Anti-Vaccine Family Members Get on My Nerves

Post Reply New Topic

Some people in my extended family are staunch anti-vaxxers (grandmother, aunt, and some cousins). They’ve been passing around this flyer about autism that’s been published by a local health food store that’s very...ignorant. They’ve even highlighted passages that they think are especially important (a bunch of garbage about giving autistic people enzymes, emphasizing gut health, and, of course, avoiding evil vaccines). It’s like they are trying to spread some anti-autism propaganda.

It’s awful that people aren’t getting vaccinated against illnesses that can (and do) make a comeback, but I’m especially frustrated, as of late, by the way they seem to view autism as being some sort of devastating malady that needs to be avoided at all costs. Apparently, it’s such an offensive “disease” that it’s worth running the risk of getting polio to avoid developing it.

I love my family, but whenever they are around, this stuff comes up and frustrates me. It’s annoying that they have such a low opinion of the autistic community. Some of the problem is probably due, in part, because they have come to blame my lack of religiosity on my autism. Socially, I was extremely uncomfortable in church and church activities, but my autism has nothing to do with the main reasons why I left their stupid cult.

When these conversations come up, I try to point to successful and highly intelligent people that might have been autistic, but it really doesn’t sway them one bit. I’m the only person in my family who has been to college, but they disapprove of college, so that hasn’t helped either.

Edited to add: this is just a mini rant. I’m careful not to show my relatives my frustration. That wouldn’t help at all!

Screw antivaxxers they are the epitome of plague worshipers and ableists alike

The mindset of anti-vaxxers was not reasoned in, so it cannot be reasoned out.

In fact, if anti-vaxxers could be reasoned with , there be no anti-vaxxers!

I understand.

My Mum believes in chemtrails and such.

You can't reason with them.

I feel like my Mum has always been scared. She had a rough childhood. She had to walk on eggshells round her Dad.

She latches on to conspiracy theories because it helps her makes sense of a world that scares her. It makes her feel like she has some sort of control. If she knows what's "really" going on, she has control in a world where she feels lost.

My health went downhill when I hit puberty. She blames chemtrails, Chernobyl, vaccines... it's easier to blame something than bear the thought that I have a mystery illness. (I've been diagnosed with Chronic Fatgue).

If you try and reason with them you're stealing away the walls that help them feel safe.

The only thing I can do is to be there for her and give her comfort in other ways. And change the subject when she starts to wander down rabbit holes.

Also, believe it or not, they love you.

My Mum, loves me, that's why she wants an answer as to why I'm ill, why I'm different.

Love can be irrational. And I've learned that those, like my Mum who've had emotionally difficult pasts, can express love badly and angrily and with fighting to protect you in ways that you don't want to be protected.

What makes them feel safe won't necessarily make you feel safe and it can be difficult to meet in the middle.

Yeah I understand that too. My mum thinks Apricot kernels cure cancer.

If she develops cancer she's gonna die and there's nothing I can do about it.

I also suspect she has an eating disorder.

She has mental health issues for sure, but won't see a Dr.

Everyone else is crazy, not her, she thinks.

Vacinate your children and grandchildren, and allow preventable diseases to remove the willfully ignorant and their offspring from the gene pool.

Who knows, an unfortunate child of an antivaxer who looses their sight to measles might find crowdfunding to sue them.

Hopefully natural selection by vaccine-preventable diseases will get rid of the anti-vaxxers...