I am not in a position to talk about neurodiversity but you don’t really say much about the impact your condition had/has on you apart from a not uncommon experience of isolation (common universally, NT and ND, that is) so one doesn’t really get a picture of you IYSWIM.
But I just wanted to say it’s my belief that we can hurt ourselves quite badly sometimes, by raking over past woes.
Not all woes, certainly, but some don’t really require our compulsive revisiting in order to reabsorb them, and just get on with living.
(I tend to cast a cold eye in a lot of therapists, whose bread and butter depend in our willingness to pick at healing scabs.)
What would you gain if everyone here were to affirm that yes, that was mean of your parents? It would cement an impression you’ve been nurturing, and turn it into a rock on your head.
Many of us, even out there in real life, endured parental cruelties intended to be of benefit. (Boarding school at a tender age, emotional absence, rejection of sexual orientation, or of personality ‘quirks’, being very common hurts, without mentioning far worse ones)
But if we are getting by tolerably well now, I think it’s a healthy idea to have compassion for our parents as a general rule, and concede that they were doing their best for us.
They may well have had their own challenges just as you do, and if you were suddenly told by a jury here that they never loved you, or they neglected you in a criminal way….that is not much use to your soul, is it?
Why seek to embrace darkness, in blame, and in resentment?
Still, every such discussion is always sealed by Philip Larkin, as we know.
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad/ They might not mean to, but they do.” 🤷🏼♀️
But so what, essentially. ‘Man hands on misery to man’….but it is up to ourselves to move on, annealed from that test, and not stand on the spot raking over the coals. (If it isn’t essential)