So my mom and I were talking and I mentioned that OCD is no longer an anxiety disorder and they made it its own family category and hoarding disorder falls under it. OCD is its own category now than under an anxiety disorder. My mom then brought up like they did with autism, made it all autism and she expressed how it was a big mistake and how it’s a disservice for me. She mentioned she will never call me autistic and expressed why. To her autism is a crippling disease, you can’t talk and live on your own, you are dysfunctional and she would never let anyone say I am autistic. She even mentioned she has a hard time saying I have Asperger’s as well because they are doctors and lawyers because of this skill they have and they are so brilliant and I am not that. But then said in a way the label does fit but I am not a typical aspie. I had always thought why not create another autism label for people like me but wait, that is why PDD-NOS existed except it meant “you kid has something somewhere on the spectrum but doesn’t fit into aspie or autistic disorder.” And the thing about this label was it could be from mild to severe.
It’s the stigma she hates and how most people think of autism and AS and I realized she views the word Autistic as bad as the R word because she expressed how demeaning that word is and it sets the bar so low on me. She also expressed when they tried to say I was autistic as a small child, it felt like a death sentence to her because they were saying I would be in a group home and in a mental institution. She said it was so horrible for her and traumatizing so I said “well you proved them wrong.”
Also put in mind this was the 80’s where people thought so low of kids with disabilities and if you as the parent had high goals for them and wanted them to be independent and live like normal adults when they grow up, you were looked at as crazy. My mom dealt with this when I was little. I guess it traumatized her.
She told me she prefers anxiety and that is what she sees me as. I pointed out to her that the problem with anxiety is many people think of it as something you can get over if you go to therapy and take a pill and boom you are cured but if you use narrower levels like ADHD or autism, then people know it’s not something you can get over and they know why you have anxiety. That term is so broad. My mom was like “so are they saying your son doesn’t have anxiety?” and I said “no, but what is the point in having all these labels when it’s all explained by one thing like by PTSD or by ADHD or Asperger’s. I sometimes think anxiety disorder isn’t even real because it’s always caused by something else.” I forgot to mention that I also think that doctors only give out an anxiety disorder diagnoses for insurance purposes so it allows therapist to bill the medical insurance or for drug purposes because no medical insurance will cover therapy for lifelong conditions but they will for OCD and anxiety because those are seen as being treatable and cured.
I also suspect my mom would not accepted the Asperger’s diagnoses either if it weren’t for my school and the situation I was in at the time. She did mention to me that my psychiatrist told her to use the diagnoses to get me the education I need and this is the only way he could help me. He also told her this was the best he could do for a diagnoses and the closest she will ever get to for me. She didn’t like “autistic spectrum disorder” and it wasn’t a real diagnoses back then either so “Asperger’s” it was along with “OCD” and “anxiety disorder.” But back then she described it as being a learning disability than a form of autism. Of course she would do that because she didn’t want gossip to go around and have neighbors thinking I was retarded or autistic. She also would say she has a daughter with a disability. She avoided the A word as much as she could. If she told them I had Asperger’s then that would mean they would be thinking “Oh her daughter is autistic” and to her that would bring back bad memories of me as a small child and what she went through.
She thinks making this all autism is a big mistake and even my aunt agrees too and thinks they will realize this mistake and make it separate again in the DSM 6. Even people on the spectrum have felt this way too and think they are not autistic, they have Asperger’s and autism is more severe. It’s either they have autism or they are autistic but it depends on what the individual prefers. My mom told me she prefers autism spectrum for me so I told her it still brings the same issue as it would with the word “autistic” or “autism” because you don’t know what type it is, is it level 1 or level 2 or what and she told me it was none of their business. I told her “well if I say I am level one autism, then they would know I am high functioning and I can work and live on my own and can understand things.” This seemed contradicting of my mom. I told her they made it all 3 levels and basically Asperger’s is level 1 so I guess it is now “my kid has level 1 autism” than “my kid has Asperger’s” but my mom told me she still hates the A word and I realized she treats it as how people treat the R word. Okay so how is autism spectrum any different than people saying autism or autistic when they mean Asperger’s or not otherwise specified because their kid fit into neither diagnoses for AS or autistic disorder? That is exactly what is being done with autism spectrum disorder here and no one will say about their kid rather they have level 1 autism or level 3 but instead they will say high functioning which I always assume Asperger’s and the mild end of the spectrum. Some just say autism and don’t say where on the spectrum they are at. Even when AS was still a diagnoses in the US, people would say autism and I never knew if they meant AS or not. So it’s always been confusing and people argue about them being the same but to me Asperger’s is milder than autism and people with autism have more limitations than those with AS. I just automatically assume someone is on the mild end when they are raising kids and living on their own and don’t need a caretaker when they say they have autism. It doesn’t offend me when people say I am high functioning. I have seen people being opposed to this label as well but to me it doesn’t change anything about me. High functioning does not mean you don’t have any bad days and don’t have days you can’t function and it doesn’t mean you don’t have any impairments and no struggles.
Anther ironic thing is Mom told me that when people say autism, it has such a bad stigma to it and people will think you are like someone they know with it but yet there she was doing the same with Asperger’s. Oh I am not a genius, I am not Einstein or a lawyer or a doctor so therefore I am not a real aspie. Maybe all the aspie students she had worked with when she worked as a teacher’s aid in the special ed room were all brilliant and had some sort of special skill and I had none so therefore I am not a real aspie and if she says I am that, then people will think I am brilliant and have some sort of special skill that will give me a living. That reminds me of the film Rain Man where everyone thought every person with autism had a savant skill. Mom also told me she didn’t understand why anyone would want to call themselves autistic. She also doesn’t understand why anyone would make it their identity because they are a person first. My mom would probably be in for a surprise if I tell her some people in wheelchairs want to be seen as their wheelchair not as someone who is a person that happens to use a wheelchair. It’s the same with other disabilities too. They want to be seen as their diagnoses, their disability, their mental illness than as a person who has it. This is where politics comes in because this is all political here. Identity politics my brother would call it. I did tell her that this autism thing about calling yourself autistic has become political because people now say you are an ableist if you don’t call yourself autistic and she was like “oh my god, seriously?” Yes I am dead serious, I don’t know why this is anyone’s concern how someone wants to define themselves and what label they want to use. I have seen this on Twitter which is why I don’t really get involved in the community on there. Most of the autism supremists have moved to Twitter or Facebook from Wrongplanet and they are the label police and dictate how you see yourself. I avoid that shit. I won’t be in groups with that forced mindset nor would I want to be in those threads on Twitter and follow those pages. It used to be real bad on the forums like on Wrongplanet, then lot of those people disappeared and I discovered they had moved to Twitter and Facebook where they can have their own echo chamber and kick anyone who doesn’t follow their ideology and block anyone who doesn’t.
This is controversial because many people will disagree that abuse can be unintentional. I have talked about before in this blog how I can see myself doing financial abuse due to my money anxiety so that was why my husband took over the finances. I was driving him crazy with my anxiety about money he felt he couldn’t live a life because I would freak out if I found out he had spent a dollar and I was already talking about taking away his cards so I wouldn’t have to worry about him spending any money and having anxiety. This wasn’t about control, it was about my comfort zone and to relieve my anxiety to make my life calmer and to feel in control of my life again because of the unknown and my husband wasn’t supporting that. This is an example of unintentional abuse and how a mental illness or a disorder can attribute to abuse.
