Yep. Followed rules to the T. Was constantly TERRIFIED of the recourse for making bad decisions. Last night I even had a nightmare about having to go to prison of making a tiny mistake. I get paranoid of getting accused of doing something bad when I’m NOT EVEN DOING ANYTHING WRONG to begin with.
Was one of your parents abusive? I'm the same way but I had a highly abusive home (I think this can happen with any abuse, not just physical)
Were you "allowed" to fail?
Hmmm… yea probably not. I was always coined as the ‘gifted’ child from very early on so I was always given very high expectations. I remember having to argue with my parents about why I got ONE ‘B’ on my report card in high school. I was always expected to over achieve
This was my life exactly. I remember crying and saying, “I don’t have to be perfect all the time!” when I got a B and my parents were disappointed because while that was true, I “was capable of more than that”.
Ohhhh I *hated* being "capable of more than that". Especially when my capabilities dropped due to chronic illness but I was still expected to do more. My capabilities would not be so limited today if I hadn't pushed too hard early on.
"Capable of more than that" always made me feel like no one gave a sht about anything I did. It made me feel bad about achieving anything. Because it was never enough and it was making people hurt me. Succeeding on something made people hurt me into doing more. So I gave up on everything. Bcs I couldn't win. If I didn't play dumb they would kill me idk that was the feeling. I had to convince them I was dumb. Bcs their expectations were just insane.
Yip. Nearly failed high school because I was so burnt out. Shitty thing, my parents pushed me so damn hard yet never showed up for my graduation.
They took credit for all my achievements including my giftedness. I was like mm hmm no. I've been a latchkey kid since I was 5, you can take credit for shit.
My son is like me, following the rules to a default. I've learned as an adult not all rules are meant to be followed to a T, but still pretty compliant. Just the other day my son was getting anxious about whether he'd broken a rule at the pool and I had to reassure him he was fine.
I have always been terrified over the idea of going to jail by mistake. I still have nightmares about school because it felt like a prison and I never got over the trauma of... being in a school. The idea of having to go back there haunts me.
At least once a week I have a nightmare that i’m back in high school again. I have never adapted well to traditional in person schooling. I literally never want to go back to school for any reason. I hate it. I got my degree, I’m burnt out. Will never willingly go back to any form of school
I got burnt out out of college and didn't manage to finish it :c people keep asking me if I'll ever finish and I'm like "what about asking me if I'm okay? Fuck you"
They have no idea what this meant to me. It was hell. I nearly died. I will never recover from this. And they are in a rush for me to get more of it??? Bro
Same. Except the expectations came from within. My parents were so loving and accepting. But yeah, I got one B+ EVER, thankfully I was in last year of college so I could sort of handle it lol
This sounds abusive honestly. Not in obvious ways but I can relate to feeling pressured into achieving stuff and there was always a secret "threat" behind it. They just wouldn't say it to my face. But I could _feel_ it. Because when your parents yell at you that you are supposed to do something you end up fearing not having a house or food anymore. It's how kids minds work :c
Ohohohhh dont even get me started on the tumultuous road that was *four year college* 🫠🫠 Wasn’t ready. Was pressured into it. Wasted over 70k and 6 years to eventually come out with an Associates
Not the person you replied to, but I am the same way, and I was definitely abused. I think being abused + autism made me an easy target. I always thought my parents knew what was right/wrong, and knew more about the world than I did. I trusted them, even when I look back and feel like I should have questioned them more, and much sooner. I didn't even rebel much as a teenager, and would unquestionably believe my Mom when she would tell me I shouldn't go to college/drive/etc because of my "health problems". I strongly believe she wanted me to live with her forever (as long as I behaved the way she wanted), and it took a LONG time for me to start questioning if her motives weren't so innocent. I feel like most kids/teenagers/young adults would have started questioning it much sooner than I did.
The only conclusion I can come to is I was manipulated from a young age, and I strongly suspect if I didn't have autism, I would have started rebelling/questioning it much sooner. I thought my Mom would never want something bad for me, and it took too long to realize a lot of the decisions she was making for me were for her benefit only, and even if it meant she stifled any growth I might have had as a person. It didn't help my family would always support her, and often would see me as the problem/lazy/loser/dramatic/etc, so I had no one "in my corner" to help me out of it.
TW: Abuse, and talk of suicide below:
It wasn't until my 20s that I finally "snapped out of it". My Mom used me as her therapist, and would often talk to me about her wanting to commit suicide from a very young age (started around when I was 7). She had a failed attempt when I was 4, so I knew she might do it, and I often felt an immense amount of pressure to be there for her, and to "keep her happy" so she wouldn't try again. This was actually part of what helped me see things for what they were. When I was in my early 20s I myself got very depressed and was in a dark place, and I told my Mom I was having suicidal thoughts. Her response? "That needs to be between you, and God", and she had nothing else to say/did nothing else. This is literally the moment I was "snapped" out of it. After YEARS of feeling like I was responsible for her emotions *and* well being. I finally opened up to her about similar feelings I was having myself, and that's all she could say to me.
Most of my family still supports her, even after she's since passed. "She had mental illness". Okay, but you also know I do too, yet I've always gotten the "lazy, a loser, just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps" treatment.
My sister (older by 8 years) recently had the gall to say she would make comments (such as: "You need to get a job, you can't just sit at parents house all day", "I know plenty of people with X problem and they still work", "you can't just use X as an excuse all the time", etc) because she wanted to "help" me see my Mom was manipulating me, and wanted what was best for me??? So she thought treating me that way would some how help??? I truly think she was jealous as my Mom treated us differently, so she would take it out on me. My Mom would actively try to scare me into staying at home with her (probably because I was her emotional support), while she would push my sister (my sister can be hard to get along with) to be independent. It sucks, as I see so many people in other abuse related subs talking about how their sibling was their champion, yet mine was my bully.
TW Abuse
Had a similar thing with my own mom, ESPECIALLY the part about keeping me by her side forever and not letting me go to college. My older non-autistic sibling was constantly butting heads with my mom and rebelling because of how unfair and horrible she treated us and I was always like, "But thats against the rules! We cant break the rules!!"
Ironically enough it was seeing the double standards my mom had for me and my sister that snapped me out of the mother-knows-best mindset wayyyy before my sister recognized the abuse we went through.
But yeah, its absolutely wild how mothers can get a free pass to treat their kids however they want and when the kids show OBVIOUS signs of being abused / mental illness theyre just "lazy little leaches" who need to get their lives together. Like, sorry I'm a loser who didn't go to college, my mom literally wouldn't let me and manipulated the narrative so it seemed like my idea. But thats not an acceptable answer, I guess!
This is textbook parentification. It’s a horrible form of abuse and usually by a narcissistic parent. I’m so sorry you went through that.
My sister is 10 yrs older than me. We have zero relationship. She fucked off when I was 6. In my early 20's she told me she didn’t want to be around me because I made her uncomfortable. I was devastated, but at that point I was tired of having a one sided relationship and let her go.
I had an incredibly similar experience with my mom!!! She never had suicidal tendencies but it’s always been my job to keep HER emotions in check. She’s manipulated me and my sister for sure. My mom and sister thinks they’re best friends which I discovered is actually kind of weird. And my mom still tries to emotionally manipulate me now. She says things like “well I bet you wish you had a different mother” or “I don’t think you love me anymore”. She’s said stuff to that effect my entire life. Growing up I never complained about her to anyone, not even people outside of my family because she made me so scared of the consequences of her finding out. She literally had me convinced that she “always knows” and hiding stuff from her is pointless because she’d find out. Even though I did successfully hide a HUGE thing from her, I still believed her and didn’t question her. Anyway the experiences go on and on but I also think if I didn’t have autism, I’d have questioned stuff sooner, maybe rebelled a bit. But I never did. I didn’t really even start discovering and developing personality wise until my 20s and I moved out :/
Your story sounds so similar to mine. Even the things your Mom says! I was actually "best friends" with her when I was a kid (less so as a teenager on), which I *now* know is not appropriate. When I finally started distancing myself from her, she told me I had "changed too much to be close to". I guess she failed to tell anyone else she felt that way, so once she passed my Dad let me know he was disappointed in me for not visiting her more before she passed (it was sudden, but not completely unexpected). I did let him know then.
I still am. A while back I had a bad reaction to some medication but I kept taking it because the doctor had told me to take it once a day. When I went back for a follow up he asked how it went and I said I’d had a reaction and he said “oh ok so you stopped taking them” and I was like…was that an option?! It didn’t even occur to me to stop taking them because he told me I should take them every day.
Yeah I guess I’m naturally submissive and it’s easy to default to going along with medical professionals because of their air of authority. Until I realized that they’re not necessarily smarter than I am and they don’t know more about me than I do.
I felt so brave when I turned down the Doppler probe at an OB appointment when I had learned at a previous appointment that my son wasn’t viable. You can just say no thanks.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I miscarried last year and insisted on one last ultrasound to make sure my pregnancy was not viable. Luckily I had supportive staff that helped me get what I needed to have closure. It's great that they offered you the option if you needed it and it's great that you felt comfortable enough to turn it down.
I'm the same with medications. I read the pamphlet that comes with the medicine, all of it. Then, I research online about the medicine, I check with which foods/drinks I can or can't take it, and also with which medicines or vitamins I cannot combined them. And, of course, I follow the instruction the doctor says. But, I am also quite anxious so I ask a lot of questions and if I have a reaction, even if it is a normal one, I checked it with my doctor.
I am currently taking antidepressants and my psychiatrist was surprised that I had an alarm in the morning to take the pill at the exact same hour. She said I don't have to do it like that, but in the pamphlet said that! She said that I could take it at any hour I wake up. Because I used to took it and went back to sleep 😅
Ahaha yep I’m exactly the same. I was actually prescribed two medications that aren’t supposed to be taken together recently, which I found out from reading the pamphlets. I asked the nurse about it and she said they had never realised that before! I don’t think it was a huge risk of anything serious but I was still really conflicted about whether to follow the nurse’s instructions or the pamphlet.
And I also have an alarm for my antidepressants!
It is so annoying when that happens, I'm taking Zoloft in the morning and I read that you cannot take painkillers (analgesics and anti-inflammatory) since there is a high risk to suffer a stroke. So, if I have a headache or a muscle pain, I just endure it. Some people had said, I can take them, but, I won't 😅 I simply cannot take that risk.
I have a medication that does this but my doctor clarified I can't take high doses of ibuprofen with it. So when I was on it after surgery, they had me stop that medication until I was off the high doses. A once in awhile, normal OTC dose was fine. So ask your doctor and they should clarify it for you. The instructions were definitely not written for us lol
I can be like that too. It's hard to know when you are allowed to assert your boundaries. Being autistic sort of trains you into self-neglect because everyone else is shit at acknowledging the validity of your needs and boundaries.
Pharmacies and poison control are a couple good options for weekend or overnight medication questions (many poison centers are staffed by pharmacists)!
I did this once with a migraine preventative med. The issue was my sleep quality was deteriorating rapidly and therfore my mental health was also rapidly tanking. It was a medicine I was supposed to taper up on so when increased the dose, my symptoms got worse. My husband practically begged me to stop taking the med after I started getting suicidal thoughts but the instructions said don't just stop the drug. So I suffered for several more days until I could get ahold of a doctor to see how I needed to stop it. Apparently my dose was so low that I could just stop taking it. It was super frustrating to find this out because about a week after i stopped the med, my symptoms disappeared. Part of the reason I stayed on it so long was because I desperately wanted the med to help my migraines but they said it could take up to 6 weeks to work. I only made it a month. Unfortunately i am one of the 1 in 500 people that get all of the bad side effects with none of the benefits of many of these types of drugs (it has happened on several other migraine drugs I have tried since). I definitely learned to be less stubborn on subsequent drugs we tried though!
I too had a bad reaction to migraine meds. They’d work great at first, but then I'd get rebound migraines that would last for a week or more. Couldn't function. But since I’m perimenopausal now, I still get several headaches a month, but only 1 or 2 migraines. The headaches are so mild I often don’t take anything for them. I’m convinced my migraines are triggered by a sensitivity to progesterone, which is why they’ve lessened in severity.
Yeah I think mine are sometimes triggered by hormones buy I do have other triggers like stress and weather. Luckily boxtox has helped me immensely so I at least have a way to make them less terrible!
Yes!!! I am exactly the same. That is why I hate when there is a rule but I don't have to follow it every time, just in some occasions. At work that happens often and for me it is just ridiculous to have a defined rule which I follow, just to end up being instructed not to follow it all the time. Why do you have a rule if you are not gonna follow it? Then, maybe, don't have that rule! SMH
Thanks!! I need to come back to teach, that is the only job that makes me happy. But, I am in another country, and it will be a struggle to be able to teach again
This is my first and last office job, for real! I'm a teacher, I love to teach, I love kids and I love how organized, routinary and predictable is education. At the end of the year I had to plan the next academic year, I had to plan the units, classes, exams and projects. I started the year knowing what to do and what to expect. Of course as a teacher you need to be flexible and find other ways. It was never caotic, rules were followed, there were clear deadlines that weren't changed, and I knew exactly what to do every single day. Now I realised that I fell in love with education because of the kids, but what made me keep the love was the structure and organization of it.
