Question for those who felt worthless or suicidal as a child

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I know I'm going to get alot of rocks thrown at me for this one but here goes anyway...

Nobody in my family knew it was autism and the worst of it is that both my parents and I are all autistic. We got through it with tough love and honestly my childhood was a nightmare that I never wish to repeat.

For years I was told I was lazy, couldn't do anything right, had 3 speeds, slow, slower and stop and my meltdowns were all viewed as temper tantrums that I was supposed to grow out of before I was 2. I wasn't just expected to act like an adult as a child, I was expected to act like a socially adept and responsible adult when every adult I knew couldn't even fill those shoes, including my own parents.

Now, because of what I have within me I'm glad it all happened that way. I'm speaking only for myself here but suspect it's true for any savant... what we are able to do in our heads gives us a HUGE ego. Even tho I'm barely short of a complete failure in society and the external world, what I am capable of in the mental world is beyond anything a normal person can even imagine.

I NEEDED to be told I was worthless to balance that out because I would have matured into a monster without it. Many savants that didn't have opposing forces to ground them have turned into monsters unable to balance their own mental abilities. Beyond that, looking back I can see that I was the one controlling how I was treated. Nobody did anything to me, I did it to myself through them and I'm eternally grateful for the help.

No I didn't always feel that way, it just comes from experience.

I think that as anything goes when you have a child with an A.S.D. there are always alot of missunderstandings and you get alot of disapproving looks everywhere you go. Its hard not to feel judged all the time. It seems that wrong planet is not always a safe haven as it is not immune to missunderstandings, and certainly full of members that are gerneally not in the cheeriest of moods all the time( as being on the spectrum is not fun usually). I have a daughter with AS and me and my wife always feel inadequate because sometimes no matter how hard you try it seems not to make any difference. I always beleive however that the effort alone DOES make a difference. You try and try again and try again and try again. Sound familiar? Obviously its best not to get frustrated, but who doesnt. There are alot of emotions attached here. Remember that alot of although members here have dealt with a lifetime of being missunderstood it doesnt make them experts at missunderstanding. So Ill not make a judgement about you here as maybe you are a bad parrent or a stupid parrent or a frustrated parrent that cares so much about their child that they cant stand that they say bad things about themselves. No one can know that really, only you. But I will share a story I have that might fit:
My daughter and I were on our way to the public pool the other day and she (kind of jokingly) slapped herself in the face. I sternly looked at her (jokingly too) and said dont you hit my daughter. She smiled back and said "but I am your daughter". I told her that I didnt like for anyone to ever hurt her even if its herself. Then she went on about the theory of me being angry at her when it was her doing it and that it didnt make sence. It was a very lighthearted event and in a subtle way it seemed that my message that I was always going to be there to protect her got through. Its one of those beautiful 1 minute exchanges that doesnt get talked about after but makes you feel good that you can joke around and get a message across. Getting messages across can sometimes be quite difficult. ONe other note: we have noticed that at bed time close to when she is ready to sleep she is very lucid and willing to talk about things more (probably to keep us longer) but we do get more insight into how she is feeling in the last 30mins of the day than all day long.
Hope this post is of some use, even if the post is not worth its length.

Souds like you control the universe.

Your right in one regard,
My daughter (with AS) often replies to complements "of course you say that. Your my mom/dad" ..."you have to think that" ...........at least she thinks its our job to think she is great. Its amazing how a kid that doesnt get some things can be so accutely aware of some parts of reality. (she's7)

We all do, both individually and as a group.

All religions speak of a truth that will piss you off and then set you free. The truth is that we ARE in complete control of what happens to us and realizing that after blaming everyone else all your life will piss you off, I guarantee it. Once you accept it, then you start trying to figure out the actual mechanics of how it works. This is an exercise in frustration but eventually all the energy that went into blaming others for your woes gets applied toward figuring out "how" you're doing it to yourself. Once you really start to figure it out, it does set you free because now you know that the only thing keeping you down was you. You also know that it was for the very best of reasons, not some arbitrary act of god or cosmic accident.

I was just wondering how many AS children you have raised yourself.

i didn't know i was defective until i was told otherwise.

I use a very similar technique with my son, instinctively, because that's what I would've wanted. It's a kind of I care-about-you-so-why-don't-you thing. Strange thing is, my kids now use it with me too, because I still insult myself and put myself down. My father did it too, so I thought I just picked it up from him. Maybe that just reinforced it. At the same time, I wouldn't argue for exclusive tongue-in-cheek reinforcement. I'd say use all the tools in the toolbox.

I think it's important to balance positivity with realism. When you are only calm and reassuring with a child, there's a numbing. It fails to mean much because there's no congruence between their home life, their inside-their-head life and their social life. Sometimes you have to jab, quickly retreat and rub the point of impact. I don't think schleppenheimer is yelling at the kid to be evil, but rather as a periodic "wake up" call. Used sparingly, I can see a good side to that.

