I'm terrified of taking this step, but I must.

[autism-and-autotune]

@autism-and-autotune

It's clear to me from this and your "work thread" that there's room for improvement in your "people interaction" skills.
Note that this isn't a criticism - this is true for almost all Aspies - but it's impossible to improve unless you believe there's room for improvement, that improvement is possible, and that there's a tangible benefit from putting in the work.

So you're working in the space between LC and restraining order now, which is a significant step forward.
Next you need to objectively assess your current ability and later potential to manage your parents' behavior.
This will help with planning.

I suggest it's time for you to learn some personal-interaction techniques with a focus on handling narcissists.
I think a good first step would be to open a dedicated thread for it here, because (a) even NT's have difficulty with narcs, and (b) there are probably some personal and Aspie-specific aspects for which an Aspie perspective will be helpful.

On a different angle:
You've probably seen the phrase "Revenge is a dish best served cold" many times, with the usual weird "mafia-centric" meaning attributed to it.

I use it because everyone remembers it, but with a different meaning which I suggest you consider, because it's an important part of handling narcs (and other kinds of annoying people too).

So:
If you try to "exact revenge" (or generally, ruthlessly control other people for your benefit, and without consideration for their interests) while you're angry, you will be visible, predictable, and very prone to errors.
If you wait until you're completely calm, you can plan and prepare. Naturally this increases your chances of success, and reduces the chance you'll get caught.
So that's an (indirect) alternative definition of "served cold".

"Work cold" is a very useful principle for dealing with annoying people and/or for getting your way when dominance games become necessary.

I mentioned a simple technique for creating a response to your mother's email the first time we talked about this, but we didn't follow up. There are simple but useful techniques though.

The point of this:
* There are semi-standard techniques for dealing with narcs ("grey rock" is a set of these)
* There are ways to communicate with difficult people that protect you (a necessary objective). You can't persuade a real narc (because they literally cannot listen) but you can talk to them without taking any damage yourself.
* Narcs are crazy, which means they have "a target on their back" if you know how to look for it. There's no "one strike win" with narcs, but they can be worn down.
* HFA's can learn to better regulate their emotions.
This is actually something like my comment in your "work thread" (paraphrased) "never plan to work over 80% capacity, never actually work over 95%, even if 'the end of the world' has come". That's actually for stress regulation - (IMO) an Aspie should not allow themselves to be controlled by the adrenaline level in their body, because we don't handle it well.
Naturally the same applies when communicating with difficult people. It's much easier to interact with them "cold". and it's always a mistake to get drawn into their craziness.


/lol - this turned into a long post, but I'll add one other thing anyway:

I don't believe in the general applicability of Closure, Validation, and all the other self-therapy terminology that's wormed its way into the vernacular.

You can't achieve mutual closure with a narc. They're crazy. Nor can you negotiate towards their validating your personal concerns. Narcs don't care, and they don't know that they don't care. "Negotiation" with them is a stupid dominance/power game that confers no benefit even if you win.

I won't say you must set aside that stuff while you reconfigure your relationship with your parents, but I can say with reasonable confidence that it's not going to help at all, and it may well make things more difficult.

Hey, I appreciate your encouragement. I'll try my best to improve; it needs both experience but also hands-on learning to do so. And lots of room for mistakes. Is this how most of us learn?

Technically, going no-contact would either be a good step to be maintained, but then only seek law should this be broken by them?

Yeah, I like that idea a lot. How do we open a thread as you suggest, so that others can learn and be wary?


Thank you for your write-up on revenge while in a clear mind versus a cluttered one; it makes total sense, and I can see how being angry may have messed things up if I'd ever fed into it.

What you're writing about stress regulation hits home for me because it's completely true. I work better and function better when cold instead of hot.

So just blocking them outright with no explanation is absolutely the way to go, point blank? The best and safest, and coldest yet most necessary? I'm convinced. The biggest roadblock in this whole rigmarole is my mind and what I wish could happen but most likely never will.

 

[All-Rounder]

Yep; fawning is just...for me, the inability to get angry at them. If anything, blocking them would be for my own sanity and need not to be selfish but self-preserving. Revenge...well, I hope I'm past that phase.

