Dear Joakim:

When you asked a therapist if it would be wrong to talk to your mother about it and the therapist said that she doesn’t know your mother, and therefore she doesn’t know the answer to your question. I think her answer was a good answer, but I can go a step further and ask you a few questions about your mother so to get to know a bit about her, and maybe I will be able to suggest a reasonable answer to you.

When you were 14 and you peaked at your mother not fully dressed, she angrily asked you: “Have you ever seen women before?”- I don’t understand her question- did she suggest that she expected you to have seen by that point other naked women- in movies or magazines, or having had girlfriends?

anita

Dear Joakim:

You don’t know what she meant by what she said. Do you know sometimes what she means when she says things to you, and if the answer is yes, will you tell me what your mother told you over the years that you do understand?

If you choose to answer my question, please take your time, don’t rush.

(I am asking about your mother so to understand her a bit and figure out if it is a good idea for you to speak to her, and if you speak to her, then what is the best way to do so).

anita

Dear Joakim:

When you were 19 you came home from the forest near your home, and your mother hugged you and cried. This is when you figured for the first time that she loved you.

This is what you wrote: “I genuinely thought until that moment that she couldn’t possibly love me”.

In a child’s mind, his mother is a woman who loves him. If a child sees a woman who does not love him, in his mind, it is not his mother, but a stranger. When you peaked at her then, when you were 14 and younger, you were not peaking at your mother, really. You were peaking at a stranger.

What do you think?

anita

Dear Joakim:

“My mother were pretty cold and indifferent when I was little… I also have trouble reading emotions”-

– she was cold and indifferent, there were no emotions to read.

I don’t think you were born with a difficulty reading emotions. I think your mother expressed no emotions for you, so there was nothing to read.

When a woman doesn’t act motherly toward her child, when she doesn’t display motherly affection for her child, the child doesn’t see that woman as his mother. Maybe he calls her mother, or mom, but he doesn’t feel that special closeness of a boy for his mother.

At a certain age, a boy starts being curious sexually, so he sees a woman and he peaks.

When she caught you peaking at 14, she asked you: “Have you ever seen women before?”, referring to herself as a woman, not as your mother. It reads like she didn’t feel close  to you as a mother feels for her son. In her heart, you were a stranger boy. No wonder then that in your heart, she was a stranger woman, and it didn’t feel wrong to peak at a stranger woman.

It is possible that you were not at all born being on the autistic spectrum, but instead, you were born to an extremely cold and indifferent woman, and that arrested your emotional development.

anita

Dear Joakim:

Some of the proposed causes for autism are controversial, from the refrigerator mother theory proposed in 1943 to the vaccination theory proposed in 1998. The modern consensus is that autism has a strong genetic basis, but the genetics of autism are not well understood and the result of genetic studies as I understand them (I am not a professional) are not convincing to me.

Again, I am not a psychologist or a doctor, but reading your description of your mother fits the refrigerator mother theory (you can read about it if you want in Wikipedia). There are current professionals who believe in this theory and even the popular Alice Miller believes in autism being caused by child neglect and/or abuse.

As to your concern about your teenage behavior- regardless of the question of whether you were born on the autistic spectrum or not- you said it yourself:  “When I were 19 or so… she hugged me and cried.. I genuinely thought until that moment hat she couldn’t possibly love me… My mother were pretty cold and indifferent when I was little. That’s something I remember clearly”-

-what this means to me is that for 19 years she behaved toward you as if she was a stranger to you: cold and indifferent. This kind of mother would be harmful to any child born to her. It is not controversial that young children (as well as other young animals) need their mother’s affection very much, and it is not controversial that growing up without affection harms children.

So give yourself a break for peaking long ago. Don’t worry about apologizing to your mother about it, (she is not worried about apologizing to you for 19 years of zero affection, is she?)

Let it go, Joakim, move away from the guilt and shame. No reason for you to feel shame and guilt for this behavior long ago. Make the best life possible for yourself now, and post again anytime.

anita