M: I'm going to explain to you a situation right now, and I need you to tell me whether one of us has weak logic, or if this is one of those situations where subjective positions mean that no one is wrong, and solving it is going to require something that is orthogonal to simple conflict resolution. My mother goes to a weekly sewing thing. Somehow she forgot the sewing machine that she brings with every time. My dad was driving her. I was going to pick her up. When she called and said she needed me to bring it to her, 20 minutes away, I was peeved, of course, but what really hit me outside of the frustration that she didn't check to see what she had and what she needed, was that she said my dad had forgotten the sewing machine. For context, every time that I drive her, I have asked her to check that she has what she needs before we leave. Sometimes she has forgotten something, and then sometimes she'll actually check before I ask, and delay leaving a little bit because she's not sure whether she remembered something. So I was ticked that she tried to pretend like it was someone else's fault. It was at the very least a mutual thing. She was trying to absolve herself of any blame with her language. Now she may be going through some mental deterioration. It's really difficult to tell. She's had strokes. She's on sometimes, off sometimes, and she also has a personality which has grated against me since I was in high school, and some of these things seem to be in parallel with potential deterioration. That's why I say it's difficult to tell what could be attributed to physical or neurological issues in the physical world, and how much of it is just an ongoing friction. So she called. I hung up. I texted her something. I can give you the language if you want, but I want to just keep talking right now. I basically said she forgot, and I don't appreciate that she's trying to dish things off, and this is part of a ongoing issue between the fact that I'm an English major, and I also know that language indicates state of mind, so I feel like correct choice of words or the wrong words indicate what's going on often, and this is one of those ongoing friction points because if I'm... I didn't yell at her. I yelled after I hung up the first time when she told me she'd forgotten, but I just spoke. When I sent the text, I had to call her afterwards because she has multiple sewing machines, which is what makes me so crazy about the whole forgetting a sewing machine for a sewing machine project, but I had to call. I spoke in clipped tones because I didn't want to get upset or get into it. Oh yeah, and to finish up the thought I was having, I was trying to say that the problem I have is that when I speak to her nicely, she focuses more on the apology than actually on what went wrong in that I can't guarantee it because it's in another person's head, but in a way that indicates she is more upset that I'm upset than thinking about how to prevent doing it in the first place, and again, I know she has potential issues that make it so I have to curtail some things, but if we think of it as a role reversal where she is in that kind of teenage mental space and I'm having to be the parent, there's a difference between making allowances and the core bedrock of communication, which is language choice, and just the idea that saying you didn't do something that someone else did is just wrong. So that's where I was. So I just got a call from my dad. He started saying that I had treated her... badly. It turns out he was alone when he made this call, so I have no idea what part of what he understood. Like, he seemed to think that I had called up and yelled at my mother. He didn't realize that I had sent a text. The implication is that... he was either around and left... or my mother called him to tell him I was... being mean or something. One of those is more gossip girl than I would expect of her. So I expect he was around when I first... sent the text, but he didn't know it was there, which means that he thought I was being mean just by hanging up, rather than letting myself... snap the way I wanted to about the things that I've already said weren't... The things that I said that I knew were out of my mother's control, necessarily. The things that she didn't deserve to get snapped at about. Between being sensitive in the morning and... rapid limbic recall about something that's happened repeatedly and all that, there's a reflex level to my reactions that I don't like and don't know if it's possible to contain. So I have to, from what I can tell, learn to function in a way that... corrals my reflexes as quickly as possible, since I can't... affect what happens at the amygdala level. Certainly not at this point in my life. Anyway... We got into a shouting match, and that is very rare. And it turns out, like I said, that he didn't know the entire situation, while I came down firmly for once, because usually I will admit that I have a bit of a... weak point, you know, one of those situations where everyone's mostly right, but that means everyone's got a little bit wrong going on. But in this case, it felt like what I had done was my best option, and that I was being chastised for it. And then as the shouting went on, and it wasn't like just rage-filled, it was coherent volume, and I put my foot down as being as right as I could be in this situation. It came out that he didn't even know the entirety of the thing. Now, on the other hand, I know that he has to deal with my mother, he loves her, voluntarily even, which is something that always... inhibits me in terms of things, because I love my mother, but... it's one of those involuntary things, so it's not that I don't love her, it's that I give him