I am still unsure what to make of this, and it often plagues me a lot. Since I began getting sick, I began to become very mistrustful of my parents. I had a certain degree of mistrust prior to this, but when I became depressed it got far worse. I find myself flipping between thinking that my mistrust is accurate and then I find myself thinking it isn't accurate.

For some background, I am a young man with a long standing history of general anxiety, ADHD, autism, and some paranoid tendencies. During this time, my parents saw that I had difficulties with my autism. This along with other things caused my parents to decide to homeschool me. My mother spent a lot of time working with me one on one, which I think is part of why I am quite high functioning on the spectrum today. She seemed to try very hard to work out my social and attention difficulties from my autism. My father also was quite heavily involved in this process. My parents would both take me to museums and different places I was interested in going, as I was very interested in the sciences. My parents and especially my Mom would seek out things in the community for me to get involved in to try to help me. Due to my autism, I was extremely difficult at times. She still put up with having me at home (with the exception of a brief period at school) despite my outbursts.

When I went to college, my parents would always make themselves available to help me to study for tests. When I began to develop difficulties away at school, my parents would always answer the phone and talk to me. When things got really bad, they even offered to come stay with me in my apartment at college. When I came down after college, since I was engaged in self harm, my parents would always check to see if I was okay to be left alone (they still do that sometimes). My father would sometimes even come up in the night to check on me if things seemed bad.

However, there are some things that I hearken back to and it has sometimes made me think that these may not be people to be trusted. For one, when I was around 8 years old I was having an argument with my parents and they said, "You need us, but we don't need you".

Then, on one occasion, they said and did things that just utterly floored me. On one night when I was about 15, I was at a birthday party with other teenagers.There was also younger kids there. I joined in with the teenagers in making inappropriate jokes while the younger kids were around. When I came home, my mother began saying that what I did was utterly horrible, that I was a menace to society and a monster. I referred to her as Mom and she told me not to call her that. They then took down a poster that said, "A New Baby A New Hope" and mockingly said something to the effect of, "Pfff. That's not what we got here." She also said that she thought I would have a bad life outcome and that she wasn't going to help me to get anywhere in my life anymore. I pretty much just assumed that they were going to get rid of me in the morning or just give me the cold shoulder for the rest of my life. I thought that I 100% lost my family. Then, the next morning, they seemed upset but were getting over it. By the evening and the next day after that, everything was completely fine in their eyes. It was like it didn't even happen. They acted the same and treated me exactly the same.

That was probably the craziest thing that ever happened with them, but there have been some other things. When I first began to experience depression (at age 17) I hid most of my symptoms from my parents and everyone around me, but I would make comments such as "I should kill myself" and things of the sort. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time in my late teenage years actually contemplating that. However, my parents would just tell me to "cut it out" and did not seem to take it seriously at all. They even thought I was saying it to be "manipulative" and would become angry with me. I would go along with saying I was manipulating them, just because I did not want to let on that I was actually depressed. They also said they would take me to the hospital if I was actually thinking of suicide, and I like having the right to roam freely without locked doors So, I just chose to lie and say I was saying it to manipulate them, which was a mistake. I should have just admitted I really was depressed. Then, one day she became irate at this "manipulation" and said that if I kept doing this, she did not want me around and said she didn't care if I slept on the street.

Then, I began to gain weight and my parents would pat my stomach and say that I was getting a gut, that I looked like a tire, etc. They would hound me that I needed to work out and eat better. Both of them insist that they said these things to motivate me to take better care of my health, but I was highly offended.

For a while, I began to get closer to my parents and forget about these incidents. I started thinking that overall they did a lot of good in my life, which has been true. However, on another occasion they did something to upset me a lot. I went to a talk that featured a guy who self harmed and was very depressed. I was beginning to develop similar issues (which I later told them about). She told me to "keep my distance from the guy" and I said that if someone in the family did it, you wouldn't feel the same way. She insisted I was talking about myself and kept saying how she would want to stay away from them, said that there would be things I would have a visceral reaction to as well, and even went as far as saying she might just shun them. The next day, I decided that I would be bold and come clean to her that I had issues with similar sorts of things in the past. She did change her tune a lot after that and said that she would be there as a parent and as a friend but that only a professional could try and "fix it".