What about a parent who isn’t aware their kid has a disability because they look normal and seem normal. Asperger’s is a hidden disorder and so is ADHD and anxiety and other things that makes the kid act different. So what if the parent was unaware their kid had anxiety so they were always getting mad at them for their fears and over reaction and calling them a baby and forcing them into situations they feel uncomfortable in. At age six I was forced to ride on a big ferris wheel and my mom and dad didn’t care about my fear of it and the reason why I was scared was because I was worried it would give me this feeling in my stomach that some rides give you and I didn’t like that feeling and I had been on a ferris wheel that gave me that feeling so I felt too nervous to ride on one again that went too high up. Lot of people will agree that it is cruel to scare your child but that is what my parents did to me, they scared me and forced me into something I feared and got mad at me for crying and for being scared and didn’t give rats ass. I would call this unintentional abuse. I don’t think they did it to be cruel. Most people are not afraid of ferris wheels so how were they supposed to know my fear was real? They were ignorant then. My dad is still ignorant about my anxiety. I don’t fear ferris wheels anymore. Back then being forced on it was like walking the green mile or walking to the torture device because you know what is going to happen and you don’t know what is going to happen like how much pain you will feel, if it will hurt or not. That was how I felt going on that ride. I didn’t know how bad it would be, how much it will be scary and how bad the feeling in my tummy would be when we go down. I realize I probably did have anxiety as a young child but it wasn’t prominent then so no one knew. Instead I would be told to stop or being called a baby so therefore my feelings would be invalidated and I did feel then as a young child that my mom didn’t care about me. I just assumed then she knew because I didn’t know my feelings were not normal and my mom had assumed my feelings were normal but was over reacting or just whining. Ironically my mom is against people scaring kids and breaking them by making them fear you so they will listen but yet she did the exact same thing to me when I was a kid. Then the time I didn’t have anxiety about being dumped on the side of the road because I figured I would just hitchhike home, my mom was mad because I didn’t have beg her to not leave me on the side of the road. Yes that is fear right there you are doing to your kids and you say it’s not good to scare your children?
Then there is ADHD. I can’t count how many times I have read online by people who grew up with undiagnosed ADD or ADHD, they always got in trouble for losing things and always got in trouble for not being able to sit still or pay attention or for forgetting things, etc. It was as if they were abused. I would call their abuse unintentional because no one was aware of their ADD then. I can’t imagine how hard their life must have been the the anxiety they must have had growing up and the low self esteem.
But because abuse implies intent, people will say they were not abused or say someone they know isn’t abusive because they know their partner or child doesn’t do it on purpose. Then of course when someone has a mental illness, their victims may still call them abusive and say their actions are intentional.
What about those who suffer from NPD or BPD, they tend to lack self awareness. They may not see themselves as being abusive. I noticed on the forum on Reddit by BPD victims that the borderliners tend to rewrite history so they have “amnesia” about their abuse they did to their child or partner. Jerry seemed to have rewritten hers when she said she did none of that stuff I said she did except for “taking too long” to give me back my Dish Network piece. Also people with BPD don’t realize they are being manipulative and may not see their behavior as manipulative because to their perspective they are just trying to get their needs met like everyone else. But that never matters to the victim. It only matters what the borderliner is doing, not their intention behind it.
Then there are people who have NPD and they also seem to lack awareness of their own behavior so to me it seems like their behavior is unintentional if they are unaware which is why it’s probably a disorder, an illness. Many people disagree that personality disorders are a mental illness and want to keep these separated from mental illnesses. But the truth is mental illness is also a spectrum. It can range from evil to none evil. Maybe people like to separate personality disorders from a mental illness because they don’t want the stigma on mental illness.
In a way I do feel sorry for those who have NPD and BPD because they are their own worst enemies and they didn’t choose to be that way and I can’t imagine having those disorders and hurting people and not even being aware and seeing myself as the victim. I cannot imagine having a disorder only to find out my own emotions are wrong and my feelings are wrong and not knowing when they are valid and not being entitled to them. We often hear that everyone is entitled to their feelings and that people should trust their gut instinct but that doesn’t seem to apply to those who have BPD. That only applies to “normal” people. Most stuff we read out there is aimed at normal people assuming whoever is reading it is “normal.”
I have anxiety but stuff I find online about what to do about yelling at your kids, none of the advice I read is helpful because it’s all about staying calm and stuff but what do you do if your kids are the ones giving you anxiety and you can’t be calm unless your kids stop? There is no parenting articles out there aimed at parents with autism or anxiety about yelling at your kids. And too much yelling is abuse so that would mean I am doing unintentional abuse.
Because abuse often implies intent and also has a bad stigma to it, no one wants to see themselves as an abuser even if their actions are abusive. Even the loved one doesn’t want to see their child or partner as abusive especially if they have trauma or a disorder or came from an abusive background themselves where they grew up around anger and abuse or neglect. I didn’t want to see Jerry as an abuser when I was with her so I always defended her and made excuses for her like she has anxiety, she is worried about what people might think of her, she has PTSD, she has AS so she is just being honest, her ex called her a pedophile so now she ignores me if I am not acting mature enough for her. But all that did was it hurt me and I let that all happen instead of sticking up for myself and now I have myself to blame. So that is why I will never ever let anyone abuse me again and no disorder or mental illness will change that and only their actions and how they treat me matter, not their intentions and I don’t care what their intentions are or if it’s on purpose or not. I need to care about my own mental health and protect myself from any abuse. I also need to stay away from anyone who is abusive. I still get triggers to this day from certain things I read when something reminds me of Jerry. I even had to block someone on a forum when she made a trigger post and what she was writing were similar feelings to what Jerry had so I took a great dislike to her and blocked her because she was triggering. But I wasn’t the only one who had blocked her because she had left that forum and I saw her posting elsewhere online saying she was ignored because people didn’t agree with her views. Her views? Is she shitting me, she was a bigot on ABDLs and then pulling the “I still love you” crap like Barney. Ugh.
Now here is an article that talks about unintentional abuse but it’s about parents doing it:
I saw another question being posted online asking if anyone had ever had to endure bullying in the family.
Occasionally my brothers and their friends would deliberately make messes to stress me out and run off and hide or take my Barbies and pull the clothes off them and put them in my dollhouse having them hanging out of windows and denying they did it. This was about it. The rest was just typical sibling annoyance like going in my room, whining, messing with my dollhouse or playhouse and they were little so they didn’t know any better. I know my youngest brother didn’t whine to piss any of us off, that was just who he is. That was not bullying there, only when they would deliberately make messes to stress me out and what they did with my Barbies.
But when my brothers got older, they started to have friends over more and more often because they had reached the age where kids start to socialize and chit chat and always have their friends around. It started to get too much for me to handle because they would be in my personal space, make too much noise, make messes and move too many things around. I did not like it at all so it would stress me out. That was when my parents started to change. They would get mad at me for my anxiety and that started to make it worse so I got worse. I remember when i pointed this out to them, they said they didn’t change I did. Yes the gaslighting behavior I had to face. They didn’t see my perspective and see it from my side so they denied denied any change and said I was the one who changed. But meanwhile my brothers seemed to get worse and worse all because they were getting older and louder and I didn’t understand why I had all of a sudden gotten more sensitive to the noise and why I was having more anxiety than before. But no one gave a damn, it was made out to be my fault and even the pills didn’t work because I still had it. Maybe if I took them every day instead of when I was having anxiety, maybe they would have been effective.
Another problem I faced was lack of understanding from my family. My brothers were still too young to understand my condition so they just ignored my needs and my problems. They just kept on minding their own business and doing what they were doing not even paying attention to my behavior and my anxiety. I remember the nights of not being able to relax and sleep because I was so worried about my brothers making messes and it didn’t help when my parents would get mad at me about it.
Then we moved into our new house and that was exciting. We had lots of room now. But my anxiety was still worse because my dad decided to bring home a new puppy who wouldn’t learn to pee outside because he had his bathroom all backwards. Then it didn’t help that no one wanted to house train it and pay attention to it so tremendous anxiety I had. Then when that puppy passed away, I was better again but I still had anxiety because of lack of understanding from my family. Whenever my brothers had parties, I would get worse again due to the anxiety. There would be messes and I hated messes and it would stress me out. Also no one would pick up after themselves and I was very obsessive about a clean house and I would have anxiety about dirt and crumbs and dirty dishes in the sink or laying all over.
