DogwoodTree
MyPTSD Pro
I work in the family business, and due to ongoing relationship issues from abuse throughout my childhood, we are now in family therapy (me, my mom, and one sister). My individual T has said that my mom shows both borderline and narcissistic traits, and this is from raw data that I've shared with him, not just my report of things she's said or done (e.g., emails from her, videos she posted to YouTube, recorded conversations). I think he would prefer that I leave the family business and the family relationships, but that would so deeply affect my career, that I've decided to stick it out a while longer for now.
I interviewed the family T before we started working with her, and she seemed to "get" the issues we're dealing with. She said she works a lot with families coming from addiction backgrounds (my grandfather was an alcoholic, and I was raised in the same dynamics but without the addiction), and she uses a family systems approach (my T thought that was a really important thing to look for). I also have asperger's, and when I've met with the family T one-on-one, she seems to hear me and understand me well enough as I describe the issues I deal with for being on the spectrum.
But. When we meet with her as a group, it's like she either forgets I'm autistic (I've learned to mask a lot of my traits), or she seems to target me for not acting totally normal and being able to express empathy with my family members in ways that are warm-and-fuzzy to them. She acknowledges the strengths I bring to the business, but the conversations still revolve around warm-and-fuzzy empathy, and we spend a lot of time trying to get my responses to the others to line up with that standard.
My family doesn't know about my AS dx, and I've resisted telling them because I'm afraid they'll make all the *issues* to be about my autism instead of recognizing how they also contribute to the problems. I'm already the scapegoat, so maybe that wouldn't be any worse. But I've watched this family T make my autism a primary focus of the conversations (we couch it in terms of "personality differences" so I won't have to reveal my dx if I choose not to). She started our sessions with teaching us empathetic communication skills, which I agree it's important to get all sides listening to the others. But her rules for these conversations are very strict, and sometimes I just can't seem to figure out what it is she's wanting, and so I feel like I'm failing in family therapy because my deficiencies become such a focus of the conversation, and the others' unhealthy relationship dynamics never get any attention.
For example, the other day I shared that I had been deeply depressed from trying for so long to be a "people person" when I'm really more of a task-oriented person, and I had reached a point of burnout to where I couldn't do it anymore (which is totally fine for my work, but doesn't work so well in family relationships, and their feelings have gotten hurt). My sister was supposed to respond empathetically. She said she also had been depressed because her job isn't a great fit for her personality, and she couldn't understand why I didn't compensate for her depression by making myself to be more of a people person with her. Then I was supposed to respond empathetically, and my response was that I knew she had been depressed, and I knew it was hard, and I couldn't fix the problem for her, but she could get other people around her to meet her needs for her. Then the T said that my sister's response to me was empathetic but my response to her was not. Whereas from my perspective, her response to me was essentially, "You're depressed? Well I am, too. And I don't understand why you don't try harder to make it up to me." But my response to her was essentially, "I actually had already noticed you're depressed, and I know your job is hard, and while I can't fix it for you, other people could help you with that." But my response was "cold" while hers was warm and "empathetic." What am I missing??
So the family T really wants me to reveal the AS dx to the others. On the positive side, it would make it easier to explain why I struggle with empathy and why it's so freakin' hard to "do" relationships. I can fake it well enough for public appearances with customers and so forth, and as I've gotten feedback from my family members, I try to make sure my work AND family communications are friendly-sounding enough. But it's exhausting and takes so much time. I'll sit and stare at a short email for 20 minutes trying to make sure it sounds warm and friendly enough. And still somehow they think I "hate" them and they feel so "rejected" (their words).
It doesn't seem to matter what my actual words say, if what I'm saying doesn't make them feel warm and fuzzy inside, then I'm rejecting them and I hate them. And then in family therapy, it's been the opposite with what they say to me. It doesn't seem to matter how judgmental or critical their words are to me, somehow they're still supposedly communicating warmth and fairness and love.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, my mom, in telling her perspective on an event, said that I had basically refused to do everything she asked of me during a particular project (quote: "she balked at everything I asked her to do"), and that she had to offer me more money to try to make sure I finished the work (quote: "I felt like I had to negotiate to make sure the work got done"). This was unequivocally not true, and I couldn't even repeat the words back to her for an empathetic response. So then the T offered to repeat back what was said, and she changed all the wording to make it sound like my mom had recognized that, in that project, I had been given more than my "fair share" of the work and she was offering me extra money "to compensate." That's actually more what happened, but that is most definitely not what my mom had just said. But somehow, the T decided that's what she had said. When I asked the T about it later in an individual session, she said she was reading body language and other, more abstract communications from my mom that I clearly wasn't picking up on because aspies take things too literally. (How is this not gaslighting? I know the definitions of the words my mom used. Even if her body language said something different, the words still raised a red flag for her dishonesty in recalling the event, and then there's the bizarre discrepancy between what my mom said and how the T interpreted it, and then said the miscommunication was due to my deficiency.)
