You Have The Right To Not Have Abusive People In Your Life

Lately I’ve been seeing on Facebook quite a few posts around the theme of choosing not to have abusive people in our lives, even if they’re other autistics – and the resulting furore, especially if the writer dares to say these people are narcissistic or similar. Some even seem to have been driven out of the community, or at least off social media, by the relentless attacks from their abusers. I’ve also received some criticism myself, either when I chose to support those making this choice, or I challenged some people’s glossing over the abuse, or from other, more private sources, because I dare to call out those who do abuse or maltreat us – something I also apply to other autistics.

So, at the risk of ‘stating the obvious’ (though it seems to some people it’s not, and we autistics don’t always ‘get the obvious’ anyway), let me make myself one hundred percent clear here, to my brother and sister autistics –

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PUT UP WITH ABUSIVE PEOPLE.

EVER.

It doesn’t matter if they had a rotten childhood, or have been abused themselves, or had a hard life in some other way, or they are just plain old jerks.

It doesn’t matter if they have some type of personality disorder or not, if they ever had a formal diagnosis, or have never had one but fit the criteria, or have a mental health condition, or are …just jerks.

It doesn’t matter if they are autistic too, even ‘top’ advocates, or just well-known personalities.

It doesn’t matter if they’re family, or your partner, or you’ve been ‘friends’ with them for ages, or they have some other hook into you.

It doesn’t matter if they’ve surrounded you with people who support them and not you, and you know you’ll lose a lot of people if you dump them.

It doesn’t even matter, ultimately, if you’ll be financially and practically worse off without them, and that it’s going to be extremely hard to get them out of your life, and you’re not even sure how to.

In fact, in the end, nothing matters except that they are abusing, bullying and/or manipulating you, and you need to get away from them, by whatever means necessary.

And no, you’re not being ‘nasty’ or ‘unsympathetic’, not to want such people in your life. You can feel sympathy for their plight, but from a safe distance! Remember that it’s actually THEIR responsibility, not yours, to sort themselves out. Even if they struggle to do so, it’s still not your problem or your fault, and you don’t have to take them back. You don’t have to hold their hand, metaphorically speaking, while they’re steadily draining your life force. You don’t have to pay that price anymore. You have the right to set boundaries, and stick to them.

And yes, they will use any and every angle, every trick in the book, to get you back under their control again. I’ve heard just about all of them, from both those who dumped on me, similar people, and their supporters, known as ‘flying monkeys’.

Just sharing recent examples, for instance - if I went back years, there would be lots more - I’ve been told that I was ‘stigmatising’ and ‘demonising’ people with personality disorders for daring to point out how badly many of them behave, and had my words rewritten to equate having one to being autistic, though there is actually no comparison. Personality disorders are the result of damaged psyches, and you CAN heal from them, with the right treatment. They are therefore NOTHING LIKE autism, which we’re born with, and which is simply a variation on human, not emotional damage, though of course people can have a personality disorder in addition to being autistic.

Another time, I was told that I’m ‘ableist’ and ‘judgemental’ of people with personality disorders, that I shouldn’t say that they tend to be abusive as ‘only abusers abuse’. To which I pointed out that if you have a diagnosis of a personality disorder in the first place, or you fit the criteria for one, you are at far greater risk of either abusing or being abused, especially if you refuse to examine yourself and get treatment. I’m guessing that they didn’t like this much either. But I’m getting better at standing my ground with such people. (Sadly, this wasn’t always the case.)

I’ve also been told that I’m showing a ‘lack of empathy’ for those who had hard childhoods, that I’m ‘judgemental’ of those with mental health disorders (though my friends beg to differ), that I was ‘unsupportive’ of a particular critic (I guess all those hours empathising with their problems during so many of their long and frequently tedious rants don’t count), that I’m ‘claiming to be perfect’ (something I’ve never in fact said, nor ever would), told I shouldn’t write about what I’ve been through without giving those who have shat on me a ‘right of reply’, and so much more. All combined with a not-so-subtle pressure to let them back into my life so that things can be ‘sorted out’.