Sometimes, it isn't so much that your parents tell you that you're okay, it's how they (and others) actually treat you. I mean, you'd have to be severely mentally handicapped to not realize when people are just saying something to make you feel good when you damn well know that, by their own actions towards you, they actually think of you as a worthless burden who should never have been born in the first place.

Especially when they don't know that you can hear their every word when they think you are asleep...

No. My parents never knew I was sucidal until I was a teenager. Telling me to stop it would have probably only made it worse. I don't know if I was truely sucidal but I remember always wanted to be dead or never be born.

I still see myself as worthless and crap
my parents don't really know
I only have a few online friends...and only like 3 really know

I attempted to OD on entire bottles of cold medications about 3 or 4 times as I was growing up from about age 11. I surmised if one made you drowsy 40 should put you to sleep forever. I finally lost interest when I was about 16 and someone gave me some alcohol.

No one ever knew I did these things. I am not sure I have even told anyone but one therapist whop had no idea how to respond and changed the subject.

The side effects were minimal although I already suffered from stomach cramps so extreme that I would finally fall asleep on me knees on the floor and my head on my bed as pressing my torso against the side of the bed would give me some relief. My Grandmother who raised me thought I was making it all up. She used to joke to people I could die at at moment. My Grandfather the eccentric reclusive engineer (I read this description of him in a magazine years later) had no idea what was going on as he was in his bubble. I would be so sore from these episodes I would limp from the sore stomach muscles for a day or so after. My doctor even told her you know we don't know what causes this but it really hurts a lot.

After I started trying to OD I quit having the episodes so much I have no idea why.

If one, just one adult would have told me I mattered at all I think it would have helped a lot. I still don't think I matter. I think if I died it would probably have some impact on my daughter and my significant other but not a great deal. I don't say this to sound tragic, this is just reality. I think killing yourself is a cop out now. Dying is easy, living is what is so hard.

I would never ever ever yell at a child and demean them emotionally in any way I do not consider that ever being helpful at all.

Last edited by GrendelUlf on 11 Sep 2008, 9:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

It is not my nature to talk about this. I wouldn't be able to face to face but maybe my experiences can help someone a little.
I started feeling suicidal at age 12 . It got really bad when I was about 14 and that led to my parents finding out about all the problems I was having at school which I did not want to talk about because I had learned that when parents got involved with issues like that in the past that it only made things worse. So they got all involved and going after school admins and stuff to try to get them to intervene and all that happened was that an environment full of hostile peers expanded into an environment full of hostile peers and adults. I remember when my dad found out about something that a school admin did to me after that he wanted to go down there and "beat the dog-sh*t" out of him, he would have done it too if cooler heads hadn't prevailed. I had to get taken out of public school after that because I refused to tell them about certain adults not following through with things and doing things to get me singled out, not to mention things from other kids. I flat out refused to go to school.

I doubt at the age I was that the method mentioned by the OP would have helped me out. I was already pretty cynical at this point and I am sure I would have thought it was stupid and probably wouldn't go along with it. If I had those kinds of issues at an earlier age it may have worked, I don't know. I never really stopped having suicidal thoughts, though they happen less and less frequently as time has passed. I have never told anyone I know for various reasons. It used to be because I didn't want them to know so they wouldn't be able to intervene if I ever decided to go through with it. I hit a really bad stretch about 7 years ago though no one else ever knew about it. I did a lot of thinking and decided that I wouldn't ever kill myself because I deserved all the bad feelings and depression because I couldn't handle things that "everybody" else can handle, I didn't deserve an easy way out from all of it. After that I really stopped caring about myself or how I looked and I over ate and didn't get any exercise and gained a lot of weight. I did eventually decide to eat right and start exercising and got back in shape. I decided that at minimum if I never amount to anything worthwhile, if I never have any meaningful personal relationships, that I am still going to make the best of what lifestyle I do live. That is kind of where I am at now. I wouldn't say that I am regularly depressed but those feelings do creep up from time to time.

I don't know if there is anything my parents could have done differently to help me, maybe if I talked to them about these things more, maybe if I kept trying more and more mental health professionals until I found one that helped me, or put me on a pill that actually worked, or at least put me in a stupor that I actually enjoyed. When I was a kid I did harbor some resentment for the way my parents handled my situation in dealing with the school system (there is much more to this story that I don't care to go into, sorry). As I get older I try to look at what I would have done differently if I was in their shoes and I don't know that I would have done anything much differently other than maybe pry a little more into my smart mouthed stubborn teenage son. It can't be easy to see your kid go through that and not tell you, and to see them try to handle a situation by themselves that they just aren't equipped to handle. If I were my dad and I found out some jackass dean did to my kid I would have wanted to go down there and hurt him as well, if I knew the whole story I would have gone there and I would have broken him in two.