Blocking them, I believe, may shock them and perplex them and give them a sense of terror which I feel when contact by them--but it's better than responding to that stupid email. Do I hate them, or do I hate who they are and what they did? shrugs I was shaped by them--the good and the bad--but it's the bad which makes me not want to be with them.

Also, it helps on some days to refer to them in the past tense. I thank the user Outdated for making me think this way.

I have gotten angry with my own narcissistic problem-parents, as my psychologist would say.

I have argued them very bluntly, called them out on their deeds, and even talked nicely and maturely with truth as my piority, but nothing will change them, and it has only given me an illusionary justice sense which further has sunk me into the darkness and manipulation of their continued deeds.

Given this experience, I now know that the only person who could validate my experiences and give me a sense of justice is someone who sees their deeds, is accepting them and their damaging nature and can support me.

Abusers will do that which they are set to do, and will do it in intrinsically varied environments and with all the proof away from their side. In public they will make you look like the bad person, will try to discredit your sanity, values and will make you be the argumentative person you aren't, by picking at your weaknesses. They assume people are stupid and bought, and sure, many are, especially towards strangers they do not know, they can be misjudge.

The ability to not view them as anything to fix or to work on has given me a much needed emotional freedom, bundaries at home, even while living with my remaining alive mother. The acceptance they will not abide by any rules but their own has given me a freeway into avoiding contact 99% of the time and taking whatever they say as nothing more than attempts of a child to get attention and manipulate. Akin to the bark of a dog, if you do not pay attention to it why would you to all these toxic tactics?

It took me a long time to stop "working" on fixing things, it was the only thing I wasn't willing to accept as a method of approaching them. Suddenly, I lost any interest and misled view onto them trying to connect with me, when they were clearly not doing that, but were actually trying to affect me. A sense of extreme freedom, and unbind by emotional conflict has overtaken my existence and I don't fully understand how it happened but I'm very thankful it did. All I can say I was doing is just ignoring them and acknowledging they aren't looking for logic and explanations because they aren't open to it. Upon understanding who they are, I was able to live in harmony with them and with what I needed to do.

Thanking my boyfriend for the suggestion of this tactic, the explanations of why my parent behaves the way she does and his very essential support. We have been through similar things at the hands of our parents.

 

[All-Rounder]

Reading this helped me.

How to Deal With Insults and Put-Downs

 

[Hypnalis]

@autism-and-autotune

To get started, just make a post like this one. If anyone wants to make it permanent later, the mods will help.

FWIW I've found the mods here to be very helpful about things like modifying posts that have "meaning-reversal typos", removing content which has become redundant or misleading as the discussion proceeds, etc.
Very few forums I've used do this as well as AutismForums

If your thread turns out to be useful but cluttered, they might well help edit it.

Title something like: "Looking for help on dealing with a narcissist"
First post:
* Reference this thread for context (one line)
* Ask that replies are limited to "technical assistance"
* Ask that any further general comments are made here

 

[All-Rounder]

Reading this helped me.

How to Deal With Insults and Put-Downs

On the last line you will notice the most powerful tactic is to be ignoring them. Though you can insult them back, though you can use humor, though you can do all these other things, and they depend on the environments and relationships with the people. I would say, even though they are family, treating them like strangers when you're trying to disconnect is the right thing to do.

 

[All-Rounder]

"To write up on revenge in a clear mind opposed to a cluttered mind" has deeper context to me than the way it is written on a page, but its tactical value.

It could mean you're untied to your emotional turmoil and revenge instincts. Viewing it from a detached POV would offer you greater insight into making a better decision about it rather than following your instincts and possibly making a mistake.

I don't think it'd be that much different to make a separate thread, I don't see any general stuff going on here, everything is on topic, and people commenting on some proposed situation downsides or additions, which is just a flow of adding ideas. You could restrain these ideas or put them all in one big thread of the same member, however with quoting following proposals, that would not be functioning from a reader point of view. And these ideas are just as important as any other.

