Tired of unsolicited advice/criticism from family and friend

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So, I'm having rough a week but today has been particularly rough.

I am dealing with a chronic health issue as well as my own issues with Autism (mainly related
to executive function). I am struggling with day to day life so much these days.

I have trouble with sleeping at night which makes me tired during the day. I also, have trouble waking up at a decent hour which just makes the insomnia worse.

As you may have guessed, I am unemployed during this time of my life, and to add you my own loserdom I am also living with a family member.

Which brings us back to the title of the post. I am so f***ing tired of my family and friends commenting on my situation, and what I should do. Yes, I know I should eat better and yes I know that I should establish routines to get things done more efficiently.

This kind of talk is insulting to my own intelligence. For christ sake how stupid do these people think I am? I know what I bloody well need to do. It is execution of the tasks in question that f*** me up.

Now most of my friends don't know I am autistic, so I can forgive them for thinking that I am capable of more than I really am. But my family all know about my diagnosis and consequent struggles in life, and still insist that I am not trying hard enough.

My stepfather is constantly asking and pushing me to do things that I am just not capable of doing at the moment. I try to calmly explain why I find something challenging or downright impossible to do, but it just falls on deaf ears. All I get is criticisms, opinions, observations and unsolicited advice.

None of these things help, they just make me feel worse about myself. Often after having an argument with my stepdad, I feel physically and emotionally exhausted. It usually takes a few days to recover and sometimes as long as a week depending on the severity of the conflict.

All I want is a bit of understanding and acceptance for what I am going through right now. I don't need other people's thoughts to clog up my already confused and stressed mind.


Thank you for reading all of the way through this. I really needed to get this of my chest.

Has anyone else dealt with a similar situation, and if so how did you deal with it?

Regards,

CFL

I haven't had much of that for a long time, but I remember that when I have, it's felt embarrassing and frustrating. What did I do to survive?

I've argued back for as long as it took to tire them out. But then arguing never tires me out, I seem able to go on forever. So probably not good advice for you. And it tends to do little but invite their contempt. Things can get polarised, I stick to my guns, they stick to theirs, and it goes nowhere. It's probably been better when I've gone into great detail about things about me they couldn't have known, that show how their (presumably) well-intended advice wouldn't work.

I've tried to be gracious and just thanked them for their concern and thus ended the debate. It's probably better than getting into an argument, but it often left us both feeling frustrated because I haven't engaged with them. Still, there's no law that says I have to engage with every clown who crosses my path. Especially relatives (who let's face it were thrust on me in the first place) and not-so-close friends. And like anybody else who isn't too easily led, I'll do what I want to do anyway. No reason why I should tell them directly that I think their advice sucks.

Slightly more diplomatic might be to ask them a question about themselves, thus taking over control of the subject matter. But I can't remember doing that myself. I remember one guy who did (when I was talking too much), and I was impressed. One day I hope to try it. I think half the battle is that I felt wary of hurting their feelings, though they set themselves up for it by being so invasive in the first place.

I wonder whether these people of yours are hogging the conversation. If they're interrupting a lot and you aren't, it's OK to say to them, "let me finish" or that line of Kamala Harris' to Mike Pence - "if you stop interrupting me then we can have a conversation."

Just my thoughts. Maybe there's something useful in there, maybe not. I usually try to be as light-touch with people as I can be, because I've noticed how unhelpful it is when some folks wade in like it was any of their damn business.

Would it help if you asked your stepdad to teach you how to do stuff?

A lot of time folks just assume you know the proper way to do things but nobody ever showed you how to do it!

Not getting enough sleep can mess up everything else.

I found when I was laid off that if I made a job out of getting a job, I could maintain a good sleep schedule. This meant getting up at the same time I would for work. I would take to bus to the library and read the paper to look at job listings. If I found none, I would still use the library for research into other interests. Putting in a full day allowed me to get tired enough to fall asleep in the evening.

^
Indeed, poor sleep is debilitating, and I think a human needs work of some kind, and a purpose, but perhaps something more physical would do more for sleep than the largely clerical, sedentary occupation of jobseeking. Not that I'm knocking looking for paid employment. But going for walks or cycle rides might be a good thing, and it may also get away from the unwanted advisors. But I guess it's all horses-for-courses, one man's meat being another man's poison and all that.

Too many people especially older ones think of Autism as character flaw that can be mitigated by trying harder. We older folks grew up in an era when it was widely believed that all issues can be mitigated or solved by trying harder(“You can do anything you want by putting your mind to it”).

Autistics are especially are targets of this type of criticism because things that are very unnatural for us many NT’s can do without thinking about them.

As far as doing things you should be doing my advice is work on improving one thing at a time. I say that because many autistics are poor at multitasking and skilled at hyperfocusing on one subject.

Dad, very likely an Aspie IMO but undiagnosed, used to say with disdain, "this is the golden age of good advice." So I think he'd have related to this thread.