For the first time ever, mom counts as “people” to my social anxiety, and I’m maybe crying a bit

Edit: Looking back at it the next morning, I was probably overreacting. She appologized to me, said that while she can't promise it will never happen again, because no one can read the future, but she hopes it won't. [end edit]

Well I just had a scary experience. It was… in the grand scheme of things, relatively minor I suppose, but... shit. I needed to tell someone, and I couldn't tell the person I would usually tell for reasons that will shortly become clear.

I don’t really know if this is in the right forum. “Is this abuse” seemed a little extreme, and while some of this is maybe autism-ish I’m not actually sure if I’m on the spectrum or not. So I guess I’ll just let a mod move it if it’s in the wrong place.

See, I've always gotten along really well with my mom, generally a really happy and conflict-low home life. But just now I went to ask her advice about how to respond to an email I got (social anxiety, it's no fun). I know she doesn't really get why I worry about talking to people so much, because it’s not really logical, and I know that she knows that I know it’s illogical, but she’s generally been pretty good about advice in the past. This time, I happened to be lying down with my back to her while we talked, which didn’t really occur to me as unusual or relevant until, out of the blue, in a tone suddenly much louder and angry-sounding, she asks why I won’t look at her.

I won’t say she’s never used a tone like that on me before, because that would be lying, but it’s definitely far enough out of the usual that I was caught way off guard. I scrambled up to a sitting position and tried to meet her eyes, but I was surprised and scared and it was hard. I ended up with my knees pulled up to my chest and my chin propped up on them, looking in her general direction but without my glasses so all I could see was a vaguely person-shaped blur. Even that didn’t last – as we kept talking my chin kept dropping until my face was hidden against my knees. She seemed hurt that I reacted like that, but... well, shoot, mom, you don't just yell at someone and expect them not to be scared.

Later in the conversation, she shifted topics a bit and asked me if I see any of myself in the people I find it difficult to be around, her theory being that the things people complain about in others are actually their own issues. She mentioned two people in particular, their common theme with me being that they apologize too much, which, fair enough, but a) their apologizing isn’t the main thing I take issue with and b) I don’t exactly dislike either of them: I think they’re good people with mental issues that happen to mesh poorly with my own. That line of questioning made me really uncomfortable, but I couldn’t tell if it was uncomfortable-because-not-true or uncomfortable-because-don’t-want-to-admit-truth. She followed up by saying that from now on she’d pay more attention to what I complain about in other people, and I found myself making a mental note to stop confiding in mom about annoying people. Which is scary in itself, because she’s been my main confidant all my life and it’s kind of sad that suddenly, in just minutes, that doesn’t feel so comfortable anymore. I dunno. It probably won’t last –for as bad as I am at talking to other people, I’m just as bad at not talking to my family.

I guess the one upside is it made it easier to send that email (pfff - I say, having not sent it yet), because pretty quickly I was looking for any excuse I could get to flee the room. On the other hand, I was also kind of afraid to leave too quickly, because I was afraid she'd get the idea that yelling at me is the "cure" for my anxiety, you know? Or that she'd decide I was faking it and am capable of "just getting over it" at the drop of a hat.

*sigh* Towards the end of that conversation she said she’d taken the harsh tone deliberately because “coddling didn’t seem to be helping,” which hurt, actually. I guess I didn’t realize she saw it as coddling.

 

That sounds upsetting. I would be upset if that happened to me. It's good that you talked about it afterward.