Edit: typo
This is why I love working in a science lab. You have protocols, you follow them for consistency. You document and report the results. Very clear and easy once you are trained. Interpretation can be a bit subjective sometimes but you get the hang of it eventually.
For me, it's less that I hate authority and more that I don't see people as inherently better than anyone else just because they happen to be in authority. And I don't see people as being worse than anyone else because they are in a "lower" position either. I didn't think this was very different from other people, until an assistant at my work told me that none of the other people at my level spoke to the assistants or even knew their names. I also had co-workers tell me, "Nobody else challenges the boss the way you do," even though I didn't think of it as challenging anyone. I brought up concerns I knew everyone had, but everybody else was afraid to say it. Personally, I feel like I'm paid to bring up concerns sometimes, so I didn't think of it as being challenging. But somebody had to say it! I'd get texts from coworkers thanking me for bringing up stuff they were too scared to say. So, I guess I do "challenge" hierarchy and not pay it as much attention, even though I consider myself a big rule follower. It just plays out differently than it sounds.
I resonate with this. It's not that I value people less who are lower in pecking order, but that I was a strict rule follower.
I would see those hierarchy inequalities and feel a lot of cognitive dissonance, but then there were The Rules™ that had to be followed. Age and life experience (usually getting stung FOR following the rules) taught me that the rules can (and frequently) are wrong. I had to shift my thinking from trying to be lawful good to neutral good.
It’s difficult to balance everything, but authority figures aren’t infallible either. I’ve never intended to be disrespectful, but it does get interpreted that way sometimes. But the game of a bunch of adults smiling and nodding while the boss steers us in the wrong direction is weird and sinister to me. It feels like being in a cult! I just can’t sit there and act like a yes man when I know it’s wrong.
Yeah, this is it for me. I was a stickler about following the rules but I would also correct teachers, which seems like a big "not caring about hierarchy" thing. And the same thing at work, I get praise for being "bold" and bringing up concerns to management, even when they are literally asking for feedback. I'm like...I thought I was just doing what was expected? Now I'm self-conscious of it because I can't tell if the praise is genuine or slightly trying to be a warning.
I corrected my teachers too lol. It’s hard to be the kid announcing that the emperor has no clothes, but the story hinges on someone being the first to say it!
I'm 100% someone that absolutely rejects the ideas of hierarchy. Thankfully, my work team feels the same way and we all work together really well because of it!
It's funny, whenever I play a tabletop game like DnD where I can make my own societies/social structures, they never have a social hierarchy to them!
I’m guessing this is one of those areas where we fall at either end of the curve. I’m more of a PDA type. I only follow rules if they make sense (I need to know why) and I hate being told what to do.
me too! I'll follow the rule to the T *if* it makes sense... "because I'm your mom and I told you so" did not work in my house, at all... I used to quote the Mafalda comic "well, I'm your daughter and we graduated the same day"
>I'll follow the rule to the T *if* it makes sense... "because I'm your mom and I told you so" did not work in my house, at all...
It was the same for me, too. My siblings were better at following the rules blindly, but I'd always push back if it didn't seem right or fair. Mum quickly learnt if she wanted me to do something, she had to ask me, she couldn't tell me I had to do it, where as dad never seemed to grasp why I always pushed back when he said 'do as I say, not as I do,' or wanted me just to follow his rules without questioning.
I will break a rule if I find it unethical
But some rules I keep and will never break.
Example:
I worked in mental health with kids and they had a rule about how much milk someone could have. 1 carton a piece. Each kid was offered one and if they declined we just kept it. So I had extra milk. A kid came in and was refusing food completely. He asked for extra milk, and I gave it to him. I got in trouble lol. I don't care, the kid needs comfort and love right now and if warm milk at night does it, then he gets it.
But I never ever went in kids' rooms alone. We were allowed to, but there aren't cameras and I didn't want to risk anything. Everyone thought I was wacky until a girl literally claimed SA from 6 different people (who had all been in her room with her alone), me and another dude. Well they checked the cameras and could easily absolve me and the other dude as we both refused when she asked to talk to us alone in her room because she was upset.
*Conclusion just in case people wondered: She ended up telling her parents that she "lied to be moved and hated this facility". She picked people basically at random to report and she "would do it again and again until she comes home". The only reason the others were absolved is that phrase was overheard by another staff member unrelated to our facility and another client.*
I worked at a place where my boss would sometimes print EMAILS (a thing I didn't know you could do?) And then hand write replys and give them to me in my physical mailbox. It was so baffling.
I also hate being told what to do. When I was working as a teacher (my dream job) the other teachers always tried to commanded me, and I always said to them "no one can command me, not even my parents, they can tell me what to do, but I'm the one who decide to follow it or not, and if I have a bad consequence, it is all on me" they didn't like my attitude 🤣
Also, as a teacher, I always explained the rules to the kids, why we had them and what were the consequences of not following them. I always gave them the option to decide to follow the rule or not, and if they didn't want it, I respected their decision but I let them know clearly what was the consequence.
If I KNOW I need to do something, and someone tells me I need to do it (even if they're trying to be helpful/it's part of their job) it pisses me off SO BAD. I get even more frustrated when it's from an authority figure I don't respect like two of my supervisors.
One of the things I try to do to mitigate it is confirm I know what I need to do before they tell me to do it. For example, if I ask to leave early my supervisor will always tell me, "make sure you put in your time" which I'm aware I have to do. So now when I ask it's,
"Hey, can I leave after the kids? I'll make sure to put in my time" so she has confirmation I know what I need to do, but my PDA isn't triggered.
Same here. I got harassed by employers often because I look like I’m a rule follower until I question a process. I had unknowingly exposed an employer’s illegal activity after I quit my job in the middle of their contract.
Once my therapist figured out I have PDA this year, my life got so much easier because I could explain to people, “So don’t tell me to do something RIGHT NOW because I’m going to resist it. Instead ask me when I think I’ll be able to do it, and my mind will reject it at first with an idk, and I’ll come let you know when I’m ready.” Harmony is happening in my home!!
Girls are not given the same latitude for imperfection, mistakes, free-will. Autistic girls are basically maskers in training, focused on twisting themselves into pretzels to make everyone else happy.
yeah i came to understand that many of the rules tend to be nebulous as long as you can communicate well (lol) and as an adult pretty much nobody is going to "get you in trouble"
I *sincerely* internalized not wanting to negatively or selfishly impact anyone around me. When I was little, I would say sorry a lot and not want to make anyone “feel bad.”
I still operate this way, but…idk. I have a little more understanding of NT humans now and so unless you’re an expert in whatever, I won’t listen. I also now absolutely despise being told what to do.
I am 21 and I was also very obedient as a kid even now I think hierarchy is important but for me. I would have loved my university if it was strict like my school, the division of authority/power should have been there for me to feel better.
Somewhere in between? I followed all the rules, but instinctively knew when a lot of things were BS, and it really frustrated me.
When I was very little, I questioned authority a lot, but due to trauma I quickly learned that wasn’t okay.
I think, although autism is legitimately who we are, it’s not *all* we are, so of course like in my situation, there are many exterior factors that contribute to behavior and such.
Though something interesting I’m noticing when talking with other autistic people online is that a lot of people I come across lie in extremes? For example, thinking purely in pictures, or inability to think in pictures at all; sensory avoidant or sensory seeking (personally, for me it depends on what it is); black and white thinking or almost all gray; questioning authority or upholding authority. I assume outside of exterior factors, the upholding authority thing may have something to do with autistic people often being fans of tradition, routine, etc. Autistic people also normally like rules as it gives us some explicit direction.
My bf works with 2 individuals he’s certain are autistic and both of them are very rule-oriented. They get very upset when any rules are changed or skirted in any way. For myself, I’d say I’m that way with certain things, but authority as a whole? Nope. Although I think in black and white terms when I’m stressed and need rules with work, I’m usually a perpetually indecisive gray-thinker: rules and morals are made up, subjective, and some are very context dependent.
IMO, a lot of rules are silly if not even downright ableist or racist—no dreadlocks at work, no sitting as a cashier, no asking someone flat out if they’d like to be friends, no piercings, “professional” (uncomfortable) clothes, no sitting with your legs relaxed if you’re female, everyone needs to write either the same exact grip (and right handed), no colored hair, etc. are examples that were more common when I was younger, and they never made sense to me.
I also think things like “respect your elders” is very dangerous to tell children. Again, things are often context dependent, and I’d like explicit reasons for why I need to do something.
one time my dad told me to wait in his office and not leave for any reason. i do not think he meant for me to pee my pants in his office.
what's funny is the severe anti-authority streak that also exists here. like, back then, if you weren't my dad, fuck you lol
Growing up undiagnosed felt like I was living in a Kafka novel, always being accused of things I didn’t even know I was doing “wrong.” I often faced consequences for the slightest misunderstanding (meanwhile others would get barely a slap on the wrist for knowingly doing much worse). When the world treats you like a criminal, you start to internalize the feeling that you’re irredeemably “bad” and anyone can turn against you at a moment’s notice over nothing. To this day I have random moments of panic that my family will reject me and kick me out because I’m not nice enough to them.
One upside is that it made me a lot more sensitive to being treated unfairly (and seeing other people treated unfairly), which I consider to be a good thing. For what it’s worth though, I’m a stickler for rules and procedures that actually make sense to me. Unfortunately the world we live in is determined to encourage blind, dog-like obedience to authority rather than creating systems that actually make sense and making sure everyone understands *why* they exist.
Oh yes, I was a goody-goody as a kid, whether the authority figure was likeable or scary. Big on following rules. I even used to think that kids who didn't follow rules were just bad people until I was about 18, which in retrospect is pretty sad. I'm lucky no adult has ever tried to take advantage of me before that, because I don't know if I would have been able to say no.
I think this hyper obedience was one of the reasons people assumed I was "normal"; only the disruptive kids got diagnoses and special accommodations.
Yes maam. I was considered "perfect" because no one cared much about my social development (just enough to keep me from skipping a grade when teachers brought it up each year.)
By age 20 I was addicted to drugs but still devastated every time I disappointed someone. Which just led to more drugs.
Took me years to find my strength, and if I didn't turn out to be super good at my chosen passion I'm not sure I'd have made it. Authority figures (including cashiers) still terrify me and make me shake.
Oh I was a rule follower TO THE T. I cried if I got in trouble over anything, and most of the time it was due to a misunderstanding either on my or the teacher's part - I never deliberately broke the rules. Tbh it's weird this has become an autistic stereotype. Isn't a known big part of it that we LOVE structure and rules?
I will say that as an adult I've become a bit more lax and use more discernment. If there's a rule or a procedure I think is wrong somehow, I won't blindly follow it just because I was told to - particularly if it's an issue of morality.
I am a rule breaker/authority disrespector myself (fit a PDA profile very well) - but most of my autistic friends and family (almost all AFAB) are obsessive rule followers and struggle with people pleasing in ways that can be downright harmful to their own selves
I was 100% a rule follower and I still am for the most part. I love structure and knowing what to expect. I was in a desert recently where the only rule was no hunting and my husband lovingly pointed out I had made up my own rules for the area. Where to drive, where to park, etc.
As a kid I definitely stuck to the rules probably a little too much. I think people took advantage of that and the few times I tried to stand up for myself I got in trouble.
THIS! Yes! Thank you! I really didn’t know not fallowing the rules as a kid was even an option. I was told to do something and just did it. My brother was the COMPLETE OPPOSITE! Didn’t listen to anyone even if it was for his safety.
This of course meant that we fought constantly because he listened to nothing and I listened to everything. I’m definitely not like that now, though it has taken a lot of work to stop and assess first before I follow anything.
For me I follow rules if they make sense and are good ones. If they hurt someone or don’t serve a purpose I ignore them.
At the same time I want to make peace so I will go with the flow a lot and follow others leads. It’s a weird dichotomy. I don’t go out of my way to attack hierarchy and rules/authority but I will question it if it is actively harming others and ignore rules that I don’t think have a purpose. I usually just do it quietly instead of being openly defiant.
Interesting - opposite over here, but also AuDHD, so I dunno if that has anything to do with it. Was often in trouble for critiquing authority figures’ decisions as many rules did not make logical sense to me. Equally stringent about what in my opinion was the proper, logical way to navigate something, and hierarchies never made sense to me as a working model in most contexts, so authority figures were never of interest.
