If you are a woman diagnosed with autism, or have experience, please give me your opinion

[Parrotid]

Background is that ASD and ADHD run rampant through my family. I have ADHD (inattentive) as do some of my kids. I have two maternal uncles with ASD traits, and then there is my mum. She is in her seventies and v sprightly, still working etc. My family are v religious and also quite showy, she likes to be SEEN to be good etc.

We have fallen out on a grand scale. The gist of it is that I feel she has betrayed me repeatedly. I’m divorced and despite my ex husband’s shit behaviour she refused to see no wrong in him at all. She stayed in touch with him and would facilitate contact between him and the children when it was meant to be carefully managed. She also accused me of deliberately making his home life difficult in an effort to make him leave and that if I had been a better and more attractive wife then perhaps he wouldn’t have been so difficult. All delightful stuff.

we haven’t spoken for months now and she seems to have no real understanding of WHY it mattered to me when she would take his side. She would call it “keeping the peace” (she would do stuff like give him a lift to the pub or babysit if he wanted to go out and I wasn’t around, despite it being HIS responsibility.) She believed she was helping us to stay married, rather than supporting me.

Anyway, it occurred to me that perhaps, just perhaps this is all a manifestation of a lack of Theory of Mind. That in her head there are rules, eg “We don’t have divorce in this family. The wife must be pretty and a great cook. Husbands can go out when they like.” And that she was just sticking to that instead of actually seeing what was happening before her eyes - I was falling to bits and he was horribly cruel and abusive.

So, could this be a manifestation of the autistic traits which are so strong in the family? Or am I clutching at straws?

Anyone?

So, could this be a manifestation of the autistic traits which are so strong in the family? Or am I clutching at straws?

I think you are looking to excuse your mother for behaving in a way that is inexcusable, autism or not.

I am an autistic woman but cannot make any connection with your mums decision to stay in touch with your ex.

Thankyou. I appreciate your view. If she had some rigid thinking around something, as my mother does around me/what’s morally right as she sees it, might that make her actions more understandable?

(For disclosure I told her again and again and again that she shouldn’t contact him and I wouldn’t be able to trust her if she did, so she knew at an intellectual level I thought her actions were wrong.)

I have autism and I don't recognise this... the rigid thing and black and white view (to the detriment of you and the relationship with you) are more likely to be a product of something else.... Autistic traits can include these though so I can understand why you think that. You mother seems to lack any sort of empathy to you though - that is the part I don't recognise.

My mother was a bit like this - but she was like it throughout my life. Anything that reflected badly on her was immediately managed as well as possible, but never a thought on how it affected me. My mother did not have the emotional intelligence to raise a child and never made any effort to change that. I felt that I was an extension of her and everything I did had to reflect that. My mother also preferred my husband to me but I saw her actions as deeply misogynistic by the end and I have no respect for her.

I don't mean to be blunt but your relationship did not appear to be valuable to her, or she saw you as so much an extension to her that the risks she took seemed miniscule. That's hard, and it would be difficult to maintain the relationship and will be nearly impossible to create a healthy relationship. If you do restart contact with her I would do so with that knowledge in mind and work to getting over that because it is very unlikely she will change. I hope things get easier for you in the future.

Maybe, maybe not. It could well be an ASD trait that she's incapable of seeing it any other way if from her upbringing and mentality that this is what is right and true to do. Autistic people are also (stereotypically) known to have very little empathy and can't see anything from anyone's point of view, so this isn't far-fetched either if she falls on that spectrum. Of course, this stereotype isn't true for many.I can understand why you're trying to see things from different angles in order to understand (but not necessarily excuse or justify) and I commend you for that. Hopefully you won't let that keep you from seeing the wrong in it either, autistic or not.

I had more spaced out paragraphs when I was writing the above post. Sorry they ended up squished together once posted.

Autistic people are also (stereotypically) known to have very little empathy and can't see anything from anyone's point of view, so this isn't far-fetched either if she falls on that spectrum. Of course, this stereotype isn't true for many.

It's not just the case that it isn't true for many. It's the case that this stereotype has been thoroughly debunked and an autistic person is no less likely to be empathetic than any non-autistic person.

Of course some autistic people and some non-autistic people lack empathy, but there's no correlation between being autistic and lacking empathy so please don't spread damaging, disproved stereotypes.

I'm diagnosed autistic but wouldn't think she was from your description alone OP. However I also think whether she could be or not is a bit of a red herring: I'm sure lots of people could act like her with or without any form of neurodiversity.

It sounds more like there are some toxic relationship patterns at play, like she blames you and your behaviour for your relationship breakdown more than anything else. Did you have the label of naughty or difficult child at all?

This sounds more like narcissism to me.

