just you guys.
Miracles do happen! My mom has been basically denying there's a pandemic since last spring - going to restaurants and casinos, giving me a hard time for not wanting to visit/eat indoors, basically being annoyed at being inconvenienced.
She's vaccinated, and so is my dad, but she's on immunosuppressant drugs and he has COPD and they're both in their 80s.
I sent here these two Atlantic articles, and... she apologized. And seems to *finally* realize it's serious. And promised to be better about masking.
Ed Yong's piece
Sarah Zhang's piece, as linked by Ed Yong
I was *floored* - also thrilled. Also wondering why this, after everything else. But... not complaining?
Articles provided in case they're useful for anyone else dealing with covidiot family.
Chickadee @478 & 486 - That's excellent news about your mom; I'm happy for you.
I'm in Alberta too; you really aren't alone. Socially-distanced solidarity fistbumps!
"Sand" by Jasmin Kirkbride. I am sending this link to my daughter's therapist. Amazing.
https://www.tor.com/2021/10/13/sand-jasmin-kirkbride/#comment-926204
Jenny Islander: wow. Thank you for posting.
Jenny Islander @488: Not unrelated: Cassandra Khaw over on Scalzi's blog.
Oh, and speaking of Cassandra Khaw: John Wick IV: Wick & Khaw
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