How do you support other siblings when a teen decides they are trans

Unfortunately I'm increasingly seeing narcissism going hand in hand with autism presentations. I think part of this has been unwittingly caused by the 'neurodiversity movement' which I am finding increasingly harmful to ND people- ironically because it is often being championed by the most narcissistic individuals! This makes sense because it brings a lot of narcissistic supply - admiration, money for the latest homegrown charity etc.

My own family is very ND and I keep all of us away from the ND movement. It often veers between narcissism and victimhood, between ND 'superpowers' and complete entitlement and infantilising. I'm probably explaining this very badly. In a nutshell in a bid to avoid 'masking' some people are being encouraged to do whatever the fuck they want whenever they want, then becoming very distressed that the world will not accommodate them. Trans ideology is just one expression of this and fits perfectly into the narcissistic end of autism. In real life people quickly find they are rejected by others except the 'allies' and those susceptible to narcissistic abuse but online they can find a bottomless pit of well-meaning idiots to cheer them on.

It is an almost institutionalised support system for narcissists.

Hard agree.

There's been a lot of research into the incidence of autism in affected families but I wonder if there's been any into the incidence of NPD? There is plenty in ours, and whereas it seems to have been caused by attachment disorder issues in an earlier generation, my observation is that learned behaviour then filters down. It might account for why some individuals are more susceptible to trans ideology than others.

Probably way OT now, sorry.

No, please don’t feel you’ve upset me. It’s just this thread has brought home just how unseen and unsupported siblings have been under this frankly tyranical and blind affirmative approach to care. It is an almost institutionalised support system for narcissists. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my older child and can see she has so much to offer, but the blind pandering to her of this treatment model, and the compelled responses from us, have NOT helped her either, so the damage done is two fold, impacting two young lives. It just makes me so angry.

And as several PPs here and on other current threads have said - unless you have lived it, dealt with being in the Tavistock limbo-wait list, you have no real understanding of it. I truly do feel that the allies are at best well-meaning and naive (coming from a perspective of ‘I have trans friends’) and at worst malign enablers of very damaged young people who need professional care and support, not cheerleaders and additional manipulation by ideologues.

Sigh. My day started with a very early, panicked request to help produce a mini essay in 30mins on the agricultural revolution because AuDHD brain freeze had kicked in and it was due today. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Thanks, @SophiaCohle . I'm not sure that this was the explanation in his case, though do understand it is true of many people with autism. In the course of copyediting a massive book on neurology I had access to loads of specialist videos etc and, for fun, really (DS was only about 12 [EDIT, no, he must have been much younger than that. Nine or so] at the time, undiagnosed and bumbling along not too disastrously) we went through of some of these autism-related emotion recognition resources together . He scored very highly for recognising emotions in faces (as did I), whereas his dad failed miserably! It is such a complex picture.

I don't think autism is one thing at all. It is only defined in relation to clusters of characteristics, and these are at least partly disjunctive. And we haven't identified a unique pathway that produces those. Similarly, psychosis is only defined in terms of its manifestations, and has no unique pathway creating them. I suspect there are several underlying conditions leading to each set of characteristics, and that one or more of these will turn out to be a unified explanation of both a person's autism and their psychosis.

Sorry, I know this is off-topic a bit.

but one thing in particular that I don't understand is the claim that an autistic person can't read others' emotions. He could, definitely. But I guess there were probably complexities in how he processed this information.

I might be able to answer that, or provide one answer anyway. The thing is that you learn, and eventually over the course of your life you accumulate experiences and information, and you file it all away in a highly organised interpersonal supercomputer in your head.

I fail dismally on those tests where you're shown a context-free face and asked to say what the person is feeling, but I can do it IRL because almost every emotion or reaction that someone can display is something that you've encountered before at some point, and you can tap into a kind of "oh, this is like when..." recognition and acknowledgement of it. It sounds kind of cold, but in some ways is the opposite, because you've tuned more consciously and with more effort into someone's feelings and are very aware of the importance of doing so.

It's not true imo that autistic people don't empathise - far from it, in fact - but they have to learn how to recognise what it is they need to empathise with. That's easier with family and people you see regularly, and also as you yourself get older, just as (e.g.) voice recognition works better once a lot of data points have been accumulated.