And so on, and so forth. I’m sure you’ve heard similar things from the abusers/manipulators/drama addicts in your life. A constant stream of distorted ‘facts’ and selective ‘memories’, all designed to break your will and wear you down. And let them back in. Always, of course, on their terms.

DON’T DO IT.

Don’t let them in. Or if they’re already (back) in, get them out by whatever means you have to. Blocking, unfriending, deleting, leaving online or IRL groups, cancelling, moving house, dropping unsupportive people and the abuser’s flying monkeys, refusing to engage, leaving town, leaving the country even, whatever it takes. WHATEVER IT TAKES.

Because you’re entitled to a decent life, one free of constant drama, criticism, bullying, verbal attacks, manipulation, and similar, a life that’s safe, peaceful, happy, and which meets your needs, and you don’t owe them anything but a heartfelt ‘goodbye!’

BECAUSE YOU’RE WORTH IT.

And you know what? The abusers deserve a good life too – just not at your expense. I sincerely hope that they get the PROFESSIONAL help they need, so that they stop treating people the way they do, but also for their own sake. I don’t wish them ill, why would I? How does that help anything, or anyone? And yes, I know that the right treatment, or indeed any treatment, can be extremely difficult to access, sometimes impossible. But until they start challenging themselves, and other abusers, to do and be better, horrible things are going to keep happening. People are going to keep getting damaged.

And we all deserve better. Better lives, better community, better everything.

BECAUSE WE’RE ALL WORTH IT.

Arohanui (much love).

Borderline Personality Disorder And Autistics

Lately I seem to be seeing lots of mentions of borderline personality disorder and autistics via social media. One article I saw asks if we are being misdiagnosed with borderline instead of autism, other times people have mentioned how we are so often victims of ‘manipulators and abusers’, categories borderline people fall into. And, of course, there are genuinely some who are indeed both.

I do believe that autistics might be at higher risk of being borderline, because of the way we’ve so often been badly treated. But we’re at even greater risk of being the victims of borderliners, as I call them, including those who are both autistic and borderline.

Briefly, borderline personality disorder is now defined as “impairments in personality (self and interpersonal) functioning and the presence of pathological personality traits.” There are several criteria that must be met for a diagnosis. I must stress here that we’re not talking here about isolated incidents, but a consistent pattern of behaviour, over many years or possibly decades.

A couple of disclaimers here – firstly, before anyone points it out, I’m well aware that I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist or anything like that. I have no professional knowledge in this area at all. But if something walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, excuse me, but I’ll call it a duck.

Secondly, this is NOT intended as some kind of attack on those with mental health issues. There seems to be some discussion as to whether personality disorders actually count as ‘mental illness’, though they are now generally defined as such. A crucial difference, however, between personality disorders and other mental illnesses is that you’re usually aware that you’re depressed, suicidal, etc. People with personality disorders, by comparison, often won’t acknowledge what they are. This is a big part of what makes them so damaging to others.

But what I am concerned with here is how often we are their target. (I’ve focused here on borderliners, but I don’t doubt that much of what I say applies to other personality disorders too.) When I researched them, my initial search only turned up websites that talked of borderline as a condition of ‘emotional instability’ and seemed to ooze with sympathy for the ‘sufferers’ of it. There was little or no mention of what it was like for those around them. It wasn’t till I typed in ‘I have been a victim of someone with borderline personality disorder’ that I discovered all their many, many other victims.

Because yes, I have suffered at the hands of borderliners, and I have seen family and friends suffer too. I didn’t have a name for their behaviour back then, but they’ve been in my life on and off for decades. The label is fairly recent, the type is not. Even the book that’s my ‘creativity bible’, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, published in the 90s, talks of what she calls ‘crazy-makers’, and the characteristics are basically those of borderliners.

