How do you handle guilt trips?

[DogwoodTree]

She also doesn't think i have a right to feel depressed or anxious sometimes, or even for a long time, purely because i haven't been through anything whereas her, dad, my friend, everyone else i know basically, has. Its been a big issue for a long time. Still is, really.

Pain can't be put on a hierarchy. Your struggle is just as legitimate as hers. If anything, she would do well to use her experiences to SUPPORT you in the challenges you face rather than belittle you.

I see it as my responsibility in my generation to pick up the recovery/healing momentum my mom started in her generation, take it to yet another level, always with the goal of passing the baton to my kids when they're ready for it.

There's no way my mom could achieve full redemption in our family line in just one generation (even though she thinks she has). So I honor the work she has accomplished by picking up where she is leaving off.

And I recognize can't fix it all, either...So this validates, in my mind, the struggles my children will face, no matter how hard I work to protect them and give them a better childhood than I had.

 

[DogwoodTree]

Anyways, that's your problem really. The second someone deviates from the script, your whole thought process breaks down and you/I just lock up.

My scripts are pretty loose already, but they're still very useful to me...usually. For instance...

Mom called me the other day to talk about a work issue. So I'm thinking about work things. I'm in a "work" frame of mind, where my goal is to be cooperative as her co-worker/assistant. She wants yes-men around her, so I try to do that as much as possible without compromising my ability to do my job, because I work for her and she's my boss.

Then she changed the subject to wanting my kids to come visit her and do things with her..a lot...over the next week. I didn't make the switch quickly enough from being the worker to being the mom of my kids. Not saying she did it on purpose...But the script environment changed and I didn't switch scripts quickly enough.

Other times, conversations have taken a turn I just didn't expect. Or someone is in a mood I didn't anticipate (my family members switch between victim or rescuer fairly regularly, sometimes in the same conversation).

This is really hard to keep up with!

 

[AsheSkyler]

Do you think there are people who complain like this because they just can't conceive of anything else to say about the situation? Maybe the only paradigm they have about life is that they're victims and must vent by complaining all the time? Maybe the only way for them to say good things is to be prompted to do it, because really, truly, their brains just don't go there on their own.

That doesn't make their complaining "right" or "okay"...they have choices just like the rest of us to retrain their brains for what is good rather than what is easy. I'm just trying to understand how people can be so negative and difficult to please all the time.

In my mom's case, I don't think it's a "complaining" algorithm so much as a "superiority complex" algorithm...that no one else is as good as she is, so everyone else deserves her criticism and ingenious advice.

I'm not sure. If that's the best they can come up with, Aspies are definitely not the only ones who needing a brush-up in social skills. There are more positive ways to word "I want to see the kids more". Although in the case of one woman who guilt trips the family, enough is never enough. You could live with her, follow her around all day long, and she'd still find some way to complain about how she doesn't spend enough time with you. She's just naturally a very smothering person who can't let go of anything.

A superiority complex definitely crosses my mind in a lot of cases, especially with people I know have had a bad past. I don't know if in the case of some of them they think people deserve to be bossed around by them, but I do think they are unknowingly trying to exercise control and dominance in response to forced submissiveness in their past. Similarly, I think many of them DO have a victim complex that makes them think they're always being targeted. And it always sets me up perfectly to soapbox about how you should be nice to people so you don't create these nuisances that plague other people.
And then I get stuck in a moral dilemma. Do I try to pity these people for the wrongs committed against them or do I hold them to the same unmerciful standards they and everybody else has always held me to, and which would be the just thing to do without enabling them or strictly exacting revenge? Some Aspies are black-and-white, some Aspies are alllll grey areas!