HOW DO YOU CALM A VIOLENT TEEN???

I felt I had to come back to this one, as there is another problem here that has kept me awake worrying all night.  You are your daughter's lifeline in a world that she must live in, which was created not for her but for people like you who are not autistic, and they feel no empathy for her.

Does that feel like I put it too strongly?  I don't think that I did.  Let me explain how it feels to me when someone starts doing something similar to what you describe.

Someone in the office where I work decided to start spraying room freshener around.  This, for me, is not simply an unpleasant experience.  I don't think that we really take the time to describe the utter torture that these events actually amount to.

First, there is the hugely overpowering, overwhelming smell that literally burns my nostrils and the upper part of my sinuses, causing pain across the front of my skull.  Then there is the sensation through my brain of a sort of pins and needles.  This worsens, rapidly.  And that is without others adding to it by trying to talk to me at the same time, or expecting me to pay attention to the computer, the phone, or the myriad of other things that demand my attention all the time.

The only similar sensation I have experienced was from a TENS machine on full power, which you wouldn't put on your head.  Imagine that, attached to a cap filled with needles that is being tightened around your head.

Your autistic teen is being tortured, and no one around her knows or realises.  I am not overstating this.  I am not exaggerating.  Pretty much every time I have tried to explain or ask for tolerance or understanding from those who are not autistic, I have been met by disbelief and assumptions that I am making it up or overstating it.

Your teen will find the same in life, and you need to be there for her when people who are causing this horrendous experience tell her "oh can't you just put up with it?" "It's not that bad, why do you always overreact?"  and other similar things, all the while she is suffering.

It's the same at christmas, with the noisy music, the bright and flashy lights, the smells, chatter, it all clashes together and produces the same sort of torture that I've tried to describe above.  At Christmas I am called a killjoy, and verbally abused if I object.  The only thing I can do is stay house bound and avoid it as much as possible, for about 3 months.

Are you finding lockdown hard?  I do this every Winter.  I am forced to by a society that has no empathy, no sympathy for what it inflicts on others in the name of fun.

I am extremely lucky that my autism does not mean that I am unable to express myself linguistically.  In fact I am lucky enough to be able to do so better than most non-autistic people I know, and even I cannot do it justice.  Can you see why some people on this thread have replied the way that they have?  You may not feel it is an appropriate reaction, but they are just as desperate to express themselves as your autistic teen.

One day she will have to cope without you, but for now you should be there for her.  You are the only one who can help her siblings to understand what they are putting her through.  She cannot do it, and they would not believe her if she tried.  The people involved change, but the theme is always the same.  It does not affect them, so they will never, ever understand what she goes through.

Do you understand now why she reacts as she does?  She has no safe space to retreat to, and her siblings are mounting an all-out assault on her every day.

Thanks, I've partly understood the way she reacts to things and I do try to help her. I understand everything you've said and we have a lot more in place now and many rules.

Thanks, I've partly understood the way she reacts to things and I do try to help her. I understand everything you've said and we have a lot more in place now and many rules.