Hey, am I a toxic person? I have meltdowns very easily when things are unexpected or stressful. This is obviously bad but I don’t know if it’s “toxic” bad, “abusive” bad, or “irredeemable POS” level bad.
- I often have meltdowns over really tiny things, like something not going a way I expect. Stuff like this makes me think it’s closer to a temper tantrum than a meltdown, but when people have temper tantrums they seem to be lucid and able to understand what they’re doing, while I kind of just blank out mentally and start doing insane shit.
- My meltdowns/temper tantrums are often violent to myself and others. I have repeatedly hurt my parents in the past by hitting them. This makes me think my behavior is abusive.
- Because of this, they understandably feel the need to constantly police their behavior so I don’t freak out. Example of similar behavior by redditor which Reddit seems to think is toxic
- I freaked out today because I was trying to explain that a 30 minute conversation where I’m expected to perform being really happy the entire time (it was because someone was getting something for me which I was genuinely excited about, but I couldn’t mimic the correct verbal and physical reactions forever) is super exhausting. They kept repeatedly telling me I should do it anyways and I was trying to explain that that would end badly but the frustration I was starting to feel was making it hard to communicate, and I ended up freaking out and literally attacking my parent.
I really should do therapy or something to get this fixed, but it’s not something I have any idea how to even begin to tackle. When things get bad enough over and over again I just come out with complete and utter violence and frustration and hurt people I care about and do things I wish I would never do. I think I’m abusive and I’ve often thought about not living with the rest of my family but I don’t know if I can economically afford that.
I’ve tried asking for accommodations that make it less likely for me to melt down, but I think my parents view it as just another thing they have to work around to stop me from hurting them. “Always walking on eggshells” and I hate doing that to people.
Can anyone help? I don’t know what to do and I hate myself right now.
I don't think you're a toxic person. First of all, it's usually not a 'choice' to feel certain emotions. The meltdowns you have do not represent any failing on your part, as they are clearly involuntary. This is pretty clearly an issue that will benefit from professional help, and I would highly recommend trying to see a doctor about this. I would like to say that point #4 is stupid, the people you were with were clearly at fault because as you stated trying to perform the right emotion for 30 minutes is an unreasonable task. Gonna post now but probably add some more in a reply in a minute :)
I do think that it's awesome that you're thinking about your family in this situation. It's something that can be hard to do when you're in situations where you find it impossible to not 'act out.' It is going to be rough for them in this situation but the key way to control.
I just looked at that reddit post you linked and,,, well to be quite honest that user's behavior isn't toxic. I think that it's a reasonable accomodation to look into, and the people in the comments saying "self harm stims are NEVER the answer" look pretty silly to me. I have some self harm stims myself and those are all about harm reduction and figuring out a safe outlet for them. I've been able to redirect some of them, I'll put a collapsible where I talk about my experience. They aren't as debilitating as yours but it might help out.
spoiler
My main self harm stim is scratching myself. The first time I did this I got far enough to where I was just about to draw blood, and the marks stayed for several days. As a result of this I started dividing where I scratch myself, so that way it doesn't leave too much damage. I was also able to control it by rapidly tapping my dresser at one point as well.I've also had the urge to hit things, but I live in a rented apartment so I want to avoid leaving any damage. I try to hit my own furniture instead (my blows aren't strong enough to leave damage, but this way it won't be on the apartment itself so I won't have to worry about paying for that).
My last thought (at least for now):
This is a bit foolish. I was in a relationship with someone who had much more issues with autism and, for instance, changing plans, and maintaining the accomodations was something I was able to adjust to and start doing automatically over time. I really hope you're able to start making progress towards controlling these issues!
I actually have a therapist but it’s very hard to get to this stuff because there’s so much other things I end up having to talk about
show them this post and dedicate a session to it?
Yeah