I don't know what you would call this behaviour

Post Reply New Topic

When I was a teenager, I suffered from a severe anxiety disorder. I used to have panic attacks quite often and I was very easily triggered. When I was at school, I was part of a support unit for autistic individuals and the teachers in that unit were heavily involved with our education and general welfare. That didn't stop them from making mistakes or being outright douchebags.

I remember one day, my anxiety was bad and I refused to have lunch because the cafeteria was too stressful for me. I was chastised by the head of the unit and she escorted me to the cafeteria. I apologised for my behaviour and she said "That's fine, let's just go". Then she proceeded to shame me. Later, I came to the conclusion that she was being very unfair towards me, so I called her out on it. I think I said something along the lines of "When you accept an apology, you shouldn't throw it back in someone's face. Either you forgive me or you don't".

A few months passed and my anxiety got worse. I ended up feeling too anxious to go to class and the same teacher confronted me about it. I said that I was going to try to face it. Well I tried and I couldn't manage. She decided to bring up that incident, warping the original message. She said something to the effect of "you promised me that you would try to confront your anxiety and you broke that promise. That is hypocrisy, because you held a similar expectation of me but cannot meet that standard yourself". That made me furious. How could she make my anxiety disorder all about her?

She did the same thing again. My anxiety continued to get worse because of external stresses in my life. My father had an affair with another woman and decided that he wasn't interested in his family anymore. There was also a lot of financial trouble as a result of this and my mother had nobody to talk to besides her daughters about this. Well, this teacher (being the emotionally intelligent, sensitive woman that she was) told me that I should count myself lucky because her dad died when she was a child.

Why am I talking about something that doesn't affect me anymore? Well, this is something a lot of people seem to do to aspies. People just seem to think they can underestimate what we go through and make our problems all about them. Why do people think they can do that?

This teacher wasn't a bad person. She just did stupid, awful things that made me really angry and resentful of people.

Did anybody here have to deal with stuff like this?

(This is from an NT parent of an AS child and someone who married and admires her somewhat quirky husband)

I would say that in this world, there are people who are "broken inside" because of their own insecurities and pain, it is easier for them (or maybe just familiar) to lash out and create more pain than to speak civally to others. It seems to me that oftentimes it is because of internal conversations and painful memories that play out in their minds and which we are not witness to, yet they respond with emotion and intent lashing out at the person who triggered the internal content/memories rather than addressing their own internal turmoil. This is not NT/Aspie misinterpretation. This is just a sad, broken person who is lashing out at everyone, and someone who may find it easier to lash out at someone who is seen as vulnerable.

I should mention that this woman wasn't a bad person. For the most part, she was awesome. However, she (like many teachers I have had) seemed to have a narrow idea of how her students would behave or think in any given time. I think when you work with so many students, you sometimes don't see them as individuals, but rather see them as some sort of hive mind. Now I know she worked with us very closely, but she was only able to draw from experience of the students she worked with before me.

Many autistic kids have avoidance strategies because of the anxiety we face. For some people, being strict works, but not for everyone and certainly not me. I'm annoyed at how much they trivialized my distress and undermined my experiences because of my condition (that and my age was probably also a factor).

I guess I was rambling about how it seems that a lot of people (even well meaning people) can lack empathy.

tell her how you feel next time she does it, I know its hard to do so but you need to do it. she may have no idea how it is affecting you. you only know what you learn.