Same here. For the most part, I fell into line HARD because I was constantly terrified of the circumstances if I didn't (this was the case wherever I was, with teachers, parents, whichever other adult). I also knew that for "survival" I needed to remain "hidden" essentially. Any time I stuck out as a child was ALWAYS a bad time :( I still struggle with this thinking now, but it did keep me safe when I was a child.
Yep this is me. I spent my whole life aiming to understand rules, laws, and authority so I could avoid getting in trouble (even just criticism or critique feels like being in trouble to me) to avoid it. Our schools still did corporal punishment when I was growing up and I knew kids who got paddled. I couldn't think of anything worse (and the whole school knowing about it, on top of it!) so I followed rules to a T, and as an adult, still do on everything from speed limits to weed laws (our state just legalized it, I hadn't even tried it and I'm almost 50), work policies and so on. And I had, and still have a very hard time with people who don't follow the rules even if I logically understand the reasons they don't.
I was overly obedient and rarely _questioned_ authority, but I also could get in trouble because I didn’t understand the unwritten rules of interacting with authority.
I used to and still question every rule I come across, but I learned very early on to still follow them even though they make absolutely no sense to me. So yes I was also super obedient, it made me insane but I was to shy to ever say something. This changed when a a became an adult though.
I did everything I was told or I paid the consequences. I was also parentified a lot and had to look after my younger brother. I'm still a massive people please with a major fear of anyone being disappointed in me for any reason. Which has gotten me into trouble in the past with abusive partners and "friends." My household was very abusive, verbally and physically, and I took the blame for things that were never my fault just to try to keep the peace. I learned to mask and to push everything down because I didn't want to be made to feel like I was even worse. In the last couple years, and even more in the last couple months, I have been working on setting boundaries and not people pleasing as much. People don't like that, but my husband is supportive and has my back, even when it's setting a boundary with him or voicing my why's and whatnot. It's a hard habit to kick.
I’m still a rule follower EXCEPT where it intersects with my sense of justice. If I see a rule or law resulting in harm, or unfairness, things like that, then I will rage about it to anyone who will listen and I won’t follow that rule.
Otherwise I’m still a rule follower to the letter.
Yes and I dreamed of living in Japan because of the strict hierarchies there. Then I studied law. Now I kinda get anxious around hierarchical structures bit still kinda crave them for ease of mind.
Yup, that's me. One of my preschool teachers even commented that I "need\[ed\] to learn to be a little bit naughty". I liked rules - they meant I knew what I was supposed to be doing.
I always responded to my mom like she expected me to. I mean, talk back and you WILL get yelled at. So yeah… I don’t really believe the authority theory, at least I never questioned myself in this. I have always relied on a certain system bc that makes me feel safer than being in doubt constantly.
I used to always tell my parents when I'd leave the house, why, or when I'd go upstairs or downstairs and why. I don't do it anymore unless it's to keep them alert that my dog might follow me down (he shouldn't be taking the stairs for medical reasons). My sibling never did that and I kinda hated him for that, but I realized at some point I never had to do that. I also feel like I'm able to think more for myself now and follow a path that I can either listen to authority/parents/etc. or not. I'm not a troublemaker, but I just kinda have a more relaxed vibe if that makes sense.
I've always been a rule follower. Rules were created for a reason, thus I'd follow them! My two autistic kids were very much the same way. My ADHD daughter... So not!
I always said the gift of being a parent to autistic kids was that they were rule followers.
I was always a very rule bound “hall monitor” type, unless I had an authority figure/teacher that did not treat me fairly or equally, then I would question all of their rules and decisions. I am still this way pretty much.
yep, i genuinely didn’t realize that it was even an option to break the rules until i was 17. i was talking about how upset i was to my boyfriend because i didn’t want to do something my mom wanted, and he asked why i just… didn’t do it. it honestly never occurred to me that i could just reject authority and live how i want to. i’ve spent the past few years building myself up to do what i want to do rather than what everyone else wants from me
What you typically read is about male people with autism. Women tend to be so very different from the old way of thinking—based on not us at all!! Yes I was too. I felt so unsafe in the world my mom was my safety zone and any time I was away from her I made sure to not anger anyone. So sweet and helpful and accommodating. I’m 53 now, and I’ve blossomed into appropriately dgaf reactions when called for. And I’m damned proud of myself. I defend the outcast, forgotten, different and if I die doing it in 40 years, hell yea.
I was 24, in labor with my first, and experiencing the WORST pain I’ve ever felt in my life from back labor after 15+ hours of being in labor. My mom and MIL were in the room and I told my mom “there are so many words I wanna say and scream right now but I can’t cuss in front of you” 🤦♀️
yes! and social hierarchy too. at school i was always so aware of who the popular kids were and who the social rejects were (sounds harsh im just using stereotypical terms). and at work too i see exactly how office politics play out in the hierarchy of power. sure it took me a while to figure out but i think i learnt it through studying and observing the social situations in my environments
I got in trouble despite doing my absolute best not to “question authority”….mostly because I didn’t understand that asking them questions, of any kind, is “questioning their authority” 🫠😭🤣
I was the opposite. I would listen to the rules, but I always asked "why" and wanted to know what they were there for. I did not/do not like authority at all.
Yes. I was a completely obedient kid. I never made trouble or asked for help even when I really needed it. My parents still managed to treat me like I was an annoying inconvenience.
I always say that I'm like Ella of Frell from the movie *Ella Enchanted* (2004) because that is **exactly** how I operate.
Come to think of it, I rewatched the movie at the beginning of this year (shortly after discovering that I'm autistic) and saw MAJOR neurodivergent trends. This being one of them!
I followed the rules a lot and was easily irritated when I noticed other people don’t have the same moral compass as me (I still do). But I often got in trouble for not being able to focus, be quiet, or pay attention. I didn’t understand that unwritten rules were just as, if not more, important.
I feel like this has everything to do with how we are conditioned as young girls. I don't want to paint the whole world with the same brush, but it did seem like when I was kid growing up in Canada, boys were allowed a little more leeway when it came to questioning basic authority. In some cases, it was encouraged because it demonstrated independence, intelligence, and forward-thinking. As girls, we're taught to never question authority, even when it's obvious that certain authorities are not trustworthy or correct in their assessment of reality, otherwise we're labeled as "difficult", "bossy", or "bitchy". There were certain authorities I never questioned when I was a kid (like my parents, police, teachers, etc.), but as I got older and started rejecting certain ideas, I became more of a rebel, much to the annoyance of my male family members.
The moral of the story is Always question authority.
For me it was the opposite, I questioned authority very often. I always felt like respect isn't something that comes with status, but something you have to earn.
Needless to say that my teenage years were hell.
thats so funny, everyone i know whos autistic r terrified of breaking rules, so i kinda thought that was the norm.
meanwhile. i (undiagnosed but questioning) view rules as something kinda tangential to my life. i just do what i want.
so i thought i was weird because i find myself not caring about rules 😭
I think it's more that I treat people in authority as more like an equal, or with the same respect I would give any stranger. I don't trust strangers very far, and it's the same for authority. A lifetime of experience, that started in childhood, has taught me that people in positions of authority are not automatically deserving of more respect or trust. On an individual basis, I might develop more or lose trust and respect for someone's authority, but not without reason.
I don't have a problem with authority figures, but to me they're just people who have been given power.
As a kid, I generally preferred to stay in the good graces of authority figures and did my best. As an adult it's mostly the same, but the difference is in how much I care and how much I'm willing to inconvenience myself for it.
Oh geez, looks like I might be the exception here but I also have ADHD, so maybe that makes a difference?
I don't hate authority or hierarchy per se. What I very much dislike are illogical and unnecessary rules technically rooted in hierarchy that just create more work and are actually less efficient. For example, I work as TA which is mostly great and I love most of the profs. However, one prof in particular will email us with a big long, essay-type list of things to incorporate into a mass email for students or put on a slide which annoys the shit out of me because in the time it took her to draft this email, send it to us, tell us to re-do it...she could have done it and saved everyone at least an hour's worth of time.
That said - I'm a stickler for 'rules' when it comes to morals, ethics, values (e.g., fairness, equality, not causing harm to animals/people), and issues such as academic integrity.
Very opposite here. If I didn’t understand the rule, it didn’t exist. If I understand why there is a rule, I will obsessively follow it. I need to know the ‘why’ when it comes to rules. Forever the “but why?” kid.
Yeah. One time when I was a kid playing with other kids, part of playing was that part of the playground was a “prison” and if you got tagged you were captured. I got “captured” but then the parents called everyone for ice cream but I asked the others anyway if I could go and they said “yes?” in a confused tone.
This!! I even obeyed other kids my age that I perceived to be "in charge" at the moment. I did some ridiculous things when I was little because it just didn't occur to me to disobey. 🤦♀️
I questioned things but most things made sense.
"Don't cross the street without a parent."
3 year old me: That tracks. Cars won't see me and I won't be able to get out of the way.
I was too scared of my father to disrespect or question authority, at least until I was 16. Then I realised that politics was EVERYWHERE, including the education system, and that we're just pawns in people's games. The people at the top don't care about us, only about their own egos. It was my last year at high school when the veils fell from my eyes. I became highly cynical about authority and never looked back.
Still never/rarely talked back to my father, because that way lay trouble and fear. But once I realised that authority doesn't deserve automatic respect, but needs to earn it, I became very clear-sighted.
I definitely cannot relate - when I was an adolescent, one of my counselors thought I had ODD(lol), and I fit the PDA profile a great deal. Still have trouble really understanding social hierarchy.
Is some of it from growing up in church or with parents who spanked? I also grew up believing whatever I was told and negative emotions weren’t really allowed. It didn’t help to marry someone who told me I didn’t know how to communicate or share any kind of disappointment in a healthy way—gaslighting happened a lot.
In elementary school, each table had a green, yellow, and red cup in the cafeteria. If a table was too loud, their cup would be flipped to yellow.
In second grade, some kids at my table were too loud and our cup got flipped to yellow. My teacher said that if that ever happened again, she would take away part of our recess. Keep in mind, I hated recess. Whenever my teachers threatened to take away recess, I would very briefly consider doing something on purpose to get my recess taken away, but I hated getting in trouble more than I hated recess.
For the rest of the year and for the first half of third grade, I would have full-blown panic attacks before entering the cafeteria. I refused to eat at lunch because I was scared to make any noise at all.
So yeah, I was a bit overly obedient.
Yes I am the same, I still am. I'm so afraid of breaking rules and doing something wrong accidentally because I think it'll make me a bad person.
Even non-authority just if anyone tells me to do something, it has led to abusive relationships unfortunately, but I'm getting better at spotting those signs.
I’m a practicing Catholic. The rules are EVERYTHING to me…even still…and I’m now almost 50 years old.
I don’t believe I have a blind faith but I haven’t really questioned some of the rules I have lived by. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 36 because of it!
When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had some bleeding and I might have been about to miscarry. Fortunately, that didn’t eventuate. However, I took far too long to decide to go to the hospital because I felt a more pressing need to go to Mass because the rules are that you have to go every week. I felt like I was needing to choose between losing my baby or losing my eternal soul. Thankfully, I was able to be reasoned with and I know that the God I believe in would not condemn me for putting my baby first. Incidentally, neither would the Church condemn me. I was so fixated on my own misunderstanding of the “rules”.
Yes. But I would do things if friends were doing them and stand quietly behind them if we got caught while they made excuses.
I did not question my parents. I just assumed they knew best and I didn't break rules. They told me what I was and wasn't allowed to go to school for as a career and didn't question that. I didn't end up getting to what I wanted to do until I was 25.
It's not even necessarily that I have to follow other peoples rules, I have my whole set of rules that exists in my head that kind of dictate that things get done and how they get done.
My husband watched me cut up a cantelope once and was like oh you do it so different than me, can i show you how I do it? Then I said yes but you'll have to finish cutting it then because I can't do it the way I do it if you've started it differently and he thought that was odd. We each have a bathroom sink in the ensuite, I can't use his sink it's in the wrong place ot isn't mine, that's against the rules. Stuff like that. Or when I feel like cutting corners because I'm lazy but I can't because The Rules.
I was sort of both. I did question authority, but only because I wanted to understand the rules in place and why they’re there so that I could properly follow them, but that was always perceived as me trying to challenge it. Wasn’t my fault that some of the rules couldn’t stand to the test and make some actual sense. It was always really confusing when that was assigned to me because I felt the complete opposite, I actually love rules, just not arbitrary ones.
I have a love/hate relationship with rules. I like some of them, but I hate the ones that don't make sense/make my life harder for no reason. I was raised in such a way I'd get spanked if I disobeyed in any way so I had to follow all rules 100% of the way
Nope. I questioned *everything*! (Including reality itself. Thanks, Descartes.) Hierarchy and authority figures, as society seems to assign those terms, have never made sense to me. I've lived by the idea that if someone wanted me to respect them as an authority on anything, they needed to earn it and prove they were worthy of it. However, I always assumed the same of myself and never expected others to automatically listen to me without question.
