To preface, I (f20), and the people around me, suspect that I have autism. I've been depressed and socially inept for 10 years so I feel like that could be a possibility. I also just don't seem to operate in the same ways that other people do. 

I've finally started to grasp that people don't always say what they mean. For example, on multiple occasions, I've been told "you're so cool, lets hang out again” only to never hear from them again when i follow up a couple times. Sometimes I invite my friends to do something with me to help with anxiety (they don't know that) and they will say yes but when I follow up they dont respond or keep texting while ignoring my question. It happened today. I understand that plans can change due to feelings or other obligations, but it still feels like they lied to me. I'm sure that's not what they intended. I'm sure they weren't thinking “let's mess with OP”.

I do find it strange though that the people that have ghosted still acknowledge me even a year later. They awkwardly smile and wave. I don't understand. If you don't like me, don't acknowledge me at all. I will ignore them. I block all of their socials and numbers. I get that sometimes people don't mean it but it FEELS intentional and it makes me feel very worthless. That's also funny because if someone is intentionally doing something to you, doesn't that mean you're of some worth to them? Idk. 

One girl who I thought was very refreshing and cool asked to hang out again. I followed up a week later and a month later. She never responded but awkwardly smiled at me when I was walking down the street. A month after that I blocked her everywhere. I'm so sensitive to everything all the time. After each social predicament I just isolate myself for a couple of months and the cycle continues.  

What she does

Doesn’t allow me to take care of myself when she doesn’t get what she wants

Whenever she doesn’t get what she wants, she does not allow me to use the bathroom or shower or do my make up because that time that I’m using to do those things is not being used on the thing she wants me to do. She claims that I have to use the bathroom every time she asks me to do something. And even if that’s the case, I don’t get why that’s an issue because the thing gets done regardless.

She also uses it against me that she’s raised me for 20 years and all that she’s sacrificed as a mother. And probably once in my entire life, I said “I didn’t ask to be born” and now she brings that up every time she yells at me which is at least 3 times a week.

Attributes everything I do to her

If I’m in a bad mood, she thinks it’s because of her and she’ll get upset about it. If I’m in a good mood, she thinks it’s because of her and it makes her happy. She micromanages me all the time so when I do do something, it affirms for her that micromanaging is the way to go, and when I do something without being told, it also affirms to her that micromanaging is the way to go.

Silent treatment

My whole life, she’s raised me with either screaming in my face or the silent treatment. For the silent treatment, she either won’t speak to me in the house or she’ll get up and leave the house the longest time she did this for it was two weeks.

She is forcing me to be in college

While I understand that your parent paying for your college is insane opportunity, I am not suited for college and I’ve never done well in school. I keep asking her to drop out, but she will not allow it and I live under her roof so I have to obey her. She also uses it against me that she’s paying for my college..

Weaopnizes therapy speak

She learned what a narcissist was, and now she calls everyone who disagrees with her a narcissist, including me. She calls me entitled she calls me mean and nasty. She used to call me the r word. She will present an argument that sounds normal when in fact, she is being very extreme.

Has very black-and-white thinking

she has very black-and-white thinking and there’s no sort of room for nuance. She expects me to think about her in a nuanced way, but does not extend the same courtesy to me.

Catastrophizeses everything

She catastrophize everything and places for anxiety on me. I myself have pretty crippling anxiety, but my mom does not believe it because I’ve never “had a panic attack in a closet at a party”. I’ve had plenty of them over the years at school. And even if I didn’t, it’s still impact my daily life in a way that’s not suitable.

Assume things about my character that aren’t true

She often miss characterizes me, but this is also my fault. I haven’t let her in on my personal experience experiences since probably the age of 13. So she doesn’t actually know anything about my true self. It is still irritating though to hear her call me names all the time, but she also sends me paragraphs about how I should be kind to myself.

Inflates me or degrades me on a regular basis

Sometimes she calls me stupid and treats me like I’m incapable of anything and sometimes she says I’m really smart and treats me like an adult. It’s very weird and I am often getting metaphorical whiplash at home.

Stares me down

I don’t know if this is a universal term, but a teardown is when someone looks you in the eyes until you look away as an assertion of dominance. My mom does this a lot to me when she’s yelling at me, but she also gets mad when I’m not looking at her so I have to look at her and then she does it.

Funny but kind of sad thing when I first got a dog I would do that to him. I would stare him down until he looked away and then I realized I was doing that because that’s what my mother did to me. I’m never having kids.

