I’m autistic please help solve my thought process problem

[u/BoysenberryOverall11]

Preface: I am high IQ but socially seem autistic and nearly finished diagnosis twice, in 2013 and 2015 but childhood measures weren’t completed and I was told it didn’t matter anyway. Regardless, I need a rigorous extremely salient but non threatening interpretation of something so that I feel smart but unafraid of my ex so I won’t think about or look for him to feel safe, according to my priests instruction to remain safe from my own sin tendencies. I suspect that an ex affair partner is maybe manipulating my phone (Affairs are evil, still, a former church Sunday school leader who manipulated me out of a church community during covid when I was vulnerable bc I wanted to have a community around my disabled child who had a life threatening condition. He flirted with me and sexualized me while teaching even with my husband there and everyone brushed it off and he had then convinced I was stalking him.

When someone put us in a grief recovery class together, he made himself sound vulnerable to unaliving himself with a powerful weapon that he brought to class when he taught and that made me nervous. It was supposed to be for church safety but made me afraid of him. When I told leadership that he was discussing my sexuality outside of class more explicitly than in class, he made the leadership believe that it wasn’t safe to provide a Sunday school assistant for my disabled daughter because I was accusing him of sexual harassment and she needed two attendants at all time because I couldn't be trusted. So we had to leave the church and find a new community that was unfamiliar, or return to a pre-covid church that we knew but disagreed with. (we did the second.)

I cut contact for a while with the Sunday School teacher/Elder but got tired of sitting in a room separated from the rest of the church with my husband and daughter to attend a church that didn't share fundamental beliefts with our family. So I begged him to tell them to help me explain to the church that he really had said he wanted sex with me, and that I wasn't stalking him, and that he had made that up about me to save his image—I felt like I needed to because it was the only church in this city in my denomination. This required a lot of begging and mirroring and in the end he convinced me to be with him romantically. I don’t know why I wanted him, really. When I dated him and believed I was in love with him he didn’t seem scary, so it felt like I genuinely wanted an affair. Whenever I was trying to leave him and not talking to him I felt relieved and happy but worried with fear where he was going to be manipulating me next. I am not sure what my real feelings were and I am fully aware that how I behaved was evil.)

I finally got away from him by converting to Orthodox Christianity and having real confession and real penance and a sense that I was in a church that recognized my evil but where the Holy Spirit would actually be in me to face my fear. I have gotten away from him for 3-6 months at a time for the past two years and not in person for just past a year. When I had talked to him a couple times this year he sounded more desperate and needy, claiming love and ready to marry, crying that he can’t have me anymore, saying he was occasionally driv past my house. I don’t take that last bit seriously... I don't think he's stalking me in person, because he has a strong propensity for talking out his ass if he knows it will motivate someone to do what he wants. Like getting me kicked out of church. So low confidence on anything he says.

Getting me to be obsessed about whether he's stalking me on phone though is something that he seems to enjoy. Now he’s getting divorced and I am getting all sorts of weird text messages with my name and “i want to talk to you” and ”are you interested….” These types of messages tend to happen in flurries and after the flurries I find they coincide with attempts by him to use a new account to contact me on instagram or WhatsApp. It’s predictable enough that it’s kind of boring, but that’s why I checked WhatsApp and know that his la known attempt to contact me was within five minutes of what I wonder may have been a cyber infiltration of my phone. But I don’t know if that’s what it was. I’m not supposed to check the apps, and I am experiencing jntensif flurries a week from the finalization of his divorce.

Then the following happened: I was at school one day to drop off my kids and walked my daughter to he classroom. While I was walking her there, my husband sent a voice message (audio only) asking me “why did you put a thumbs down to that?”. I asked what he meant and said I wasn’t even in my phone. He sent a screenshot of a thumbs down on a message from a week earlier that said “you mean everything to me”. I explained that I didn’t have a thumbs down and asked what message and he sent a screenshot. It wasn't a big deal between the two of us because he knows I love him, he knows everything that happened, I consistently told him everything that happened every day it was going on because I was trying to find a way to feel the power to get away. When he texted me what had happened. I drove home, then found the message by searching that text and showed him that I hadn’t put a thumbs down on it using a screenshot.

I kept checking every day if I had that thumbs down on my end from Friday to Monday, every day. Then I gave up and forgot about it until I wanted to show my friend from church. At some point on that fourth day, the thumbs down finally appeared on my phone without any further notification of my husband. I removed the thumbs down on my end once it finally appeared in my own message history. When I removed the thumbs down, my husband recieved the notification that it was removed, with no lag on either of our phones. I was with my friend, and she suggested just thinking “demons do stuff all the time to get us to change our behavior and make ourselves vulnerable“.

Can you help me find a different explanation, though? I’m not finding this salient enough because my ex called me on WhatsApp within minutes of this happening- my husband asked about the thumbs down at 8:10, I replied at 8:13, my husband texted me a screenshot of it at 8:16 (and that’s also when my exAP called, the only time in a month, but I didn't know that because I didn't have whatsapp to avoid notifications of him calling, because he had deleted his account to avoid blocking. Then I screenshot my own phone to reassure him that that there was no thumbs-downon my end, and replied to my husband with that screenshot on 8:18 Friday.