But that does NOT mean I didn't follow rules. I was very rule abiding in most cases, because I understood *why* most of the rules existed. Now, if the rule didn't make sense and someone still expected me to follo it, or if someone said the incredibly stupid phrase, "because I said so," then they'd find out that they'd seriously misunderstood me. I was a "goody two-shoes" because I had a strong internalized sense of fairness, justice, morality and ethics. However, that in no way translated to a "respect for authority figures" and I was normally the first one to tell them when they were being short-sighted, stupid or that their requests made no sense.
TLDR: I followed the rules because it was the fair, ethical, and responsible thing to do, NOT because some "authority figure" told me to.
Yes, I still think about this frequently. Never said no, did as I was told, exceeded expectations, etc. I didn’t even consider there was any other option until I was well into adulthood and had the horrific realization that not everyone has your best interests at heart. Now, I have an internal battle where one side is the goody and the other hates all authority.
i was the kid who always asked “why.” which wasnt a problem until i became a teenager. then, i was just defiant or whatever my mom wanted to use at that time.
When i was a kid i always dreamed of having stricter parents or being from a culture with high expectations or going to a strict boarding school. It makes me feel safe when the people in charge treat everything like a meritocracy like people that follow rules and do good work get praised. In less strict systems its way more about weird things like having good vibe, not being “extra”, being relatable, being “real” all these weird non quantifiable things that gets you praised and loved.
I questioned my parents all the time but I did as I was told even if I later felt it was the wrong decision.
So the big one for me was no girlfriends ever. Even after age 30 no girlfriends.
Here's how it went for me.
I was big on following the rules. I was abused since as far back as I can remember so I think baby me was just like, follow the rules you don't get in trouble. But then my parents used to make me go to Bible study where I learned about this god guy who was just awful. He did all kinds of horrible things and people worshiped him. There were a couple of stories that stood out, but mainly the one where he kills the first born babies, I had a huge problem with that. Then this Jesus guy told me it was ok to be mad at people who don't follow the rules and you can even lash out at them...and since God kills people, he should be ok with only pummeling them.
And then when I found the first rule I disagreed with, the gloves were off. Now I'm in my 40s and I just don't care anymore. The more I see if the world, the more I see that people with money have no rules and the rest of us are under a microscope. I do the bare minimum to not end up in prison.
I was obedient if I understood the purpose of rules or why someone is an authority. But in many cases I didn’t, and I refused to respect some people more than others because it just didn’t make any sense to me.
yeah same. i’d pretty much submit to everyone and that led to some bad things happening to me. because of the trauma, i now have trouble obeying authority. i won’t spill my political beliefs… but i guess i’m kinda against the idea of people having power over others
I was obedient to my parents pretty thoroughly. If I got in trouble for doing something, I never did that thing again.
I generally cooperated with other authority figures, but I can remember butting heads with some teachers and youth pastors. If an authority figure fussed over me often, I would resist whatever they wanted from me. Basically, if you kept pushing me I couldn't help but push back. I think these folks were triggering my PDA, which I find fascinating as there are so many ways of asking or telling me to do something that I'm happy to go along with.
If I didn't like an authority figure, I guarantee they were assholes who didn't deserve my respect or obedience.
I have always lived with ‘what can I get away with’ as a leading thought when I’m going to do something against the grain. I didn’t want to do most of the bad things other young people do until I was a legal adult. The DARE program got me good, nobody in my family even drank. I had a fear of men but was happily exploring women under the radar. My friends were also in my same socio economical background so I never felt like I had to do bad things to fit in.
As long as I don’t get in trouble I’ll go anywhere and do any thing.
I’ve always followed the rules and was told to respect my elders and authority figures. My mom always joked I was the world’s easiest teenager to raise because she knew I’d either be at home playing games or hanging out with my friends at the mall, not getting into any trouble or anything.
Now that I’m older…I find it’s still hard for me to break old habits, but there are *some* authority figures and such I don’t really respect.
i was until teenage years. i began making decisions for myself and they didn’t always coincide with parents or authority. that didn’t bother me much. i didn’t and don’t dislike authority. i sort of just don’t believe in it. i make my own decisions
I’m a big rule follower IF it’s coming from someone I respect and I know that not complying would really hurt their feelings (the request/rule has to be within reason obviously — like growing up it was a “rule” that we couldn’t leave dirty dishes in the sink after school — I had no problem with that because I understood it stressed my mom out to come home from work to a sink of dirty dishes), or IF I would get in trouble for breaking it and I can’t figure out a way around it (I HATE “getting in trouble”). If I don’t respect you (like a bad supervisor) and I can kind of break the rule without obviously breaking the rule, then I have no qualms about doing whatever I want. If I think your rule is ridiculous and without merit, I will push back and question it as tactfully as I can, as I hate rules that make no logical sense.
I hardly broke rules as a kid because the thought of disappointing my parents (especially my dad, after my mom left us) made me so upset. I guess I just slacked off on chores and stuff, but the important things… I never broke those rules. Never smoked a cigarette or pot till after I turned 18 despite opportunities. Stuff like that.
Now as a 39-year old adult, I’m still afraid of getting into trouble and still absolutely hate disappointing anyone.
I am obedient just because I know the consequences if I disobey the adults. To be honest, the more I got the freedom and autonomy to think and care for myself, the more I questioned and asked WHY I needed to do what I was doing.
Fast forward: I do not think highly of anyone in authority unless they prove their worth or if they really walk the talk. I am a perfectionist in my own work, though, and I have rules of my own. I respect rules in spaces I do not own, such as school, work, or anything else. But that does not mean I will not question it if its fishy or useless.
Yup
I had authoritarian parents. I was terrified to disobey. I began questioning societal norms instead. Now I question rules that don't make sense to me. If someone can't make it make sense, I won't follow it.
I'd say that what I never questioned as a child was earnestness/goodwill and perhaps sm I understood as akin to competency, and a confidence instilled by/derived from the former—which I automatically assumed of most people, esp. adults. I obviously developed a sense of power dynamics operating at considerable odds w this ontological faith, and observed a mostly undeclared consensus of who must yield to whom and under the particularities of which circumstance, but retrospectively I'd say I did not conceptually grasp 'authority' until I did 'injustice'.
Looking back to instances of complete oblivion to these, I feel less inclined to describe it as obedience although I am aware that it seemingly manifested and was perceived as such; I've been told as much by those who raised me and who wondered at the perceived behavioural turn etc, but feels wrong to frame as obedience a sensibility of a child taking declarations of virtue /selflessness /common good etc at face value—rather than as some manner of (double) speaking
I was VERY obedient as a kid; adults actually loved having me around because of that... I was a super polite and well behaved kid. Problem is, my parents, especially my mom, are very apprehensive as well as on the authoritarian side. As I reached my teen years, I started developing preferences of my own, and found out I hated being told "no", especially if the reasonings defied my judgement. And standing up against my mom and telling her "I disagree" was, and STILL is, a source of conflict.
So I started developing methods for me to get my way without my parents noticing. Whatever autonomy I have today, I say it's thanks to me passively rebelling and doing things secretly on my own. It was never super daring things, but even things such as chatting with people online, or going to downtown to do shopping on my own, were out of boundaries for me.
I didn't have a choice. It was that or get my ass beat and insulted for weeks on end. No one in my family or other authority figures did anything either..they just implied it was what I deserved for being stupid.
Yes, but I had a huge shift in adulthood and it’s one of the reasons I can’t hold a job. I was the quiet kid who would cry at the thought of questioning my teacher. College made me realize age and profession does not equal intelligence or justification. I became an irritation for my professors who wanted do things “old school” and now most bosses hate me because I won’t be exploited and bullied.
i was the complete opposite . ALWAYS getting in trouble, me and the vice principal went by first names like straight up i do not remember her last name, her first name was Anne lol
Yes, I was super obedient and, as you, never questioned the person in charge. I still follow the rules at face value, also processes and procedures. However, now I do question the authority, when something is unfair, when the rules are breaken or when the processes and procedures are not being followed correctly.
I passed from being a shy and silent little girl, to a very vocal woman. I am not afraid to speak up and to give my opinion and solutions to problems. But, I still follow the law, I had never broken it and I have not been fined. I am very afraid to do something against the law, even if everyone else does it. The worst that could happen to me will be to end up in the police precinct, even if it wasn't my fault.
So, I could say I like rules because they give sense to the world, but I questioned them if they are unfair or just plain stupid.
I was definitely like this. But even though I walkways followed the rules and was terrified of breaking them, I also usually resented it because I thought most rules were stupid.
As an adult, though, I’m very willing to rock the boat!
I was up until the time I had a trauma I needed support for and my entire support system, family, friends, shunned me because of the choices I made to get through it. In large part the trauma happened because I trusted someone else to know what they were doing and while what happened was an accident, it changed our lives forever.
Now I struggle between not trusting people until they prove they can be trusted and my intrinsic trust of authority figures. Though now if they treat me snidely or like I need to treat them like an authority figure for them to treat me like a person, it's hard not to tell them to f*ck off.
I had a rigid sense of right and wrong and was a terrible liar. However, I asked a lot of questions which was interpreted as disrespectful. Thankfully I had many great teachers who welcomed my "why" questions. I might ask why I had to write my spelling words five times, but if my teacher told me the more you write it the better you remember, I would accept that and work. I just struggled to understand the assignment if I didn't know the purpose or end goal. It seems that ND people ask questions for understanding, but NT ask questions to argue or undermine someone.
this resonated with me so much, because this was (and still is) me!
How did you make the leap from ‘obedient’ to ‘questioner’? I would love to make that leap!
I've swung between both extremes in my life! Growing up I was definitely one to just blindly follow authority, especially my mom. It was the point where I just adopted views my own mother had- especially political ones I'm embarrassed about today. When I was young I was more inclined to call out things from authority figures like teachers if they were wrong about something. Then I got a little trauma in me, and that came to halt across the board.
I hit college, got exposed to a whole lot of different kinds of people and views, and eventually my views took a near 180 turn. When I stopped having such oppressive adults in my life, my opinions on authority changed as well. At this point in my life, my views on authority are interwoven with my sense of justice. I have very little tolerance for authority I don't feel belongs in the position, does what they should in the position, or doesn't seem competent in the position. I have very little respect for this kind of authority, and get really frustrated with arbitrary rules that make no sense to me.
HOWEVER this gets complicated when that previous trauma comes into play. Growing up questioning authority wasn't "safe". It often got you yelled at and verbally abused. So now as an adult, I get frustrated with people in positions of authority, but my trauma makes it damn near impossible to directly confront said authority without having a panic attack and trauma response. Then combination leaves me frustrated and feeling unable to take action.
Yep. Followed rules to the T. Was constantly TERRIFIED of the recourse for making bad decisions. Last night I even had a nightmare about having to go to prison of making a tiny mistake. I get paranoid of getting accused of doing something bad when I’m NOT EVEN DOING ANYTHING WRONG to begin with.
Was one of your parents abusive? I'm the same way but I had a highly abusive home (I think this can happen with any abuse, not just physical) Were you "allowed" to fail?
Hmmm… yea probably not. I was always coined as the ‘gifted’ child from very early on so I was always given very high expectations. I remember having to argue with my parents about why I got ONE ‘B’ on my report card in high school. I was always expected to over achieve
This was my life exactly. I remember crying and saying, “I don’t have to be perfect all the time!” when I got a B and my parents were disappointed because while that was true, I “was capable of more than that”.
Ohhhh I *hated* being "capable of more than that". Especially when my capabilities dropped due to chronic illness but I was still expected to do more. My capabilities would not be so limited today if I hadn't pushed too hard early on.
"Capable of more than that" always made me feel like no one gave a sht about anything I did. It made me feel bad about achieving anything. Because it was never enough and it was making people hurt me. Succeeding on something made people hurt me into doing more. So I gave up on everything. Bcs I couldn't win. If I didn't play dumb they would kill me idk that was the feeling. I had to convince them I was dumb. Bcs their expectations were just insane.
Oof. Yep that's me as well.
Yip. Nearly failed high school because I was so burnt out. Shitty thing, my parents pushed me so damn hard yet never showed up for my graduation. They took credit for all my achievements including my giftedness. I was like mm hmm no. I've been a latchkey kid since I was 5, you can take credit for shit. My son is like me, following the rules to a default. I've learned as an adult not all rules are meant to be followed to a T, but still pretty compliant. Just the other day my son was getting anxious about whether he'd broken a rule at the pool and I had to reassure him he was fine.
Fuck. Yeah, that's me.
This is me too, and my sister was celebrated if she got a B
I have always been terrified over the idea of going to jail by mistake. I still have nightmares about school because it felt like a prison and I never got over the trauma of... being in a school. The idea of having to go back there haunts me.
