My Brother.....

Post Reply New Topic

I know one person with Aspergers Syndrome. My older brother. He is 17 and I'm 15, we are the only two children in the family.

My brother is constantly annoying me for no reason. I'll be playing Xbox or on my computer and he will come up and poke me and mess with my stuff. He will also be a complete dick to me for NO reason. I don't know much about AS so I was wondering if people with AS are generally mean. I hope you can prove me wrong. He will ask me a question about something that 1% of the population of the world knows the answer to. When I say I don't know he will completely rip on me. "Oh wow you're a dumbass!" "Dude you're so stupid, I'm way smarter than you will ever be." He has a huge ego that drives him to act this way. He thinks he is a science wiz and a genius. He is not very smart at all but he is constantly acting like he is the smartest person alive. The worst part is when I reply to one of his remarks I'm the bad guy! I really don't think AS is causing him to act towards me like this. I think he has a personality that is just pure mean. Sometimes he will hit me and I'll hit him back and he will go into some crazy rage and start pulling my hair and bite me! My reaction is to back off immediately because I know about his condition. I'm bigger and stronger than him and I'm almost at my limit. I won't be able to bottle my anger up next time he lashes out at me. He makes death threats to me when he freaks out, he says he'll smother me in my sleep or stab me. He is pretty much ruining my home life. It doesn't stop there.

He was getting harassed by kids in middle school which lead him to lashing out at them. He got suspended 3 or 4 times before switching schools. Now he goes to a completely different high school than me. Kids in his grade look down at me like dirt because I'm his brother. He is almost famous for being "abnormal" which reflects upon me. When I have friends over he will join in and start to undermine me and say ignorant things about me around my friends. When he freaks out with friends around it becomes a living hell. He goes crazy and my friends think he is a freak. They constantly talk about him and how he is a "psycho". Things aren't getting any better I think I'm starting to believe my friends. You think being a parent of an AS child is hard try being a teen sibling of one. He pretty much ruined my life. I mean to say this in the nicest way possible, but I don't know anyway else to put it.

I hope I don't offend anyone. It feels really good to get this off my chest after so many years. Any kind of advice or feedback would be nice.

We're not generally mean, no. The average Aspie is shy, awkward, and introverted, or else just plain odd and eccentric (or both). But we're not angels, either, and we're mean sometimes just like neurotypicals are mean sometimes.

It seems to me like your brother has been hurt a lot--you mention bullying, and I think there are very few of us who haven't experienced it, and for a majority it was severe. He's not handling it very well. I've seen this a lot from people who are part of minority groups, including people with disabilities: Because they've been told their whole lives they're inferior, and treated horribly, they over-correct for it and claim they are hugely important, smarter than everybody else, better than everybody else... It's a way of trying to insulate themselves from their secret fear that they are in fact inferior. They try to make everybody else look worse, because they have the idea that pushing other people down might make them the one who's more valuable, for a change. The solution, of course, is to realize that one's value does not depend on one's skills; and that one is valuable simply for being a human being, and that all humans have equal value; but I was well into my twenties before I realized that. I practically burned myself out trying to be perfect and prove myself to be a worthwhile person because I was so scared I wasn't.

You see it sometimes with people who say that those with AS are superior... every once in a while, we get someone who claims that we're the next stage in evolution, or smarter on average, or something of that sort (none of which are true, statistically, except the claim that we are more specialized, which is true; neurotypicals tend to be generalists, autistics specialize. Both arrangements are useful in different ways.)

There are good ways and bad ways to handle being the target of abuse; and becoming narcissistic is a bad way to deal with it. But he's a teenager; he's still learning. So, for that matter, are you. Over time, if he thinks about it, he'll get a more realistic view of himself that's neither "I'm wonderful" nor "I'm horrible" but simply "I'm acceptable".

You probably know that when your brother "goes crazy", it's called a meltdown, which is basically what happens when your brain gets too much input and is trying to process too much data, and you lose control. They're different from person to person; some people just curl up and cry; others freeze; a few hit anyone nearby. They're impossible to stop once they're started; but they can often be prevented. I'm surprised he isn't working with a therapist to learn how to predict and prevent them before they happen, because they're very embarrassing (at least, for me, they are, and for many of us here), and if you can learn to prevent them, that's a great thing. There's nothing "psycho" about it, of course; if anything, it's something like what happens when a one-year-old child is tired, hungry, and lonely, and can't help starting to cry; and then can't stop crying because he has started and has gotten going; only with us we can't be comforted by other people because we have generally forgotten they exist by the time we're in mid-meltdown.

Brothers fight, of course. All brothers do; that's normal. But I think your brother hasn't picked up on the unwritten rules of fighting, the non-serious fights that happen between siblings: Don't go for the eyes or the groin; don't bite; don't use weapons; don't use death threats. Like any social rule, we have to learn these; and it seems like he simply hasn't. So when a typical teen would just push and maybe throw a few punches, he's going all-out. It probably doesn't help that he seems to have poor self-inhibition and can't stop himself easily once he gets started.

Anyway, no, we're not all like that; and those who are like that as teens often grow up to be adults who aren't. You'll probably get replies from people who became violent in self-defense during high school; some of us figured it was better to bite a few people than to be constantly tortured, while others learned to be invisible.

I really hope you figure this out. Your brother sounds like he's rather unhappy, and probably going through a horrible time. Smart or not, he's got a lot to learn about himself and the world; but many of us have learned those things, and I think we're all capable of it.