But this can just be done in a file, a copy-paste of whatever is found helpful in terms of ideas which allow even more flexibility and power over content.

Perhaps an idea is that everyone reposts their main points so that everything is organized, once this thread has ended. Regardless, that is additional work and for some autistic people it beats the point and forces patterned writing. Perhaps if someone does it for us all, without misinterpreting our points. If an automated system would do that, for forums, maybe in the future.

We could underline our own important points with the flow of a new thread on a new topic for the future, that could be working. It's easier to read them and keep track of them.

 

[Hypnalis]

@autism-and-autotune

So just blocking them outright with no explanation is absolutely the way to go, point blank? The best and safest, and coldest yet most necessary? I'm convinced. The biggest roadblock in this whole rigmarole is my mind and what I wish could happen but most likely never will.

Outright blocking is another easy option, and it might be the best thing for you. I would have included it in my "algorithm", but your "Restraining Order" context made me think you had rejected NC.

Personally I always use LC, but my situation is nothing like yours, and I have a lot of practice dealing with assertive people (one of the benefits of a long career in marketing - all sales reps are a bit narcissistic, and they are not sentimental at all
:
:
I'm confident you'll deal, at least partly, with your "roadblock" in time, but not quickly. TBH I could see this quite early in our discussion - it's why I keep emphasizing simple techniques and strategic clarity.

Personally I do my (simpler) versions of this kind of thing "on the fly": 10 minutes to clarify my objectives, then meet IRL, call, or email. But remember: even Aspies get reasonably good at adversarial communication if they've spent several decades in my line of work
:
:
A preliminary piece of tactical advice for what might now be a theoretical activity. But do this - you need the practice.

1. Temporarily (at least - permanent would be good) mentally categorize your mother and father as "NPCs". They're something like in-game merchants, quest-givers, random monsters etc, but with the slightly elevated status of mini-bosses running on normal MOB scripts.
Important; this isn't a joke. It's a tool to help you stay "cold". You need to operate impersonally and dispassionately to deal with difficult people. Seeing them as NPCs is a simple but effective way to do that.

2. For this exercise, set aside all the expectations/hopes you have on them. Those make you dependent on their reactions, and that makes you weak. We're simulating a low-level "play to win" action (akin to positioning correctly, and range-pulling the mini-boss into a position where you have an edge).

3. Write a short 3 to 5 line theoretical response to that email, and tune it properly.

A) Basic principle for narcs: don't "JADE" (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain). Those are for other players (like your SO). It's pointless to do such things for an NPC.

B) A general principle for communicating with narcs: be polite, non-confrontational, neutral in tone, semi-formal in structure.
This is to bypass the "denial / synthetic-offense / narc rage" cycle. You don't trigger an NPC's "Frenzy" state, you avoid or interrupt it.

C) Narcs are selfish and arrogant, but they don't know it. That's one of the "targets on their back".
We've (hopefully) removed your "enfeebling dependency" - caring what they think - and this is just a small , zero-risk exercise. You can you can "lean in", pick up errors on review, and learn from any early mistakes.
Note that your parents can't remove their dependency on you as long as you restrict the topic to something they want (in this case contact with you (at their convenience OFC /lol)).

I wrote a bit more about the exercise, but I sent it in a conversation.
The right communication techniques for your situation can be readily misused, so I won't include them here.

It's probably available on the web anyway.

 

[autism-and-autotune]

On the last line you will notice the most powerful tactic is to be ignoring them. Though you can insult them back, though you can use humor, though you can do all these other things, and they depend on the environments and relationships with the people. I would say, even though they are family, treating them like strangers when you're trying to disconnect is the right thing to do.

Ignoring them is the easiest option, and I'm trying not to fight the guilt of having ignored their letter. But I'd also rather ignore than engage--not because it's a 'cowardly' option, but because it's the one that ensures there's not needlessly spent energy on anyone's part.

 

[autism-and-autotune]

I wanted to take a moment and seriously thank all of your for your insight and help with this. I know it must be sometimes annoying for me to just vent about my family issues, but it sincerely helps to hear the input and experience which you all have. I have much gratitude.