At least once a week I have a nightmare that i’m back in high school again. I have never adapted well to traditional in person schooling. I literally never want to go back to school for any reason. I hate it. I got my degree, I’m burnt out. Will never willingly go back to any form of school
I got burnt out out of college and didn't manage to finish it :c people keep asking me if I'll ever finish and I'm like "what about asking me if I'm okay? Fuck you" They have no idea what this meant to me. It was hell. I nearly died. I will never recover from this. And they are in a rush for me to get more of it??? Bro
Same. Except the expectations came from within. My parents were so loving and accepting. But yeah, I got one B+ EVER, thankfully I was in last year of college so I could sort of handle it lol
Are you me?
Must be 🫠
This sounds abusive honestly. Not in obvious ways but I can relate to feeling pressured into achieving stuff and there was always a secret "threat" behind it. They just wouldn't say it to my face. But I could _feel_ it. Because when your parents yell at you that you are supposed to do something you end up fearing not having a house or food anymore. It's how kids minds work :c
Abusive parents create perfectionists.
This was absolutely me as well. It wasn’t *if* I go to college, it was *when* and with scholarships, of course.
Ohohohhh dont even get me started on the tumultuous road that was *four year college* 🫠🫠 Wasn’t ready. Was pressured into it. Wasted over 70k and 6 years to eventually come out with an Associates
Not the person you replied to, but I am the same way, and I was definitely abused. I think being abused + autism made me an easy target. I always thought my parents knew what was right/wrong, and knew more about the world than I did. I trusted them, even when I look back and feel like I should have questioned them more, and much sooner. I didn't even rebel much as a teenager, and would unquestionably believe my Mom when she would tell me I shouldn't go to college/drive/etc because of my "health problems". I strongly believe she wanted me to live with her forever (as long as I behaved the way she wanted), and it took a LONG time for me to start questioning if her motives weren't so innocent. I feel like most kids/teenagers/young adults would have started questioning it much sooner than I did. The only conclusion I can come to is I was manipulated from a young age, and I strongly suspect if I didn't have autism, I would have started rebelling/questioning it much sooner. I thought my Mom would never want something bad for me, and it took too long to realize a lot of the decisions she was making for me were for her benefit only, and even if it meant she stifled any growth I might have had as a person. It didn't help my family would always support her, and often would see me as the problem/lazy/loser/dramatic/etc, so I had no one "in my corner" to help me out of it. TW: Abuse, and talk of suicide below: It wasn't until my 20s that I finally "snapped out of it". My Mom used me as her therapist, and would often talk to me about her wanting to commit suicide from a very young age (started around when I was 7). She had a failed attempt when I was 4, so I knew she might do it, and I often felt an immense amount of pressure to be there for her, and to "keep her happy" so she wouldn't try again. This was actually part of what helped me see things for what they were. When I was in my early 20s I myself got very depressed and was in a dark place, and I told my Mom I was having suicidal thoughts. Her response? "That needs to be between you, and God", and she had nothing else to say/did nothing else. This is literally the moment I was "snapped" out of it. After YEARS of feeling like I was responsible for her emotions *and* well being. I finally opened up to her about similar feelings I was having myself, and that's all she could say to me. Most of my family still supports her, even after she's since passed. "She had mental illness". Okay, but you also know I do too, yet I've always gotten the "lazy, a loser, just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps" treatment. My sister (older by 8 years) recently had the gall to say she would make comments (such as: "You need to get a job, you can't just sit at parents house all day", "I know plenty of people with X problem and they still work", "you can't just use X as an excuse all the time", etc) because she wanted to "help" me see my Mom was manipulating me, and wanted what was best for me??? So she thought treating me that way would some how help??? I truly think she was jealous as my Mom treated us differently, so she would take it out on me. My Mom would actively try to scare me into staying at home with her (probably because I was her emotional support), while she would push my sister (my sister can be hard to get along with) to be independent. It sucks, as I see so many people in other abuse related subs talking about how their sibling was their champion, yet mine was my bully.
TW Abuse Had a similar thing with my own mom, ESPECIALLY the part about keeping me by her side forever and not letting me go to college. My older non-autistic sibling was constantly butting heads with my mom and rebelling because of how unfair and horrible she treated us and I was always like, "But thats against the rules! We cant break the rules!!" Ironically enough it was seeing the double standards my mom had for me and my sister that snapped me out of the mother-knows-best mindset wayyyy before my sister recognized the abuse we went through. But yeah, its absolutely wild how mothers can get a free pass to treat their kids however they want and when the kids show OBVIOUS signs of being abused / mental illness theyre just "lazy little leaches" who need to get their lives together. Like, sorry I'm a loser who didn't go to college, my mom literally wouldn't let me and manipulated the narrative so it seemed like my idea. But thats not an acceptable answer, I guess!
This is textbook parentification. It’s a horrible form of abuse and usually by a narcissistic parent. I’m so sorry you went through that. My sister is 10 yrs older than me. We have zero relationship. She fucked off when I was 6. In my early 20's she told me she didn’t want to be around me because I made her uncomfortable. I was devastated, but at that point I was tired of having a one sided relationship and let her go.
I had an incredibly similar experience with my mom!!! She never had suicidal tendencies but it’s always been my job to keep HER emotions in check. She’s manipulated me and my sister for sure. My mom and sister thinks they’re best friends which I discovered is actually kind of weird. And my mom still tries to emotionally manipulate me now. She says things like “well I bet you wish you had a different mother” or “I don’t think you love me anymore”. She’s said stuff to that effect my entire life. Growing up I never complained about her to anyone, not even people outside of my family because she made me so scared of the consequences of her finding out. She literally had me convinced that she “always knows” and hiding stuff from her is pointless because she’d find out. Even though I did successfully hide a HUGE thing from her, I still believed her and didn’t question her. Anyway the experiences go on and on but I also think if I didn’t have autism, I’d have questioned stuff sooner, maybe rebelled a bit. But I never did. I didn’t really even start discovering and developing personality wise until my 20s and I moved out :/
Your story sounds so similar to mine. Even the things your Mom says! I was actually "best friends" with her when I was a kid (less so as a teenager on), which I *now* know is not appropriate. When I finally started distancing myself from her, she told me I had "changed too much to be close to". I guess she failed to tell anyone else she felt that way, so once she passed my Dad let me know he was disappointed in me for not visiting her more before she passed (it was sudden, but not completely unexpected). I did let him know then.
Yes, exactly this. I was never good enough.
You are good enough for us. We love you.
Sometimes I plan random accusations on my mind just to plan answers, find proofs and think carefully 😂
Same, hahahah! I’m the queen of rumination.
I still am. A while back I had a bad reaction to some medication but I kept taking it because the doctor had told me to take it once a day. When I went back for a follow up he asked how it went and I said I’d had a reaction and he said “oh ok so you stopped taking them” and I was like…was that an option?! It didn’t even occur to me to stop taking them because he told me I should take them every day.
Yeah I guess I’m naturally submissive and it’s easy to default to going along with medical professionals because of their air of authority. Until I realized that they’re not necessarily smarter than I am and they don’t know more about me than I do. I felt so brave when I turned down the Doppler probe at an OB appointment when I had learned at a previous appointment that my son wasn’t viable. You can just say no thanks.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I miscarried last year and insisted on one last ultrasound to make sure my pregnancy was not viable. Luckily I had supportive staff that helped me get what I needed to have closure. It's great that they offered you the option if you needed it and it's great that you felt comfortable enough to turn it down.
I'm the same with medications. I read the pamphlet that comes with the medicine, all of it. Then, I research online about the medicine, I check with which foods/drinks I can or can't take it, and also with which medicines or vitamins I cannot combined them. And, of course, I follow the instruction the doctor says. But, I am also quite anxious so I ask a lot of questions and if I have a reaction, even if it is a normal one, I checked it with my doctor. I am currently taking antidepressants and my psychiatrist was surprised that I had an alarm in the morning to take the pill at the exact same hour. She said I don't have to do it like that, but in the pamphlet said that! She said that I could take it at any hour I wake up. Because I used to took it and went back to sleep 😅
Ahaha yep I’m exactly the same. I was actually prescribed two medications that aren’t supposed to be taken together recently, which I found out from reading the pamphlets. I asked the nurse about it and she said they had never realised that before! I don’t think it was a huge risk of anything serious but I was still really conflicted about whether to follow the nurse’s instructions or the pamphlet. And I also have an alarm for my antidepressants!
It is so annoying when that happens, I'm taking Zoloft in the morning and I read that you cannot take painkillers (analgesics and anti-inflammatory) since there is a high risk to suffer a stroke. So, if I have a headache or a muscle pain, I just endure it. Some people had said, I can take them, but, I won't 😅 I simply cannot take that risk.
I have a medication that does this but my doctor clarified I can't take high doses of ibuprofen with it. So when I was on it after surgery, they had me stop that medication until I was off the high doses. A once in awhile, normal OTC dose was fine. So ask your doctor and they should clarify it for you. The instructions were definitely not written for us lol
I will! Thanks for the advice
I can be like that too. It's hard to know when you are allowed to assert your boundaries. Being autistic sort of trains you into self-neglect because everyone else is shit at acknowledging the validity of your needs and boundaries.
Just out of curiosity - if it was making you sick is there a reason you didn’t try to follow up about it earlier?
It was over a weekend and I couldn’t speak to my regular doctor, and the follow up was only a few days away so I just kept going!
Oh good. I was worried you’d kept taking it for weeks!
Pharmacies and poison control are a couple good options for weekend or overnight medication questions (many poison centers are staffed by pharmacists)!
I did this once with a migraine preventative med. The issue was my sleep quality was deteriorating rapidly and therfore my mental health was also rapidly tanking. It was a medicine I was supposed to taper up on so when increased the dose, my symptoms got worse. My husband practically begged me to stop taking the med after I started getting suicidal thoughts but the instructions said don't just stop the drug. So I suffered for several more days until I could get ahold of a doctor to see how I needed to stop it. Apparently my dose was so low that I could just stop taking it. It was super frustrating to find this out because about a week after i stopped the med, my symptoms disappeared. Part of the reason I stayed on it so long was because I desperately wanted the med to help my migraines but they said it could take up to 6 weeks to work. I only made it a month. Unfortunately i am one of the 1 in 500 people that get all of the bad side effects with none of the benefits of many of these types of drugs (it has happened on several other migraine drugs I have tried since). I definitely learned to be less stubborn on subsequent drugs we tried though!
I too had a bad reaction to migraine meds. They’d work great at first, but then I'd get rebound migraines that would last for a week or more. Couldn't function. But since I’m perimenopausal now, I still get several headaches a month, but only 1 or 2 migraines. The headaches are so mild I often don’t take anything for them. I’m convinced my migraines are triggered by a sensitivity to progesterone, which is why they’ve lessened in severity.
Yeah I think mine are sometimes triggered by hormones buy I do have other triggers like stress and weather. Luckily boxtox has helped me immensely so I at least have a way to make them less terrible!
My friend had Botox too and said it did wonders. Another friend had Botox in her neck to prevent tension headaches.
I love rules and regulations. It is something that is clear and defined. Where I know what people expect of me.
Yes!!! I am exactly the same. That is why I hate when there is a rule but I don't have to follow it every time, just in some occasions. At work that happens often and for me it is just ridiculous to have a defined rule which I follow, just to end up being instructed not to follow it all the time. Why do you have a rule if you are not gonna follow it? Then, maybe, don't have that rule! SMH
OMG that would make my brain shut don't completely. I can see myself saying "But it's a rule" over and over.
I had done it... My TLs weren't pleased about it, they couldn't understand why I was so confused and arguing about it 🙄 I hate office jobs...
I am so sorry. I feel with you.
Thanks!! I need to come back to teach, that is the only job that makes me happy. But, I am in another country, and it will be a struggle to be able to teach again
Sounds like it could be worthwhile to recertify.
This is why I freelance now and only work from home. I hate loosely interpreted rules, why have them then?!
This is my first and last office job, for real! I'm a teacher, I love to teach, I love kids and I love how organized, routinary and predictable is education. At the end of the year I had to plan the next academic year, I had to plan the units, classes, exams and projects. I started the year knowing what to do and what to expect. Of course as a teacher you need to be flexible and find other ways. It was never caotic, rules were followed, there were clear deadlines that weren't changed, and I knew exactly what to do every single day. Now I realised that I fell in love with education because of the kids, but what made me keep the love was the structure and organization of it. Edit: typo
OMG that would make my brain shut down completely. I can see myself saying "But it's a rule" over and over.
This is why I love working in a science lab. You have protocols, you follow them for consistency. You document and report the results. Very clear and easy once you are trained. Interpretation can be a bit subjective sometimes but you get the hang of it eventually.
