u/Several_Cat7155

My dad is most certainly on the autism spectrum but is undiagnosed, and possibly has ADHD (I have an ADHD diagnosis and so does one of my siblings), he also has anger issues and a temper. This post is not about me listing the reasons why we think he has autism, but instead the affect that it has on our family.

I hate writing this post because it feels unkind but I don't have a choice anymore, I am totally at my wits end. My dad's behaviour is becoming an enormous problem for our family and yet he takes no accountability for his actions and has lost all sense of what is an acceptable way to treat his own family. He was always difficult to be around and always had a temper, but his behaviour is completely out of control now. The way that he treats our family, especially our mum is shocking. They never have a normal conversation they just bicker constantly, and I don't think they even like each other, but he is outrageously rude to her. He never speaks to her with a nice or friendly tone, it's always snarky, whingy, or aggressive and he always mocks her. He is capable of having a 'nice' tone with other people, just never with her.

He often speaks about topics at length using unnecessary technical terms or about people that he knows she doesn't know, when the proper way to communicate this would be to phrase it in a way that's relatable to the other person. He did this to her just now about a really unimportant topic, and it turned into argument between them, and then spiralled into a shouting match between him and me because I tried to peacefully explain the situation to him and stand up for my mum but he is relentless and turns a genuine conversation into a massive argument as I will explain below. I haven't had an argument like this with him in years because I was living away from home, it's really unsettled me and I honestly don't see how to move forward from here.

When I try to explain to my dad that the way he treats us is not okay he sees red and just yells and treats me like I'm a child talking back to him, instead an adult trying my hardest to have a functioning relationship with him. I explain to him that I am genuinely trying to tell him how I feel and he just starts arguing and talking over me. He sees this kind of situation as an attack and starts firing off insults and yelling to defend himself and to distract from the actual issue, thinking if he can get the other person to stop talking the problem will just go away. He pushes and pushes until the other person is totally distressed and upset. It's so humiliating when you're being vunerable with someone about something so important, and they just verbally abuse you. He genuinely does not understand that other people have feelings, thoughts and opinions and that he should care about the feelings of people who are close to him and put effort into those relationships.

I normally avoid confrontation and arguments but the way that he shouts over me in these situations and literally refuses to let me speak when I'm trying very hard to make myself understood makes me so distressed that I end up having to shout over him and end up saying what I actually think of him. It makes me feel terrible about myself because I never raise my voice or get angry with people in my daily life. This is what happened in our argument today and I feel really upset with myself for letting his behaviour push me to that point. I feel so bad for my mum because these situations bring attention to how terrible their relationship is and I feel like it's my fault that the argument happened in the first place. I feel like maybe I should say nothing when he treats her badly and my mum can pretend everything is ok, but that wouldn't be right either because then she'd have no one to stand up for her. I feel like by living here with them I'm holding up a mirror to the problem without meaning to, but I just can't stand to see my mum treated like this. For context, I moved back into my parents home a few months ago after living away from home my whole adult life.

I'm just fully at my wits end after trying everything to have a functioning relationship with him my whole life while he does the opposite. He was never around when we were younger because he was always at work (which wasn't necessary), never took care of us or spent time with us. He completely refuses to do any housework and just expects eveything to be done for him, even when everyone else works full-time too. He gets incredibly angry when I ask if he can wash the saucepans after mum or I cooked dinner - he won't even do that. He fully puts his job, church, and random people over us because I guess he just assumes we'll always be here. My younger sibling passed away a few months ago from a horrible illness and even that hasn't been a wake up call for him to care about us while we're here and actually spend quality time together. Even when my mum was caring for my terminally ill sibling he treated her horribly, even though she had put her whole life on hold to become a 24hr carer out of the blue.

For the last few years he's been spending more and more time 'working'. There are no boundaries any more and no end to his work day, he doesn't condense his work into a normal day he just lets it spread out from 8.30 in the morning until 10pm, midnight or whenever. This is NOT beause he has a huge workload, he is busy but wastes plenty of time during the day so it ends up spreading out way past normal hours. He might go off and do something not work related during the day and he thinks it's fine because he can spend the whole night working, but then our home feels like an office 24/7. He's just lost all concept of normality when it comes to work and doesn't realise that this causes issues for our family.

I've come to realise that when he asks me something about myself, it's simply to find out a certain piece of information, he isn't trying to have an actual conversation to spend time with me. I might be excited to tell him something interesting but he brushes it off. Once he's got whatever information he wanted he doesn't see a need to continue the conversation. It's horrible because when I was living abroad he would call me on loudspeaker with my mum, but he'd control the whole call. He'd run through whatever questions he had and wouldn't ever let me elaborate on anything or tell the stories or news that I was excited to tell them. Then he'd just abruptly end the phone call without ever giving me a chance to speak naturally or talk with my mum. I'd feel so deflated and upset after those calls, it made me feel awful. I had so many things that I was excited to talk about or things I was interested in but I never got a chance to speak, it was totally one-sided. He is able to have conversations with people outside of our family but he just doesn't put the same effort in for us.

After this arguement today I don't know how to continue dealing with him at all. He seriously needs to see a professional about his behaviour and to learn communication skills and how to treat other people, otherwise I don't see how our family can continue on like this. I just can't see how that would be possible to arrange. He gets very angry and defensive if anyone points out that he needs to address these issues, and he totally rejects the idea that there's anything wrong with how he behaves. I think deep down he probably does feel like something is 'wrong' but he doesn't want to admit that because of insecurities etc. I'm not even talking about getting him an assessment for Autism/ADHD even though I think a diagnosis would really help him, but I mean even getting him to see a therapist about the behavioural stuff doesn't even seem to be possible.

Does anyone have any advice for how to deal with a complex situation like this? I feel like the fact that he doesn't have a diagnosis complicates things massively. It would be a lot easier if he was aware of these traits and how they impact his behaviour and if he could understand the differences between how he thinks and how other people think it would help so much. I feel like the only thing that can help is if he would see a therapist but won't even entertain that idea.

This is a huge post and it was very difficult to write so I'm really thankful for anyone who has read it to the end.

Just a note - I've seen other people try to shut someone down before for speaking out about how having an autistic parent has affected their life, because they weren't comfortable seeing any negative side of autism being spoken about. If you feel that way, that's ok but please don't reply here. There is plenty of positive messaging around neurodivergence at the moment, we can afford to let people be heard when it comes to the negative side. I feel horrible posting this but today was really the final straw for me and I am just wanting to hear how other people have dealt with similar situations

TLDR: My dad treats our family horribly and it's getting completely out of hand. My family and I think that he has undiagnosed autism which makes this issue harder to address with him due to how he sees things, amongst other problems, and I'm looking for advice on how to cope with this situation as it's gone too far now

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