3/16/2014: My Mother and Anxious Attachment

It began with my mother.

What began with my mother? I don't know, a lot of things. A lot of the problems I deal with now. This post is one that deals with the past, with emotions and bad memories. Apologies if it comes out a little disconnected.

Relationships seems like a good place to start.

Perhaps I was taking a cue from my father, who would call my mother over and over again if she was gone late at night, and be angry at her when she returned. When my mom was gone for extended periods of time, I would become frightened. My mind would come up with the worst-case scenarios for what had happened--that she had died, or was kidnapped, or whatever else I could come up with. Then she would come home and, relieved, I would go back to living normally.

I've had problems with relationships. When I get infatuated, I become obsessed. Further than other people. I worry endlessly. When I'm not with them, my mind conjures up the worst-case scenarios--they hate me, I'm pushing them away, I can't have a relationship with them--and I feel the urge to check, to ask them if I did something wrong, if I've been bothering them. They'll say no, you haven't--and then I'll do it again, and they'll say no, you haven't--and then I'll do it again. In the uncertainty, my mind conjures up horrible possibilities, and the more I fear them, the more real they become.

Maybe that's just OCD, related to autism. I don't know.

My mother had a primary role in my upbringing. My father has Asperger's syndrome, and spent his younger years away from his family for long periods of time, a wound that continues to hurt him to this day. He has never been a social butterfly, and often struggles to communicate with me in ways beyond reciting pithy lectures, or repeating well-worn stories about his own upbringing. These conversations were often one-way, and after a time I became to realize I viewed him as more of a record-player than a father.

So the onus was on my mother to raise me.

I was not the most well-adjusted of children. I, like my father, had Asperger's Syndrome. From an early age I had little interest in interacting with other children; during recess, I was more content playing on my Game Boy or reading a book than playing with the other children. When I did interact with them, it was often as an outsider, and I frequently got in trouble for my behavior with them. In second grade I was suspended from school for half a day because I was frightening other students. In third grade I was given detention for a week because I choked a student I thought had called me an alien. I recall other children often drawing away from me because I was weird, and how I felt like a virus because of this.

Because I did not involve myself in any social situations, my mother took the opportunities to involve me in various extracurricular. She had me play soccer and join the Boy Scouts of America. I never wanted to do either, and often was quite bored or unhappy at the meetings, but I did it anyway, because I didn't think I had a choice in the matter. I won't say the things I obtained from them weren't helpful, but they seemed to set a precedent for my interactions with my mother for years in the future.

I'm in college now. My mom still sends me suggestions on what I should do. In Freshman year, she constantly pressured me to get a job, to join various clubs, go out to this-or-that event. When I tell her of friendships or relationships, she'll sometimes send me suggestions on things I can do with them, as though I can't come up with them myself. Sometimes if I don't do something she wants me to do, she'll continue hounding me to do it, or else send passive-aggressive comments, though she may send them either immediately, or at a later time, such as in the middle of the night, or in the next morning. Whenever she gets bothered about it, I guess.

She goes through self-help books and countless books on nutrition. She's tossed vitamins, nutritional supplements, and said self-help books at me. She's advocated high fat diets, low fat diets, mainly protein, gluten-free, soy, pescetarian, vegetarian, whatever-the-fuck-etarian. She's talked about adrenal deficiencies, thyroid diet, chi-whatever, I can't even keep track anymore, here's a picture of a fraction of the books she's bought over the years.

Whenever she suggests to me some new lifestyle thing, I do my own research to see if it's any true.

I often feel weak. I often feel like I can't do things. Whenever I go into a new direction, I ask as many people as I can for help. To some extent that's a good thing, but there are times where I feel like I can't do things unless other people say it's ok, where I can't believe things unless other people believe them, where if I feel emotions that other people feel, I'm wrong.

I've had friends and therapists alike caution me to separate my own goals from that of my mothers's. My therapist asks me sometimes if the critical thoughts I have in my head are my own or my mother's. One of my friends, who I seem to talk to more about my own problems than my own mother, has a similarly low opinion of her, such that sometimes I feel the need to defend her. Perhaps I shouldn't.

Christ.

From Ainsworth's patterns of attachment, Anxious Attachment stems from being "excessively protect towards the child, unwilling to allow independence", and results in being "clingy, unable to cope with absence of the caregiver. Seeks constant reassurances."

From Wikipedia:

People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to agree with the following statements: "I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like", and "I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don't value me as much as I value them." People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on their partners. Compared to securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They often doubt their worth as a partner and blame themselves for their partners' lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships.

Hello, me.