respect deserved for choosing to love her, and her family by extension. So I have a respect for that, but on the other hand, or other other hand, depending on where we are, in this case, I was as right as could be, and he was deciding now was the time to give me grief. Also, he's under stress, because there's... they just built another fucking house. He's not thrilled about it, he doesn't mind it, but they had to move out of a house perfect for them, because of my mother's medical issues, which... happened because my mother had a stroke, because of my whole legal situation. And then it turns out that at the current time, they wouldn't even have had to have moved, because a hospital was built, or some sort of emergency care was built near enough that it became moot. So he is currently under stress. He's neurotypical, like, almost alarmingly so. So I can't put myself entirely in his shoes, but it can't be helping that he's remembering that he's having to move again, instead of settling into a house that was literally built on the side of a golf course. He's having to deal with everything in the next month or so involving making sure the building goes right, and then there's going to be another month of moving. He's under a lot of stress. I'm perfectly aware of it. Really, the problem is that I need to make sure that I am right about being right, and then use you to speculate about what perspectives his neurotypical position could be, given what I already know and have given you. I might not have given you everything, but I gave you as much as I could glean from it, from my neurodivergent perspective, because now I'm going to have to go home and try and deal with things, and I simultaneously feel like I'm on perfectly secure footing, and also am not in a position where I want to have any kind of argument, because I think I understand what's going on well enough that I'm not even mad at him. I'm not even mad at my mother, outside of the time that's getting lost. I just am kind of floundering. Go online if you need to, although I don't know why you would. Just go online if you need it for anything that comes up in your thought process.

M: Okay, I thought the logic was solid. I just wanted to make sure because I am, you know, currently capable of wearing emotional blinders, even if I'm looking for them. That's the problem with blinders is sometimes they make you blind to their existence. In fairness to my mother, my dad did forget it. The problem I was having is that she also forgot it and was trying to distance herself from that failure. As someone who's bad at lying, I've often used partial accuracy to try to escape awkward situations without actually lying. Probably not as often as I'd like, but usually it's for more positive reasons like to avoid criticizing. And usually I'll use it as a two-part thing where I will be, you know, critically honest, but not harsh, along with the partial truth. Both to soften the blow, depending on how important or, more importantly, how trivial the situation is. And to forestall any attempt to dig further into a partial truth if it's seen by giving also the partial critique. Except in serious circumstances, most people are willing to accept that as being, if not something they like, at least sufficient. And if anyone digs deeper, it tells me that I've misread the situation, and there is potentially more at stake here than just the trivial nature I assumed there was to begin with. Among the things I'd like you to do in your response is to, well, first of all, I want you to respond to the entirety of this message. In the course of that, I would like you to be critical of my reaction. Like objectively critical. Like a life coach or something situation where, given what you know about my restrictions in terms of amygdala response, etc. etc., how I could have handled that better without avoiding the other elements of the situation. Like he said, saying nothing was socially smooth but behaviorally enabling. I would like to get more towards socially smooth with my reactions in the future without the enabling. And importantly, in this situation there was also a time constraint. She has maybe four hours of functionality in this kind of situation. So I wasn't able to simply walk away and say nothing while I digested things and shaped my message over the course of that time. I had to say something while on the move because either I would say nothing or it would bottle up and come out later in a form I couldn't even really remember in terms of the cause or whatever. The point is that the time constraint added a level of complexity that makes it difficult for me to do an improvement analysis after the fact that I'm hoping you'll have some insight on. And I'll admit to my reaction, and my defense of it, being a little of my own self-interest, regardless of the objective situation. It's the kind of thing where, if there is a change, it's not going to be effectuated by courteous requests. Or, you know, maybe not quite that fancy, but, you know, nice handling of things. But harshness might still be able to pierce the years of habit, even without taking into account the potential stroke damage, etc. But if she isn't ever going to make any changes, at the very least, I can keep trying and, in the middle of it, do it in a way that does the least damage to me psychologically. If that makes sense. As far as my dad goes... I think you're missing a little bit of the lost information, or the reason why I need you to speculate in terms of possibilities. It's because, however it happened, whether he was there and talking to my mother, or whether she texted him or called him, he knew something was wrong in terms of her being upset, but he didn't know that I had sent