I remember I felt abused because I was having all this anxiety so it felt like I was being abused and tortured and tormented because everyone kept doing things that was stressing me out and they knew it did but they kept on doing it. When I tried to tell this to my mother, she just went “You only want to move out because you just want your way.” That was hurtful because that was implying I was just having a tantrum and being controlling. It was very invalidating. How hard is it to just wipe up your crumbs or just throw away garbage or put something away when you are done with it or how hard is to wipe up your spill or mess or when you do a drop on the floor? But her just saying I wanted my way makes it sound like I was only having tantrums and being manipulative to get what I want and that I was choosing to have anxiety and being all stressed out or that I was faking it. What happened to the mother that used to understand me? She said I was the one who changed, not her and I was just screaming like a two year old. I think she said that to justify her treatment of me than admitting she lacked compassion and understanding. I have been noticing a lot of people have narcissistic tenancies but it doesn’t mean they are narcissists nor does it mean they have NPD. My mom had that N tenancy. Avoiding responsibility, putting the blame on me, the gaslighting, finding excuses to justify her behavior. But I think it only becomes narcissist when they do it all the time and my mom doesn’t do it all the time. She only does it in certain areas but not in most areas. I don’t think she will ever understand and I don’t bother trying to explain it to her because I don’t want to deal with this and having all the blame thrown on me because that is like blaming it on an autistic person or on someone for being deaf or for being sick with a mental illness and I feel that is what she is doing with me. She is acting like I did this all on purpose and I acted it all out and I was being manipulative and having tantrums to get my way. She is acting like I wanted to be that way. No she never apologized for her cold behavior and for saying that or for her lack of understanding. That is why I think she still doesn’t get it. She doesn’t have anxiety, she is not in my head so what would she know. She doesn’t even know ASD gets worse in adolescence or she would have understood that in me. Even then I thought I was going crazy and I didn’t understand what was going on and why has it gotten worse for me? I even feel sometimes to this day that maybe I acted all that out and faked it and maybe I really was just being a bitch and wanted my way and I was using anxiety as an excuse. I even feel I should have tried harder and hold in my feelings and try and suffer in silence instead of showing it.
My therapist was no help either because he didn’t seem to have an understanding because he kept saying I was a police woman and using my own condition against me by saying “when people tell you to stop yelling, do you stop?” That is like telling someone “When people tell you to stop having a sensory overload, do you stop?” Also he acted like I wanted my way because he was saying how everyone puts up with stuff and my parents put up with the messes and noise for one night. For me it was pure torture while for most people it might just be an annoyance. For me it was beyond annoyance. But no one cared.
My mom also thought I was trying to be Asperger’s as if I wanted to have all that anxiety and always be so stressed out and always have daily meltdowns due to the chaos they were doing. Then she blamed it on my school counselor so she fired him. I think she just needed someone to blame and it was him because of what he said but I wonder what would have happened if he had said I had anxiety instead of Asperger’s. Then what? But I think she was just so upset because I had gotten worse due to the anxiety and my brothers getting older and what they were doing and their lack of following my rules so that made me worse so I think my mother needed him to blame. She just needed an excuse for me and used him because he became the culprit because of what he said. But she had accidentally found out from that that he wasn’t the right person for me to be seeing because he didn’t think I could get better, he didn’t say “it will get better once she gets passed these teens and she is out on her own.” He didn’t show sympathy for my mother. He also didn’t have faith in me and he told her my parents were wasting their money on me seeing a therapist and saying I will always be that way. So she was right to fire him due to that reason than for the other thing. Plus he was just giving me excuses and wasn’t teaching me how to cope and get better and he didn’t have a PH D but was acting like he was a therapist instead of just a counselor. So of how much he told me, I have no idea if it was BS or not.
But since my mom had told me my therapist had gotten me mad on purpose to get rid of all that anger and hurt feelings, I wonder if he was being ignorant of my anxiety on purpose to piss me off. Mom told me he wanted me to get mad at him and hate on him so I would get rid of all that anger and hurt feelings from over the years. Now I don’t know anymore of how much he said was truthful or just him trying to piss me off.
But once my brothers got to high school, they started to follow my rules so instead of being loud and doing running in and out of the house, they started to be quiet and stay in their area and taking off their shoes. I then started to not notice when my brothers were having parties or had friends over because they would be so quiet. They still watched TV and talked and played video games but they were not acting all wild like teens do when they hang out. My brothers finally were older so they started to understand and found a compromise. Then I was acting normal because of no more anxiety. I was calm and they were not doing all that chaos. So I got better again because of less anxiety. Then I moved out like I’ve always wanted since I was 16.
I am sure if I were to compare this to abuse and torment and bullying and saying that is what it was like for me and it was like they were doing it intentionally to upset me and make me stressed out and uncomfortable because I had already told them how it made me feel and how I don’t like it and how much it upsets me, it might come off as manipulation because they are not in my head so what would they know? They would just think I am just saying this to be manipulative and that I wanted my way and still trying to do that. So that is why I don’t really talk about it and I just keep it to myself and only share it online because I am sure they would understand, those who suffer from anxiety, those who suffer from OCD, those who suffer from autism or sensory processing disorder. But anyone else reading this, I am sure they would just think I am whining and being a cry baby because what would they know if they have never experienced it?
I was reading a book at Barnes & Noble and it was about anxiety. It talks about anxiety disorders and I was reading the first chapter and he talks about teens and technology. He talks about bullying and he said something very interesting. He said when you are bullied often, you start to think there is something wrong with you, there is something about you that makes kids target you, you don’t see anyone else being bullied like you do, so you start to think something is wrong with you. It brings down your self esteem. He said what makes you a target for bullying is your reaction. REACTION.
Yes the bullying did make me think there was something wrong with me. I took the criticism kids thought of me and I tried to better myself. I started to study what was rude behavior and what exactly is showing off, I started to walk looking at the ground so I would stop bumping into people. I always felt bad for bumping into people because of my clumsiness so I learned to look at the ground when I walk and I will have more time to move my body when I see a kid in the way. I even started to copy “normal” behavior to be normal. I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be respected, I didn’t want to be this mean and rude girl and a show off. Kids thought I was weird so I tried to stop being weird. I didn’t accept being different anymore. I tried harder to care about others so I wouldn’t be selfish anymore and spoiled. Also the author wrote to not listen to what kids tell you about yourself and it’s just their opinion. I sure took their opinions seriously so I started to obsess about being normal and trying to be this good person. I couldn’t handle the criticism. But the truth is bullies do not care, you can never impress them. But where do you draw the line for when to listen to someone’s opinion about you and when to not listen? If we never listen to anyone, we will never better ourselves and also when does a comment count as bullying? My mom doesn’t think I was really bullied, she just thinks I was just teased and I was too sensitive and I took kids comments too personally. She says they were just mean kids but she didn’t see any of it as bullying. She says the others were just innocent and I took it too personal, too literal. That seems common in ASD kids to take it all personal so they continue seeing those kids as the same people, I sure did. I didn’t want to be around the kids that made fun of me in the third grade for how I spoke. I didn’t want to be around any kid that thought of me as a show off or selfish or spoiled or rude or crazy or weird. I had true social anxiety around those kids because I felt so self conscious about myself so I had to watch my facial expressions, my behavior, how I sat, my body language. I don’t feel that way anymore because I don’t care what people think and I don’t care about normal. Besides what is normal anyway?
I was also rejected but I didn’t know why I was rejected. My own friends would avoid me and tell me to go away. I had poor social skills.
But I think kids are bullied for many reasons, not because of how you react. Transgender kids get bullied because they do not follow the gender role Homosexual kids get bullied because they are not following the “norm” and kids are taught that being gay is “wrong” by their religious families or because their parents find it “sick.” Autistic children are bullied because of their poor social skills and because they don’t understand jokes and of course how they react to teasing so it makes them even more of a target. I think one of the things that made me a target for bullying was my reaction to teasing, the way I talked, I was socially naive, I was pretty sensitive. Kids also thought I was stupid or retarded and I did take teasing seriously and I remember getting upset by it too. So when I got upset by it, I think that is what made me more of a target for teasing. Most kids would just ignore it and handle it better and then the kids move onto the other kid. That didn’t happen with me because I made myself the target. Children with autism make themselves the target because of the way they react to teasing so the kids do it more. Kids do like to pick on those who are different. Different can be normal kids or kids with disabilities.
