r/AutismInWomen•
idk7643

DAE have a bipolar parent?

General Discussion/Question

My mum got recently diagnosed with a severe bipolar personality disorder (on top of depression and anxiety), and now I have been thinking a lot about my childhood and how that has affected my development.

I guess the main issue to this day is that instead of her taking care of me emotionally, I had to be her therapist from age 5 onwards, and never got to have any issues myself. My parents liked to joke that I didn't go through puberty, and my mum always talks about how I never wanted anything as a child and that I never had tantrums ("I would give you some yarn and then you would play on the carpet by yourself for 3h in silence").

Instead of her worrying about me, it has always been me worrying about her. Is she taking her meds? Did she just gamble away half of her savings? Did a sales person convince her to buy a 500$ vaccum cleaner she doesn't need? Is her stalker back? Is she currently dying of an infection because she refuses to see the doctor and also won't tell anybody about it? Is she lying about her problems because she rather lies than to admit that she needs help?

I frequently think back to the total lack of "raising me" she did, and I am surprised that I turned out as well as I did. She left me in front of the TV for 5-10h a day, never helped me with any homework or taught me anything, let me eat whatever I wanted, didn't check that I brush my teeth (so all of my teeth were rotten), and my grandma recently told me that she apparently continued to smoke through pregnancy.

Nowadays I live in a different country so my exposure to her is very limited, but to this day, nobody else manages to ragebait me this much. It's like every time I talk to her she somehow managed to do yet another completely insane thing, or she's having an anger attack because she can't do a extremely simple task, or she's crying over something that literally happened 50 years ago.

Posted Aug 12, 2026, 8:21 PM UTC

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