So, I’ve put together a list of common characteristics of borderliners so we can recognise them, preferably before they irreparably harm us.

1) Everything Is About Them. They have to be the centre of attention, at all costs. They will create (melo)dramas, sulk, throw tantrums, argue or rant for hours or even days, whatever it takes to make sure your focus is on them. They will also consistently invade your boundaries and your privacy. It didn’t matter what I was trying to do, my (now ex!) partner just had to talk to me, even when I was writing and made it very clear that I didn’t want to be interrupted. In fact, any time my attention strayed from her, she became almost frantic to get it back. This is often coupled with isolating you from family and former friends, so that you lose perspective on what’s happening. 

Borderliners can also be very controlling. My ex once threw a huge hissy fit because, in the middle of a ‘discussion’ (ie lecture from her), I got up and went to the toilet without asking her ‘permission’. How dare I “just get up and walk away!” Around a borderliner, your life no longer feels like your own.

2) They Are Never To Blame. The only time they don’t want attention, is when it comes to accepting blame. Their standard tactics are to deny and minimise. After I fell out with one borderliner, for instance, she tried to tell a friend that I’d ‘just misunderstood one little incident’, when in fact there’d been months of increasingly objectionable behaviour on her part. They will also deny there is any repetition of their behaviour - “let’s just talk about this one thing”, my ex would always say, when I tried to point out any patterns.

 Another tactic is ‘reframing’. If something negative did happen, it’s always someone else’s fault. On the rare occasion my ex would admit there was anything ‘wrong’ with her behaviour, she’d insist that it was an ‘only natural’ reaction to how *I* behaved, that I ‘drove’ her to it. For years, I tried very, very hard to be ‘better’, so she in turn would be nice to me. Only when I realised that my behaviour was not the trigger, was I able to break free.

3) They Have Almost No Self-Awareness. A borderliner, for instance, will say things like “I’m a very calm person”, when they’ve just spent hours screaming at you, or claim “I’m not _____ anymore”, when it’s obvious to everyone around them that they still very much are. They also have (or pretend to have?) almost zero awareness of the effect of their actions on others. This is part of the blaming others of course, but it’s more than that. I’ve had a borderliner tell me, with great concern, how it used to ‘really upset’ her when her ex used to self-harm, not realising that this same ex had told me how they only self-harmed after the borderliner had convinced them that they were worthless. It was as if they can’t comprehend any connection between how they behave, and how other people react to them.

4) They will use others against you. This is particularly so if you’ve put yourself out of their reach somehow. Remember that borderliners are experts at manipulation. There’s a phenomenon called ‘flying monkeys’ where borderliners recruit others to continue their abuse of you, having convinced them that YOU are the ‘baddie’. You may even have been one yourself, when you were with them. And while they rarely seem to commit physical violence themselves, I have seen one incite someone to commit it on a third party – after several attempts to destroy that party’s personal and professional reputation.

5) They see all this as normal. Whatever made them borderline happened so young, and so thoroughly, that they seem unable to understand just how screwed up they are. I suppose this makes them objects of pity, but the way I see it, it’s like seeing an unhappy-looking lion in its cage at the zoo. You may feel sorry for it, but it’s not a good idea to jump into the cage and pat it on the head - ‘there, there, poor kitty!’ Borderliners are like the lion – feel sorry for them perhaps, but at a safe distance, or they will rip you to shreds. They can be helped, yes, but not by just anyone. It takes truly major therapy - and first they must admit they need it. Wherein lies the Big Problem – they generally don’t and won’t.

If all this sounds horrendous, believe me, it is. Victims can take years to win free, and more years to heal, if we ever do. After more than twenty years, I’m not sure I’ve quite managed yet to ‘un-program’ myself from the messages my ex implanted in my psyche. And it still didn’t stop me from being the victim of other borderliners. Thankfully, I recognised the patterns quicker, and was able to get out faster and limit the damage.