So the author is right that being bullied doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you.
I think bullying attributes to anxiety. It can lead to PTSD, social anxiety, depression, and of course low self esteem. I think the bullying may have lead to my anxiety and the rejections and causing me to be depressed. By 6th grade I wanted to kill myself and was already talking about it because I couldn’t handle it anymore and I was sick and tired of not being able to be normal. I was so obsessed with the word normal and I didn’t accept myself. I did try to to up my low self esteem by doing work by myself and being proud of it no matter what grade I got. Even my mom getting upset with me about my grade didn’t change it because I did it all by myself without help so I felt normal and smart. C is average so why feel bad about it?
I also have an anxiety disorder so that makes me over react and freak out about things lot of people wouldn’t get upset about. I have money anxiety and I like to have our savings account untouched. It’s only used for emergencies and for car maintenance and it’s not to use for bills and fun stuff. We owed our parents money for the plumbing we had fixed to my dad finally took it out which is fine but the thin that gave me a freak out and got me very upset was when he told me he took other money out and I started to panic and freak out like our money had been getting taken as in stolen. He told me it was for other money we owed him. Owed him in what? What else did we owe him for. He said it was for bills. i freak out because we use our banking for bills, not our savings and I am very upset and I get very repetitive in speech.
When I get very upset my voice gets very high pitched, I get repetitive, and I am hard to console and calm down. Then my day is ruined and I can’t relax and I need to be alone and I am crabby and can’t be bothered by anyone and I am in no mood to communicate with anyone except for online.
But good thing I took back our card that is access to our savings because I don’t want my dad to keep taking money from it because he gets impulsive and doesn’t think and he knows I have anxiety but he still continues to tell me about money stuff and then he wonders why I am freaking out and getting too upset “over nothing.” But he can still access our account just by going to the bank and getting money out but he always needs the card for it so I feel safe because it makes it less likely to happen. My husband said he would pay back the money to our savings. I hope he can because we never can pay it back which is why I freaked out so I still feel upset about it and thinking what if he can’t do it and now I will be freaking out when he buys something we don’t need and when he wants to eat out or do anything fun because we have to go on a saving spree now to pay back the money, anything extra we have left over goes to the banking account and since our son will be done with his school soon, there will be no more monthly payments for the school and we can use part of that money to pay it back. He has taken money from our savings in the past just to buy stuff he wanted and I dunno if he ever paid it back because my husband handles it all so it’s always my fear he will spend our savings. It’s under his name because of Social Security and they don’t allow you to have above $3,000 for a married couple on it. It sucks because how in the hell are people on it supposed to have money for emergencies or to pay for car insurance, it’s like they want them to remain poor and broke.
But how is this any different than autism, I have no idea. They both get upset over things lot of people wouldn’t get upset about and they also have things a certain way and also get upset if it gets messed with like my dad did with my savings because I also have it a certain way and use it a certain way. To me they’re both the same but yet they also call it an anxiety disorder and why am I diagnosed with both is beyond me because that is like diagnosing an autistic person with dyspraxia or sensory processing disorder when they are part of it because of sensory and poor coordination issues and issues with motor skills. I have always liked things the same way as long as I can remember and would also get very upset if it got messed with. But back then it probably looked like me being a cry baby and over emotional and that I needed to toughen up and stop crying like a baby. That is what my mom used to tell me “stop crying like a two year old.” Back then I was baffled about her reaction because why would you get upset with someone for being upset because someone else had upset them by touching their things or messing it up or ruining it or taking things from them?
I get anxiety when things don’t go the way I planned or expected it
I get anxiety when something is on my mind and it can’t be fixed right now
I get anxiety over change in plans
I get anxiety from stress
I get anxiety from my children because of their screeching and screaming and them not listening to me and because my son asking if he can get this or that and whining and crying and not listening to me and not taking no for an answer
I get anxiety when my kids make too much noise and cause chaos and fight
I even get anxiety from too many interruptions and when I can’t be alone and have down time
I get anxiety when I feel I am not in control and when I feel my life is out of control
I get anxiety over prices going up like in bills which is why my husband handles the finances
I get in anxiety about the unknown and when I don’t know what to expect
I get anxiety about things not getting done due to limited time
I get anxiety when I am uncomfortable and forced to be in that situation and I can’t get out of it
Dog pee indoors in my own home gives me anxiety which is why we don’t have any pets because I don’t want to toilet train it
Having too much to do gives me anxiety because it’s all thrown at me at once and it takes me out of my routine
Being bored gives me anxiety when I have been waiting for too long
I get anxiety when my stuff gets touched too much and moved around
I once got anxiety when I couldn’t find the TV remote because I always watch Dr. Phil when I get home from work and then someone took the TV remote again and I got anxiety about it because someone took the TV remote and you can’t turn the TV on without it or even watch the show without it because it’s on TIVO
I get anxiety when I get upset
My anxiety has nothing to do about worry or fear. My anxiety is unusual but yet I have anxiety disorder, diagnosed. I don’t fit into either anxiety label so it would be anxiety disorder NOS but mine is only listed as Anxiety disorder. And I wonder how autism spectrum disorders works without anxiety because aren’t they having anxiety when their routine changes or when a room changes or the menu or things in a store or when their plans get disrupted or when they are interrupted due to difficultly with transition and don’t they get it from not being able to stim and do their repetitive behaviors and don’t they get it from sensory issues? So why don’t they have an anxiety disorder too like I do? Didn’t Rain Man have anxiety when his brother was trying to force him get on a airplane because he believed they were dangerous to fly? if you try and force him to be in a situation he felt was unsafe, he would freak out so wouldn’t that have been anxiety he was having? I believe Max Beaverman has anxiety too like me because of the way he reacts and when he gets upset and he acts just like me except he is more of a textbook aspie. It would be surprised if he also didn’t have anxiety. Even Frankie had anxiety too so he got anxiety when he lost the game Shy Guy Says in one of the Mario Party games because he raised up the right blag but the game made him raise up the wrong flag so he lost and he got upset. He once got anxiety when their family dog wouldn’t stay in a certain spot in the pick up truck while we were going to the lake so he kept shouting at the dog.
Right now I have my Wells Fargo credit card on my mind, it got hacked a couple weeks back and they sent us a new one with a whole new number on it and I found out today it did come but now it’s lost. I am so upset and I had anxiety and was having a hard time talking and breathing and it upsets me so much when people touch my mail and move it and don’t give it to us. i never saw it in the kitchen and I had looked in the mail box always for that mail and I never saw it. this is what happens when you live with other people in your home such as your parents so I don’t always see all my stuff that comes in the mail and I just wish it would be kept in one spot or be taken to our room and set on the table or chair. It never comes natural for us to check our mail because it’s like remembering to check your tire pressure. Back in Montana it was no issue because I always checked it when coming back from work and it was my routine. I need to try and make it a routine again but it’s hard when the mail man never comes at the same time and when my dad always checks it so it’s impossible for that routine and I do not like to make a routine only for it to change and then I have anxiety because it gets disrupted so my life is chaotic without one. I do always give the mail to my husband and set it on his computer when anything comes for us when I do see it on the counter.
I used to this this was another BS condition I had but I am realizing it’s a real thing I may have because I can never handle stress well and my coping skills are poor and it turns me into a different person.
I wrote here why I don’t own a gun. It’s also because I am afraid I will get impulsive if I have my moment again and go in a state of mind where I feel so suicidal due to too much stress and so much anxiety, I might just kill my family and then regret it. A gun is quicker to use and kill with. No one has a chance to defend themselves when you have a gun. So I am being smart and responsible by deciding to not ever have one and if it makes me selfish because I think my safety is more important than others having a gun in my home, so be it. I have no issues with gun control laws either. Some people just don’t have the common sense to not own one because of their state of mind and their own limitations and some just can’t handle owning one. I don’t think I would be able to handle it so I fear touching one and having one in my home. I would rather just not have one.
