https://youtu.be/6WSMZrrceeE

Masking, or conforming to perceived social expectation by projecting the persona of the person you think other people need to see or else you will be rejected, is what I was doing from a young age. I could write books on the intersection of Mormon culture and autism, and I’ve only known for certain for a month.

It’s damaging to mask your whole life. I masked. I felt uncomfortable around people, apart from them. I could never read social cues right or figure out what to say to break the ice with people. I stuck my foot in my mouth a lot, and it was extremely discouraging. All my emotions seem to be dialed up a notch. I don’t have “It’s a small world after all” Disney emotions. I have “Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let it show”/Elsa’s redemption arch kind of emotions. And I burn out and get tired after spending too much mental energy. I always wondered what was wrong with me, and then when I hit puberty, I was broadsided by a total surprise of what being a sexual being was like. I had no idea what was normal — I couldn’t even infer it from social cues (that’s autism) — and nobody was verbally forthcoming about what was normal.

Why? Why do Mormons have to be such anti-intellectual, self-important, emotionally-retarded people? I had to reverse engineer my emotional intelligence from scratch, from within a cult, with little ability to read the nonverbal side of people! I trusted my bishops and my bishop-father, because what other choice did I have? I trusted them 110%. I was ready to do anything they told me to do which felt righteous. I just wanted to know why I always felt apart from everyone and to know what was expected with exactness so that I could stop being so perfectionist. I wanted to know why nothing ever made any sense. They gave me standard primary answers: read your scriptures and pray. I did that. I did it with such intensity, I surpassed them all in my ability to scripture recall on the spot. Why did I still feel like s**t? These clueless bastages sympathized with me but they would never tell me I was ok. I was enraged when I found out how common my “sins” were, and they and even my Mormon therapist would retort to my claims about what was natural by quoting “the natural man is an enemy to God”. Oh, brother! These are not things you say to a guy in the edge! I needed to have stuff spelled out for me.

I learned how to excel at 1-on-1 interviews because I kept the revolving door to the bishop’s office spinning. These guys had nothing. I went to BYU-Idaho to learn about all the questions I ever had related to religion, because I figured things would finally make sense there. They never did. My social awkwardness followed me to Rexburg. I visited the student health center to find out what was wrong with me, and because I was so observant of Mormon habits and so good at maintaining eye contact, they thought maybe I only had ADHD. I do have that, but holy Christ. I finally got enough of a sense of both myself and the facts of the reality that I live in that I pushed God and Mormonism as far away from me as I could so I could think. I had taken confidence in the idea that I deserved to be happy, but when I overshared with my therapist and nurse’s practitioner about my mental health break throughs which I felt after gaining the confidence to think for myself, they flipped out on me. The therapist tried to jettison me as a patient because he didn’t want to be responsible for helping me kill God in my mind, and the nurse’s practitioner violated my privacy to ask my therapist if he thought I was capable of hurting anybody because she had imagined a lump in my sweater was a weapon. I tried venting all of this shocking behavior to my Mormon friend who I trusted enough to let him know I was atheist, and he jumped down my throat for tacitly admitting to a porn habit. I’m AUTISTIC!!! I cannot understate how shocking and scary and traumatizing the Mormons are and have ever been to me, and I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to understand and fit in with them.

And after all that, after my whole life of loneliness and discomfort in my own skin, masking, of seeing bishops with a sincere heart and practicing everything they ever told me to do with real intent and having their advice get me absolutely nowhere, I’d having experts with advanced degrees act like children around me, my parents gave up on me too. They’d uneasily supported me through my porn habit and the doubts I’d had about the church after my mission, but when they realized I’d given over to my doubts, they assumed that Satan had beaten me and made me his servant, and from that point forward they would not work with me anymore. They wouldn’t let me overshare or sift through my feelings with them anymore. They just pat me on the back, wished me luck doing whatever pieces of apostate trash like to do, and bidding me to shut up if I wanted to be around the family for dinner.

I feel mugged spiritually after having been mugged by my disabled social reality. Autistic brains, no matter how severely they fall on the spectrum, have all the same neurons in all the same places, but the ways they connect to each other can be unique and the nature of the connections can be different. From all the information im consuming, I get the impression that the neurons which recognize social cues as social cues tend to lag if they fire at all, they work more in retrospective memory than they do in real time, and they connect in ways that help me categorize and make sense of information into belief systems the way that normie brains categorize humans via their faces, body language, emotions, etc and etc, into perceived personalities. I have all the same parts anybody else ever had, just bequeathed upon me in tweaked and unique ways. Others are even more special than I am, but as strange as their behavior might seem from the outside, I can imagine their conscious experience in my way. I just need to know everything about a thing and then watch their minds encountering it for the first time, and then by studying the thing I can reverse engineer how they came to see it the way they described it to me. I learned how to read other Mormons’ emotions by watching them internalize scripture and react to being attacked by anti-Mormons. It helped a lot that they trusted me as my father’s son to reveal their more vulnerable feelings about religion, trusting me to think of scriptures to reassure them.