her a text. For clarification, the text was sent within two minutes of finding out that she needed the sewing machine. I still can't say for certain whether or not he was there or if he had already left with the intent to come home and pick it up, if I was going to be contrarian. But the point is, he was definitely functioning with partial information, and as a neurotypical, it's difficult for me to put myself in his shoes in terms of addressing the spectrum of possibilities. Like, if I knew exactly what had happened, I probably could interpret that with some empathy, and perhaps develop a method of dealing with things. But when it comes to someone who doesn't think like I do, I'm afraid that I will either oversimplify or overcomplicate. When a spectrum of possibilities is involved... Oh, and, um, he's my stepfather, so I call him Dad and my biological father, my father, uh, just for differentiation's sake. Or Tom, usually I call him Tom to his face, and my dad when I'm talking to other people. And one more bit of information, my mother is neurodivergent as well. It's difficult to say whether or not it's as severe as I am, because she went through at least 13 years of being a single parent, which likely twisted and complicated, varying, divergent issues into a form where direct comparison really made it impossible without having lived exactly the same life. But when I say language is important, I got a large part of that from her. Hell, my sister is at least relatively neurotypical, and she picked up that language thing from both of us. So it's not just an autistic thing, it's a family thing. The pre-commitment framing is dangerous in its specificity. It sets a precedent for requiring that I let people know what's going to set me off, and that would require a list of pet peeves that I don't think ever could be comprehensive. And the first part of that I have been explicit about. I don't mind helping. I've even acknowledged that you have to dismiss my first explosion because I don't necessarily have control of that reflex any more than you should get pissed about my kicking you if you tap my knee that right way. And you're standing in front of it. I've done this because I hate apologizing for it as though I was guilty of something. So the first part of that I already dealt with, or tried to deal with. I just keep having to repeat myself, and neither of them seems to really have internalized it. My mother actually has kind of internalized it better, I think. Possibly because I actually do go off, but I go off articulately. Like, if you filtered out the tone, usually half of it is some sort of self-acknowledgement, probably one that I've acknowledged before. So like, half of that half usually is something along the lines of, I've said this before, I'm going to say it again because you don't seem to get it. My dad and I don't argue nearly as much. And we're on the same side in terms of recognizing the situation. But it means that he has rarely had to be the person who is dealing with me trying to simultaneously not take responsibility for things that are out of my control, but acknowledge that in doing so, I've made his life more difficult, and that I'm still trying to get a better handle on the things that I do control, if that's applicable. While simultaneously defending the accurate aspects of whatever has the argument going in the first place. And in terms of the specific translation, I wasn't even trying to protect myself. I was trying to get her to acknowledge responsibility instead of dishing it all off on him. He was the one who drove. He was the one who would have carried it, so perhaps he should have found it odd that he hadn't. But it's her project, her materials. He has never touched a sewing machine. So his belief that she has everything is... ...understandable, if not reasonable. Like, the same way that we both have gone to... She does this at two separate places, diametrically opposed on a map from where we live. And both of us have, because we didn't ask and weren't told, gone to the wrong one to try and pick her up, and the other one has had to cover for it. That's another case where... She was not absolved, but at the same time it's understandable that the error was made. It's not absolution, but it is comprehension of the situation. At this point, the discussion or argument or whatever, when I get home, is going to revolve around the fact that I wouldn't do what I usually do, because what I usually do is, at that point, appropriate, which is to say I went off a little bit harder than I should have and attempt to analyze it so that I do better. But this time, I was about as good as I could be at this time and place. Two or three years from now, there might be a better response. But given who I am now and what I have control over, this was, as far as I can tell, at least 90% of the best I could do. And everything else is just kind of a homeostatic variable collection. Whether I get up on the right side of the bed, whether or not I'm particularly sensitive towards one issue or another, whether or not I've been listening to the news and wondering how the hell people can be so stupid, etc., etc. Or, in this case, as I was driving there, I was trying to get the odometer to work, and the Audi that I'm in doesn't have that as a primary feature. You actually have to go digging, and I had to go digging, and that's when he called while I was in the car just finishing dealing with a user interface stupidity. And it doesn't help that I'm tired of being the one who does the most analysis in any kind of confrontation, in an attempt to fix things. I want to know what goes wrong, while other people just want to believe themselves to be right. And it kind of sucks.