I have also blogged about our dog about my anxiety and my OCD and if psychopathy can come and go. I also blogged about my OCD about a clean house.
When I was 18, my mom was signing me up for Social Security so she kept me home from school that day for a phone interview and she helped me with the questions. She told them I was seeing a therapist for adjustment disorder. Back then I had no idea what that was so I figured it was another name for a component for Asperger’s. It must mean difficulty with adjusting to change. For a while I just thought it was a BS condition and then I thought it was a fancy label my mom had given me but after a thread I posted online about this:
While I have felt suicidal and felt like I wanted to kill my family and myself, the difference is I didn’t make any plans for it because I didn’t want to do it. The mom planned to kill her son and she was faking her symptoms of her illness because she was doing research about it and reading about Andrea Yates and her illness and looking up insanity defenses. But people in the ASD community knew she was just selfish and faking it and having excuses and they were right so I posted the thread. I am someone who always gives people the benefit of the doubt until it’s proven they were cold hearted and selfish killers and they had no problems when they did the crime and there has to be proof they are faking their misery and distress and their mental problems and faking their anxiety and their depression and the fact they couldn’t cope anymore so they snapped and now they regret what they did. This is always my biggest fear in life for if I were in that situation. But most people will judge right away and think of the worst while I don’t think of the worst and I always think of stress and want more details to the story before I judge because of my own personal experience and the fact I know my limitations and what stress can do to me so why would I want to judge others for it?
It’s always difficult reading these comments because that could have been me and I know those comments wouldn’t even help me and it would have made things worse for me. All I can do is be happy I am not in that person’s shoes and be glad I am not in that situation but yet it would be very hypocritical of me to go and judge other moms who kill their kids. And there are situations where I am speechless about and don’t know what to think.
Christina Riggs for example suffered severe depression so she wanted to kill herself, she killed her kids because she didn’t want them to live apart (they had different fathers) and she attempted to kill herself but survived. I don’t know what to think of this. Did she try and seek help? Was it selfish? Did she regret what she did? Was she faking it? The only thing I think of this whole thing is capital punishment was a joke because she is suicidal, she wants to die so how is killing her even a punishment? Wouldn’t it be more logical to just lock her up for life and have her live for the rest of her life for what she did and always remember how she killed her babies and regret what she did? Isn’t this more of a punishment than the other? She would have to live with it for the rest of her life. So she basically committed suicide by capital punishment which is what I think she did. She wouldn’t allow her lawyers to bring up her suicidal thoughts and depression in the trial.
And men that have shot their spouses and then themselves, I can’t even. I don’t know what to think of this, was it selfish? Was it cold hearted murder? They had killed themselves so what do I think of them? Would it be more logical to just kill them and then try and cover their tracks to try and make it look like an accident or a suicide or something. Did they regret what they did so much they also had to put a bullet to their head because they didn’t want to live with it for the rest of their lives?
I even wanted to kill our puppy when I was 16 and the only thing that held me back was fearing of being sent away. I am glad I didn’t do that plan. It was a compulsion I had in my mind and an unwanted though and it wasn’t something I wanted and I didn’t like what I was going through. But I think it might have eventually happened because I would have reached my breaking point and just do it when no one is around and it would have been spontaneous because I wouldn’t have woken up one day deciding “Today this will be the day I will kill Squeaky and the my life will be all better again and peaceful.” I am sure I would have regretted it if I did it. Plus when I was alone with him in the house, I either kept him outside or in his crate. I had control of the environment then because I was doing what worked for me even though the rest of my family disagreed and that is when I had problems.
But to put it in a different perspective, maybe I was selfish because I didn’t want to give up my precious time for video games to train the animal myself since no one was willing to do it even though I wasn’t the one who decided to have a new dog. I could have watched him like a hawk to stop him from doing anything wrong. I could have kept the crate with me with the dog in it so my family couldn’t let him out. That is the way you are supposed to house train dogs. I am sure he would have eventually figured out he was supposed to go outside. When a person told me online I was selfish because I thought my own unhappiness was more important that my family and their dog, it really hurt because I felt she was dismissing my feelings and what I was going through and that it was all my fault that I can’t handle my anxiety better and my feelings and the stress and I am just so weak and I should have tried harder and not have meltdowns so I wasn’t making my own family miserable. But the truth was it was more than unhappiness I was going through. I think there is a big difference between being unhappy just because you don’t like how things are going or because you can’t do something vs having distress and changing as a person and not being able to function because of the anxiety and stress.
To this day it still hurts if my mother said I only wanted my way then because it feels like she didn’t really understand what I was going through and the pain I was having and the nightmares I had to have at night and the compulsions about killing the pet. I even wanted to move out and she acted like then I was having a tantrum and wanted my way so of course I would act out more because of the misunderstanding and I wasn’t able to put into words how I was feeling. If I tried to express it, it came out as me me me instead of what I was going through and the pain I was having. I was even threatening suicide to my whole family because it was too much and I couldn’t live with it. I suffered. I had the misery. Does she really think I wanted to be this way?
Should I have tried harder at holding everything in and try to not let it all out? To this day I try and avoid this topic because my old feelings are still there and they will just come back like they are still here and like the situation was still recent. I do wish I knew other options as a 16 year old and no one bothered to tell me how I could handle it and what I could have done instead instead of just saying “There were other options you could have done” and I would always ask ‘Like what?’ and they wouldn’t tell me. What the heck?
How do I deal with stress, I try and avoid it. I try and find solutions for it before it gets way too out of hand. But what happens when it’s beyond your control? I’m fucked.
I understand people out there who kill their kids because they couldn’t handle stress in their lives and the stress of caring for their disabled child or their normal kids because I have been there. I have a hard time judging them if I know I am the one that could have been me if I were in that situation. I have been there before with our dog and with my husband and having a one year old son but the difference is I didn’t go with the plan and I had help. Do I think those moms should try and seek help if they are feeling like doing a double murder and suicide? Absolutely. You don’t want to harm your partner or your children or anyone else. If you are fearing you are heading that way and getting closer to it and you find yourself starting to plan it, call social services or your family or something.
Now what would have happened if I did threaten my whole family I will kill the dog or abuse him if he keeps peeing in the house? I am sure they would have stepped in and help and maybe train the dog better and watch him more. Why didn’t I do the threat? Because I feared being hospitalized. The threat actually worked so it kept me from trying to get more help for myself from my family so I suffered even more and they had even more misery from me. So things maybe would have been better if I did threaten to harm the dog. In a way I would have been asking for help. But if it was seen as me throwing a tantrum and being manipulative, that also wouldn’t have helped with the situation. It would have been dismissing my feelings and what I was going through. Even telling me I just wanted my way then is still dismissing how I felt and the pain I was going through. It’s trivializing my experience. But instead I was emotionally abandoned and treated like I was selfish and trying to get my way and it never made the situation better or myself better.
Every time we hear about school shootings or animal torture, we always hear the word psychopath for those monsters that did it, same as for when parents kill their kids including disabled ones.
I have always felt I had some characteristics because lack of remorse is one of them. that is just something I never grasped, I cannot understand why someone would do something wrong and then feel bad for it. Why would you want to do something bad in the first place?
I remember as a kid I would sometimes do something wrong and not feel bad for it. For example, when I was six or seven I took a pack of gum from the store after Mom had told me I couldn’t have it. I took it off the shelf and opened it and my mother caught me eating it when we got home. She asked me “Were did you get the gum?”
Me: from the store
Mom: Why?
Me: I wanted it.
Mom: But I told you no you couldn’t have it
Me: But I wanted it.