Mormonism was the tool I used to compensate for my social deficit. It was my mask. I did it more earnestly than many other Mormons, and then one day I found out it wasn’t true and the hope of a social life I’d been staking on it just bottomed out, and I knew every fear of rejection and abandonment I’d ever had was about to come true. It did come true. I feel rejection and abandonment as exquisitely as anybody else too.

I’m made of study stuff. I have had to be to survive. I’m a survivor. But it’s lonely, and it’s hard. I get tired. I burn out often. I get back up, but I need hope to keep going, hope that something is going to change soon for the better, or the bad thoughts return. I haven’t spoken to my parents in 8 months. I skipped thanksgiving. Im going to skip Christmas. These people have hovered over me as helicopter parents my entire life, and it’s always been toxic but for the last seven years it’s been intolerable. Im not sure what my long term goals are. I was always too busy managing clinic-level anxiety to think about such things. I’ve been ready to die since I was seventeen. I’ve felt like an old man since I was twenty-one. I am brilliant and my mind races with profound thoughts. Will my folks ever see how many lifetimes of effort I poured into just 25 years of trying my damnedest to do life their way? No. How many lifetimes does it take prove that I didn’t betray their trust so much as their crap just doesn’t work for me and I have the right to move on? I can never prove that. They will extract every natural hour of my life from me until I die in the form of ponderizing angst if I let them. I can’t be around them anymore. I won’t. I respect myself more then that. I just thought maybe the story could end happier than this, but it’s not going to. I don’t think I’m being over dramatic. I think I’m just trying to survive like usual.

Merry Christmas. Remember Pagan Yule was appropriated by Roman Catholicism to convert the Germanic and Norse tribes to the gospel. It doesn’t matter where the traditions come from. I love them. Christmas is my birthday, after all. :)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2021 07:21AM by Cold-Dodger.

Very very nice Cold-Dodger. Don't fit in?
We all relate to parts that you just finished writing, if not all of it.

The MormØŽism I knew drove me more than crazy with it's own brand of true insanity.

My cold metal bar touch on the back door of the chapel, as I hit it so hard with both hands when deliberately leaving Sacrament Meeting early, is forever etched into my memory.
I was only there for one, last, look.

I can still feel that cold aluminum bar.

Joseph's Myth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I can still feel that cold aluminum bar.

That is an amazing metaphor, JM.

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Joseph's Myth Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I can still feel that cold aluminum bar.
>
> That is an amazing metaphor, JM.

I gave those hinges a real 'wind test' that's for sure!
I remember after a very hard exit pretty much knowing I would never return thinking about how well that door, was sturdily hung by somebody.
"Pffft.. Only thing on that building that's right" Struck me in an odd way as being almost funny.

It isn't metaphorical.

What I found was that I lived it and all my friends in the ward, etc., mormon friends, did not. And they all got married young and some had 5 kids when I finally got married to my gay husband. That was a trip. I have been suicidal since age 25 and I'm 64. The day he told me he is gay and then the leaders had NO ANSWERS. In fact, they had the wrong answers. And they messed up my life and my kids' lives. And my husband's. I'm not very happy with him right now. I have a boyfriend of 17 years that is a nonmormon who I met at age 20.

I've said a lot of this before. I did meet some good mormon guys where I worked. They were all scientists and chemists. One was a mathematician and he thought I was brilliant as did the others. Most were Ph.D.s. I had never fit in before and I did with them. I made several nonmormon friends. Their acceptance saved me after trying so damn hard to fit into mormonism as these guys are not your typical mormons. They were all nerds, very interesting people. I miss talking to them daily, though I get to now and then. My boss wore the same suits he probably wore on his mission, 1950s suits that were pressed perfectly. He always looked sharp even if out of style. He had penmanship like you wouldn't believe.