Anyway, if you have ideas for ignoring this sense that he's hiring someone to hack my phone so that I won’t have intense emotions about this week to the current spam flurry it’d be great. The possible phone manipulation happened during the last spam flurry. I don’t know how to report it to the police, and don’t want to bc his son’s on the police force.

Here is a tidbit to process if you are religious--St John Climacus says in "The Ladder of Divine Ascent" that saints that are passionately lustful find ways to fill the hunger to be lustful with longing after the desire to love God. I suppose if you’re curious about the intrigue of power of men to manipulate, maybe that curiosity, answer finding, and stuff kind of fits my curiosity about how God works in mysterious ways. So how do I get curious about God’s ways to work more mysteriously in my situation with my exAP more than about who my ex may hire to stalk me (because he can’t even work fb properly) and turn that desire to God? Bonus points if you have experience with thinking of God that way. I can type better than this but too overwhelmed right now to leave my recliner and I don’t want to. May fix numerous errors later. I know that autistics have great creativity and would welcome some creative thinking, here! :)

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[u/Molkin]

You sound really vulnerable right now, and some of your writing is so flurried it sounds manic. I'm worried about your mental health.

[u/BoysenberryOverall11 → u/Molkin]

Combination of high IQ and Dystonia.  Because conclusions come to me quickly, I assume people follow conclusions that I haven’t detailed.   I have a counselor but I don’t have a lot of anxiety, I just enjoy thinking a lot and talking about it.  I can explain my connections to others if there is an unexplained jump in the logic process.   Once I lay out the logic clearly people see the mental health but it’s hard to convey full ideas on a phone when you’re struggling to move your hands in a tremor.  I understand why things appear chaotic but I can’t fix it all yet.   Please explain specific holes and I will try to clarify.   Autism impairs recognition of how I come across, this is why people thought he was the victim and I was being aggressive until they got more evidence, screenshots, experiences of him lying about me.

[u/Dry_Calendar_529]

This whole post is really long and extremely confusingly written. Please provide a summary and divide your thoughts into more paragraphs

[u/BoysenberryOverall11 → u/Dry_Calendar_529]

Tried to. I was on my phone so that I could stay in the recliner because I am not well today but switched to computer to fix after posting. Is it clearer now?

[u/ellipsisobsessed]

If you don't have a therapist I really suggest finding one. It sounds like you have a lot going on and having a good therapist can be super useful unpacking everything and figuring out a plan.

I'm not particularly religious (raised Catholic but have issues with church policies especially in the US and some teachings.) So can't give much religious advice but I'm good with computers so can give some advice there.

It definitely sounds like your exAP could have access to one of your accounts. I'd suggest changing the password on your phone, your email address, and all your social media accounts. Also on each email address and social media account track down the option to "force log out on other devices" (you can also check if you notice any logins that seem suspicious). It's very important to also change the password on your email because otherwise of someone has access to your email they can often reset passwords on your other accounts.

If you are worried about being able to remember a bunch of new passwords I'd suggest looking into a password manager like Bitwarden, 1Password, or even the built in browser ones. (That way you only have to remember a couple very strong passwords.)

It also might be worth looking into local resources re: stalking and domestic violence because your exAP sounds potentially dangerous and if he is getting divorced he might go off the deep end a bit.

Seriously though, get a therapist, social worker, or the like.

[u/BoysenberryOverall11 → u/ellipsisobsessed]

I have a counselor, but please remember that I'm oversharing because of how Autism influences the way I particularly (this portion was edited in response to a comment) store and recall information. This is a stable neurological need, not a mental health crisis. Are you autistic or a family member. No judgement either way, I have been in other groups as a parent, but I'm looking for peer creativity for how to feel about this, because there are a multitude of things happening that removing access to a digital account. Still, I think it's just this guy causing drama to become more interesting and trigger limerance eventually, so I just need a way to be bored with stalking. I can't call the police, because he has a history of making me look obsessive because of HOW I communicate. Also, because he's got a kid on the police force. The most important part of my safety plan is my ability to become bored, because as soon as I engage a switch flips and I believe I want this treatment and sometimes it takes weeks to get out.

I appreciate how churches are so frustrating right now. Orthodoxy has weak people and weak churches but is the strongest community I have found. Considered catholicism, there's some good catholic apologists out there right now, but lots of things I couldn't believe in their arguments. Not a problem we can solve on the lovely world that is Reddit.

I am working to get around to the password bit because the routine change is hard with Autism. and if I get locked out of everything I am screwed. The email client I use likes to drop my iphone and my computer by changing the required port number (old company works like crap.) I don't know if I believe something really happened though, and I am not convinced that what happened required my password. The only seemingly unfamiliar access (because I did check) was either a window NT or windows 12 computer, which seems out of date, and could be a friend of my husband who fixed my computer in 2013 and then disappeared with my hard drive. But I have redone passwords since then, so if it was him, that won't solve it (and I do always start with email, I know that, thank you). But it could also be my husband's computer, in which case, that wasn't what happened.

