Mother issues! What's new?

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I love my mum to death, she’s my best friend and greatest advocate, but often I wish I’d never gotten my AS diagnosis. I’m 20, and was only diagnosed a year ago. Since then, I’ve made progress in leaps and bounds and consider myself at current (and hopefully will continue to for some time) a fully functioning member of society, and haven’t had any problems with people noticing I’m different; in fact, when I’ve told people who don’t know that I have AS, they’ve been shocked and told me they never would have guessed I was any different to anyone else. I’m still clumsy and I still struggle enormously with math, and drunk people are still my ‘kryptonite’; but I’ve lost a lot of my social anxieties through hard work and forcing myself to get out there. I still get nervous beforehand, but once I’m out and about I’m as sophisticated and coherent (coherency in social situations used to be a problem for me) as any ‘normal’ person my age.

When I say I never wish I’d gotten the diagnosis, I don’t think I really mean it. I don’t know whether I’d have been able to progress so fast and been so determined to move on with my life if I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Perhaps I wish more that my mum didn’t know.

I’m not very good at explaining things quickly, so I’ll probably babble a bit, I apologise. The thing is, my main area of weakness in social interaction doesn’t arise until I’ve known a person for a while. I learn to read their body language, then, and I tend to get paranoid that their facial expression is telling me they’re upset with me. I’ll not be an as*hole about it, only ask ‘are you okay?’ or ‘you alright’ or, if I’m really worried, ‘did I do something to upset you?’

I ask it in a nice way, and, for anybody not my mother would take the answer as fact. The problem is, my mum has lied about it in the past. Repeatedly. I’ll ask if she’s okay because she doesn’t look as though she is and she’ll tell me she’s perfectly ok, and I’ll accept that she is and then later on in the day I’ll find out that she was pissed or upset or whatever. It’s normal for people to hide their true emotions, yes, completely, I understand that; the problem I have is her using her AS against me. If she seems upset and doesn’t want to tell me, she just goes ‘no, you’re reading me wrong again, it’s because your brain works differently’, and then later I find out it was a lie.

It goes further than that, but before I continue, please let me make this clear: My mother has supported me more than anyone else in the world. She’s my best friend. But she does have a tendency towards little white lies which she got from her own mother, who she’s nowhere near as bad as. She’s also very, very headstrong, and grew up with five brothers, leading her to shout her way through any discussion even if the other participant is only talking, and to point black refuse to admit she could be wrong. Ever. I can count the times she’s actually apologised to me in my lifetime on one hand, they’re very special occasions. But in a thousand other ways, she’s the perfect, perfect mother.

She’ll do the same if she snaps at me or is really rude to me and I call her out on it. “No, you’re having an Aspie moment, I didn’t snap.” 100% of times I think she snapped at me or was rude to me, ‘it’s the Asperger’s’, or ‘ass burgers’ as we affectionately call it. However, if she thinks I snapped and I am convinced I didn’t, I’m bossed into saying I did, 100% of the time. I need honest opinions: Is that fair? Am I, as someone with AS, likely to get it wrong 100% of the time? Does my AS mean she gets it right 100% of the time? It seems unfair to me, and I’m not somebody who likes to use the ‘not fair’ argument often. I’ve tried to discuss this with her lots of times; nothing changes.

Whenever I try to discuss anything with my mum, she starts to raise her voice even though since I was six I’ve been telling her it’s intimidating and asking her to not do it anymore, that talking would be better for us both. Sometimes, I want to raise my voice back, and I could, because intellectually I am a stronger person than her. But she’s my main emotional support, and the only friend I have in person since my friends went to university and I stayed behind, and she’s also my monetary support until September when I go to university. If I shout back, she won’t talk to me for a while and I’m completely alone for who knows how long, plus the little alarm that goes off in my head telling me that since she provides me with my food and money I really can’t afford to stick up for myself.

The result? I’m 20 years old and my mother still treats me like a child she can speak to how she wants because she’s ‘the adult’.

Sometimes it’s just hard not to scream or cry, because I know I’m an intellectual, mentally mature person and I’m stuck inside the body of somebody who needs help with things like a child would. I’m a published writer, for God’s sakes, yet here I am afraid to speak my mind because I know I’ll be shouted down. And of course, I can’t talk to her about any of this! Because it will be taken as a personal attack and she’ll yell.

And then there are the times she treats me with kid gloves or puts on her therapist speak and makes me feel like an idiot, but I know she’s only trying to be a good mother at those times, I can forgive her that.

On the plus side, I have September to look forward to, my light at the end of the tunnel. And I do love my mum

Move out.

Your mother is clearly utilising double standards to get what she wants from you. The model daughter, proving she's a superior mother in society by overcoming autism and taming Aspergers.

Ideally, you should either move out or stake your claim within the house. Respond to your mother in kind so she knows exactly what it feels like. Many refuse to agree until they have experienced it first hand.

Give the leading industrialists cancer and it'll be cured in a year. But they don't understand.

I'd advise far more brutal treatment but I have already recieved a warning for being me. *Shrugs*

Or you could just use your home as a base to sleep and spend the rest of the day out and about. Working, with friends, etc etc.

Whilst your mother may very well be your best friend, it is the key attribute of best friends that they piss us off. If she snaps at you, snap back and bite down hard! Never back down, browbeat her and force her to apologise.

She sounds extremely prideful and arrogant if you ask me.

Crush her.

Regards
GM

Uh, wow... I don't quite know what to make of this. Thank you, really, for taking the time to respond to my little rant, clearly you have strong feelings on the matter. However, I could never purposefully upset my mother, and your advice that I 'crush her' is a little odd. As is quoting one of the most evil men of all time in your signature!

Thanks, all the same.

Hi msgreengenes. Mothers and daughters don't have the easiest of relationships, often. Sounds like she's using your AS against you sometimes, then feeling guilty about it and being nice. No it's not fair. There is often a subtle power-play going on with mothers, no matter how old you are (my mother never stopped the adult/kid thing with me for as long as she lived and I was in my 40's) It takes a huge effort to get the relationship from a child/parent basis onto an adult/adult one, and try as you might, sometimes it just never happens, but it's definitely worth a try. I would keep trying to talk to her, calmly, which you are doing. Putting your point across.

You seem very mature. And congratulations on what you've achieved so far, sounds like you've come a long way. You might find things change when you go to university. Perhaps when you have a break from home, your mother will see you more as an adult and that will help your relationship.

Anyway, good luck at uni. Just hang in there for a while longer, September is not very far away.

Thank you, Starr, that's very helpful advice. I know that we're completely normal, really- better than normal usually! I have the most wonderful parents. But we all need to vent sometimes, right?

Right!

Oh absolutely! Just because they're parents doesn't mean they're not a pain in the *ss sometimes!

Evil is merely biased perspective. Hitler did great things. Horrible things, don't get me wrong. But great. He changed the world and Germany was on the cusp of creating fully synthetic rubber before they lost.

Parents will always be a partial anathema to aspies, unless said parents are also aspy.

And aspies are superior to NT folk. We're more logical and this world needs more.

Regards
GM

That it may well be.
I'm Jewish. Members of my family were in those camps.


Still. I think murdering millions based on their faith seems evil to most people who have any sense of empathy and universal humanity. I don't think that's bias.