Tells me that she barely hit me as a kid

She tells me that she barely hit me as a kid. You know that saying the “axe forgets the tree remembers”? It’s like that. She often minimize the trauma that she’s caused her children because I’m not the only one. I’m one of 4

The only reason why she stopped beating me as a kid is because she saw someone else do it to me and realized that it was wrong.

What I do

Visibly irritable whenever she speaks

I am visibly annoyed or irritated whenever she opens her mouth, even if she’s not doing anything to me. And it makes her sad and I feel guilty about it. I just don’t know why I’m automatically angry. Every time she talks to me. And what I do is just sit and listen to her and then go about my day. I don’t say anything back usually.

Grey rocking as much a possible

i’ve been grey rocking my mom probably since middle school. Which from a mother’s perspective, if your daughter isn’t speaking to you or sharing any personal experience experiences, I would feel pretty sad.

I also don’t talk to her when I’m upset

That’s pretty much it. I don’t talk to her when I’m upset. I don’t talk to her when I’m upset about other things and I also don’t talk to her when I’m upset with her which mirrors is the silent treatment that she gives me.

And my thing is, I don’t know if I’m ready to take the first step to fix it? I don’t know if I’m ready to take the first step to healthy communication.** **

I stare blankly at her when being yelled at

This has to do with the gray rocking I kind of just stare at her blankly whenever she’s screaming in my face because if I have any sort of emotion on my face, then she’ll comment on it. Sometimes I can’t help but cry and then she says “good. You should be crying.” Or I should be the one crying. I’m not allowed to be angry. I’m not allowed to be sad. I’m not allowed to be annoyed.

Sometimes I disobey on purpose

Since she is a micro manager, sometimes I do things without asking just to piss her off. When I was a kid, I used to bang my head on the wall between our room rooms because I knew my mother was sensitive to sound. And she would get up and get mad at me and that’s what I wanted because I was upset and I wanted her to be upset too.

I don’t have a job and I dont pay rent

That’s pretty much it. I don’t have a job and I don’t pay rent so I’m living in my mother’s house for free. I am a freeloader and a parasite. I am looking for a job, but I have not heard back from anyone yet. I also haven’t told my mom that I’ve been looking for jobs for months because I don’t let her know anything that I’m doing unless it’s financial.

I procrastinate chores sometimes I don’t have time to do them

I procrastinate my chores a lot, especially doing the dishes because I have sensory issues around it. Regardless, I have to do the dishes because I don’t provide anything else for the household and I do do the dishes, but it takes me longer to get to them because I have other things to be doing like homework that I struggle over or social gatherings. But most of the time I do get them done before someone else does them. It’s not just the dishes. It’s other chores around the house like I clean the bathroom and do the laundry.

Sorry about any typos. I’m feeling very stuffy and don’t have the strength to fix them. Thanks for reading.

I (f20)am on my 3rd attempt at psych statitsistcs. still nothing is clicking for me. I’ve asked for help, I’ve gone to tutoring and nothing seems to work. I spent two straight days going through all of the lectures so far to study for the midterm and a quiz I had to take. I got a 40% on that quiz and I got a 26% on my last quiz.. I’m currently failing the class. To pass, you need to C or above. I’d like to drop out, but my mom will not allow it so I feel like I’m going to keep failing this class to no end.

So if any of you have any recommendations for Youtubers or something that could possibly help me, that would be nice. I understand standard deviation but everything beyond that makes zero sense to me.

I don’t understand z scores or Z tables, confidence intervals, Alpha levels, sampling error, standard deviation of sample means, etc. I know I’m too stupid for college, but I am not allowed to drop out so I need to figure something out.

I also don’t understand hypothesis testing or any kinds of T-tests

Hi all, like the title says I am behind by 3 quarters (we run on the quarter system) which puts a year behind everyone else. I’m a junior now. Freshman year I knew that college wasn’t for me, but my mom will not let me drop out. She’s convinced that I’m smart enough for college.

I have mental health problems as well as an abusive home and I really don’t think that I’m going to succeed. I think I’m just gonna end up even farther back and waste more money. I’ve also been sort of terrible at school my entire life. I barely made it through high school. I struggled all the elementary school and middle school. I’m just not smart.

I don’t really know what to do with myself. I could just cry. I’m stressed all the time even before I knew how much I failed. I just don’t know how to succeed in college (clearly). Idk I’m just ranting and I feel terrible with my mom says I’m stupid but also says I’m smart and she also says I’m a narcissist for wasting her money ( she pays for college). And I’m not saying in any way that it’s not OK for her to be upset about all the money wasted I think that’s pretty valid.