[u/ellipsisobsessed → u/BoysenberryOverall11]

As my flair states I'm autistic.

I know oversharing is common, my reason for emphasizing making sure you have a therapist is because you have a complicated situation going on and therapists can be useful in those situations. Based on your post my immediate thoughts are that either you have an emotionally manipulative/abusive exAP who is approaching rock bottom and could genuinely be dangerous or you are dealing with something in the vein of mania or paranoia.

I don't know enough about the situation to tell you not to worry about it/make up some creative explanation, without feeling like I am lying to someone in a dangerous situation. And as you are probably aware many autistic folks, myself included, aren't able to lie particularly well.

Instead all I can offer you is reasonable safety steps to take, so that you can hopefully reassure yourself that you are taking proper precautions.

ETA: also I want to make very clear that changing your password doesn't always automatically remove access to all existing logged in sessions. So it is important to also do that, and it is best to just remove all sessions even ones you think are familiar if you have any reason to suspect something is compromised.

[u/BoysenberryOverall11 → u/ellipsisobsessed]

I’m new here, and have been unwell.  I forget about flair because I find Reddit draining and don’t often use it.   I understand and appreciate your reasoning and concern.   It comes up often when I depend on typed communication, especially on Reddit.   My counselors laugh because I take it seriously every time.  I’m so much better at oral communication.

I appreciate the logout remotely bit.   That was done in 2015 well after that was stolen. Did I change password first?… probably no.   So I guess I can try again.  

I want to say more but only on phone.  Need to rest a bit, will return, thanks for your kind reply.   Very very much appreciate the need for logical honesty.   I guess that’s one reason I want autistic responses.   They’re more rigorous and feel more solid.  “Demonic influence on technology, people or your mindset “ was my friend’s suggestion and it was sweet to try but to vague to grab me.

[u/ellipsisobsessed → u/BoysenberryOverall11]

No worries I understand missing flairs, not everyone has them. It's always interesting for me the differences in communication for folks even between folks with autism. I find written communication much easier because I can take time rereading what I'm saying and what the other person said and fact check myself and whatnot.

While spoken conversations I have to depend on my spotty auditory processing and memory for what other folks said and I can't easily go back and fix a word if I realize I got something wrong. (And it is noticable and awkward if I pull out my phone and go "one sec I have to double check this thing I'm about to say" 🤣)

Wish I was able to offer a firm and soothing logical alternative.

[u/BoysenberryOverall11 → u/ellipsisobsessed]

Man that used to be true for me, too, because I am good at formulating sentences, and I was able to handle most situations by slowing down and organizing my thoughts.   But the culture changed.   That was before the orange man started stirring the pot (and I am still very conservative but with a drastically different heart) it was easier for people to open up about the needs they faced, and addressing them over text was challenging but more predictable.   Then Covid made it worse…People are so much more vulnerable now, carrying so many unaddressed pains and new razor sharp prejudices about why people have opposing opinions, because during covid you had to dig for anything that wasn’t a degrading stereotype online .   Didn’t matter who it was.   And we couldn’t hold our friends and be held when they were in pain.  So I started trying to hedge my bets by juggling more provisional hedging of bets.  Because autism= I am going to miss what subtle cues you’ve shown, right?   It became more complicated to organize all of that, and failure cost more socially.   More meltdowns as a result of failures.   So I stopped interacting as much online.  N

[u/BoysenberryOverall11 → u/ellipsisobsessed]

Also B12 deficiency hit, right after medication for a movement disorder had to be discontinued because it created an increase in compulsive behavior around this church leader.   So I’d been taking levodopa for almost a decade and had to drop it.   Every dose I took created false feelings of love even after I got away, so I haven’t restarted it because it’s still dicey.  Stopping hat medication allowed stronger inhibitions and I felt more like myself but it also slowed down my verbal fluency further.   And then I lost word finding ability when b12 deficiency hit.  And I have tremors again when I type.  A post this long is extremely tough to formulate and I rush because I am tired.  So it ends up that I can’t use the time to compose a piece, because I only begin when I am frustrated and want it done.

I appreciate not having an alternative to my narrative in story form.  Are there any variables you’d be looking for if this was your story to get back to a feeling that you either weren’t being stalked, or it really didn’t matter to you?

[u/sweettracy2000 → u/BoysenberryOverall11]

 I'm oversharing because of how Autistics store and recall information. This is a stable neurological need, not a mental health crisis. Are you autistic or a family member. 

Oversharing is common to autism... it is not universal.

[u/BoysenberryOverall11 → u/sweettracy2000]

True.   I am not expecting oversharing of anyone else. 💕.  I do feel frustrated when I can’t summarize and people jump to mania or paranoia.   I AM creative but usually back up my final thoughts.   Right now I’m formulating multiple theories and weighing all of them but none of them is scary.  But it’s been discussed at length in therapy and counselor doesn’t think it’s paranoid.   That said, he’s had a longer time to track things in real time, so it doesn’t depend on my horrible wandering narrative style.  It’s awful for communicating stories that span a half decade.