M: With my mother, I would argue that you would have a valid point usually, but she was just going to be sitting and not able to do much for the next half hour as I drove the sewing machine out. So, while it wasn't guaranteed, there seemed to be a possibility that she would have time over the course of half an hour to reflect. It wasn't a guarantee, but also she almost immediately texted a response to my text that I'll give to you. That basically said she understood and she was sorry. Here's the text: “It is your project. Do not try and dish off responsibility. You forgot it too. I tell you to check every time. That means you check every time. Not just when I am driving. And whether you do or not, you do not try and phrase things to shift the blame. The fact that we do the carrying does not absolve you.” Her response was, quote, you're right, I should check every time, it's my fault, unquote. Whether it actually registered or not, at the very least, I think she has recognized the pattern, either in terms of cognitive failure, just appeasing me, or some more practical combination of the thing where she knows that arguing with me is not going to do anyone any good, and usually, even if she doesn't completely agree, that there probably is a point in what I said. So the bandwidth thing, I'm less concerned about. Really, I'm concerned about my dad, and dealing with him. I don't disagree with your critique. I'm trying to figure out how to fold that in with my personal constraints and issues. If I put things on the back burner until I'm capable of dealing with them, often they don't get dealt with. I'm not sure how to deal with that. I'm taking the critique and not fighting it. I'm just not sure how to fold it into my future efforts, given that knowledge of my nature. And it certainly can't involve any idea like, quote, we'll deal with this later, unquote. I personally hate the waiting to deal with issues, and I can't see myself comfortably taking that approach when it's something that aggravates me, and is pushed by the speech patterns of my mother. She will honestly give me the entire background of what's going on, or at least as much as possible, without letting me know what's actually happening. One time she spent five minutes assuring me that she just wanted to talk, and that this was something that needed to be talked about, and a whole bunch of fluff around the idea of whether or not I was going to get up early for Christmas breakfast. So I've got almost a pathological dislike of delaying things, plus of course what I just said about my narrow window of being able to act upon something before my emotional energy is just too... It seems like it would be too much of a strain on my emotional reserves after a certain point to reintroduce a topic. Plus there's the idea of tone. Even neutral, I sound kind of grumpy. Resting grouch voice. So talking about it is much more volatile than using text. In part four, I understand what you're saying. My point was more that restraint is one thing, but restraint to the point of excessive personal stress in a situation where the effect is is unpredictable at best, that doesn't seem like it's entirely healthy, given how often it occurs. Especially since it occurs within the family, there's also this element of this perception that somehow being as polite as when you're out in public is something that should be met even if you're talking to someone who's walking around in nothing but a nightshirt. Like, that argument is sometimes attempted to be brought out, although less frequently recently, as though once I get upset somehow this barrier of politeness prevents them from hearing me. But when I'm polite, I'm not heard anyway. Therefore, restraint does not seem to be worthwhile as the entire consideration for an interaction.

M: I need to start arguing things out with you more often. Not because I think it helps in terms of content, but because I think it's helping in terms of processing speed. Usually when I'm upset, particularly when it's something that's reflexively triggered, I know the patterns by now, but getting through the patterns usually requires some sort of processing. When I try and do it in my own head, it's like trying to sort a pack of cards while I'm still holding on to the entire deck. It can be done, but it's got a lot of room for screw-ups. After going through this one with you, I think that I could speed things up by metaphorically having a table to put things down on. This took like 45 minutes. Not part of that was because I was talking while driving. No, I wasn't reading while I was driving, so don't worry about that. Part of it, too, is just not being in practice, and the 45 minutes was usually at least how long it takes me by myself, and at the end I still feel like the job is incomplete because I'm not sure if I dropped anything. It doesn't matter whether I did or not. So, I probably should do this just so that I can try and get a little bit faster. If I can't avoid things, I have to get better at them.