The thing is if your kid is going through this, and they are talking about it with you then that is a good thing. Keep them talking. I wish that maybe I had talked about it more, I could maybe talk about these things more today than I do (which is not at all). Do what you can to keep them trusting you, if they stop it may not even be that you did anything wrong, some times we kids just get angry at the world and make bad choices about who to trust because we don't trust anyone at all any more, not even ourselves. If you can find something that works then use it! Just remember that it isn't about what makes you feel good but what most helps your child.

I was also suicidal at a young age and was hospitalized at 11 for an attempted suicide. I never told anyone how I felt and didn't understand why I felt that way. It was just that I didn't want to live and I remember at a young age wishing that I was never born.
I used to yell at my parents for having me and I resented them for having me and making me follow rules. I was a bad kid, bad baby, just bad. After a while my parents ignored me and stopped trying to control me and then I felt invisible and that is when it got worse.

If someone would have told me that I was born with a purpose and that all the suffering I would endure would have been my choice that I made before coming into the world, it would have made sense to me. It may have helped to believe that I came from the stars and had a mission on earth and when I complete it then I can go back. I'm just trying to find a way to put it in words for a kid. I know I was born with that attitude and it was nothing that my parents did to cause it.

My daughter (3 yrs.) just let me know that she's afraid to go to the drain side of the bathtub because because she thinks she'll be sucked down. I laughed (gently), stroked her back and told her that she can't because it's a small hole and she's big. "The worst that could happen," I told her, "is that you'd plug the drain with your butt." She wasn't convinced, so I invited her to crawl into my ear. Small hole, big person. Doesn't work. A few more examples, I repeat the "worst that could happen" bit, and she could finally believe it and laugh with me.

Relevance, you ask?

Everyone has irrational fears or negative thought patterns it's hard to get out of. A parent's job is to ground those fears and gently coax children out of any negative thought patterns (and hopefully, into more positive ones). Not that parents necessarily know how to do that by instinct. It's a skill. We've got to figure it out.

My entire life I've had this depressive (often suicidal) thought pattern. I only ever really tried to kill myself once (couldn't find anything good to hang myself with, so I swallowed all the pills I could find and only ended up barfing my intestines up all day - nobody ever found out), but I've destroyed my life with the self-defeating, escapist narrative in my head.

I think it would have helped a lot - at any point in my life - if I had someone to laugh/slap/cajole/whatever some reality into my head and just hold me tight.

There's a saying where I live, "The hit of the beloved is like raisins," (meaning sweet - well, it rhymes in Arabic). I used to think this was abhorrent, but over the past ten years, my feelings have slowly changed. Now I smack and pinch my baby all the time. From me, she loves it and asks for more, but the slightest indication of a smack from her brother or sister makes her scream. Point? Not all hitting is equal. It has a language all its own and should not be declared unequivocally pathological.

[Disclaimer: the following transition is on the basis of the theme: hitting as a form of intimate communication] Once I came across a presentation of the Kama Sutra which was over-the-top apologetic when it came to the chapters on hitting and biting. Made me realize how ridiculous the level of outrage has become in America et al. when it comes to hitting. It's so anti-nuance.

One of the worst things my parents ever did to me was to leave me alone.

More than wanting to die, I usually just didn't want to be. I didn't have any purpose to want to be. I didn't have anyone telling/showing/convincing me that there was any consequence of my being. To me, this is obviously something that came from inside and I think my father had the same problem, so I can shave some of the blame off of him. My mother had five children, an unfulfilling marriage and was an outsider in the community, so I cut her some slack, too. Parents are people and people are limited. American society can be so individualized and depersonalized that no one gives a damn about you until you become a disruption, so whose to blame there? What is the value of a child? How much is there for a child to meaningfully contribute before he/she actually becomes an adult? How long is that to wait to feel that your life has any meaning or importance?

Sometimes, when my son (7) gets angry with me for getting angry with him, he starts on me with this line that "I'm not useful". Whenever he says this, I take it seriously, I talk to him, I ask him why he feels that way and I try to reassure him that he is indeed very useful, when he wants to be, and I try to give him examples. But, I also try not to let it go on too long. At some point I have to crack jokes or do something to launch us back into reality.

Right now, actually, my daughter (5) is angry at me for not letting her have a mattress to play on, so she's threatening to jump off of some contraption she's made and kill herself. So I'm talking with her to get her down. She tells me how she feels, what she wants to do and I ask her why and talk her through the points that make no sense. I can tell it's working when she stops to think. I can't tell you how many times as a kid I used to go through this dialogue alone in my room or wherever and how much I wish somebody would have been there to even look at me and reassure me that I exist and that somebody cares, no matter what a screw-up I was (and I wasn't really, but I felt that way a lot).

I have no idea how much of this comes from my negative speech patterns in front of my kids and how much may be in their genetic composition, but I hope that by being vigilant and facing the issue openly and honestly, that we can turn the situation around, even if it's just a bit at a time.

No, it probably would have made me worse. My mom used to yell at me to try to make me realize that my fears and phobias weren't realistic. It just made them worse. My mom never knew how to comfort me.