So my mom took it from me and finished putting the groceries away and took me upstairs to my room and made me take some coins out of my piggy bank. She was going to teach me a lesson about if I want stuff from the store and what money is used for. She took me back, told the cashier what I did but she says “Oh that’s okay.” Mom tells her “No she is going to pay for this gum so she will learn her lesson.” So the cashier lets me pay for it and then she hands me back my gum. “Here is your gum dear.” My mom tells her “No, it’s going to be thrown away now, she can’t have it.” The cashier tells her I had paid for it and my mom tells her if she lets me keep that gum, I will think it’s okay to take things from the store. Other customers who were there thought my mother was nuts but an elderly woman said “No that is being a good parent.”
My mom and I left and my mom tossed the gum out and I was mad because I had paid for it not seeming to understand why I couldn’t have it.
So you see, a normal kid would feel bad for taking the gum without paying for it, but me I didn’t care. I was not embarrassed nor even felt bad for breaking the law. I would have just learned if I wanted something, just take it and mom would have to let me have it so that is why she threw it away so I will know there is no point in taking things I want if my mom will just not let me have it. Did I have no remorse because I didn’t understand how it would make others feel around me or did I have that psychopath trait? Even as a kid I had a hard time with feelings and understanding them. I knew of laughing and crying and mad and yelling but I didn’t really understand why they felt that way. Feelings are abstract and I was very concrete. According to my mother I was loving and would pick up on her feelings as a toddler because I would act different around her. She called it a gift. I must have lost it then.
I also teased others kids and didn’t know when to stop and I loved to provoke people to see their reactions and do things to see how people would react and I didn’t seem to care how I made others feel. Did I not understand their feelings and their reactions or was that the psychopathic tenancy?
But as I got older I wanted to be a good person and not evil so I changed my behavior. I compensated. I still don’t feel a lot of emotion so I feel I still lack empathy. I can watch the news and not get really upset like most people do but yet whenever I read stuff by Sarah Burleton, I just want to punch her mother and I feel hate for her because of what she did. I cannot imagine torturing my own child or shooting at an innocent goat. Instead of rehoming the animal, Nancy had decided to shoot it with a BB gun to hurt Sarah because it was her animal. The goat would destroy things on property and eat the flowers and Nancy hated it.
I always got violent thoughts but was never strong enough to execute them to seriously harm other kids including my bullies. I realized at 14 I was too nice to do that but that means I don’t have enough psychopathy in me to do it which is why i believe when people do school shootings, they must have been a psychopath because they had enough in them to execute such an action.
When I was 16 I was having a lot of anxiety and more meltdowns because my family would not keep the house neat so it was stressing me out. Then my dad brought home Squeaky. That caused me tremendous anxiety and it literally made me go crazy. Crazy to a point that I changed as a person. I started to mimic Frankie to get my way so my life would be easier. I also wanted to kill Squeaky and was getting compulsions to drown him in our pond. I believe I would have done it because the only thing that held me back from doing it was fearing i would go to a mental hospital and I wanted to torture him too but was also afraid of getting institutionalized. My mom had already threatened to send me away once so I was forced to stop trying to have ODD. I was having nightmares about the dog and nightmares that my mother had stopped caring about me so she was letting kids be mean to me. I believe I was getting close to killing the animal but then something happened, he got hit by a car and died. That saved me from turning into a psychopath. Thinking of the fact that that dog would have made me go crazy makes me think of this song here:
What could a puppy possibly do that would drive someone to kill the poor thing? Well when there is the OCD, the anxiety, the depression, emotional issues, and the fact the dog wouldn’t quit pissing in the house because no one would watch him and the fact no one would let the person keep them crated or keep the puppy outside would do it because the person had reached their breaking point and couldn’t handle it anymore so they killed whatever was giving them the stress.
What would have happened if i really did kill the animal, I would have been a psychopath and then be recovered from it because I would no longer have all that anxiety and stress and my OCD wouldn’t be so out of control because whatever was causing it had been removed from my environment.
So what would that mean for someone who is at risk like I am. Well first of all they shouldn’t have a pet that can’t meet their standards due to their mental issues. My dad should not have brought home that animal but we had another dog but she met my standards because she always peed outside and she didn’t wreck things. But even if someone would be at risk to kill an animal, it is very unlikely it will happen because first of all if they had a pet, they would either keep the pet locked up or outside and if the pet was still a nuisance, they would re home it than torture it and kill it which is why I say Nancy could have kept the goat fenced in part of their land or get rid of it by rehoming the animal but no she had to shoot it with BBs to punish her daughter. Also they might not live with anyone who has an animal they can’t stand nor would they get in a relationship with someone with it. They would problem solve first before going crazy and for me it would take me a lot before I go crazy and become a psychopath which is why it always scares me to imagine how I would handle a severely autistic child or someone severely handicapped because I worry I would be one of those parents who kills their disabled child. I did try to problem solve with our puppy by keeping him in his crate or outside but no one would let that happen so I got worse and worse and having violent thoughts about our puppy. I used to tell stories in my therapist’s office called The Abusing Adventures of Squeaky and my therapist found them funny and told me his office was a safe place for these stories. Back then i thought he was evil and not a normal animal because he wouldn’t go outside, he would just hold it and wait until he was inside to go so it made me think he was doing it on purpose and he loved going in the house. I can remember my therapist saying to me “Oh you thought he was defiant.” Even as an adult I still didn’t understand how a puppy can be so stubborn and I knew I couldn’t be crazy because he really did wait until he was inside before he took a piss. But no one seemed to believe me because everyone saw him as innocent. Then I started to think if dogs can have fetishes like humans, maybe he had a wetting fetish and loved going inside. It was one of my online friends who laughed and told me he wasn’t doing it on purpose and I asked what did he mean by that and she said he wasn’t doing it to upset me and he didn’t know it was upsetting me. I asked her why did he keep on doing it and she said he was probably just confused, he was a dumb animal. So I did my research and learned that he just probably had it backwards, he came from a pet shop so he always peed inside and thought he could pee inside and puppies when in a new environment, they find all these places in the house they could pee in so crating them is what you do because they will never pee in their bed or area like humans. so I was right about crating our puppy, it is not cruel, that is how you house train them. I wish I knew this at 16 years of age and I wish I was told this solution so i wouldn’t have gone crazy thinking I was trapped and there was nothing I could do. My therapist was correct, there was something I could have done but he wouldn’t tell me when I asked what could I have done? I was so defensive then because anyone who didn’t see it my way was against me. Anyone who treated me like the bad guy was against me so I always put on my defense. But my online friend understood me, she didn’t judge or go against me so I was able to listen and do some research. This is how you get through to people folks, you understand them, see their perspective, not judge them, and it is easier for them to listen because it’s easier to get though to them if you understand their side than treating them like the bad guy. If I knew this at 16, I would have been in control of my environment again and not go crazy and have daily meltdowns and try and mimic Frankie or even doing self harm or even squeezing the puppy or pushing it away with a broom or pounding my fists on his crate with him inside it or pushing it out of the way with my feet or broom whenever he is in it because I hated him and didn’t see him as an animal. It’s like how people don’t see someone as human once they rape a child or do child abuse so they use that to justify for them getting raped or beaten in prison, well I was justifying not seeing him an an animal to do my actions on him to release anger. I also would literally throw him outside because I hated him. We were both at war. But yeah maybe he was an innocent animal like everyone always said. But yet I still don’t feel bad. I must have that psychopathic trait. But that was me going crazy there because of the anxiety and stress and I had been pushed that far by my family so that is why i say my dad should not have gotten a new dog and we should have gotten rid of him. I think it’s wrong to keep a animal in the house with someone who is aggressive with it. That should be a form of animal abuse. But it wasn’t the dog’s fault either. He probably thought I was crazy because he didn’t know that him pissing in the house was making me that way. Plus I think he had it backwards about his toilet like I did when I was 2 and 3. But no way was I pissing in my diapers or on the floor or just in my pants to piss my mother off. What if she had abused me thinking I was doing it on purpose and that I was evil and I was no innocent child so she used that to justify the abuse? It wouldn’t have to be beatings or starvation or anything bad that would harm me or leave me any marks and injuries. I could have been hair pulling or being choked or squeezed or hit because those things would be hard to prove if she wasn’t leaving any marks on me. Yes people would be getting on her case about it and judge her harshly if they all knew than understanding her and seeing her perspective to get through to her. Instead I was put back in diapers because my mother figured I wasn’t ready. Problem was solved even though some people online have felt she did me a disservice when I told them that story about how she tried to potty train me and I had it all backwards so she put me back in them. But too bad puppies don’t wear diapers. But I have heard horror stories online about potty training and some parents snap and abuse them. I couldn’t understand it until I was potty training my son and after but no way am I going to justify their abuse and I didn’t go abusing my son for wetting or messing his pants because he wouldn’t use the potty. But yes I did cry and I did get frustrated to a point where I just wanted to hit him and slap him silly and my dad thought he should be spanked when all I could do is put him in time out, take away a privilege for him, have him get a natural consequence; he wouldn’t be able to wear his big boy underwear if he got them all soiled and I am not going to be washing them until there is laundry. This was after he knew how to use the potty. I never punished him during potty training. He would go forwards and then regress again and that stopped when I had my daughter and poof he never regressed again so I knew he knew how to use the potty and he was just choosing to not go. I knew that all along because he would be good at going potty and then regress. Even with our washer down, he went potty in the toilet and didn’t wet or mess himself until the washing machine was working again so there is another hint that he was doing it on purpose. But I doubt he was doing it to torment me and I have heard of little kids wetting and messing themselves on purpose because they don’t want to stop playing to go potty. I can handle human pee because it’s different than animal pee so it doesn’t make my OCD go bad. It’s easier to clean up and to get rid of.
