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Parent with undiagnosed ASD

uniqueOcean72 May 10th, 2020

Hi everyone!

I wasn't really sure where else to post this.

Background

My mom has been unintentionally emotionally abusive for most of my life. It caused me to have a meltdown. This lead to me seeing counsellors and psychologists who happen to specialize in ASD. They thought that I was autistic at first. There were a lot of conflicting signs and they couldn't figure it out for a while. It was as if I had been born neurotypical, but somehow had 'developed' characteristics of ASD very early on. Two of the psychologists I saw met with my mom on a regular basis, with one of them meeting with her as part of my session every week. After a couple months, both highly suspected that my mom is autistic. It completely explained why she didn't understand that what she was doing was hurting my feelings, even when myself, my family, and the psychologists all tried to explain it to her; and why I had ASD-related learned behaviours. She can only follow certain extremely specific instructions and even then she would get confused sometimes.

The Problem/Tl;dr

My mom doesn't know that she's autistic and she's too stubborn / prejudiced to get diagnosed or consider it. She hurts herself and the family emotionally very regularly because she doesn't know better. I already have C-PTSD from her. Any tips?
P.S. She tends to try to force/guilt physical affection on my sister and I... it's extremely uncomfortable. Any idea why and how to stop this?

1
faithlove1111 May 17th, 2020

@uniqueOcean72 , Thankful that you are seeing a therapist as It's very beneficial for yourself to have some support . You can suggest to your mom but souds like she will only agree if she makes the choice of seeking help all by herself. Meanwhile , maybe your sister could speak to a school counsellor or even log in to 7 cups to share her thoughts.