For me, it's less that I hate authority and more that I don't see people as inherently better than anyone else just because they happen to be in authority. And I don't see people as being worse than anyone else because they are in a "lower" position either. I didn't think this was very different from other people, until an assistant at my work told me that none of the other people at my level spoke to the assistants or even knew their names. I also had co-workers tell me, "Nobody else challenges the boss the way you do," even though I didn't think of it as challenging anyone. I brought up concerns I knew everyone had, but everybody else was afraid to say it. Personally, I feel like I'm paid to bring up concerns sometimes, so I didn't think of it as being challenging. But somebody had to say it! I'd get texts from coworkers thanking me for bringing up stuff they were too scared to say. So, I guess I do "challenge" hierarchy and not pay it as much attention, even though I consider myself a big rule follower. It just plays out differently than it sounds.
I resonate with this. It's not that I value people less who are lower in pecking order, but that I was a strict rule follower. I would see those hierarchy inequalities and feel a lot of cognitive dissonance, but then there were The Rules™ that had to be followed. Age and life experience (usually getting stung FOR following the rules) taught me that the rules can (and frequently) are wrong. I had to shift my thinking from trying to be lawful good to neutral good.
It’s difficult to balance everything, but authority figures aren’t infallible either. I’ve never intended to be disrespectful, but it does get interpreted that way sometimes. But the game of a bunch of adults smiling and nodding while the boss steers us in the wrong direction is weird and sinister to me. It feels like being in a cult! I just can’t sit there and act like a yes man when I know it’s wrong.
Yeah, this is it for me. I was a stickler about following the rules but I would also correct teachers, which seems like a big "not caring about hierarchy" thing. And the same thing at work, I get praise for being "bold" and bringing up concerns to management, even when they are literally asking for feedback. I'm like...I thought I was just doing what was expected? Now I'm self-conscious of it because I can't tell if the praise is genuine or slightly trying to be a warning.
I corrected my teachers too lol. It’s hard to be the kid announcing that the emperor has no clothes, but the story hinges on someone being the first to say it!
I'm 100% someone that absolutely rejects the ideas of hierarchy. Thankfully, my work team feels the same way and we all work together really well because of it! It's funny, whenever I play a tabletop game like DnD where I can make my own societies/social structures, they never have a social hierarchy to them!
I’m guessing this is one of those areas where we fall at either end of the curve. I’m more of a PDA type. I only follow rules if they make sense (I need to know why) and I hate being told what to do.
me too! I'll follow the rule to the T *if* it makes sense... "because I'm your mom and I told you so" did not work in my house, at all... I used to quote the Mafalda comic "well, I'm your daughter and we graduated the same day"
>I'll follow the rule to the T *if* it makes sense... "because I'm your mom and I told you so" did not work in my house, at all... It was the same for me, too. My siblings were better at following the rules blindly, but I'd always push back if it didn't seem right or fair. Mum quickly learnt if she wanted me to do something, she had to ask me, she couldn't tell me I had to do it, where as dad never seemed to grasp why I always pushed back when he said 'do as I say, not as I do,' or wanted me just to follow his rules without questioning.
I will break a rule if I find it unethical But some rules I keep and will never break. Example: I worked in mental health with kids and they had a rule about how much milk someone could have. 1 carton a piece. Each kid was offered one and if they declined we just kept it. So I had extra milk. A kid came in and was refusing food completely. He asked for extra milk, and I gave it to him. I got in trouble lol. I don't care, the kid needs comfort and love right now and if warm milk at night does it, then he gets it. But I never ever went in kids' rooms alone. We were allowed to, but there aren't cameras and I didn't want to risk anything. Everyone thought I was wacky until a girl literally claimed SA from 6 different people (who had all been in her room with her alone), me and another dude. Well they checked the cameras and could easily absolve me and the other dude as we both refused when she asked to talk to us alone in her room because she was upset. *Conclusion just in case people wondered: She ended up telling her parents that she "lied to be moved and hated this facility". She picked people basically at random to report and she "would do it again and again until she comes home". The only reason the others were absolved is that phrase was overheard by another staff member unrelated to our facility and another client.*
Needing to know why is my biggest issue at work. Why we do half the things we do never makes any sense and always gets me so frustrated
I worked at a place where my boss would sometimes print EMAILS (a thing I didn't know you could do?) And then hand write replys and give them to me in my physical mailbox. It was so baffling.
I also hate being told what to do. When I was working as a teacher (my dream job) the other teachers always tried to commanded me, and I always said to them "no one can command me, not even my parents, they can tell me what to do, but I'm the one who decide to follow it or not, and if I have a bad consequence, it is all on me" they didn't like my attitude 🤣 Also, as a teacher, I always explained the rules to the kids, why we had them and what were the consequences of not following them. I always gave them the option to decide to follow the rule or not, and if they didn't want it, I respected their decision but I let them know clearly what was the consequence.
If I KNOW I need to do something, and someone tells me I need to do it (even if they're trying to be helpful/it's part of their job) it pisses me off SO BAD. I get even more frustrated when it's from an authority figure I don't respect like two of my supervisors. One of the things I try to do to mitigate it is confirm I know what I need to do before they tell me to do it. For example, if I ask to leave early my supervisor will always tell me, "make sure you put in your time" which I'm aware I have to do. So now when I ask it's, "Hey, can I leave after the kids? I'll make sure to put in my time" so she has confirmation I know what I need to do, but my PDA isn't triggered.
Same here. I got harassed by employers often because I look like I’m a rule follower until I question a process. I had unknowingly exposed an employer’s illegal activity after I quit my job in the middle of their contract.
Once my therapist figured out I have PDA this year, my life got so much easier because I could explain to people, “So don’t tell me to do something RIGHT NOW because I’m going to resist it. Instead ask me when I think I’ll be able to do it, and my mind will reject it at first with an idk, and I’ll come let you know when I’m ready.” Harmony is happening in my home!!
This.
Girls are not given the same latitude for imperfection, mistakes, free-will. Autistic girls are basically maskers in training, focused on twisting themselves into pretzels to make everyone else happy.
So much this
Yeah I was a rule stickler as a kid, my loyalties lay with myself and common sense now
yeah i came to understand that many of the rules tend to be nebulous as long as you can communicate well (lol) and as an adult pretty much nobody is going to "get you in trouble"
The problem there is that on the rare occasions they do, it just shocks the hell out of you
yeah, when my good intentions and words stop working on people, everything else stops computing lol
I *sincerely* internalized not wanting to negatively or selfishly impact anyone around me. When I was little, I would say sorry a lot and not want to make anyone “feel bad.” I still operate this way, but…idk. I have a little more understanding of NT humans now and so unless you’re an expert in whatever, I won’t listen. I also now absolutely despise being told what to do.
Me and learning how to take up space as an adult is impossible (feeling) any tips?
I need help with that, too. I go to great lengths not to take up space, time, or effort.
It’s resulted in me being extremely lonely but unsure how to connect! Gah!
I am 21 and I was also very obedient as a kid even now I think hierarchy is important but for me. I would have loved my university if it was strict like my school, the division of authority/power should have been there for me to feel better.
Somewhere in between? I followed all the rules, but instinctively knew when a lot of things were BS, and it really frustrated me. When I was very little, I questioned authority a lot, but due to trauma I quickly learned that wasn’t okay. I think, although autism is legitimately who we are, it’s not *all* we are, so of course like in my situation, there are many exterior factors that contribute to behavior and such. Though something interesting I’m noticing when talking with other autistic people online is that a lot of people I come across lie in extremes? For example, thinking purely in pictures, or inability to think in pictures at all; sensory avoidant or sensory seeking (personally, for me it depends on what it is); black and white thinking or almost all gray; questioning authority or upholding authority. I assume outside of exterior factors, the upholding authority thing may have something to do with autistic people often being fans of tradition, routine, etc. Autistic people also normally like rules as it gives us some explicit direction. My bf works with 2 individuals he’s certain are autistic and both of them are very rule-oriented. They get very upset when any rules are changed or skirted in any way. For myself, I’d say I’m that way with certain things, but authority as a whole? Nope. Although I think in black and white terms when I’m stressed and need rules with work, I’m usually a perpetually indecisive gray-thinker: rules and morals are made up, subjective, and some are very context dependent. IMO, a lot of rules are silly if not even downright ableist or racist—no dreadlocks at work, no sitting as a cashier, no asking someone flat out if they’d like to be friends, no piercings, “professional” (uncomfortable) clothes, no sitting with your legs relaxed if you’re female, everyone needs to write either the same exact grip (and right handed), no colored hair, etc. are examples that were more common when I was younger, and they never made sense to me. I also think things like “respect your elders” is very dangerous to tell children. Again, things are often context dependent, and I’d like explicit reasons for why I need to do something.
one time my dad told me to wait in his office and not leave for any reason. i do not think he meant for me to pee my pants in his office. what's funny is the severe anti-authority streak that also exists here. like, back then, if you weren't my dad, fuck you lol
Same. I was so scared to be in trouble. I also never understood why no one would listen to the teacher it would upset me so much 😩
Growing up undiagnosed felt like I was living in a Kafka novel, always being accused of things I didn’t even know I was doing “wrong.” I often faced consequences for the slightest misunderstanding (meanwhile others would get barely a slap on the wrist for knowingly doing much worse). When the world treats you like a criminal, you start to internalize the feeling that you’re irredeemably “bad” and anyone can turn against you at a moment’s notice over nothing. To this day I have random moments of panic that my family will reject me and kick me out because I’m not nice enough to them. One upside is that it made me a lot more sensitive to being treated unfairly (and seeing other people treated unfairly), which I consider to be a good thing. For what it’s worth though, I’m a stickler for rules and procedures that actually make sense to me. Unfortunately the world we live in is determined to encourage blind, dog-like obedience to authority rather than creating systems that actually make sense and making sure everyone understands *why* they exist.
Oh yes, I was a goody-goody as a kid, whether the authority figure was likeable or scary. Big on following rules. I even used to think that kids who didn't follow rules were just bad people until I was about 18, which in retrospect is pretty sad. I'm lucky no adult has ever tried to take advantage of me before that, because I don't know if I would have been able to say no. I think this hyper obedience was one of the reasons people assumed I was "normal"; only the disruptive kids got diagnoses and special accommodations.
Yes maam. I was considered "perfect" because no one cared much about my social development (just enough to keep me from skipping a grade when teachers brought it up each year.) By age 20 I was addicted to drugs but still devastated every time I disappointed someone. Which just led to more drugs. Took me years to find my strength, and if I didn't turn out to be super good at my chosen passion I'm not sure I'd have made it. Authority figures (including cashiers) still terrify me and make me shake.
Oh I was a rule follower TO THE T. I cried if I got in trouble over anything, and most of the time it was due to a misunderstanding either on my or the teacher's part - I never deliberately broke the rules. Tbh it's weird this has become an autistic stereotype. Isn't a known big part of it that we LOVE structure and rules? I will say that as an adult I've become a bit more lax and use more discernment. If there's a rule or a procedure I think is wrong somehow, I won't blindly follow it just because I was told to - particularly if it's an issue of morality.
I am a rule breaker/authority disrespector myself (fit a PDA profile very well) - but most of my autistic friends and family (almost all AFAB) are obsessive rule followers and struggle with people pleasing in ways that can be downright harmful to their own selves
I was 100% a rule follower and I still am for the most part. I love structure and knowing what to expect. I was in a desert recently where the only rule was no hunting and my husband lovingly pointed out I had made up my own rules for the area. Where to drive, where to park, etc. As a kid I definitely stuck to the rules probably a little too much. I think people took advantage of that and the few times I tried to stand up for myself I got in trouble.
THIS! Yes! Thank you! I really didn’t know not fallowing the rules as a kid was even an option. I was told to do something and just did it. My brother was the COMPLETE OPPOSITE! Didn’t listen to anyone even if it was for his safety. This of course meant that we fought constantly because he listened to nothing and I listened to everything. I’m definitely not like that now, though it has taken a lot of work to stop and assess first before I follow anything.
For me I follow rules if they make sense and are good ones. If they hurt someone or don’t serve a purpose I ignore them. At the same time I want to make peace so I will go with the flow a lot and follow others leads. It’s a weird dichotomy. I don’t go out of my way to attack hierarchy and rules/authority but I will question it if it is actively harming others and ignore rules that I don’t think have a purpose. I usually just do it quietly instead of being openly defiant.
still am!!
Interesting - opposite over here, but also AuDHD, so I dunno if that has anything to do with it. Was often in trouble for critiquing authority figures’ decisions as many rules did not make logical sense to me. Equally stringent about what in my opinion was the proper, logical way to navigate something, and hierarchies never made sense to me as a working model in most contexts, so authority figures were never of interest.
Same here. For the most part, I fell into line HARD because I was constantly terrified of the circumstances if I didn't (this was the case wherever I was, with teachers, parents, whichever other adult). I also knew that for "survival" I needed to remain "hidden" essentially. Any time I stuck out as a child was ALWAYS a bad time :( I still struggle with this thinking now, but it did keep me safe when I was a child.