I hope sooner than later you find those people who you FIT IN with and you feel it. I'd assume that many of these men had autism or something like that I've found autistic people are often very intelligent. My son asked me once if he has aspergers or autism and my sister had brought that up to me a few times. She teaches first grade, but used to teach special education. She thinks she and I have some of the characteristics. Our whole family isn't social. We never fit into mormonism. Not a one of us. I tried the hardest as I was afraid of losing my family.

Mormon guys never liked me, but I had to have that mormon.

Just wondering if you are alone for Christmas. Is there anything I can do to make your Christmas better? I think many of us on here would like to do something to let you know we care. Feel free to e-mail me. I assume the moderators have my e-mail address. I'd put it here, but they'd probably remove it.

My son really struggles. He just turned 36. He had a mental breakdown 1-1/2 years ago and ended up in the hospital. He has a therapist and is on meds (ones he has chosen to stay on and not the ones that some psychiatrists have given him, but ones his doctor, who he loves has put him on--he hs been going to him for 13 or 15 years. My son was a drug addict and an alcoholic and he is off all of those now. He is on medical marijuana.) It is tough to see my son struggle so much. As suicidal as I can be at times, I have stuck around for my children and I worry a lot about my son. He is extremely intelligent.

Long answer: My family keeps trying to reach out to me hear and there. They haven’t outright disowned me, but I wish they would because what they do instead is far worse. They belittle me whenever our differences get serious and forbid me from being myself. I’m not allowed to care about truth in their presence. That’s fine. We don’t have to be around each other, but they also can’t bear my absence. My presence is just one of those things they took for granted. I never had anything else to do, anyone else to see, so they just got used to filling up my time with their shit. They feel entitled to it. I’m insulting them when I don’t show up. I’m the one with psychological problems, because I was vaccinated before my parents “knew better” and also because I get strangely intensely passionate when they hit a button I’ve put a thought a lot into and then forbid me from explaining anything to them. Stupid dumb ass parents should be thrilled that their DNA recombined into kid who seems to know a lot about everything that they’re too afraid to delve into themselves. That’s sort of my fixation: that stuff that’s too controversial for white corridor Mormons that they avoid but remain curious about forever. So, I’m avoiding them because being around them has become too emotionally hostile for me. I’m tired of the anxiety. I’m tired of the gaslighting: like I’m not feeling what I’m feeling or like I’m the one who’s unwilling to talk about it.

Short answer: yes, I’m alone this Christmas. Reminds me of my mission. They’ve forced me to go away before. I’ve been threatened with disownment before if I wouldn’t go. They’ve frankly forgiven themselves for these things, but I can’t forget them when I pick up cues often about how much they despise me for not believing anymore. I don’t want patronage. I want serious acknowledgment of my emotional history.

Cold-Dodger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So, I’m avoiding them because being around them has become too emotionally hostile for me. I’m tired of the anxiety. I’m tired of the gaslighting: like I’m not feeling what I’m feeling or like I’m the one who’s unwilling to talk about it.

This sounds like a good idea, CD. You can always change your mind in the future. No permanent decisions need to be made immediately. Absolutely do what you need to do for yourself. That is the first rule of survival.


> Short answer: yes, I’m alone this Christmas.

That can seem sad but often it's a plus. Anybody would be much better keeping themselves company than dealing with so much stress and anxiety and antagonism visited on them by others who can't just see them for who they are but have to argue over details.

I can relate to the yearning many have that someone could really know us and accept us without needing us to change for them. That's a big problem with many religious groups, most especially the more fundamentalist ones, which includes Mormonism - you're just never good enough the way you are. While self-improvement is usually a positive goal to have, they take it to extremes and trample on our inside selves where we just want to be accepted for who we are, not who they think we should be. It's a tragedy that all too many parents discard their children on the altar of the church. It's very much their appalling loss but unfortunately they hurt their offspring too as they bow to their god.

Hang with us over the holiday season, CD. We're interested in you and I hope some of the interactions are helpful to you.