So, my question boils down to, would it be helpful to reveal my AS dx, or is that setting myself up for more gaslighting and scapegoating? Or maybe I really am misreading all of this, and the words a person says really don't matter but only some mysterious body language that has nothing to do with the actual words said. (I actually do read body language well because of my abusive upbringing, but I don't always know what to do about the information I gather from someone's body language, and I don't naturally communicate with body language unless I work at it. And I didn't notice anything in my mom's body language that day that said what the family T interpreted her message to say.)
I interviewed the family T before we started working with her, and she seemed to "get" the issues we're dealing with. She said she works a lot with families coming from addiction backgrounds (my grandfather was an alcoholic, and I was raised in the same dynamics but without the addiction), and she uses a family systems approach (my T thought that was a really important thing to look for). I also have asperger's, and when I've met with the family T one-on-one, she seems to hear me and understand me well enough as I describe the issues I deal with for being on the spectrum.
But. When we meet with her as a group, it's like she either forgets I'm autistic (I've learned to mask a lot of my traits), or she seems to target me for not acting totally normal and being able to express empathy with my family members in ways that are warm-and-fuzzy to them. She acknowledges the strengths I bring to the business, but the conversations still revolve around warm-and-fuzzy empathy, and we spend a lot of time trying to get my responses to the others to line up with that standard.
My family doesn't know about my AS dx, and I've resisted telling them because I'm afraid they'll make all the *issues* to be about my autism instead of recognizing how they also contribute to the problems. I'm already the scapegoat, so maybe that wouldn't be any worse. But I've watched this family T make my autism a primary focus of the conversations (we couch it in terms of "personality differences" so I won't have to reveal my dx if I choose not to). She started our sessions with teaching us empathetic communication skills, which I agree it's important to get all sides listening to the others. But her rules for these conversations are very strict, and sometimes I just can't seem to figure out what it is she's wanting, and so I feel like I'm failing in family therapy because my deficiencies become such a focus of the conversation, and the others' unhealthy relationship dynamics never get any attention.
For example, the other day I shared that I had been deeply depressed from trying for so long to be a "people person" when I'm really more of a task-oriented person, and I had reached a point of burnout to where I couldn't do it anymore (which is totally fine for my work, but doesn't work so well in family relationships, and their feelings have gotten hurt). My sister was supposed to respond empathetically. She said she also had been depressed because her job isn't a great fit for her personality, and she couldn't understand why I didn't compensate for her depression by making myself to be more of a people person with her. Then I was supposed to respond empathetically, and my response was that I knew she had been depressed, and I knew it was hard, and I couldn't fix the problem for her, but she could get other people around her to meet her needs for her. Then the T said that my sister's response to me was empathetic but my response to her was not. Whereas from my perspective, her response to me was essentially, "You're depressed? Well I am, too. And I don't understand why you don't try harder to make it up to me." But my response to her was essentially, "I actually had already noticed you're depressed, and I know your job is hard, and while I can't fix it for you, other people could help you with that." But my response was "cold" while hers was warm and "empathetic." What am I missing??
So the family T really wants me to reveal the AS dx to the others. On the positive side, it would make it easier to explain why I struggle with empathy and why it's so freakin' hard to "do" relationships. I can fake it well enough for public appearances with customers and so forth, and as I've gotten feedback from my family members, I try to make sure my work AND family communications are friendly-sounding enough. But it's exhausting and takes so much time. I'll sit and stare at a short email for 20 minutes trying to make sure it sounds warm and friendly enough. And still somehow they think I "hate" them and they feel so "rejected" (their words).
It doesn't seem to matter what my actual words say, if what I'm saying doesn't make them feel warm and fuzzy inside, then I'm rejecting them and I hate them. And then in family therapy, it's been the opposite with what they say to me. It doesn't seem to matter how judgmental or critical their words are to me, somehow they're still supposedly communicating warmth and fairness and love.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, my mom, in telling her perspective on an event, said that I had basically refused to do everything she asked of me during a particular project (quote: "she balked at everything I asked her to do"), and that she had to offer me more money to try to make sure I finished the work (quote: "I felt like I had to negotiate to make sure the work got done"). This was unequivocally not true, and I couldn't even repeat the words back to her for an empathetic response. So then the T offered to repeat back what was said, and she changed all the wording to make it sound like my mom had recognized that, in that project, I had been given more than my "fair share" of the work and she was offering me extra money "to compensate." That's actually more what happened, but that is most definitely not what my mom had just said. But somehow, the T decided that's what she had said. When I asked the T about it later in an individual session, she said she was reading body language and other, more abstract communications from my mom that I clearly wasn't picking up on because aspies take things too literally. (How is this not gaslighting? I know the definitions of the words my mom used. Even if her body language said something different, the words still raised a red flag for her dishonesty in recalling the event, and then there's the bizarre discrepancy between what my mom said and how the T interpreted it, and then said the miscommunication was due to my deficiency.)
So, my question boils down to, would it be helpful to reveal my AS dx, or is that setting myself up for more gaslighting and scapegoating? Or maybe I really am misreading all of this, and the words a person says really don't matter but only some mysterious body language that has nothing to do with the actual words said. (I actually do read body language well because of my abusive upbringing, but I don't always know what to do about the information I gather from someone's body language, and I don't naturally communicate with body language unless I work at it. And I didn't notice anything in my mom's body language that day that said what the family T interpreted her message to say.)