That's how it is for me anyway. Some people are easier to read than others, just as hard-of-hearing people find some people's speech easier to decipher than others. When I was with my ex still, I sometimes needed to ask him what was going on in a given situation, as some people deliberately or unwittingly obscure their emotions.

But just to add - and I'm thinking on my feet here - that this is something that can be exploited by others who want to manipulate autistic, especially young, people. The internet is absolutely awash with memes and youtube clips etc of people "reacting" to stimuli - see how this baby panda reacts when his mother appears after a long absence, see how this 3-year-old reacts to hearing Mozart after cochlear implants etc etc. I find this stuff baffling, and so do NT people I know (mostly those of us who aren't young and have lived without 24/7 visual entertainment) but maybe the point is to corrupt the internal supercomputer of young, vulnerable autistic people by introducing a load of nonsense data? Just a wild thought. More research needed. <heart sinks at thought of looking at lots of youtube clips>

Oh @CautiousLurker just reading that my emotions jump from rage to devastation for you and your family.
I am so sorry if my question has upset you or brought back difficult emotions.
How dare these so called allies promote and perpetuate these behaviours.

I'm so sorry @CautiousLurker

I agree it seems (from my perspective, in hindsight) to be almost unconscionable that a second child’s needs are de-prioritised, but when you have been fed a narrative that one child will kill themselves if you do not pander to them they necessarily become the focus. We were told that our DD planned to be dead by her 18th birthday. We were not allowed to make plans, buy cards or gifts because she was going to kill herself by then (acc to SocServs, CAMHS etc). The family was on an agency-imposed suicide watch for years: which meant I slept barely 2 hours a night for more than 2yrs because she is a night roamer and would be in the kitchen etc where medications and knives etc were under lock and key; I used to be physically sick every morning when she did not appear by my DS’s school run as I would have to go up and waker her. We lived in the fear that we would find her dead every morning. It kills you inside.

In your head, preventing death of child A has to be the imminent and urgent priority, but you justify it to yourself as being in Child B (& C & D etc)’s interests because you don’t want them to discover the body or suffer loss.

The fear, out of the narrative you are fed by the professionals, is so raw and acute that you have no choice. You are made to feel that if Child A succeeds, you have failed, been negligent. The onus is on you, even though it means Child B cannot access urgent medications (migraine drugs etc), even if it makes keeping the loos clean impossible because medications and bleach is locked away. It’s like living on a psych ward.

It is only afterwards when it becomes clear that they never had any REAL intention of doing anything, that they were just deeply depressed, distressed and had learned on line that presenting as suicidal MIGHt get them elevated up the Tavistick wait list, might get them PB/X-sex hormones sooner, might get them onto the surgery wait list immediately that you realise you have been totally conned. And that the professionals who should have discerned what was going on and not enabled it, have allowed you to psychologically damage Child B.

There is no support offered for Child B - at least there wasn’t until our Child A decided to moot with Child B which would be the least traumatic way of killing herself from Child B’s perspective - drinking bleach or jumping off the roof - that social services finally considered his needs. Briefly. But after a few visits, a 360 review covering school etc, they concluded he was safe and our parenting was responsible and grounded. But the suicide safety plan was implemented meaning Child B had to join the psych ward along with all of us regardless of their duty to protect HIS wellbeing too.

sorry, another long ranty reply…

Am so sorry again @EugenieGrandet to direct this at you, because it's a question for most parents in this situation but only because you've mentioned it.
You said the family have to pussy foot around one of your children and that engaging on this distresses dd2 but the family still does it?
I just struggle that one child's wants are placed so firmly above another's.

I think my son had this difficulty ... alexithymia, though I've only just learned the word.
Often after difficult conversations/confrontations I would ask him about his feelings and he would deny having any. I think many of us, especially if depressed or traumatised, have this difficulty to some extent, but with him it was often complete. Not always, and I eventually saw more and more of a part of him that was incredibly rich in feeling, and capable of reflecting on his feelings in therapeutic contexts.

He was also deeply perceptive of others' feelings ... as well as being also, in some circumstances blind to them. There are a million ways in which I don't understand what is conveyed by the diagnosis autism (given that of course each autistic person is profoundly different from every other autistic person), but one thing in particular that I don't understand is the claim that an autistic person can't read others' emotions. He could, definitely. But I guess there were probably complexities in how he processed this information.

