Help Keep getting angry at parents

[spinningship]

I have no framework for looking at anger and what good anger looks like. It used to be I only felt angry with family, and it would be completely suppressed with other people. Now it's seeping into my friendships and it's ruining them. The thing is the anger is always justified I feel. It's always me trying to set a boundary down with people. It's always in response to what I perceive as a threat to my autonomy. I feel very intensely when people try and cross me. In the past I've never really had a solid sense of self, and now i'm trying to assert that part of it is laying down boundaries.

But I guess I have no good way of setting boundaries without just sounding angry at people. I think that's an autistic thing I have a hard time conveying my emotions effectively or being subtle in laying down boundaries. Normal people can probably come up with an indirect or polite way of conveying their message but I can't. It doesn't help that the people I hang around tend to also be bad at picking up social cues, so even if I do find a way of hinting that i'm uncomfortable they may not even pick up on it.

I think the anger might be trauma related. I don't know if it is technically trauma or not. But getting bullied to death by flatmates and made to feel like i'm a defective person has definitely been the trigger for a lot of this anger to come out. At a time in my life when I didn't assert boundaries as harshly, I got emotionally and verbally abused by people and now I feel like the same is gonna happen every time someone does something vaguely similar. I was so intensely suicidal right after I found out what happened, and the people I was bullied by behind my back I thought I was friendly with, so now I think I'm looking for signs anywhere that someone secretly hates me. And if they do I try to push them away.

This is coming up now for me because I'm about to return home for about 3 months. I've constantly gotten into massive fights with my mum about this stuff because she blames me for what happened with flatmates bullying me and makes jokes about it all the time in front of extended family members. A lot of it was initially caused by one night when I got a bit too drunk, so my mum just makes jokes in front of family about how everything happened because I got drunk like it's my fault for how people chose to treat me. And she just calls what they did just funny jokes and tells me I'm probably overreacting. The thing is i'm not comfortable telling her the full extent of what happened because there are details I don't want to share and i've told her this but she doesn't listen.

She just brings up this stuff casually when I'm trying to forget it and it's been 6 months and I can't move on. I don't think she realizes how sensitive I am about it all. Whenever I try to lay down boundaries she just tells me that she's joking, and like oh can't you tell it's a joke? Tells me that people aren't gonna like me if I'm the type of person who doesn't take jokes. I have food sensitivities due to ASD as well and have to eat the same stuff and she makes "jokes" about this stuff, but you can tell really she's not joking but expressing a problem. I also really don't like people making comments about stuff that is a symptom of ASD, sure it's weird I eat similar foods all the time, but it's not some quirk of my personality, it's my brain forcing me to eat the same stuff and I have very little control over it. It doesn't feel funny to me.

So I end up getting somewhat aggressive when I push back on this stuff, and she switches the conversation to how I shouldn't be angry. And tells me she won't speak to me when i'm "like this", as if me being angry is not an expression of my feelings, but some weird behavior that I should sort out. She'll then passively aggressively stop speaking to me for days at a time. She tells me that I don't think about her feelings when this stuff comes up, and I only care about my own feelings. Maybe that's true I honestly can't tell. But to me it feels like the topics she is bringing up when I get angry are so intense and sensitive for me, and she's literally making fun of shit that made me want to end my life for months afterwards, compared to what me getting slightly aggressive and pushing back??? It just feels like the emotions are nowhere near on the same scale?

What's the healthy way to handle this? Clearly getting angry does not work at all. But how else am I supposed to respond? This is pretty much destroying my relationship with my mum which is not actually that bad when we stick off the difficult or personal subjects.

 

[timf]

Whenever I try to lay down boundaries she just tells me that she's joking, and like oh can't you tell it's a joke?

It sounds like you get sucked into verbal traps where others have the advantage. You mentioned an "autistic" thing. One autistic characteristic is taking things literally. It can be eye opening to understand that logic, reality, and truth is only one of many ways language can be used. Many use it to express how they feel, others to support delusions, and still others to exploit and manipulate people.

Anger can be the result of being surprised. Since you have a pretty good idea about what to expect. You may prepare in your mind rejoinders which can be used to parry verbal thrusts. Such as, "You are probably right about me being worthless. I ascribe it to defective parenting".

Not everyone is suited to verbal combat. Skill in this area can make others fearful of attacking you (which is a sort of victory). Another partial victory can be had by asking the other person to explain what you did that makes them hate you. Holding people accountable can be a useful approach.

Perhaps a better approach is to picture in your mind the antagonist as a sad person who has developed their crippled verbal skills to protect themselves at the expense of others. This sort of picture can help to lower expectations and reduce hurt to simple annoyance.

 

[Sweet Tart]

I'm sorry for the emotional and verbal abuse you have experienced and I'm sorry your mom is disrespectful of your feelings. To me, it sounds a bit like she is a bully. If she knows you are sensitive about certain things, why does she think it's okay to joke about them? And then criticize your reaction to her joking. If she jokes about something painful to you and you let her know it's not funny to you, she should respect that.

I think anger is an appropriate response to having your boundaries violated, however it's important to find appropriate outlets for anger. When I express anger toward someone who is trying to push my buttons, it tends to backfire. My mom can be a bully, tho she presents herself as kind and caring. Arguing with her is always a losing battle. I'm trying to do better at keeping calm around her and letting my anger out in other ways. For me, the most effective way to avoid tensions with my mom is to limit my contact with her. She's a narcissist who believes she is right about everything and will never see things differently. Unfortunately, I am staying with her, but keeping distance helped a lot in the past.

I'm trying to gray rock my mom when she tries to bait me into arguing. Are you familiar with this? Just giving neutral or vague responses instead of of letting a convo escalate into an argument. I'm sure it could be described better, but I'm still learning. It's really difficult for me but maybe it would work with your mom.

 

[EternalShore]

Wish I could help, but I'm no good at talking and convincing others to stop annoying me either~ Good luck and I wish you the best tho! I know how bad it is getting verbally bullied and harrassed like that! >_<