So can one turn into a psychopath due to the environment and their own mental issues and then not be a psychopath anymore once they are out of whatever caused them to be that way?
If I were seeing a therapist, I would be asking him/her this question,
BTW when the puppy did die, my daily meltdowns went away and my anxiety lessened. My mom also felt relieved when he died because he caused so much chaos on the household even though he didn’t do it on purpose.
I have also tried talking to people including my old therapists about my concern for psychopathy but all of them have told me I am not one if I am even thinking about it and also because I don’t kill and torture people. I am not Diane Downs or Ted Bundy. But is it possible to be one and not act on it? Diane Downs sure shot her kids once but had never killed anyone else or do anything evil before and no doctor ever thought she had cluster B disorders until after she did the crime. She has not done any others since but that is because she is in prison and what if she had gotten away with it, would she have done another evil thing? Would she have tried to kill her kids again? Not all psychopaths do crimes over and over like Bundy did or Dalmar or Gacy. I fact only very few commit crimes. But do I have any psychopath traits? Symptoms do overlap. What if I actually had psychopath traits and they were mistaken for Asperger’s when I was a kid because psychopathy cannot be diagnosed in kids until they are 18. But I have never tortured any animals or anyone so of course it would never be caught. But then again even autistic and aspie children have caused injuries and I have read bad stories online about autistic children being mean to animals. I was rough with them too as a kid because I didn’t really understand. My therapist I saw when I was 11 and 12 had to teach me. But I didn’t really torture them like psychopaths did when they were children. I would never dream of killing an animal as a child or wanting to harm them. I did try to get my cat to fight with our neighbor’s dog once but I wasn’t trying to harm my cat and I didn’t know a dog could kill a cat during a fight. Also I used to think my lack of feelings for others was due to my autism but then I started reading around 2009 that they do have empathy and they in fact feel too much so they get overwhelmed from it so it appears they do not care. I cannot relate to that, I feel too little in fact. I can see someone cry and not be affected by it. I will just know they are sad or upset. But then again I remember reading a story by John Robison in one of his books about how he saw an accident and the person was hurt so he was able to help the person without feeling anything, most people would panic and be upset what they saw and not be able to do a thing about it because their emotions would have gotten in the way. It didn’t mean he was a psychopath of course. I do hear how logical us aspie creatures are but yet that contradicts about having too much empathy so wouldn’t that mean they get in the way if they cause us to shut down? That just shows how different we all are. Maybe I don’t have psychopath traits. Like I say symptoms over lap. I was impulsive when I was a kid too and that is also a symptom of psychopathy. My parents even though I would be one of those school shooters so they made sure my grandfather’s gun was locked up at his house and that they didn’t have any fire arm around. She said I was so impulsive I would have done it without even thinking of the aftermath. Yes I even almost burnt down our barn once when I was 16 because I came home from school very upset so to calm myself, I drag the trash to the rotted wood pile, light it on fire and it burns and then the grass catches on fire and it got close to the barn but the fire didn’t get that far to catch it on fire. My parents came home and saw it and my mom told me how it’s part of my IEP whatever she was talking about and told me I get so impulsive so it’s part of my IEP and I said I don’t get impulsive and she told me to look out the window so i did and she pointed to the grass that was burned and told me “That is how impulsive you were, you almost burned down the barn because you didn’t even think before setting the garbage on fire because you were very upset and that is what happens when you are very upset you get very impulsive.” I have no memory of feeling bad for almost burning down our barn. But the barn didn’t burn down so no need to feel bad about it.
There are also other conditions out there that overlap with psychopathy like narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, oppositonal defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and reactive attachment disorder. I do feel that RAD is basically psychopathy in kids except they are created. I can remember my therapist mentioning conduct disorder to me but he didn’t say I had it so I must be cured from it then because I am not in that environment anymore where I was going crazy and heading for psychopathy or conduct disorder. Makes me wonder if it can come and go. There would be two different types, those who are psychopaths no matter what and the other type would be they are one when it depends on the environment they are in like are they stressed out and having anxiety, and have they reached their breaking point? Then once whatever was causing it is resolved, they no longer have it. That could be the case with school shooters too. they reach their breaking point and go crazy and do a killing spree. The Night Santa Went Crazy.
There is an overlap between the two, what do they have in common; obsessions, anxiety, rituals, the need to perform a task.
But with OCD, they do not like their routines and their obsessions, it causes them distress.
People with autism love their routines, it keeps them relaxed, it helps them function better
But I read people with OCD will perform their routines and tasks to keep themselves calm and to ease their anxiety. But don’t autistic people get anxiety when they can’t perform a task and ritual because of their routine? Don’t they get upset with a change in their routine and have a meltdown? Same thing happens to people with OCD when they also can’t do it. According to my mother, people with OCD can also get violent if you try to keep them from doing their routine. For autistic people, it’s about predictability, for OCD people, it’s about control. They need to be in control because it keeps them calm and relaxed.
I read that only 30% of people with OCD like things clean and neat and are obsessed about a clean house. That is a common stereotype about OCD so you often hear “I am so OCD about my clean home.”
In the movie Snow Cake Linda liked having a clean house and would freak out over dirt and anything out of place. She was a perfectionist about her home, she was literally OCD about her clean home and she also needed everyone to take their shoes off when they come inside, I could relate so much to this because I was exactly the same way when I was a kid, shoes always had to be off, I would freak out over dirt and messes and freak out over dog pee like she did in the movie. But she had autism, not OCD. I have been diagnosed with both in 6th grade. It was like they made a movie about me except it was about a middle aged woman who was autistic, not Asperger’s. She also couldn’t touch the trash bags so her daughter always did it and now that she was deceased, she needed Alex to stay and do it for her. Could she have been a dirtophobic or a germophobic or did she simply have sensory issues with plastic trash bags. Her reason for a clean home could be due to visual processing issues, when too many things are out of place, they can get overwhelmed because of too much information their brain is getting, it cannot filter it, also if things are in the way because they are laying out, it’s hard for them to move their bodies and navigate around the stuff so it’s like a huge obstacle course for them. That could have been the case with Linda than OCD but I kept thinking the whole time she also had it. The thing about it is she liked her clean house and liked her obsession with keeping it clean and having it look like a palace my mom would call it. “I will not make our house look like a palace,” she would tell me.