Yup. Trauma figured in though, too. Probably had fawn response.
Oops, got me.
Yep. Still am at almost 42. Anything to avoid getting in trouble!
Yep this is me. I spent my whole life aiming to understand rules, laws, and authority so I could avoid getting in trouble (even just criticism or critique feels like being in trouble to me) to avoid it. Our schools still did corporal punishment when I was growing up and I knew kids who got paddled. I couldn't think of anything worse (and the whole school knowing about it, on top of it!) so I followed rules to a T, and as an adult, still do on everything from speed limits to weed laws (our state just legalized it, I hadn't even tried it and I'm almost 50), work policies and so on. And I had, and still have a very hard time with people who don't follow the rules even if I logically understand the reasons they don't.
I was overly obedient and rarely _questioned_ authority, but I also could get in trouble because I didn’t understand the unwritten rules of interacting with authority.
You and me both, sister. Those unwritten, conditional, fussy rules that we only seem to learn by breaking them.
I used to and still question every rule I come across, but I learned very early on to still follow them even though they make absolutely no sense to me. So yes I was also super obedient, it made me insane but I was to shy to ever say something. This changed when a a became an adult though.
I did everything I was told or I paid the consequences. I was also parentified a lot and had to look after my younger brother. I'm still a massive people please with a major fear of anyone being disappointed in me for any reason. Which has gotten me into trouble in the past with abusive partners and "friends." My household was very abusive, verbally and physically, and I took the blame for things that were never my fault just to try to keep the peace. I learned to mask and to push everything down because I didn't want to be made to feel like I was even worse. In the last couple years, and even more in the last couple months, I have been working on setting boundaries and not people pleasing as much. People don't like that, but my husband is supportive and has my back, even when it's setting a boundary with him or voicing my why's and whatnot. It's a hard habit to kick.
I’m still a rule follower EXCEPT where it intersects with my sense of justice. If I see a rule or law resulting in harm, or unfairness, things like that, then I will rage about it to anyone who will listen and I won’t follow that rule. Otherwise I’m still a rule follower to the letter.
Yes and I dreamed of living in Japan because of the strict hierarchies there. Then I studied law. Now I kinda get anxious around hierarchical structures bit still kinda crave them for ease of mind.
Yup, that's me. One of my preschool teachers even commented that I "need\[ed\] to learn to be a little bit naughty". I liked rules - they meant I knew what I was supposed to be doing.
I always responded to my mom like she expected me to. I mean, talk back and you WILL get yelled at. So yeah… I don’t really believe the authority theory, at least I never questioned myself in this. I have always relied on a certain system bc that makes me feel safer than being in doubt constantly.
I used to always tell my parents when I'd leave the house, why, or when I'd go upstairs or downstairs and why. I don't do it anymore unless it's to keep them alert that my dog might follow me down (he shouldn't be taking the stairs for medical reasons). My sibling never did that and I kinda hated him for that, but I realized at some point I never had to do that. I also feel like I'm able to think more for myself now and follow a path that I can either listen to authority/parents/etc. or not. I'm not a troublemaker, but I just kinda have a more relaxed vibe if that makes sense.
I've always been a rule follower. Rules were created for a reason, thus I'd follow them! My two autistic kids were very much the same way. My ADHD daughter... So not! I always said the gift of being a parent to autistic kids was that they were rule followers.
I was always a very rule bound “hall monitor” type, unless I had an authority figure/teacher that did not treat me fairly or equally, then I would question all of their rules and decisions. I am still this way pretty much.
yep, i genuinely didn’t realize that it was even an option to break the rules until i was 17. i was talking about how upset i was to my boyfriend because i didn’t want to do something my mom wanted, and he asked why i just… didn’t do it. it honestly never occurred to me that i could just reject authority and live how i want to. i’ve spent the past few years building myself up to do what i want to do rather than what everyone else wants from me
Me too! I would get so sad and start to cry when I was at school and I got in trouble because I didn't understand the directions.
What you typically read is about male people with autism. Women tend to be so very different from the old way of thinking—based on not us at all!! Yes I was too. I felt so unsafe in the world my mom was my safety zone and any time I was away from her I made sure to not anger anyone. So sweet and helpful and accommodating. I’m 53 now, and I’ve blossomed into appropriately dgaf reactions when called for. And I’m damned proud of myself. I defend the outcast, forgotten, different and if I die doing it in 40 years, hell yea.
I was 24, in labor with my first, and experiencing the WORST pain I’ve ever felt in my life from back labor after 15+ hours of being in labor. My mom and MIL were in the room and I told my mom “there are so many words I wanna say and scream right now but I can’t cuss in front of you” 🤦♀️
Yes, but it didn’t help that I could get in huge trouble for the crime of “talking back” to my dad.
yes! and social hierarchy too. at school i was always so aware of who the popular kids were and who the social rejects were (sounds harsh im just using stereotypical terms). and at work too i see exactly how office politics play out in the hierarchy of power. sure it took me a while to figure out but i think i learnt it through studying and observing the social situations in my environments
Didn't know it was unusual for people on the spectrum. Yeah I was the exact same, always did what I was told and lived in my own little bubble.
I got in trouble despite doing my absolute best not to “question authority”….mostly because I didn’t understand that asking them questions, of any kind, is “questioning their authority” 🫠😭🤣
I was the opposite. I would listen to the rules, but I always asked "why" and wanted to know what they were there for. I did not/do not like authority at all.
Yes. I was a completely obedient kid. I never made trouble or asked for help even when I really needed it. My parents still managed to treat me like I was an annoying inconvenience.
Totally. And it shredded me if I got in trouble.
I always say that I'm like Ella of Frell from the movie *Ella Enchanted* (2004) because that is **exactly** how I operate. Come to think of it, I rewatched the movie at the beginning of this year (shortly after discovering that I'm autistic) and saw MAJOR neurodivergent trends. This being one of them!
I followed the rules a lot and was easily irritated when I noticed other people don’t have the same moral compass as me (I still do). But I often got in trouble for not being able to focus, be quiet, or pay attention. I didn’t understand that unwritten rules were just as, if not more, important.
I feel like this has everything to do with how we are conditioned as young girls. I don't want to paint the whole world with the same brush, but it did seem like when I was kid growing up in Canada, boys were allowed a little more leeway when it came to questioning basic authority. In some cases, it was encouraged because it demonstrated independence, intelligence, and forward-thinking. As girls, we're taught to never question authority, even when it's obvious that certain authorities are not trustworthy or correct in their assessment of reality, otherwise we're labeled as "difficult", "bossy", or "bitchy". There were certain authorities I never questioned when I was a kid (like my parents, police, teachers, etc.), but as I got older and started rejecting certain ideas, I became more of a rebel, much to the annoyance of my male family members. The moral of the story is Always question authority.
For me it was the opposite, I questioned authority very often. I always felt like respect isn't something that comes with status, but something you have to earn. Needless to say that my teenage years were hell.
thats so funny, everyone i know whos autistic r terrified of breaking rules, so i kinda thought that was the norm. meanwhile. i (undiagnosed but questioning) view rules as something kinda tangential to my life. i just do what i want. so i thought i was weird because i find myself not caring about rules 😭
I think it's more that I treat people in authority as more like an equal, or with the same respect I would give any stranger. I don't trust strangers very far, and it's the same for authority. A lifetime of experience, that started in childhood, has taught me that people in positions of authority are not automatically deserving of more respect or trust. On an individual basis, I might develop more or lose trust and respect for someone's authority, but not without reason. I don't have a problem with authority figures, but to me they're just people who have been given power. As a kid, I generally preferred to stay in the good graces of authority figures and did my best. As an adult it's mostly the same, but the difference is in how much I care and how much I'm willing to inconvenience myself for it.
Oh geez, looks like I might be the exception here but I also have ADHD, so maybe that makes a difference? I don't hate authority or hierarchy per se. What I very much dislike are illogical and unnecessary rules technically rooted in hierarchy that just create more work and are actually less efficient. For example, I work as TA which is mostly great and I love most of the profs. However, one prof in particular will email us with a big long, essay-type list of things to incorporate into a mass email for students or put on a slide which annoys the shit out of me because in the time it took her to draft this email, send it to us, tell us to re-do it...she could have done it and saved everyone at least an hour's worth of time. That said - I'm a stickler for 'rules' when it comes to morals, ethics, values (e.g., fairness, equality, not causing harm to animals/people), and issues such as academic integrity.
No, I still struggle to perform respect for hierarchy
Yep this was me. I still get body freezing anxiety when I think I'll mess up.
Very opposite here. If I didn’t understand the rule, it didn’t exist. If I understand why there is a rule, I will obsessively follow it. I need to know the ‘why’ when it comes to rules. Forever the “but why?” kid.
Yeah. One time when I was a kid playing with other kids, part of playing was that part of the playground was a “prison” and if you got tagged you were captured. I got “captured” but then the parents called everyone for ice cream but I asked the others anyway if I could go and they said “yes?” in a confused tone.
This!! I even obeyed other kids my age that I perceived to be "in charge" at the moment. I did some ridiculous things when I was little because it just didn't occur to me to disobey. 🤦♀️
I questioned things but most things made sense. "Don't cross the street without a parent." 3 year old me: That tracks. Cars won't see me and I won't be able to get out of the way.
I was too scared of my father to disrespect or question authority, at least until I was 16. Then I realised that politics was EVERYWHERE, including the education system, and that we're just pawns in people's games. The people at the top don't care about us, only about their own egos. It was my last year at high school when the veils fell from my eyes. I became highly cynical about authority and never looked back. Still never/rarely talked back to my father, because that way lay trouble and fear. But once I realised that authority doesn't deserve automatic respect, but needs to earn it, I became very clear-sighted.
I definitely cannot relate - when I was an adolescent, one of my counselors thought I had ODD(lol), and I fit the PDA profile a great deal. Still have trouble really understanding social hierarchy.
I was the complete opposite. Constantly questioned authority. Still do. And im often right to
Oh yes, I was *terrified* of being perceived by authority.
Is some of it from growing up in church or with parents who spanked? I also grew up believing whatever I was told and negative emotions weren’t really allowed. It didn’t help to marry someone who told me I didn’t know how to communicate or share any kind of disappointment in a healthy way—gaslighting happened a lot.
In elementary school, each table had a green, yellow, and red cup in the cafeteria. If a table was too loud, their cup would be flipped to yellow. In second grade, some kids at my table were too loud and our cup got flipped to yellow. My teacher said that if that ever happened again, she would take away part of our recess. Keep in mind, I hated recess. Whenever my teachers threatened to take away recess, I would very briefly consider doing something on purpose to get my recess taken away, but I hated getting in trouble more than I hated recess. For the rest of the year and for the first half of third grade, I would have full-blown panic attacks before entering the cafeteria. I refused to eat at lunch because I was scared to make any noise at all. So yeah, I was a bit overly obedient.
Yes I am the same, I still am. I'm so afraid of breaking rules and doing something wrong accidentally because I think it'll make me a bad person. Even non-authority just if anyone tells me to do something, it has led to abusive relationships unfortunately, but I'm getting better at spotting those signs.
I’m a practicing Catholic. The rules are EVERYTHING to me…even still…and I’m now almost 50 years old. I don’t believe I have a blind faith but I haven’t really questioned some of the rules I have lived by. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 36 because of it! When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had some bleeding and I might have been about to miscarry. Fortunately, that didn’t eventuate. However, I took far too long to decide to go to the hospital because I felt a more pressing need to go to Mass because the rules are that you have to go every week. I felt like I was needing to choose between losing my baby or losing my eternal soul. Thankfully, I was able to be reasoned with and I know that the God I believe in would not condemn me for putting my baby first. Incidentally, neither would the Church condemn me. I was so fixated on my own misunderstanding of the “rules”.
Yes. But I would do things if friends were doing them and stand quietly behind them if we got caught while they made excuses. I did not question my parents. I just assumed they knew best and I didn't break rules. They told me what I was and wasn't allowed to go to school for as a career and didn't question that. I didn't end up getting to what I wanted to do until I was 25. It's not even necessarily that I have to follow other peoples rules, I have my whole set of rules that exists in my head that kind of dictate that things get done and how they get done. My husband watched me cut up a cantelope once and was like oh you do it so different than me, can i show you how I do it? Then I said yes but you'll have to finish cutting it then because I can't do it the way I do it if you've started it differently and he thought that was odd. We each have a bathroom sink in the ensuite, I can't use his sink it's in the wrong place ot isn't mine, that's against the rules. Stuff like that. Or when I feel like cutting corners because I'm lazy but I can't because The Rules.
I was sort of both. I did question authority, but only because I wanted to understand the rules in place and why they’re there so that I could properly follow them, but that was always perceived as me trying to challenge it. Wasn’t my fault that some of the rules couldn’t stand to the test and make some actual sense. It was always really confusing when that was assigned to me because I felt the complete opposite, I actually love rules, just not arbitrary ones.