I just don’t even know how to console myself anymore

 My mom doesn't let me do anything for myself if a task that she wants done is it done.  for example, I'm behind in school and she's not allowing me to do my makeup or my hair or anything that isn't school work. 

 she micromanages me to hell and she has my entire life even when I try to do things on my own she comes up behind me and breathes down my neck and monitors how I do it.

 I was raised with screaming or the silent treatment and now my mom gets mad at me because I won't have adult conversations with her.  and she says you're not adult enough to have a conversation with me?

 he keeps bringing up that time I didn't speak to her for 3 weeks because she called me a narcissist.  she conveniently forgets that she left me alone in the house as a child more times because she was mad at me.  I wonder where I learned that from?

 I feel like a big dumb stupid baby when I try to do anything on my own.  I have trouble doing anything without explicit hand holding which is not how the world works so I want to figure out how to undo that.  I'm also very sheltered.

f20 my mom has been very emotionally abusive my whole life all the way up to this point. Sometimes when I speak to professors I kind of talk to them like I'm afraid of their reactions and I wonder if they can notice that or if they just kind of brush it off?  I'm not sure how to word this or how to ask this but I'm kind of paranoid because I don't want them to think something's wrong because they're all mandated reporters. i feel like my most noticeable quality is being overly apologetic

There was one time I was having a misunderstanding with a professor, a very light-hearted one, and I kept saying "sorry" and he said “you don't have to say sorry it's ok” and then I got embarrassed

Or another time (this was not a professor) but this was a staff member and at the time I lived in a dorm and she was the front desk person.  and I asked if it was okay if I leave. And she said yes but she looked confused and then I later found out you don't have to ask permission to go in and out of your dorm. 

 so I'm just afraid that instances ike that set off red flags in professor's heads.  I've only ever been reported once and that was in Middle School but ever since then I've been super paranoid.

f20 Since freshman year of college I've been meeting and hanging out with people (platonically). and i feel like i'm making a connection and they ask to hang out again and then never follow up. i reach out 1-3 times with no response. i'm not sure whats wrong with me for this to be the case 70% of the time. i really want to make friends but i keep getting ghosted. theres nt even a text sayng that they aren't interested, just silence and awkward looks when we see eachother in the hallway. i really dont understand.

at the beginning of this summer i hung out with a really cool girl from my class and we sat and talked for hours. afterward we hugged and she said she wanted to hang out again. i follow up maybe a month later asking if she still wanted to hang out and my text message was green. so either im blocked or her phone is using a different messaging service. she still follows me on the socials. i was really excited about meeting with her, she actually asked me to hang out. i thought she was really cool but seemingly the feeling isnt mutual. she also hangs out with people i know all the time idk if that detail matters. i'm just really upset about it and want ti know what to do. i grew up sheltered so my college years have been my first interactions where I wasn't being monitored by my mother.

im genuinely too stupid for these social games

Food has been an emotional crutch for me in my entire life, but I actually started binging all the way back in 2022. In 2024 I reached 226 pounds.

It was my freshman year of college and I was struggling with everyone else getting romantic and platonic attention while I wasn’t. I got my heartbroken and I finally decided to lose the weight. I was sick of being fat and miserable. I got all the way down to 160 pounds and my joints were messed up and I was nauseous all the time and doors were heavy for me, but I was just happy to be beautiful.

Fast forward summer break hits I get really depressed and start binging again now I’m back up to 198 pounds. I am devastated. It’s a really weird thing to gain pretty privilege and then lose it again. I can’t seem to stick to a fitness plan and I always gain the weight back. My whole life I’ve been severely overweight and ugly, and it’s so miserable. Not saying that being overweight makes you ugly, i’m just saying that I do not carry weight well and it does not go to the places that are acceptable. I honestly just wanna die at this point because it seems that I’ll never escape this. It feels like I’m doomed to be ugly and out of control forever

this summer, I spent so much money on DoorDash and probably ate 2-3 boxes of pop tarts in two days across the course of a couple weeks. I haven’t been active. I haven’t been seeing friends. I haven’t really been outside much. I haven’t found a job.. I’m just a blob at this point I don’t even feel like a woman. I can’t even look down without my double chin getting in the way.

I f20 weighed 160 when summer began. I am now 190 with only 30 days until school starts. I’m so mad at myself. I was finally being treated like I was beautiful and ofc I went and fucked it up. Does anyone else struggle with not being able to stop eating? If so how did you stop. Also getting fat makes me feel like a kid failing at a task. I can’t wait for boys to do that “my freind thinks you’re cute” prank on me again. College boys still do that (crazy right?)