Regarding self-harm, he did this a lot and was strikingly blind to its effects on others. I remember him once coming downstairs and asking for help with a cut that was deeper than he had perhaps meant. It was bleeding profusely. He definitely wasn't trying to shock or manipulate or pressure me (though I do understand that self-harm can carry these sorts of significances). It was like it simply hadn't occurred to him that I might have any feelings about it at all.

This strange combination of compassionate perception and total blindness was also present when he very movingly decided to attend the funeral of a relative with us, despite being ill and isolated. He was motivated by warm concern for the family, and an awareness of all the feelings present at a funeral, but when we arrived at the hospitality part I had to suggest to him that he put his jacket back on to cover the many many self-harm scars that were on show. He immediately understood that this was appropriate, but it simply hadn't occurred to him.

Being so lost in your own self, in a mosaic of deep awareness and contrasting deep blindness, must be very disorientating; and I guess that (combined with the rigidity of thought that also characterised his autism) it must have been tempting to imagine a single overall solution, a single lever that could be pulled, to make everything fall into place and become meaningful -- ie becoming a woman, or acknowledging that he was in fact a woman.

It reminds me of the early chapters of Jude the Obscure. As I remember (haven't read it for 40 years) Jude is full of confusion and ambition in his young life and he wants to learn a foreign language. But he misunderstands what is involved in learning it: he thinks it is like learning a code, that there is one simple code-breaking rule that you can apply that will make the foreign language completely comprehensible to you. Did my son (and others in his position) view transition like that?

@MaidOfAle thank you for explaining alexithymia so clealy. My young person also says they do not know what happy and sad are. Some time ago they told me an event that happened and said that was the last time they felt sadness but they do not remember that now. They also say they dont know what love is. We put this down to the trauma of being bullied but maybe it is autism too. Or trauma accentuating the autism.
Undiagnosed or late diagnosed autism can cause great suffering to the individual

@MaidOfAle 🌺I'm so sorry. I appreciate the insight as I've wondered a great deal. He's extremely articulate, however, so not sure if it's exactly the same, but maybe not feeling he can share emotion? Sometimes we manipulate to get help the only way we know how.

Kellie Maloney assaulted their ex wife, so can fuck right off.

Re self-harm and purposely showing the marks: for me, it was a way of showing how unhappy I was without using words because I didn't and still don't have words to articulate it. Alexithymia is a common feature of autism, and it's when you can't name or describe your emotions in words. So I didn't, and still don't, understand what "happy" means and all of "angry", "guilty", "scared" etc were called "bad" and still all get mixed up in the moment. Showing the self-harm marks can be an attempt to manipulate, I don't dispute that, but it can also be a good-faith silent scream for help with a problem that the screamer can't even describe.

Interesting you should note anorexia. My friend's son has claimed that, as it's a "girls' disorder" but I saw no signs of it (he's actually overweight due to the estrogen). Maybe disordered eating? He also did some cutting for about 6 months and would wear shorts to show off the cuts (not deep). No idea if this is related, and I didn't understand why every time we saw him he purposely wore 'short shorts' to show the scars...it obviously speaks to mental illness, but I don't understand it and my friend has been too distressed to talk about in terms of why-she was more focused on stopping it. and apparently it was very shortlived, but not sure.

@Delphinium20 your poor friend. What she has been put through in terms of blame and guilt sounds horrendous. So immature from someone in their 20s. I came across a podcast with the journalist Hadleigh Freeman and she draws parallels between trans and anorexia, which I found interesting. Those suffering from anorexia might do similar to their parents but they would do it because they lacked cognitive function because of malnutrition. It’s not right in either instance, but you could understand it better in somebody whose brain is starved.
It must come from a lack of empathy due to neurodivergence and if you don’t have any coping skills then I guess you can become a pretty horrible person to live with, lashing out, apportioning blame etc. I’m sure a therapist would say that it is not ok and boundaries need to be put in place.
It is interesting that autism is so prevalent in people suffering from anorexia and also in teens with ROGD. Our understanding of autism has increased so much in the last few years that hopefully we will get better at diagnosing and supporting young people struggling to understand themselves.