People who have AS tend to be "rude" because they lack of social skills and speak their mind.

People who know they have a high IQ tend to have a huge ego and feel superior to others intellectually.

People who know they are somehow superior intellectually to someone else are sometimes objective. If this person as AS, they will probably sound rude because they'll say what they think. Perhaps anyone who lacks of social skills will act this way.

I'm pretty sure your brother isn't mean, he doesn't realize that he says something innapropriate.

I do that a lot. Hey, last time I was talking with my mother I basically called her stupid without realizing it, it's hard to know that you're telling something you shouldn't say when you're not socially adapted, this is a kind of intelligence you brother lacks and it's probably not easy for him. You know, this social impairment is pretty hard to live with and he probably thinks that other people are being mean with him because they don't understand him.

It took me years to understand a little more about human behaviour (which is why I love sociology and psychology so much by the way), he's only 17 so it doesn't suprise me that he has these diffucilties.
Perhaps you should try talking with him about your feelings because he's probably not able to understand them by looking at you, perhaps you could help him understand more about the structure of human communication (though I highly doubt he will truly be able to use them properly).

But you are right to share your feelings here, it's important that people who have a disability and people who don't try to talk to each other about that to understand better the way they perceive things, it's probably a good way to learn and to improve our skills or to help.


Have you tried talking about this to your parents ? I can't tell why your brother reacts that way but he's probably suffering of his lack of social skills and he probably realize that you don't have any problems which makes him suffer even more.

By the way, my brother is apparently normal though he is a nerd and he was rejected by other kids, he now rejects others. Some people react that way to rejection, they become quite mean because they've been hurt and try to find confidence in what makes them superiors to others.

No, I think he means to call his brother stupid; if you're saying "You're such a dumbass," then it's very likely you know it's an insult. If you know that it's considered a good thing to be smart and a bad thing to be stupid, and you say "I'm smarter than you'll ever be," then chances are you mean to insult somebody... Give us some credit; we're not completely oblivious.

But yeah, a lot of rudeness does come from being straightforward, not sugar-coating things, and saying what you're thinking without considering how the other person will take it. For example, I might slip up and comment to a pregnant friend that she's gotten fatter... which is a bad thing to say because "fat" is considered bad; but I'd forget about that in all the hurry of a conversation. It's an unintentional insult, not something meant to be mean. (And I'd probably get really embarrassed and apologize repeatedly afterwards, too.)

I'm a autie girl with a 16 year old brother and 15 year older stepsister. Both of whom are NT. When it comes to my brother I've sometimes done stuff like poking & hitting him not b/c I'm being mean but b/c I'm using him to try and learn human behavior & facial expressions by memorizing his reactions. I picked him for this b/c as a sibling I thought I'd get in less trouble for doing stuff to him than to someone else. Also, expressing affection in typical "sibling manners" is a problem since I hate hugs & he's strangely affectionate in my opinion. He also got annoyed with me for picking stuff off his head... for me fuzzies are annoying & picking stuff off him is my version of hugging... (I know I'm weird). I think you should try talking to your brother but you'll need to take some of his reactions with (as I've heard) a "grain of salt" b/c its not odd for aspies to say things they shouldn't w/o thinking about what they're saying. If he doesn't know how to react he's probably just saying the first thing that pops into his head from feeling under pressure to respond at all. I'm not defending his bad behaviors, but you need to be very specific with him about what you do/will not accept from him.

He has a therapist and I know he tries to stop his meltdowns. I also try to stop them, like when we are in an argument. If he is trying to prove a point and I prove him wrong he goes into a rage. Simple things like that cause him to forget to calm down. Most of the time I will stop the argument because I don't want him to have a meltdown.

He was bullied but that was a long time ago, I know that it may stay hurt him but I don' want him to take it out on me. He seems to have made friends at his new school. The mix of AS and his personality seems to make him very intolerable. I just can't deal with it anymore, my parents try to use AS as an excuse to scorn me for picking at him and I don't think that is fair whether they have a point or not.

He is clearly trying to insult because I know what he sounds like when he is speaking his mind. I've learned my brothers habits and social skills. I can tell when he is lying or not, and I can tell if he is insulting me.

Peke Said:

No, people with AS are generally not mean.

However, older brothers generally are mean.

If he is genuinely mean, then you need to convince your parents that he doesn't have Aspergers. Have you looked up other problems, like Anti-Social Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder? Does he fit the criteria?

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder

It's totally possible to be a mean Aspie. Looking into personality disorders may be a little much, hon.

Does he assume identical knowledge-- like, if I know this, everyone knows it? It's really easy even without such issues to lose track of what the general population knows on a topic you're an expert on. That could well account for his considering you stupid when you don't know something obscure.

Does he know he's being rude? Is it intentional? Can you ask him that? If he's shocked and offended that you could think that, he might genuinely think he's not being rude.

Sounds like he's a crazy teenage guy. How am I to fathom such a mind? It's not like you can fathom the minds of all NTs.

Maybe he's got a superiority complex because he's essentially throwing it in the bullies' faces.

Maybe you cause him a great deal of upset that he's not sure how to express.

What's stressing him? Does he always act that angry, or does he apologize or seem to regret it later? Maybe he hates you. (Does he try to avoid you?) Maybe he has a lot of testosterone (did this get worse when he hit puberty?) and so can't keep his emotions in check.

I'm really sorry this has affected you this way. I don't really know what's up with your brother, but I hope you can find some way to keep it from eating at you.

It sounds like immaturity.