I wouldn't say it's been thoroughly debunked as what's now in question is whether autistic people are more likely to have less cognitive empathy than NT people. What has been accepted is that autistic people are no more or less likely to have affective empathy than NT people.

PenanceAdair

That stereotype has indeed been debunked.

Research shows people with autism may struggle with cognitive empathy because they are unable to recognize and name emotions based on facial expressions. Eye scan studies found people with autism tend to look at the periphery of a face rather than pay attention to the eyes and mouth, where emotions are typically displayed.

However, while cognitive empathy can be lower in people with autism, affective empathy—which is based on instincts and involuntary responses to the emotions of others—can be strong and overwhelming. In fact, newer research suggests that some people with autism may actually feel other people's emotions more intensely.

OP

I was also going to suggest you read about narcissism with regards to your mother. She is very much like your ex; an abuser too and this is also why she got on with him. It was another way of she getting back at you.

Yes I agree with this.

Yep, exactly. So find it harder to recognise other people's emotions, but if anything likely to have more of the kind of empathy that people are usually referring to when they use the term generically, and that really matters i.e. actually empathising with people.

OP I am autistic and know many autistic women. I recognise none of your mother's behaviour in any of them.

She could be autistic whilst also being a twat. Being autistic doesn't cause being a twat. I'm Audhd, and not a twat, the same as my immediate and extended family who are neurospicy. Apart from one brother and sister, they're twats. Nothing to do with their neurodiversity.

I have autism and my whole family have autism. I think it would actually be far more common for your Mum to side with you in that situation and be completely unable to see or understand any other sides. I know I tend to be very black and white about things but to me family comes first, I literally have no time or interest in other people. So it would be very easy for me to just completely cut your ex out of my life and focus on you as my dd.

Yep.

There’s a really funny and good episode of Big Bang - which I usually can’t stand- where a new girlfriend one of them has is deaf and she turns out to be a gold digger and absolutely vile and everyone is like “oh she can’t be awful - she’s deaf”! 😆 People with disabilities/ autism whatever else can and are often still arseholes, nothing to do with autism etc.

Sounds like internalised misogyny to me.

Yes, this!

I'm autistic and I don't recognise this as autism. I recognise it as how my mother often behaves. She consistently favours her children's partners and ex partners, blaming her children for relationship issues and siding with the partner in all situations up to (not including) obvious physical violence.

The theory of mind aspect of autism has been largely debunked now. It's mostly an issue of expressive communication differences so autistic people are really empathic but struggle to express that so people don't read them as such.

I think you are grasping at straws to see the best in her, which is a coping strategy when being repeatedly let down by people who are meant to love us.

None of what you have described OP sounds like how my autism affects me.

it’s also not very nice just to assume awful behaviour could suggest autism - but it’s usual for this site.

This is not what having ASD is like in my experience. Having ASD is not just having one or two traits of being rigid etc. Everyone on the planet likely has at least one trait that someone with ASD or ADHD might also have - but that is very far from having either of these - and it is actually quite insensitive and ignorant to go round using terms like ASD and ADHD on this type of basis. It is like when people say they are a bit OCD just because they are superstitious. You either have it or you do not, and if you have it it could be mild or more severe. My sense from the OP post is none of the family actually have anything at a level that could be diagnosed as something, they just aren’t perfect - like any normal family.

Has it been totally debunked? I have ADHD and have several close autistic family members, and the ASD family members certainly do struggle with empathy in that they find it very hard to see things from another person's point of view.

It doesn't mean they don't have sympathy for others, nor that they can't recognise when someone is upset, for example, but they just can't do putting themselves in another person's shoes, and this can lead to behaviors that seem unkind on the surface, but are about lack of understanding not lack of kindness if you look at what's actually going on. I've always understood this to be part of autism.

I found the lack of emotional connection or affection from my ASD mother - that stemmed from her lack of empathy - hard to deal with as a child. My sister less so as she's also on the spectrum and doesn't feel a need for connection in the same way as I did.

As an adult, I can better understand - and am less hurt by - my mum's lack of empathy now I know it's not a lack of love, it's just her brain works differently. If people are now saying this isn't autism, then this makes no sense to me at all.

It could be a sign of autism depending on your culture. I’m Indian, a lot of my family is autistic, and social conditioning from birth means many autistic women can have very rigid ideas of what a woman should / shouldn’t do. I suspect my sil is autistic - she literally didn’t come out of the kitchen but had nothing to show for it (eg taking 5 hours to make a simple meal for 3 people that should take an hour, no concept of hygiene so DN keeps getting tummy bugs etc). She is incredibly scathing about working mothers because her mum, my mil, is but then became one and complains about how exhausting it is to be ‘someone else’ at work. I think all of that together plus DN having major signs is definitely a sign of ASD.