Oh gosh, I relate to this so much, the self-scrutiny and self-recrimination. And you're on to a loser as we all make mistakes and it's natural, particularly as women in this culture, to feel guilty for everything and nothing. My mum used to say, "a woman's place is in the wrong".

If you were wanting to create a, um, coercive organisation that trashed women's rights by undermining the way words can be used to express women's oppression, what better tool could you harness than women's own self-doubt and self-blame?

Maybe recognising that tendency in ourselves, and rejecting it, and stubbornly refusing to blame ourselves for a phenomenon that's mostly very clearly driven by bad actors on the internet is something we should be actively doing as a first step to de-fanging some of this stuff.

Sending virtual hugs to your friend - I am endlessly stunned by our ability to continue to love and worry over our kids/god children even when they display such selfish and narcissistic behaviours. They’ll never understand just how deeply they are loved: that largely maternal ability to love so completely and unconditionally is such a superpower (and a curse).

Beautifully stated, @CautiousLurker thank you

It is frustrating as I do honestly have every sympathy with genuine trans people (e.g. former boxing promoter Kellie Mallory). But the movement has been taken over & they are targeting the vulnerable & impressionable. Telling a children year old how they identify & encouraging hormone therapy is just horrifying, and then isolating them from their parents & friends. No other group would get away with this legally.

@Delphinium20 Am so sad to read about your friend’s experience. She was going through this at a time when you were absolutely not allowed to question your child’s identity - and clearly their behaviour.

It sickens me as we really SHOULD be able to push back. When I was growing up (in the wild 80s and 90s), if we come home drunk at 15, skived school, or parents found drug paraphernalia you’d have expected to be on the sharp end of a serious bollocking. But with this parents have lost their right of reply. And it’s leeched into everything else now - so that if they DO skive from school, or get caught underage drinking, you are supposed to rush them to therapy so that you can better understand them and absorb the responsibility for their behaviour because whatever their reasons it must ultimately be your fault.

I know the pendulum swings both ways before it settles back in the middle, and this is the reaction to over-authoritarian parenting of past decades, but could it hurry up and recalibrate?

Sending virtual hugs to your friend - I am endlessly stunned by our ability to continue to love and worry over our kids/god children even when they display such selfish and narcissistic behaviours. They’ll never understand just how deeply they are loved: that largely maternal ability to love so completely and unconditionally is such a superpower (and a curse).

My friend's son does this. He has ADHD as does his mother (tho, she wasn't diagnosed until he was). I have my own doubts about ADHD treatments but my friend has always been very successful in school and career, and when their son came along, she, like many of us working moms, took on the bulk of the childcare. At times, she'd be juggling so much, she would drop son off late at an event or be frazzled in the mornings. Just like I have.
^
Despite growing up upper middle class,^ private schools, loving married parents, apparently his childhood trauma is due to her lateness. She apparently is in therapy because her trans son expects her to confront her parenting fails. She believes she was an awful parent and now she's decided the only way to atone is to fully affirm him, when she was first questioning it. This strains our relationship greatly as I can't stomach her defending his sumo wrestling sized body entering women and girls's restrooms.

He's my godson, I love him dearly, but when he told me the thing about her being late (he was in his 20s at the time), the urge to slap that nasty expression off his smug face both shocked me and also opened my eyes at how ungrateful and narcissistic he really was. It was a real turning point for me when I saw that this ideology is designed to destroy families and friendships.

In a word yes.

Which is precisely why MN banning conversations in just so infuriating.

If you look into this, the advice is pretty much the best you can find AND it defuses a lot of the family guilt in terms of realising how you can feel powerless and what the alienation process involves.

Tricky as cults work by isolating the individual from friends and family and have zero tolerance for any other point of view but their own. The individual can only see what they are allowed to see and just get drawn in. But the trans movement is so mainstream now it is hard to fight. They have the social media content, influencers, and just make their demands without any form of discussion, can get away with threats of violence and now the situation is been abused by men who feel able to access single sex spaces.

But be quick to screenshot it as someone may come along to report/delete it any second…!!!

@Runor

@RedToothBrush posted some good advice at 22.38 yesterday.