You’ll notice I’ve said ‘she’ when talking about the borderliners I’ve known. This is because all the ones I’ve known have been female. Typically, about 70% of those diagnosed borderline are women, but this may simply reflect society’s expectation of how men and women ‘naturally’ behave, as more recent research finds the same rates of borderline among men and women in the general population, though the ways it manifests may differ somewhat.

Similarly, I am aware that borderliners are not all the same. Some seem more aggressive than others, some treat badly only those closest while seeming ‘lovely’ to everyone else, while others display the same behaviour to all. Some even seem to have moments of remorse and acknowledging their behaviour (my ex would sometimes do this), but the big problem with this is you can’t trust them to stay that way. What they say today, they will ‘forget’ and deny tomorrow. It’s how they’re built.

There is much more I could say about borderliners, but I think this post is long enough! My basic message is - be wary. Be very wary. And when you recognise one, run a mile. And then another, and another. For your own sake, and the sake of those closest to you. Stay safe, people.

Autistics and Trust Issues

A lot of aspies, including me, have big, big issues with trust. We generally start out in life very naïve, wide-open and totally trusting, taking people and situations at face value, and willing to believe whatever people say. Lying and deceit don’t come naturally to us, and it never occurs to us that others might do it. In consequence, we have often been used, abused, tricked, deceived, maltreated and betrayed, over and over again. At some point, we realize this blind trust of ours is misplaced, and become extremely wary. Many of us come to view people in general and NTs in particular with a great deal of suspicion, resentment and anger. We can even become so hyper-sensitive that we jump to conclusions and see slights, rejections and betrayals that aren’t in fact there.

The ‘pop psychology’ on such betrayals is that we should ‘forgive and forget’, move on and let it go – after all, it’s in the past, right? But for us, it’s not ‘in the past’. It’s ongoing. Our memories stay uncomfortably vivid. We find it hard to ‘just forget’ things, and don’t do forgiveness well. Moreover, we have extreme difficulty in letting go past betrayals because we usually just can’t process them, can’t understand why they happened, whose ‘fault’ it was, or even, often, what happened, exactly. Reeling, confused, we only know we’ve been kicked in the guts, and it really, really hurts.

And even if we can somehow let go of past incidents, that’s not the end of it. Some of us are still enmeshed in ‘betrayal of trust’ circumstances. But even if we aren’t, every day, we must go out into the world and face again situations we can’t judge accurately, people we can’t read properly if at all, and thus, we know, the potential is always there for more betrayals, more abuse, more dumping of other people’s crap on our heads. We can come to trust pretty much no-one, because we are so bad at figuring out who can and can’t be trusted. The whole thing becomes a bewildering morass, and it never really ends. Each day, consequently, can be a nightmare of trepidation. And the more we have to do with the world, the more likelihood there is that these betrayals will happen, simply because of what and who we are.

Some aspies I’ve encountered claim they’ve always been suspicious, and mistrusting of others. I think it’s possible their betrayals happened so early, they’ve forgotten the times before. Others, like me, remember all too well their earlier naivety, and the pain of the repeated betrayals and loss of trust.

Either way, there really isn’t any ideal solution, for me or for autistics in general. The world is what it is, and we are what we are. No amount of ‘social skills training’, no amount of struggling to learn how to ‘read’ other people, is going to alter the fact that just about all of us will get taken advantage of sooner or later.

Each and every autistic individual has to make their own choice, as to how much and in what way they interact with the world/other people. If we become total recluses, we may be safe (in some ways), but this can mean we become very lonely, and cut off from those who do or might love us, and who could be trusted. On the other hand, being totally ‘open’ to the world means being a target for bullies, abusers, scammers and all manner of undesirables. We all need to find our own midpoint, between total reclusiveness and total openness. That midpoint will be different for every aspie/autie, and no-one has the right to judge another’s decision on this.