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Cold-Dodger Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > So, I’m avoiding them because being around
> them has become too emotionally hostile for me.
> I’m tired of the anxiety. I’m tired of the
> gaslighting: like I’m not feeling what I’m
> feeling or like I’m the one who’s unwilling to
> talk about it.
>
> This sounds like a good idea, CD. You can always
> change your mind in the future. No permanent
> decisions need to be made immediately. Absolutely
> do what you need to do for yourself. That is the
> first rule of survival.
>
>
> > Short answer: yes, I’m alone this Christmas.
>
> That can seem sad but often it's a plus. Anybody
> would be much better keeping themselves company
> than dealing with so much stress and anxiety and
> antagonism visited on them by others who can't
> just see them for who they are but have to argue
> over details.
>
> I can relate to the yearning many have that
> someone could really know us and accept us without
> needing us to change for them. That's a big
> problem with many religious groups, most
> especially the more fundamentalist ones, which
> includes Mormonism - you're just never good enough
> the way you are. While self-improvement is usually
> a positive goal to have, they take it to extremes
> and trample on our inside selves where we just
> want to be accepted for who we are, not who they
> think we should be. It's a tragedy that all too
> many parents discard their children on the altar
> of the church. It's very much their appalling loss
> but unfortunately they hurt their offspring too as
> they bow to their god.
>
> Hang with us over the holiday season, CD. We're
> interested in you and I hope some of the
> interactions are helpful to you.

Thanksgiving is bad, the tip I use is to eat a day early and it is incredibly decompressing. I just thought of something!
That, is my tradition.. hmmm.

Christmas is sometimes worse, it all depends.
Happy Hanukkah candles get lit this week, so be a little different and a little early and set up seven candles.
I'm late on that so I'll be doing that maybe alongside you, this time.

Toxic Christmas is not very missed as it turns out, after all.

When I first quit, I was always doing something exciting at Christmastime and likely traveling.

I’m about to lose my job, so I don’t know what to do.

Job loss, religion change or loss, breakups in relationships, and major health challenge are all on the top stressor list.

Mine (all four) hit at once, yes all at the same time!

It's on my private resume.

Carry on as you soar out of this stupid pandemic.

it'sbeenaroughone

"I had to reverse engineer my emotional intelligence from scratch, from within a cult, with little ability to read the nonverbal side of people! I trusted my bishops and my bishop-father, because what other choice did I have? "

I'm too good at social cues. I was abused in Mormonism, neglected, watched over by sometimes kind, sometimes very cruel siblings. I learned to pay it forward to my younger siblings.

I trusted people I thought I loved because I was told that it what I was supposed to do. I'm hypervigilant with social cues and hypersexualized from when I was a toddler.

Sometimes I envy people for whom social cues, dealing with attention as something less stressful, and interpersonal relationships are easier.

Mormonism was the icing on the cake for our dysfunctional family. It was a patina of superimposed superficial "righteous" emotional responses. The monster under the bed were my parents and yet I was to honor and respect them and live with them forever.

“I had to reverse engineer my emotional intelligence …” is the best summation I’ve heard on the topic.

May I quote you, EB ?

kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> May I quote you, EB ?

It wasn't mine. It was Cold Dodgers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2021 03:39PM by Elder Berry.

"Why do Mormons have to be such anti-intellectual, self-important, emotionally-retarded people?"

Because people like that drive the saner people from the group, leaving the remaining pool with a higher concentration of anti-intellectual, self-important, emotionally-retarded people, who then drive away even more of the sane people, and so on.

It's called "adverse selection."

I used to think my family was somehow different from those "Utah Mormons," but then I started to realize that it was just the culture that emerged from the axioms correctly gleamed from the Book of Mormon and the triple combination and the cultural interpretations which has grown up with them. Non-Utah Mormons are different because they have other sources of acculturation, not only the church. My brain somehow missed this. No wait, I did have those thoughts, but I shelved them, because blaming the members for everything wrong with Mormonism was easier than questioning the church itself.

Cold-dodger, you wrote,"Non-Utah Mormons are different because they have other sources of acculturation, not only the church."

I was thinking this same thing, as I was reading your post, and wishing you had, at least, been raised in California, like my brother and I had been.

I suspect you are more "Asperger's" than "autistic", because of your wonderful ability to communicate! My 12-years-older brother has Asperger's, and I can relate to what you wrote. He was born BIC, but being raised in California saved him! My parents were concerned only about his bad grades and difficulty adjusting to the school norms, so they had him tested for possible retardation. Instead he tested with a high IQ. He also had a photographic memory, which drove people nuts, because he was always correct. He memorized all the Mormon scriptures, but had little understanding of their meaning--or so we thought--until we discovered that they were almost meaningless! He was right again!

You know how rough autism can be, but my brother rode it out, at home, because, imperfect as things were, it was the best place he could be. He never married, but had many friends. The ward accepted him, because he was so funny and entertaining, and paid large amounts of tithing and donations. His photographic memory skills landed him some good jobs. He was gifted at investing, and bought Tech stocks, then sold them before the crash.