Finally, for a time I became extremely belligerent to my parents while I was rather unwell. I called them names and acted in an extremely hostile way on a daily basis. I probably really made their life hell, and I apologize greatly. I also was often saying very negative things, like that my life is pointless, that I'm garbage, not doing good, etc. They said they didn't want to keep hearing those things and I kept saying them too. One day after my being extremely mean and hurtful towards them, my mother told me that if I kept this up that I would have to leave their house. She started talking about getting a lawyer to absolve all ties with me. I asked her to make a list of things I'd have to do to stay with them and stay in their lives. She wrote to stop being so abusive and also to stop being "negative". She later told met hat if I stopped being mean but was still going on about "not doing good", being garbage, etc. on a frequent basis that she would leave and I'd stay with Dad. She then said she would stay in touch and come back whenever I wasn't so difficult to be around.

So, sorry about the long wall of text. If you have taken the time to read all this, your an amazing person I don't like to go on with long walls of text like this, but this is pretty much one of my biggest core issues. I have questioned if my parents are loyal people as a result of the things I mentioned before. I have gone back and forth in my mind numerous times, and I have tortured myself mercilessly thinking about this issue. It has, at times, literally driven me mad I just needed to get this out. Also, the mentions of suicidal ideation and self harm were purely in the past and not something I have luckily gotten past.

Broken people are allowed to have children too. Being a parent doesn't mean you have to be nice.

Your gonna have to 1. Choose life, 2. Choose independence, 3. Become independentm 4. Decide where they stand in your life, you don't have to deal with them for much longer.

Its best to not judge them too much for not being angels. You don't know why they are they way they are. You don't know what they have been through.

Just find some self stability. .. pass your courses so you can graduate asap, then find a job, which ever comes first. I wouldn't want to be standing on that shaky foundation for much longer. do the things that will improve your independent life the most

[~Christina]

Are you seeing a Therapist? If not I would suggest you talk to someone. It can help you learn healthy ways to communicate with them so you wont feel the need to lie and always hide how your feeling and especially when your not feeling safe.

Boy have things really changed since I wrote this. The past few days I have started on medication for my mental health issues for the first time in my life. It's an OTC herbal anti-anxiety med, but I am only planning to take this until my doctor prescribes me something to calm me down a bit and help me think clearly. Apparently, my anxiety problem was worse than I thought because I feel far calmer now. Anyways, with my more calm state of mind I was actually able to communicate with them and have a major breakthrough.

That whole incident with that night I came home from that birthday party was entirely not what I thought at all. They had no idea I was coming to them, because I knew I did wrong. They simply thought I was telling the story without any thought of wrongdoing. Given the demented nature of the jokes that were being told by the teenagers in front of a kid that was very young, she was taken aback at the false idea that I had no moral compass about it. When she realized that I knew I did wrong, she said she would have done it completely differently. She truly said she felt terrible about it and was literally in tears which is very rare for her. We simply held hands and cried, it was a very emotional and life changing moment. I feel much differently after that, and the medication is helping to keep me quite calm.

Also, I am remembering now, when I was younger and making those suicidal comments that they deemed manipulative, they truly had no idea about my mental health problems. The only thing I did was being extremely abusive towards them. I told them frequently how terrible they were and I argued over very small things. Sometimes, I would be verbally combative and abusive all day long. It was a nearly daily thing at that time. Given my abusive behavior and always saying that I "didn't really mean it" my parents actually did think I was being manipulative. Also, they had no idea about my mental health struggles after they responded to my remarks about that talk. Granted, they did kind of go off a bit. However, once they realized that I was talking about myself in the sense that I had mental health struggles, they assured me that they would stick by me as parents and once they knew, I constantly mistrusted them and they constantly assured me that they would stick by me.

When things got out of hand recently, I had been being extremely verbally abusive towards them yet again. I was going off, telling them they were 'dead to me' and other mean insults on a frequent basis. Again, I sometimes went on all day. It was a nearly daily routine. They expressed that they were concerned about my mental health at the time, as well. After I stopped being belligerent to them, they seemed to become supportive towards my struggles again for the most part. The whole "getting a lawyer" thing subsided, and yet again it seemed to be one of those things that she expects to just "pass". Since then, after I started not being so abusive towards them, they seem to have said that the whole "get a lawyer" thing and the threats were just something they said because I was being so abusive towards them, which was actually true. She also has apologized for it, so I don't know, but things have smoothed out since then. Also, that was a couple months ago and not current.

[iwonderaboutstuff]

I'm really glad you feel more positive about things. Good relationships take work and it sounds like you and your parents are willing to put in the effort. If you got a therapist, do you think they'd be willing to go to a session or two with you, come up with a list of communication "rules" to help going forward, and learn more about how they can support you when you're struggling?