My mum is autistic and avoids me because she says I’m too emotional.

[Neverreallyknow]

I’m struggling with this really. I’m not sure if I’m too emotional as I was brought up to hide all emotions as she had no idea what to do with me. I’m not running around stupid and I have a few good friends and a nice partner.

She pretty much avoids me now as she still has no idea what to do with me. She prefers my brothers company as he is much easier, he’s more like her. Should I just leave them to it? It does get me down but I can’t turn into someone else. She isn’t horrible but she will literally blank what I say or dismiss it. She doesn’t come to visit me but she will visit my brother.

@MelodyFinch that sounds useful. We do speak an entirely different language. I do need to let it go but it’s difficult because it’s all part of me, I realise I need to meet her where she is but I’m unsure if I can do that. I can’t live in a world where I only say the things she thinks I should say. I don’t know how to talk with zero emotions. When I spend time with her she tries to control the whole experience and I can’t go off track or else she shuts me off and literally won’t talk to me. I end up getting stuck wondering how she actually views me, as the just wrong object that doesn’t do what it should?!

The pain is coming from the desire to engage with a mother and receive emotional support, can you free yourself of this desire by getting emotional support elsewhere?

Even paying a therapist is surely preferable to living in hope and banging your head against the brick wall that is your mother, in hopes of her changing.

How can you be helped to accept your mother will never be who you want her to be? Remembering just as your mother has had to try to accept you will never be who she wants you to be.

A radical acceptance, an extreme letting go of the fantasy dream of the mother you wanted, needs to occur.

Inner child work may be the next step for you.
The mother you want doesn’t have to be your mother, you can become the mother you always wanted, you can give yourself the loving you need.
https://www.betterup.com/blog/inner-child-work

You do not “need” to help or make your mother see or do anything. You are a mother yourself. You have a lot of healing and living to do yourself.

I second finding a good therapist and teasing out the difference for you between your mother as autistic(incapable or oblivious) and narcissistically self involved (incapable and actively reactive and defensive).

The important thing is for you to gain some perspective and distance on the relationship and on tour own responses to her and others. At the moment you are very “fused” with your identity as a neglected child (which you were) who learned to cope by creating a galse self (which you did) which does not serve you well in some interactions. But that emotion suppressing, outsider, victim, hurt child is not all of you. She is just a part. Learning to understand yourself is much more important than connecting with her.

I feel a bit bad because the more I learn about myself the more I actively hate my own mum. Not just disagree but really not like. I feel a terrible person for disliking someone autistic, a mum. I don’t want her around my children. I don’t want to visit her because I don’t feel good around her. Everyone around me thinks I’m horrible. My brothers didn’t have this experience, perhaps because he is a boy and a girl feels differently? As a mum myself I’m horrified at the lack of self awareness she had. I stopped eating, I started hoarding (I don’t do these now), how she couldn’t see I don’t know.

Never really know,
It is so hard to come face to face with the reality of your inner child’s anger. I strongly advise that you search out a skilled therapist to hold your hand and guide you through this. I feel like giving you a hug. We all have different ways of dealing with neglectful mothers or not dealing with it at all ( and absorbing harmful consequences). In my own therapeutic journey, after my mother developed dementia, I found myself feeling fiercely protective of her at one point and disliking and rejecting the therapist. Even though I knew that my unboundaried and irresponsible mother had done me great harm.

@MelodyFinch at the end of the day it’s our mum, she’s in our DNA, it’s automatic to want to protect. Everything I feel goes against what I’m supposed to feel, it feels wrong and necessary at the same time to disconnect. Everywhere I look there are mums and daughters happy together. I want that for my children. I encourage them to be who they are. I don’t like people’s judgment when they see me not loving my mum, they think something is wrong with me.

