Published on 12, July, 2020
I don't know if my grief is causing me to act out or something, but I feel really sensitive to being told no. Even if it's something I raise to my parents of "I want to go to this place" and the thing in question is, practicality wise, extremely difficult, I hate being told no.
I feel like something is taken away from me. Like they're telling me "you're stupid and you know nothing and you should stop talking", but then I am used to people like my brother saying that more outwardly.
There's a separate discussion as to whether I should even have to ask at the ripe old age of 27, and with most things I wouldn't consider it, but maybe it's also demand avoidance.
Or maybe they want you to be "normal" and see your wanting to do certain things as abnormal, they don't have to be abnormal in wider society, but abnormal in your families unique culture. People rarely think about the culture of certain families, what is and is not acceptable, I was called weird by an ex for buying a newspaper, his family don't read them and never have, they always listened to radio 4, which to me when I was growing up was for posh people.
Who's really demanding avoidance? Is it you not liking no for an answer or are your family demanding that you avoid certain things because it dosen't fit with their view of what people like "us" do? It sounds like a real power issue going on, who has power in you family and how it is exercised. Is there any scapegoating going on? Are you always the "bad" one with outrageous needs, who won't fit in with every body else, the one who every body else blames for things? I think when thinking about these things you need to look at the difference between "won't" and "can't", "won't has a much more forceful and deliberate tone, maybe even a moral force to it, 'I won't smack my children' for example. Can't is problematic as on the one hand 'I can't eat strawberries as I'm allergic to them', is different to 'I can't wear that, its ugly, what will people think?'
If no has been the default answer to everything you've wanted to do in life, from I want to be an astronaut when I grow up, to I want beans on toast for tea tonight, then it would be no surprise that you feel sensitive.
I'm the oldest of four, and the only knowingly autistic one. I'm fully sure that I'm treated as the one who is stupid, knows nothing and can't possibly think for himself.
Even something like "I want a new bicycle for my birthday" is immediately shut down from a perspective of "it might get stolen", ignoring the fact that there's a risk with everything and I have a bike lock etc.
I had that sort of thing a lot from my parents, usually it was 'you'll hurt yourself'. So I never learnt to do so many things, I was rarely if ever encouraged, even when I was small, I'd do something like show my Dad a picture I'd drawn and he wouldn't really look at it, he'd just say that maybe I'd grow up to be a fmaous artist, or if I said I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up, he's start shreiking about having to carry bed pans around. I even wonder sometimes if was born autistic, or somehow "learned" it, through all the things I wasn't allowed to do, say or watch. I think of it as social deprivation, if you're never allowed to do normal things and you grow up not knowing that many normal things exist, then you sort of grow up in a vacumn. How is one ever supposed to make up for it? People arn't patient, they don't understand what its like to be not allowed to do normal things, or not know they exist. On balance I think I am autistic, but I wonder what life would of been like if I had of been allowed normal things?
Have you ever been diagnosed with demand avoidance? Or is this just another way of shutting you up and denying your needs? I so often wonder if such diagnosis are real disorders or a form of official, medical denial that someone who has something like autism has legitimate needs and likes and dislikes, let alone should have any agency with their life.
I don't think Demand Avoidance is a diagnosis, but I do relate to it.