I was also obsessed about a clean house. it kept me calm and relaxed, I did not like clutter, it felt too chaotic and drove me crazy and I hated messes. My own environment needed to be clean and neat. As far as back to age two, I needed to take a certain step in each room, have my food served in a certain way, one of my cousins even told me that when I was about three, she and her parents and her little sister were visiting us and I had this one bow collection thing and I had to have it a certain way and would get upset if anyone messed it up. That was typical me. Even my mom told me when I was 16 that I had been saying since I was five years old that I always pick up when I am done with it. Yes I always put my toys away when done playing with it and it would always baffle me how kids could just scatter their toys all over and lose pieces to it. I liked these things and they didn’t stress me out unless someone fucked it up. Moving furniture in someone’s doll house would be an annoyance to most children, for me it was a nightmare and more than an annoyance it would really upset me if i saw someone moved even one piece in my dollhouse. I just had to fix it to move on. I didn’t have any meltdowns I would just fix it so I could get over it. I don’t think anyone realized how upsetting this all was for me. My mom learned to keep my brothers out of my room and from touching my stuff or she would be getting screamed at by me for hours and hours because coming home from school and finding someone was in my room because a few things were out of place was like coming home to your house being broken into and stuff being taken. Sure I have always liked to clean and didn’t like my stuff touched but it came to a point where it turned into OCD because I started to impose my routines on other people in my household, they now had to follow my standards of a clean house or else there would be hell. It would be hell for me if there were crumbs on the counter, stuff in the wrong spot and I couldn’t relax and do anything else unless the house was clean. I would want to do other things but couldn’t because of the damn mess so yeah I would be mad about it because it kept me from my life. I did read that autism can cause someone to have OCD and that OCD can be caused neurologically. So it is very possible that my need for a clean home was both Asperger’s and OCD because I liked it and it kept me relaxed and I loved it and cleaning relaxed me but the OCD part was the distress if no one else followed it. In 2001 my parents decided they weren’t going to live that way because they felt they were walking on eggshells all because it was to avoid my anxiety and the chaos but my brothers were not happy, it was driving them crazy so my parents decided I will have anxiety and they quit giving a damn. As a consequence to that, I made their lives hell, not intentionally. The more they did it, the worse my anxiety got and the more they got mad at me about it, the more I acted out and then my dad brought home a puppy that would pee in the house and oh boy that was the straw that broke the camel’s back so I had tremendous anxiety and I went literally crazy to a point I was heading for psychopathy and I got abusive and violent because I thought it would make my life easier because Frankie always got his way with his abuse so I tried his method but it backfired. But thank goodness mother nature kill the dog before I could because I kept on thinking of drowning that thing in our pond and I felt I was getting closer and closer to that compulsion. I hated the anxiety, the daily meltdowns all because of that damn dog. Also the fact no one would keep him outside or crated because they felt it was cruel but yet it would have lessened my anxiety and my dad should not have gotten that dog in the first place because I was already having more anxiety, we had just moved into our new house so having a puppy was not the right time. No one was willing to watch him to house train him and he thought he was supposed to be indoors because he came from a pet shop and he was five months when my dad bought him. It’s easier to train a puppy when they are young and it gets harder when they are older and to house train a dog, you need to keep them crated or be very active with them. Having them in the same room as you while doing your thing is not being active with them. But no one was willing do do that and i can say I was also at fault because I could have given up my computer and video games and train that damn animal myself and that would have lessened my anxiety because I still would have been in control. Then when that puppy died, my anxiety did lessen because there was no more pee in the house and I didn’t have to freak out anymore and live in constant fear.
Then when I became an adult and finished high school, I started to get less obsessed about a clean house, who knows what happened. Maybe because I was an adult so I had more control of my life so I didn’t need to control my environment and the fact my parents decided to pay me for my cleaning obsession so all of a sudden dirt in the house meant more money because shoes on the floor, I get to earn more money by cleaning it again. I was still in control and my family got to do what they wanted and everyone was happy.
But one thing I will never understand is how hard is it to just wipe up the crumbs when you are done making something or how hard is it to just put your book away when you are done reading it? My mom calls this hard and I think “oh FFS.” My Aunt Mary also liked having a clean house, it was not hard for me to hang my towel up or even put a plate in the sink or dishwasher or even wiping the crumbs off the counter, I kept my own mess in my own room when I lived with them. Recently I watched the Dr. Phil show and in one of the episodes was a 20 year old girl and a mother and according to the daughter, her mom was a neat freak and kept everything spotless. The house looked like the parade of homes. But the daughter refused to pick up after herself and everything and I was thinking the whole time how hard is it do pick up after yourself, come on. Then of course my mom was able to explain to me why it’s hard and used a few examples like you are playing with trains and then you both get up to leave the room to get something else but your OCD mother would want it picked up first before you go get that thing or you may be reading a book and then you set it down to go to the bathroom and you come back, the book is back on the shelf and you have lost your place in the book because you didn’t take it with you. My mom also told me she will have her cup of coffee and then someone comes to the door, she sets her coffee down and comes back and sees it’s gone. I asked her if I did those things and she said I did. She told me she would make herself a hot cup of coffee and then set it down to go to the bathroom or to go to the door and come back and see I have poured it out and put the cup in the dishwasher because I would have just taken the cup with me but because she didn’t, it was abandoned and left in the wrong spot. I of course laughed because I can laugh at my own glitches I used to do and how it must have been so hard for my family and a inconvenience. So yes I can see why this would be hard to keep things picked up so you better not bother playing with anything because what is the point if you will have to put it away when you leave it or when you can’t even take a break and come back to it later and you better just bring your book with you or your hot cup of coffee or your plate of food. Just imagine going to someone’s door and the person answering is holding a plate of food in her hand and she sets it down next to her as she writes and then carries it again and you are left wondering why couldn’t she just leave her food in the kitchen or on the table so you tell her that and she goes “if I do that, my OCD daughter will just dump it in the trash thinking it’s abandoned.” I don’t know if I was ever this extreme except about the hot coffee thing.
So some people were right that I do expect people to follow my standards and expect people to be like me.
Lately my kids have been driving me crazy and bringing up my anxiety. I have no way of staying calm unless they can both stay out of trouble. I can’t even keep my son in his room because he will just keep coming out and I can hold the door close and he will just pull on it and we are playing tug o war with the door. But I am stronger than him so I have no problems holding it closed. My son will run around, throw things, jump on furniture, my daughter will keep getting into things, climb on furniture and tables, she can climb up the stairs and down them, and it’s “no no no” and chasing them all over. I admit I can’t control them and they will just keep on doing it even after I say no or do time outs or put my son in his room. Then finally it was better when I finally separated them. I yelled at my husband to keep our son away from me because they are driving me crazy and I can only focus on one. So they stayed in the basement while our daughter stayed upstairs and she was a lot calmer and stayed out of trouble. I think with them together, it is chaos and they both get hyper and into trouble and then there is sibling rivalry. they remind me every day how I shouldn’t have more kids by how they act. If two is stressful for me, I cannot imagine three or more. They are my birth control. Their behavior tells me I am done after having two kids. I didn’t need a IUD after all. Oh wait, at least we are saving money on condoms so never mind. And I hate being one of those screaming parents. I no longer judge the ones that yell yell yell because they might just be overwhelmed or have an anxiety disorder just like me. But it’s not the kids job to accommodate their parents just so they can be calm and be more relaxed and be a better parent that way. Then the kids feel they never had a childhood and they had to grow up and not be children. I just have to be a tougher mother or make my husband get involved more. He keeps one child, I keep the other so that way there is no chaos and no trouble and I am not a screaming mother. Also the whining and the screaming also does it too. My parents are the same way but the difference is they are in their sixties so the older you get, the less energy and patience you have and I am only in my thirties so I already feel old already because it’s like I have no patience and no energy. It’s like I have aged too quickly mentally. But my husband isn’t like that at all so it’s like he is still young mentally and he also has anxiety like I do. I wonder how does he not get overwhelmed from the chaos. I have always been like this, even in childhood, and I thought I would grow out of it but never did.
My World 