Spiderpig wrote:
Mine assumes every mature and sane person knows those rules, but he considers me mentally defective, so he’ll often go out of his way to explain the most trivial details of social interaction as if they were completely alien to me. Sometimes he does it in front of strangers, thus letting them know not to treat me like a sane grown-up. If I complain, he reminds me that, if I were so sane, I’d have succeeded in life and become independent long ago.
Wow, Spiderpig, your parents sound really toxic. I recommend this book,
Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life, Susan Forward. (Don't let them know you're reading it). It really helped me see what messages were realistic and what were just their way of bullying me and undermining me. I'm hearing a lot of bizarre, bullying messages that they are giving you. Social awkwardness, wearing the wrong clothes or pursuing a career they don't approve of is not a sign of insanity. Neither is being unsuccessful, but it might be a sign of low self esteem. Some families that are not functioning well will select one person to be the token sicko -- everything becomes their fault, they can focus all their abuse on this one person instead of what's wrong with their own lives. Please don't take what they say to heart! You sound very sane to me.
Spiderpig wrote:
Mine has many scientific and technical interests, and I inherited this inclination, but he managed to cripple it in me anyway, because every time I want to understand something theoretically in depth, he counts it as another sign of my mental illness. He resents my wish to learn things that can’t readily be explained to lay people in terms they already know, and also my lack of manual practice, which I didn’t get for want of time and resources. He rather ascribes it to my mental illness, too.
My father usually assumes sane and mature people feel the way they “ought to”. When he sees a sign that I don’t, he takes offence and regards it as another sign of how mentally ill I am.
I'm seeing a lot of him saying that there is only one right way to think and feel, and your way is wrong, wrong, wrong. That's just not true. My parents were much the same way. If I expressed an opinion they disagreed with, or wanted a career different from theirs, or a different religion, they would take it as an act of personal and familial betrayal. One thing I learned from my wife is, there are lots of ways to think and feel about things, and lots of ways to solve problems and be creative. Many of them are good, just different.
My wife is extroverted, creative, experimental with her creativity (she's a cook), relies on leaps of insight to solve problems, and is a non-linear thinker. I am introverted, methodical, logical, rely on learned knowledge and testing theories to solve problems, and a linear thinker. Both ways are legitimate. One way of thinking may be better for a particular line of work, but that's fine, we need all kinds of thinkers. Maybe one reason you are not successful is you are trying to squeeze yourself into a role that doesn't use your abilities to best advantage.
_________________
Diagnosed Bipolar II in 2012, Autism spectrum disorder (moderate) & ADHD in 2015.
18 Sep 2016, 3:45 pm
