Hello. I'm new to this, so please bear with me! Firsty a little about me....I am a 46 year old male, living with partner of 17 years and one daughter, successful business....so enough about me and on to my question. My mum is 79, she has always been described by anyone who spends more than 2 mins in her company as unusual. I have had a difficult relationship with my mum and for many years we did not speak...as speaking would inevitabley cause an argument. Eventually we started to communicate again (I was about 42 when this happened, after 7 years of not having any communication at all). When we started to comminicate again I was very aware that I had to bite my lip and try to understand my mum, her views and obvious communication problems, rather than argue with her, if we had any chance of maintaining a relationship. I have managed to do this and now we do have quite a good relationship. I love my mum and have found that understaning her problems is the best way for us to have a relationship but In trying to understand why we have had such a difficult relationship I have tried to pinpoint what went wrong in the past...so here goes, a bit about my mum
- She had a horrible upbringing.Eldest of a large family, physically and mentally abused by her mum. She is now obsessed with this and EVERY conversation will be turned to this subject. She has never come to terms with this, even though all her siblings have been able to deal with it...some through therapy though
- She seems desperate to communcate anything that is on her mind to anyone who will listen.She will meet someone in a supermarket for example and will within 2 mins be telling them about her up-bringing.
- She has no 'firewall' between brain and mouth and will say more or less exactly what is on her mind. She is very direct and what she sometimes says can easily be taken as aggresive of affensive. I now know (or at least am pretty sure) that this is not her intention, its just how she comes accross
- She seems to not understand the rules of communication. She talks about inappropriate subjects, to people she has only just met. She never understands jokes or sarcasm, laughs in the wrong place (sometimes at serious comments), rarley listens, struggles to understand when its her turn to talk, talks over people, randomises the conversation by picking up on a specific word in the conversation and then changing the conversation to talk about that word and all shes knows about it
- Other people (strangers) very quickly 'back off' from a conversation. She dosent want to talk about nuetral things such as the weather...she wants to talk about her obsessions, mainly her hatred of her mother and her terrible childhood
- She struggles to commicate ideas and will only talk about things that she wants to talk about. If she gets into a 'dead end' ie where she has no knowledge of the subject she will very quickly bail out and change the subject to anything that she has knowledge of
- She tells lots of 'white lies'....nothing serious but lots of them. Exaggerates a lot...mainly to make herself appear better than she is
- She has a very high opinion of herself...recently described herself as 'wonder woman'
- She is VERY judgemental of others and slightly obssesed with snobbery and when talking about such things puts on a posh voice
The above is really on a snapshot, the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more (46 years worth). My partner who has some experience dealing with autistic children says she does display some autistic traits. Can anyone help, point me in the right direction. I dont think she will ever get formally diagnosed but if I can understand what the problem is it will certainly help me to help her, and help us to have a better relationship. Thanks in advance
