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Auntie SparkNotes: My Parents Are Pretending to Be Cool About My Mental Health Issues

Dear Auntie Sparknotes,

I’m 17, almost 18, and I’ve got to admit that I’m the epitome of teenagers convincing themselves of mental health issues.

The only problem? I actually have them all.

This isn’t about how to deal with them (I read the FAQ and also I don’t want to burden anyone, especially complete strangers, with having to help me with that – that’s what my therapist’s for) but I just want to give a basis for the rest of the letter: I have autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, AvPD, and some related symptoms, but I’ve learned to cope and deal with them, and I’m pretty high-functioning on all levels.

The last two in this list are things that have been diagnosed while I’ve been in high school (though speculation began even before that), and the people who have stuck with me have been some of the greatest people I’ve ever known. I just wish that I could feel like the two people who matter the most are also that supportive.

I’m talking about my parents, so I guess I’m dealing with an average teenager problem?

I’ll try to keep things simple:

One of my points of paranoia is that they have never been *that* okay with me and all my disabilities. I’ve had group sessions with them, and they constantly assure me that everything’s okay, but I just don’t feel that way. I’ve been diagnosed with autism since age 2, and whenever I talk about it to them, they seem uncomfortable. It’s not that they say anything mean or anything, I just get a gut feeling sometimes that just won’t go away.

I’ve been open in the past: about my sexuality, my gender identity, heck, even some embarrassing things I thought that they’d be mad about. But they were cool with it, albeit a little uncomfortable at first to hear that I didn’t identify with anything “normal.” They don’t mind it when I play my music loudly because I can’t hear it, nor when I ask them to turn the subtitles on the TV when I forget my glasses.

I guess the sum of my worries and the question I would like to ask: How can I open up to my parents about how I feel? Now that I re-read this, it’s bare-bones, but it’s really what it boils down to.

I (mostly) can communicate effectively, but I’m just trying to work up the courage on how to address this. Any advice?

For starters, you can try this: The next time you’re all sitting at the dinner table, or hanging out and watching TV, reach over and lightly pinch one of your parents on the upper arm.

Not as a means of starting a conversation about how you believe they secretly loathe you, but as a way of giving yourself a dearly needed reminder that your mother and father are, in fact, human beings.

Because based on your letter, this is your problem: Not that your parents are putting on a show of support to mask their discomfort with your various mental health issues, or that you need to come up with just the right words to suggest as much, but that you want them to accomplish the impossible, inhuman feat of making you believe that they’re sincere.

That’s not a reasonable or feasible expectation, sweet pea; you cannot subject your parents to a purity test about the contents of their hearts. And that’s true for everyone, not just you. None of us will ever truly know exactly how another person feels, about us or anything else—and even if we could, it wouldn’t be a good thing, because how we feel about the people we love is particularly messy and complicated. For instance: Are your parents thrilled that you’ve been saddled with all these various disabilities, things you’ll have to deal with on some level or another for as long as you live? Of course not. Your parents brought you into this world, and they had their own hopes and dreams about what your life would be like — hopes and dreams that almost certainly didn’t include watching you struggle. They may even have wished, especially at the beginning, that you could have been spared some of the challenges in store for you, simply because nobody wants to see someone they love go through a hard time.

What you need to realize is that your parents can feel sorry for your struggle, and frustrated that you have to go through it, yet still love and accept and support you, just as you are. But since you can’t open up their skulls and peek into their heads to see what they’re thinking, your best measure of how your parents feel on the inside is how they treat you on the outside.

Which brings us to this: by your own account, your mom and dad have been kind, supportive, generous, accommodating, and—after a brief adjustment period—totally cool with everything you’ve ever told them about yourself. They’re going the extra mile to not only make sure you’re getting professional help but to be actively involved in your treatment. And they’ve told you, time and time again, that they don’t secretly resent you for your disabilities.

So while you could raise the issue once again, before you do, I’d like you to ask yourself: What are you hoping to accomplish, here? What would it take for you to be satisfied that your parents feel the way they say they feel? What would you have them do, that they aren’t doing already, to convince you?

And look, if you actually have a concrete answer to these questions, then that’s what you should bring to the table in order to have a productive conversation. Being respectful and specific will take you a long way toward getting what you need. (E.g.: “Hey Mom and Dad, next time I do/say X, it would be helpful to me if you could do/say Y.”)

But if your answer is that you don’t know, you can’t say, or you just want them to make you feel differently, then that points to this being a problem you need to address with your therapist, not your folks. This is probably something you’re working on in counseling, but it bears mentioning anyway: Gut feelings are an instinctive response, but that doesn’t mean they’re always a useful or reasonable one. And as a person who has been diagnosed with not just one, but several conditions that are famous for making people prone to paranoia, excessively fearful of rejection, and less-than-adept at reading and interpreting social cues, you’re going to want to give your gut feelings an extra level of scrutiny before you act on them. So when you “just feel” something despite all available evidence to the contrary, that’s exactly the kind of thing that it’s good to tackle with a professional third party first—if only to give yourself the kind of objective reality check we all sometimes need before pointing a finger at someone else.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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