I feel doomed. I ALWAYS gain the weight back. I was down 60 and now I’m just down 30. It feels hopeless I swear people are nicer to me when I’m smaller

Im not sure w whether I have autism or something. The people around me think I do. But I’ve grown up super sheltered I’m super socially awkward and don’t know how to interact with people. So I don’t know if that’s what they’re seeing?

I’m just wondering what signs you guys saw of autism you saw before got diagnosed.

I’m trying to decide if in evaluation a good place to spend my money. I’m unemployed and pretty much inadequate in every aspect and I’m wondering if it’s because of my mental health. I’ve been depressed for literally a decade and it’s only gotten worse. And now my mom (who didn’t used to believe in mental illness), I have ADHD and autism because of Facebook reels.

The pressure is really on because I’m 20 years old and I haven’t started adulting yet and my mom says that I need to start and that the way I’m living now is not good and that no 20-year-old lives the way that I do. I don’t go outside. I don’t have a job. I don’t want to go outside and I don’t want to hang out with people. I don’t have any close friends and I’m scared of trying anything new. I also struggle in school. I can’t even keep my room clean. I’m just fucked up on every front and I want to be better

I’m on summer break from college and I have not left the house in months. It feels safe to stay in my room all day. I eat the same five foods. I do the same five activities. I take the same routes and I don’t deviate. I’m very depressed about how I’m not living at age 20. But I’m also scared to do anything.

I’m scared of sex because pregnancy is my worst fear. Contraceptives are not 100%. I’m also scared that the person I choose will just be using me for my body. I’m scared that if I date a man or a woman, I will get abused. I’m scared of eating certain foods. I’m scared of being in a relationship. I’m scared of dying alone. I’m scared of being fat. I hate being touched. I’m scared of being sick. I’m scared of the doctor. I’m scared of being seen. I’m scared of being stupid. I’m scared of being worthless. I’m scared of making the wrong choices in life and ending up somewhere bad.

All of my friends drink and smoke and have sex and go to parties. I’m scared to do any of that. I’m going into my third year of college and I have no adult experience.

It’s very exhausting and I’m getting nowhere in life, but also every little thing stresses me out so much that I don’t know what to do. I really don’t know what to do with myself, and I feel like the only option for me to have a line is just to die young. I’ve had anxiety for years and it has not gotten better.

It’s basically the title. I dated a girl and I think I accidentally loved bombed her, my friends say I didn’t and she also didn’t say I did. But I feel like I did and I wasn’t a very good partner and it was my first relationship ever so I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was supposed to be feeling, but ultimately, I wasted her time and probably traumatized her because I kind of just broke up with her on a random day. And it wasn’t random to me because I have been thinking about it, but it was probably Random to her, and I feel really bad about it and then I blocked her because she responded to my Internet activity and if pissed me off. I had her number unblocked for a while in case there was further conversation to be had but then she was r rude to me while I was trying to get her her things so then I ended up, blocking her there too because she upset me.

And I just feel really bad because I really could’ve gone about that differently because she’s not a bad person. And we’ve been broken up for about five months and the guilt has been eating me alive since then. I’ve gained weight from stress eating and I just feel miserable. Which is insane because I’m not the one that got broken up with. And the craziest part is she probably doesn’t care and I’m just worrying for nothing.

I also can’t talk to my friends about it anymore because I’m sure they’re sick of me

After hitting my high highest weight freshman year of college, I finally made Myself lose around 60 pounds. I had a lot of personal things happen and stress happens and I’ve been on a sugar binge for three months now and I’ve gained around 20 pounds. And I hadn’t really binged before that for a very long time and the reason why I got so big in the first place because I was binge eating and eating my feelings. The thing that made me stop was hating myself the way I was so much that I changed it. But it’s not working now. I don’t know how to stop. And I’m back to being fat and I’m not looking forward to the way. I’m going to be treated by people.

If anyone has any advice or similar experiences that would be nice

To sum up what happened. This woman named Paris on one of the socials basically said that she sexually attracted to men and would date men, but would never marry a woman, but she stated that she’s sexually attracted to women as well. There were definitely misogynistic tones in the way she spoke about it however she did say she had attraction to women. But then (ofc this happened during pride month) a huge wave of biphobia and bisexual versus lesbians interrupted on social media. They’re saying that if you would not marry a woman as a bisexual then you’re actually just straight.

I’m just really confused because I thought the definition of being bisexual is being sexually attracted to two genders. It’s biSEXUAL.

Here comes the question. I’m bi and people see me as bi, but I’ve never been with a man and I don’t see myself being with a man romantically. But I have dated women and I’ve only ever been with women. A few people say that I’m just a lesbian (implying I’m confused), but I am bi. So why am I considered bisexual and Paris is not?

Please be kind I’m genuinely confused