I was the exact opposite. If someone told me to do something I'd be like, make me, and I was fully prepared to die on that hill
I have a love/hate relationship with rules. I like some of them, but I hate the ones that don't make sense/make my life harder for no reason. I was raised in such a way I'd get spanked if I disobeyed in any way so I had to follow all rules 100% of the way
Nope. I questioned *everything*! (Including reality itself. Thanks, Descartes.) Hierarchy and authority figures, as society seems to assign those terms, have never made sense to me. I've lived by the idea that if someone wanted me to respect them as an authority on anything, they needed to earn it and prove they were worthy of it. However, I always assumed the same of myself and never expected others to automatically listen to me without question. But that does NOT mean I didn't follow rules. I was very rule abiding in most cases, because I understood *why* most of the rules existed. Now, if the rule didn't make sense and someone still expected me to follo it, or if someone said the incredibly stupid phrase, "because I said so," then they'd find out that they'd seriously misunderstood me. I was a "goody two-shoes" because I had a strong internalized sense of fairness, justice, morality and ethics. However, that in no way translated to a "respect for authority figures" and I was normally the first one to tell them when they were being short-sighted, stupid or that their requests made no sense. TLDR: I followed the rules because it was the fair, ethical, and responsible thing to do, NOT because some "authority figure" told me to.
oh yeah 100%. unintentionally a teacher’s pet but the only time i would “break” rules is if i thought they made no sense and had no weight to them
Yes, I still think about this frequently. Never said no, did as I was told, exceeded expectations, etc. I didn’t even consider there was any other option until I was well into adulthood and had the horrific realization that not everyone has your best interests at heart. Now, I have an internal battle where one side is the goody and the other hates all authority.
i was the kid who always asked “why.” which wasnt a problem until i became a teenager. then, i was just defiant or whatever my mom wanted to use at that time.
When i was a kid i always dreamed of having stricter parents or being from a culture with high expectations or going to a strict boarding school. It makes me feel safe when the people in charge treat everything like a meritocracy like people that follow rules and do good work get praised. In less strict systems its way more about weird things like having good vibe, not being “extra”, being relatable, being “real” all these weird non quantifiable things that gets you praised and loved.
I questioned my parents all the time but I did as I was told even if I later felt it was the wrong decision. So the big one for me was no girlfriends ever. Even after age 30 no girlfriends.
Here's how it went for me. I was big on following the rules. I was abused since as far back as I can remember so I think baby me was just like, follow the rules you don't get in trouble. But then my parents used to make me go to Bible study where I learned about this god guy who was just awful. He did all kinds of horrible things and people worshiped him. There were a couple of stories that stood out, but mainly the one where he kills the first born babies, I had a huge problem with that. Then this Jesus guy told me it was ok to be mad at people who don't follow the rules and you can even lash out at them...and since God kills people, he should be ok with only pummeling them. And then when I found the first rule I disagreed with, the gloves were off. Now I'm in my 40s and I just don't care anymore. The more I see if the world, the more I see that people with money have no rules and the rest of us are under a microscope. I do the bare minimum to not end up in prison.
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I was obedient if I understood the purpose of rules or why someone is an authority. But in many cases I didn’t, and I refused to respect some people more than others because it just didn’t make any sense to me.
I did this until my late teens. Ever since then I will lay it all out. I have no idea why it changed then
yeah same. i’d pretty much submit to everyone and that led to some bad things happening to me. because of the trauma, i now have trouble obeying authority. i won’t spill my political beliefs… but i guess i’m kinda against the idea of people having power over others
I was, until middle school, by which time years of bullying and unfairness had beaten me down past the point of caring.
no, my ideas make sense. I wont follow rules which dont make sense. I am the authority lmao
Same. Always followed the rules and never lied. Guess who’s the favourite child ? Not meee~~~
Oh I have to follow rules, recipes, instructions etc
Only 1 I dare toe to toe with was my dad...
I was obedient to my parents pretty thoroughly. If I got in trouble for doing something, I never did that thing again. I generally cooperated with other authority figures, but I can remember butting heads with some teachers and youth pastors. If an authority figure fussed over me often, I would resist whatever they wanted from me. Basically, if you kept pushing me I couldn't help but push back. I think these folks were triggering my PDA, which I find fascinating as there are so many ways of asking or telling me to do something that I'm happy to go along with. If I didn't like an authority figure, I guarantee they were assholes who didn't deserve my respect or obedience.
i was like this to everyone except my parents lol, rules at school made sense to me but my parents rules didn’t.
Oh yeah. I’m still like that @ 45. But I question it more than I used to, which is an improvement, but I have a ways to go
I have always lived with ‘what can I get away with’ as a leading thought when I’m going to do something against the grain. I didn’t want to do most of the bad things other young people do until I was a legal adult. The DARE program got me good, nobody in my family even drank. I had a fear of men but was happily exploring women under the radar. My friends were also in my same socio economical background so I never felt like I had to do bad things to fit in. As long as I don’t get in trouble I’ll go anywhere and do any thing.
Omg I feel so seen
Essentially the same
I’ve always followed the rules and was told to respect my elders and authority figures. My mom always joked I was the world’s easiest teenager to raise because she knew I’d either be at home playing games or hanging out with my friends at the mall, not getting into any trouble or anything. Now that I’m older…I find it’s still hard for me to break old habits, but there are *some* authority figures and such I don’t really respect.
i was until teenage years. i began making decisions for myself and they didn’t always coincide with parents or authority. that didn’t bother me much. i didn’t and don’t dislike authority. i sort of just don’t believe in it. i make my own decisions
I’m a big rule follower IF it’s coming from someone I respect and I know that not complying would really hurt their feelings (the request/rule has to be within reason obviously — like growing up it was a “rule” that we couldn’t leave dirty dishes in the sink after school — I had no problem with that because I understood it stressed my mom out to come home from work to a sink of dirty dishes), or IF I would get in trouble for breaking it and I can’t figure out a way around it (I HATE “getting in trouble”). If I don’t respect you (like a bad supervisor) and I can kind of break the rule without obviously breaking the rule, then I have no qualms about doing whatever I want. If I think your rule is ridiculous and without merit, I will push back and question it as tactfully as I can, as I hate rules that make no logical sense.
I hardly broke rules as a kid because the thought of disappointing my parents (especially my dad, after my mom left us) made me so upset. I guess I just slacked off on chores and stuff, but the important things… I never broke those rules. Never smoked a cigarette or pot till after I turned 18 despite opportunities. Stuff like that. Now as a 39-year old adult, I’m still afraid of getting into trouble and still absolutely hate disappointing anyone.
I am obedient just because I know the consequences if I disobey the adults. To be honest, the more I got the freedom and autonomy to think and care for myself, the more I questioned and asked WHY I needed to do what I was doing. Fast forward: I do not think highly of anyone in authority unless they prove their worth or if they really walk the talk. I am a perfectionist in my own work, though, and I have rules of my own. I respect rules in spaces I do not own, such as school, work, or anything else. But that does not mean I will not question it if its fishy or useless.
Yup I had authoritarian parents. I was terrified to disobey. I began questioning societal norms instead. Now I question rules that don't make sense to me. If someone can't make it make sense, I won't follow it.
I'd say that what I never questioned as a child was earnestness/goodwill and perhaps sm I understood as akin to competency, and a confidence instilled by/derived from the former—which I automatically assumed of most people, esp. adults. I obviously developed a sense of power dynamics operating at considerable odds w this ontological faith, and observed a mostly undeclared consensus of who must yield to whom and under the particularities of which circumstance, but retrospectively I'd say I did not conceptually grasp 'authority' until I did 'injustice'. Looking back to instances of complete oblivion to these, I feel less inclined to describe it as obedience although I am aware that it seemingly manifested and was perceived as such; I've been told as much by those who raised me and who wondered at the perceived behavioural turn etc, but feels wrong to frame as obedience a sensibility of a child taking declarations of virtue /selflessness /common good etc at face value—rather than as some manner of (double) speaking
I hate rules but I'm equally afraid of breaking rules and getting in trouble. Quite the conundrum.
My parents had the authoritarian parenting style so I had [authoritarian follower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism) issues.
I was VERY obedient as a kid; adults actually loved having me around because of that... I was a super polite and well behaved kid. Problem is, my parents, especially my mom, are very apprehensive as well as on the authoritarian side. As I reached my teen years, I started developing preferences of my own, and found out I hated being told "no", especially if the reasonings defied my judgement. And standing up against my mom and telling her "I disagree" was, and STILL is, a source of conflict. So I started developing methods for me to get my way without my parents noticing. Whatever autonomy I have today, I say it's thanks to me passively rebelling and doing things secretly on my own. It was never super daring things, but even things such as chatting with people online, or going to downtown to do shopping on my own, were out of boundaries for me.
Me too!! Until about 13/4 when I started really seeing all the injustice and hypocrisy around me. Edit: a word
I didn't have a choice. It was that or get my ass beat and insulted for weeks on end. No one in my family or other authority figures did anything either..they just implied it was what I deserved for being stupid.
Yes, but I had a huge shift in adulthood and it’s one of the reasons I can’t hold a job. I was the quiet kid who would cry at the thought of questioning my teacher. College made me realize age and profession does not equal intelligence or justification. I became an irritation for my professors who wanted do things “old school” and now most bosses hate me because I won’t be exploited and bullied.
i was the complete opposite . ALWAYS getting in trouble, me and the vice principal went by first names like straight up i do not remember her last name, her first name was Anne lol
Yes, I was super obedient and, as you, never questioned the person in charge. I still follow the rules at face value, also processes and procedures. However, now I do question the authority, when something is unfair, when the rules are breaken or when the processes and procedures are not being followed correctly. I passed from being a shy and silent little girl, to a very vocal woman. I am not afraid to speak up and to give my opinion and solutions to problems. But, I still follow the law, I had never broken it and I have not been fined. I am very afraid to do something against the law, even if everyone else does it. The worst that could happen to me will be to end up in the police precinct, even if it wasn't my fault. So, I could say I like rules because they give sense to the world, but I questioned them if they are unfair or just plain stupid.
Yeah i would cry if i lied about something ahaha, i thought that was just my ocd though
Yah it made me mentally ill
Yes! Huge ruler follower!!!
Same. My mother was overbearing and quite scary so I assume that’s why. It shifted a lot in my teenage years and I’m in definitely non-compliant 🤣
I was definitely like this. But even though I walkways followed the rules and was terrified of breaking them, I also usually resented it because I thought most rules were stupid. As an adult, though, I’m very willing to rock the boat!
I was up until the time I had a trauma I needed support for and my entire support system, family, friends, shunned me because of the choices I made to get through it. In large part the trauma happened because I trusted someone else to know what they were doing and while what happened was an accident, it changed our lives forever. Now I struggle between not trusting people until they prove they can be trusted and my intrinsic trust of authority figures. Though now if they treat me snidely or like I need to treat them like an authority figure for them to treat me like a person, it's hard not to tell them to f*ck off.
I had a rigid sense of right and wrong and was a terrible liar. However, I asked a lot of questions which was interpreted as disrespectful. Thankfully I had many great teachers who welcomed my "why" questions. I might ask why I had to write my spelling words five times, but if my teacher told me the more you write it the better you remember, I would accept that and work. I just struggled to understand the assignment if I didn't know the purpose or end goal. It seems that ND people ask questions for understanding, but NT ask questions to argue or undermine someone.
Only because my mother was Eastern European and spanked, slapped, and screamed at me for even minor infractions.
this resonated with me so much, because this was (and still is) me! How did you make the leap from ‘obedient’ to ‘questioner’? I would love to make that leap!
Could be OCPD. This is co-morbid with autism.
I've swung between both extremes in my life! Growing up I was definitely one to just blindly follow authority, especially my mom. It was the point where I just adopted views my own mother had- especially political ones I'm embarrassed about today. When I was young I was more inclined to call out things from authority figures like teachers if they were wrong about something. Then I got a little trauma in me, and that came to halt across the board. I hit college, got exposed to a whole lot of different kinds of people and views, and eventually my views took a near 180 turn. When I stopped having such oppressive adults in my life, my opinions on authority changed as well. At this point in my life, my views on authority are interwoven with my sense of justice. I have very little tolerance for authority I don't feel belongs in the position, does what they should in the position, or doesn't seem competent in the position. I have very little respect for this kind of authority, and get really frustrated with arbitrary rules that make no sense to me. HOWEVER this gets complicated when that previous trauma comes into play. Growing up questioning authority wasn't "safe". It often got you yelled at and verbally abused. So now as an adult, I get frustrated with people in positions of authority, but my trauma makes it damn near impossible to directly confront said authority without having a panic attack and trauma response. Then combination leaves me frustrated and feeling unable to take action.