Insight on sister sought

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Hello,
I'm new here, but my sister's autism spectrum disorder is causing her needless pain and alienating her from the family, causing many of us distress and pain. She has a brilliant mind, is generous to a fault, and can be tremendously kind. Unfortunately, many of her traits are clearly maladaptive, and these traits are creating chaos in our family. Her thinking is so polarized, that if you to anger her, there is no coming back. Sadly, we were close, but she came unglued on me when I challenged her insensitive response to something in my life. She really hurt my feelings, and then she became enraged when I sent her a few emails saying I wanted to talk about it. Suddenly, I had narcissistic personality disorder, a diagnosis she lobs at many people she has conflicts with. Sigh. She can gravely insult someone, then claim they are a narcissist when they become hurt.

Although we didn't always have a name for it, it was clear from a really young age that her brain works differently. This has been a blessing and a curse. Scholastically, she has always excelled, and she has turned her intellectual gifts into a relatively lucrative career, now that she works for herself. She struggles socially and does not recognize when she is alienating people. She was bullied mercilessly through school. She had innumerable conflicts when working for companies. Unfortunately, she has little psychological self-awareness, so she is not aware that her behavior can be odd, off-putting, mind-numbingly boring, or that many of her perceptions of others are extremely distorted. She can be extremely inappropriate and insensitive, but obsesses for decades over minor or imagined slights. Ironically, she is not the only person in our extended family with Asperger's, and she recognizes it when she sees it in our cousins. She also claims to have heightened capacity of reading people's facial expressions, but does not recognize the discomfort people experience when she corners them and launches into a long-winded monologue on her fascination du jour, which can range from the Neanderthal genome to the ways prions result in faulty folding of proteins. Sorry, but 80-year-old Aunt Betty or the 12-year-old nephew aren't' interested in those things.


In general, I struggle applying the term "disorder" to neural atypical people, because our society has benefitted enormously from people who are wired in different ways. However, in my sister's case, her world is closing in around her, because she causes, and then can't deal with conflict.

Anyway, I'm interested in any insights people who are on the spectrum might have, or family members of those who may be experiencing the same issues. This makes me so sad. Before my father died, she sent him a long letter detailing what a horrible person my mother is. Parents make mistakes, but no one else in the world sees my mother this way, certainly not my father.

It sounds terrible, but some people have to learn the hard way; perhaps once she realises she no longer has any friends and has alienated her family, it'll all click together.

In addition to being on the spectrum, I also have bipolar disorder, clinical depression, anxiety and PTSD. As such, I can get triggered very easily. And what sets me off? People. My solution? Avoid everyone as much as possible. There are certain things I know - I'll never have kids or get married. It'll just end in disaster. Isolation seems to work best for folks like me, and that may well be the way it's going to be with your sister.

Signed, The Recluse.

Many Aspies are bullied during their school years. As you said

This caused your sister to retreat within herself. As a result, many Aspies tend to reject all criticism out-of-hand. She had to do this just to keep her sanity. It is almost like an automatic reaction.

I do not know if there is an easy way to correct this deficit. Somehow you need to teach her the difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism. Constructive criticism is intended to improve a person. Constructive criticism is the process of offering valid and well-reasoned opinions about the work of others, usually involving both positive and negative comments, in a friendly manner rather than an oppositional one. Tell her you have her best interest at heart. You are not trying to hurt her only help her to become a better version of herself.

Here is a true story about Albert Einstein: In 1955, Einstein passed away. A decade later in his memorial lecture delivered on 13 December 1965, at UNESCO headquarters, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn."

When Einstein’s marriage began to break down he presented his wife with the following contract that detailed what he expected of her if the relationship was to continue:
CONDITIONS:
1. You will make sure
- that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
- that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
- that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

2. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, you will forego
- my sitting at home with you;
- my going out or traveling with you.

3. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
- you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; - you will stop talking to me if I request it;
- you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

4. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

Einstein’s son Eduard struggled with mental illness and attempted suicide, eventually dying in a psychiatric hospital. Einstein had not visited Eduard for more than thirty years prior to his son’s death. His other son, Hans Albert, is quoted as saying, "Probably the only project he ever gave up on was me."

Sadly, she won’t talk to me at all unless a licensed counselor is in the room, a condition I welcomed and tried to make happen. We live in different parts of the country, so I don’t see her often. We spent a lot of time at my mother’s house while Dad was in hospice, but I couldn’t get any counselors I contacted to call me. The estrangement grieves me. She flipped out on me over nothing, then diagnosed me with narcissistic personality disorder, accusing me of having a narcissistic rage, when I was just asking her to call me so we could talk. It was surreal and painful, as my ex-husband is a narcissist and was cruel to me. I’m ashamed to admit that after being attacked this way, I did not keep my cool and said things I now regret. I have a degree in psychology and lots of training in dealing with conflict and should have conducted myself better. Still, her perceptions are so distorted, and she grabs onto strange, ancient grudges to condemn me. Like I played Led Zeppelin on my stereo instead of the opera albums she gave me when I was 15. How many 15 year olds preferred opera to Led Zeppelin in the 1970s? She has an irrational hatred of our other sister (also incorrectly diagnosed as a narcissist) and conjures conflicts where none exist, and obsesses over conflicts that should have been shrugged off decades ago. She is cruel to the other sister, always pointing out she’s overweight. The only things she says to me now are snide comments under her breath. She’s incorrectly diagnosed my mother as having obsessive compulsive personality disorder. My mother is an elderly widow. She’s made some mistakes like all parents, but let it go already!