We lived in Silicon Valley, and my brother had friends similar to the people Cl2 describes. Geniuses! Engineers and inventors who became millionares in the Tech Boom Era. The thing about these extraordinary people, is that they are one-of-a-kind, just like my brother is. The individuals he befriended in California have been his friends for a lifetime! They never got married, either, except for one of them, who married me.

My brother was honest, to a fault. He was one of the funniest people I ever knew! He had the uncanny ability to zero in on the Real Truth and Ironies of Life. Cold-Dodger, you have that, ability too, and you can appreciate that about yourself. Others--the right kind of friends--will appreciate it, too. You are a philosopher, of sorts.

We all, here, are a little bit like you. You are not totally alone, in any group. In my own story, I did better once I gave up on having a meaningful, close or loving relationship with Mormon fanatics. I learned to take Mormons at face value, on a superficial level. For example, my mother was verbally abusive, but she made beautiful clothes for me, and had me looking fabulous, always. My TBM parents gave me piano lessons, and I became a piano teacher, while in college. They paid for BYU, and another university for my grad school. They did a great deal for me--just not in the way of offering unconditional love, acceptance, emotional comfort, or safety. I did eventually find that on my own.

You need your parents! They need you. Mom had my brother as her life's "quest", and he lived with her and a caretaker, for her final few months. He took care of the house, when my mother and father traveled the world, and spent the summers at my house. Because of my brother, I have some trauma, but I also have some of his unique perspective on life. He and I both survived Mormonism. Best of all for me, I fell in love with one of my brother's lifetime friends, who is the most amazing human being I have ever known! We have wonderful kids! If I need a break from my brother, I can tell him so, and he backs off. We laugh every day! No more talk of suicide!

Never give up on yourself!!!

There is so much more for me to say.... With Mormons, go for substance, not meaning. Give them gestures and words of kindness, even if you can't love them. When they mistreat you, well, maybe all you can do is leave. I had to cut off all contact with two relatives, who stole money from my parents, my brother, and me. I did resign completely from the Mormon cult, and they all still shun me, so no more contact there, either.

I don't think you are at that end-point with your family--or that you ever will be. Take short breaks. Share your parents' Christmas dinner with them, but go home for the rest of the day. Life is a struggle, and keep up the good work and the good therapy. If it isn't working, get another (non-Mormon) therapist. Find and adopt your people, or even one person, or a good dog. There is love in the world.

That is a great post.

I can’t openly take pride in my best qualities, or the people I’m always bonking heads with call me arrogant and proud.

Hitchens said religion is “fossilized philosophies but with the questions left out.”

Anyone who has cared to try to understand the WHY of their native faith is a philosopher: they are examining their life, doing what Socrates said to do. If they’ve never tried other options, they can still begin to appreciate other positions by knowing theirs first.

Mormonism left all the original questions out, deliberately and almost violently. When you understand what Joseph Smith’s OG questions were, the historical context of his day and all his family dilemmas are thrown into focus and you realize just how “19th century” it all is, but not just 19th century: his mind specifically. It doesn’t make it all worthless. I found the man thoughtful, given his starting point. Conceited, given how it ended. He was a yokel who conquered the world of religious philosophy. He in a sense called it all for the sham it was a demanded something better, but he was only human and not even that educated at that so his answers suffered from scrutiny until at last his religious system stagnated too, and people began to leave the questions out.

Mormons often ask themselves why revelation should have stopped, but they don’t read the King Follett discourse closely enough to realize that Joseph equated learning itself, the inspiration of pure knowledge flowing into you, with revelation. For him, a ignorant farm boy, revelation never stopped, and the longer he had contact with the world, the more he learned about it. It was all to him an orgasmic theophany, and he rubbed it in. He was amazed himself that his own “beardless” ass could put the whole religious realm of America on high alert.

I’m like Joseph, just without the coercion of people into my bed or plotting to become King of America. Unlike Joseph, I have a profound awareness of how much I don’t know and it humbles me. It also fills me with wonder. I’m not going anywhere until my body gives out from under me. I’ll be absorbing knowledge on my death bed and begging for a little longer to mull it over and make connections. That’s what I love about my life, and the rest of it is just some sorry annoyance to be tolerated between mind-dives.

Thank you for your kind words.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2021 11:09AM by Cold-Dodger.

Some of my most sincere and long time acquaintances treat me like family and they know I consider them family.

You adopt when you have toxic relatives.

Best thing I ever did (accidently really) was adopt a grandfather.

People "get-it" so try and be ready and don't act too surprised.

Welcome to the light outside of Plato's Cave!!!