It is never helpful to hate your Mum or anyone else tbf.
Look at your Mum see her for what she is, accept she probably did the best she could with the skills she had.
Now it's your turn. You have the opportunity to rid your family of behaviour patterns that may well have been damaging them for generations.
Work on yourself for the benefit of yourself, your children and those that follow after.
As they say, you can only start from where you are!

She has never been diagnosed with ASD and again nothing you write re her points to autism. I would put a crisp fiver on it she is not autistic and instead has an untreated, and untreatable, personality disorder.

What if anything do you know about her childhood, I ask as this often gives clues. She had a choice when it came to you. Her best was simply not good enough and she likely doled out the same treatment to you as she herself received.

Neverreallyknow

Re your comments in quotemarks:

"Everywhere I look there are mums and daughters happy together. I want that for my children. I encourage them to be who they are".

This is great; the cycle of abuse and dysfunction has stopped with you. Also you would not and have never treated your kids like you were (and remain) treated now by her. Her abusive treatment of you caused you to develop both an eating and hoarding disorders.

"I don’t like people’s judgment when they see me not loving my mum, they think something is wrong with me".

Many people, particularly those who do come from emotionally healthy families, do not always understand as familial dysfunction is unknown to them but many others do. Who is the "they" you are referring to in your above sentence?. I presume you mean other people or relatives. Take no heed of this "they", you do you. There's plenty of posts on MN from women who agonize over which Mothers Day card to buy even if they do send her a card because they cannot abide their mother's ill treatment of them.

@AttilaTheMeerkat I don’t know much about her childhood. I know her mum died young and her dad eventually re-married and then she went through some years of no contact with her dad then. She never liked her dad’s wife (she is really lovely in my opinion). My mum mocks her but the only thing she’s done is marry her dad, she is nice. Grandad (her dad) said she was a very quiet child, often sat in silence just watching people. Suddenly she decided that she wanted to be the head of things as a young adult so joined all the local village groups and chaired them all. So went from silent to being the head of groups wanting to know everything. That’s all I know.

No, she won't love him more. Some people within families are just more similar to each other so it seems they 'prefer' each other. That's not necessarily the case - just that more similar characters/personalities find or understand one another more / find it easier to be with each other.

My mum has never once been concerned about my safety I don’t think she has any urge to protect me I remember some fellow students on my course ( men aged late teens early twenties ) were more concerned about my safety then she was , I was really shocked . She just thought I was having sex with them all (I wasn’t !)

Have you had any counselling or psychotherapy? It sounds like the frustration is just pouring out of you, the way you say people are judging you for how you feel toward your mum. Is it a big theme in your conversations with people? It might help how you feel to try and process some of this stuff with a professional.

@Mmhmmn umm not really. It’s mainly close family who can see us. I perceive the judgment I think a lot of the time.

You don’t know that. Don’t gaslight the OZp.

I agree completely with the other posters who have stated that this doesn't sound remotely like autism from the way you have described it. Who told you she was autistic? From how you've described her it doesn't seem versy likely.

It sounds more like the behaviours she exhibits ade the result of extreme trauma/ abuse suffwred herself and for whicht she hasn't received m treatment, or a personality disorder.p

Regardless of the cause it is horrible that you have grown up so damaged by her behaviour towards you and it's had such a negative impact on your life. Having your self-esteem destroyed like this by a parent takes a lot to get past so I agree with orhers that you should aeek counselling for that and stop worrInf about why ahe soesxwhat she does. Focus on healing yourself and keep this relationship very low contact to protect yourself. After so many years of this it's highly unlikely her behViour fo you eill change.

@Froglight its just something that my parents have said. I have a done a bit of reading and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t sound like autism, definitely some unhealthy behaviours involved whatever it is. This whole notion that everything must be okay and it must all go the way she wants without anyone voicing any opinions. I think she sees very black and white and I don’t thinks she ever acts out of compassion for another. I think whatever she has gone through she has developed this extremely avoidant behaviour. I’ve tried to live like a still pond and not cause waves, it’s not been healthy at all.