I don’t think she has the capacity for the self-reflection needed to see that her behavior is alienating her from the family. Being cut out of the family is an ongoing theme, but she brings some of it on herself and some of it is imagined. She had been excluded from a holiday function after sending the other sister a long, nasty letter about how horrible the other sister had been to her all her life, and she torments my other sister when they are together. I never read the letter, and the other sister will take its contents to her grave, but she was devastated. I can see therapeutic value to writing such a letter, but you never send it. Use it as a tool in rethinking and healing from slights real and imagined.

I think she is becoming more paranoid and irrational. I had hoped that her husband could intervene, but he comes from a dysfunctional family and seems to thrive on conflict. He certainly eggs on the conflict with my other sister.

Up until the estrangement a few years ago, we had been close and spoke frequently, although I did little of the talking. I actually could hang with her long-winded monologues on preeclampsia and diet, the pre-Columbia’s diet and tooth alignment, or whatever her current obsession was. She is very witty, and occasionally, I got a few words in. She also dropped everything and stayed with me after my truly narcissistic ex-husband cruelly dumped me with no warning after 25 years of marriage and hooked up with my best friend, who decided that news was best delivered in the nastiest way possible.

I just see this as intractable. I regret some of my response to the way she treated me. It wasn’t productive, and i’m far from perfect. She just doesn’t have the psychological self-awareness to see how she fosters conflict and can’t cope with criticism. I guess that’s part of the Catch-22 of her condition. She has no idea she has Asperger’s and has denied it vehemently. I think she could cope much better if she recognized it and could correct cognitively. For those of you whose brains are wired this way, any suggestions on how to approach this? For someone who hands out psychiatric diagnoses like she does, it amazes me that she is so self-unaware.

The irony of the disorder, if one chooses to think of it as a disorder, is that her brilliance is undeniable, and she has so many fine traits.

^ Yep. You're definitely a psychologist - well-intentioned but, in the end, fruitless. My psychologist tried to change me, bring me around to normal. Hah! Not. Gonna. Happen. All you can do is accept your sister as she is, and if that means abandoning her, so be it.

I agree with RedRobin... my advice is, give up. Way too big a project for you to succeed in, and it's a little arrogant to set out to change someone else, anyway. (Not calling you arrogant; but maybe your desire to improve things is a little too idealistic.) Your sister will go on her own way. You live as you see fit.

People sometimes do become estranged. There are several instances of this in my own family. I think it's just a natural result of people with strong and incompatible personalities.

Ditto BeaArthur and RedRobin. All three of my brother have declared me to be persona non grata in their homes, and if I even pass their respective properties (unlikely to happen, as I no longer drive), or even step one foot on their respective properties, I will be shot on sight and arrested for trespassing. If I attempt to contact them in any way or any reason, they will have me arrested for harassment.

I have a housemate that says i’m Full of bullsh!t, and insists that I still try to stay in contact with them. My response is what part of persona non grata don’t you understand? I’m not about to risk having my fat ass arrested, convicted and thrown in jail in order to make nice-nice with my brothers. I’ve tried extending the olive branch to them several times, only to have then turn around and beat me bloody with said olive branch. I may be an aspie and a dumbass, but I’m not stupid! Felix Unger, I’m not!

Well, my background in psychology tells me I can’t change people. I can only change the way I respond to them. With the narcissistic ex-husband, I had to give up being reasonable and expecting reasonable. It took a while to exorcise him from my life, but my days of taking s**t ended, and I was quick to jump his s**t when he transgressed. He would grouse that he’d appreciate civility, but I was civil for 25 years, and it didn’t work. His rule, not mine. Now he stays far away.

The responses make sense. I can’t change her, especially when she is willfully ignorant of her disorder. I grieve the loss of our friendship, and i’m troubled by the way she treats my mother and sister. My mother is getting on in years, and my sister lives close by, but she is mean to my mother. I’ve provided Mom with some disarming statements to counter my sister’s frequent insults, like, “I guess I have to accept the way you see me”.

I’ve ended a marriage and some friendships. I guess my formerly close relationship with my sister is on the trash heap, but I will be willing to reopen the door. It’s sad, but I can’t do much more.

Apparently, neural atypical folks posting here have accepted their diagnoses and are finding ways to cope and function, and recognize their limitations. How common is it for someone in her mid-50s to not be aware of or deny she is on the spectrum? She writes books about psychology for crying out loud, although her educational background is in economics, and she’s been a medical editor for decades. She regularly gets blocked from message boards and Facebook when she disagrees with the moderator. As someone pointed out, she’s experienced horrible bullying and has developed maladaptive responses to criticism, usually by pronouncing the offender to a be narcissist.

When my father died, my best friend from high school came over to the house. My sister had not seen this friend for probably 30 years. Did she ask her anything about her life, if she had kids, what they were doing? Nope, she immediately launched into the preventing preeclampsia through diet epic monologue. My friend is not an OB/GYN, and she’s done having babies. She does have a Masters in Special Ed and recognizes autism spectrum disorders when she sees them. She shrugged off the monologue when I was finally able to extricate her. Her comment was, “we always knew it was something, we just didn’t have a name for it.”

I know I’m going back to the notion of fixing, which is pointless. I grieve for our lost relationship, and I know she suffers from the social rejection that’s been her lifelong burden. I know I’m among the last people she would listen to. The elephant in the room

SHE has to make the first move.

SHE has to want to change.

Yep. I’m just trying to wrap my brain around the intractability and process the irony of her inability to see she is on the spectrum. All this helps.