HFA and Adolescent Denial

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all,

Our 14 year old son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS three weeks ago, after we admitted him to a behavioral health hospital for suicidal ideations. The psychological assessment determined he has a "personality of denial and suppression." After meeting with him a few different times and trying to explain to him the diagnosis, he still continues to deny that he has ANY problems at all! He believes we put him there to "punish" him. He doesn't believe he has a problem with socializing (he does). He doesn't believe he has a problem with empathy (he does). And he doesn't believe he has a problem with communication (he does). He doesn't even believe that his being bullied is a problem--he thinks it's no big deal!

Has anyone out there had any experience with adolescents in denial of their challenges? How did you overcome it?

I don't experience with your situation, but I am not surprised by it. I extend the way my son, also now 14, was before diagnosis (at 7) to how he would view the world and himself now if he hadn't had the help he's had, the understanding he has had, and so on .... I think he would have integrated many inaccurate assumptions about the world and himself.

My son has VERY strong opinions, and sense of self. Good, bag, ugly, accurate, or totally off-base, boys like mine believe they know exactly who and what they are.

You just told your son that it was all off base.

And, kids that have gone this long without knowing they are on the spectrum seem to have often spent a lot of time and effort to try to fit in, and part of the survival instinct is to believe they are succeeding. I think kids like your son have also spent a lot of time trying to ignore what they have seen all along, that they are different, until they many layers of self-defense connected to it. Your son didn't form his self-image knowing he was ASD and knowing what that meant, and it is super hard to change course. Especially at 14 when the whole world is telling you that the most important thing in life is fitting in.

Long run, I think the information will benefit him a lot, but it is a pretty late stage to be introduced to it, and it is going to take him a long while to integrate it. If you an figure out who some of the other ASD kids in your community are, and see if any of them have traits your son might admire, that might help him start to change his self image - - but there is a good chance he just sees those kids as weird, and wants nothing to do with them. Talk to him about famous people who are believed to be on the spectrum, and how the gifts/burdens aspect of is why he has gifts A,B or C that he is proud of (hopefully he has some clear gifts: that is the easiest path to self-esteem and acceptance).

Overall, though, I think it is a tough age to have make such a huge change in how you see yourself. Be patient and gentle.

I figured it out when I was 13 and I took it to heart straight away, but that was because i worked it out on my own. (I'm 15 right now)

He probably feels judged and mis-understood, so he may feel like admitting there is anything wrong will just be seen as more weakness or whatever to judge him on. Also if he has autism of course he will have issues with socializing, maybe he is aware he does and just doesn't want to admit there is something 'defective'...so one thing is try to explain he's not defective or bad for having these sorts of issues...that might help some. Also one thing to keep in mind is a lot of times people with autism do have empathy it just might be hard to express or they might have trouble expressing it effectively...so just keep that in mind so you don't fall into the 'you have no empathy' because those accusations can hurt.

I mean when it comes to denial it is usually about the indiviual not wanting to be judged for what they are denying, they don't want to admit it to them-self because maybe its too painful for them ect. So the best thing is to provide a supportive, non-judgmental environment. But that is just my two cents on this, hope it was somewhat helpful.

Thanks everyone! I'm learning so much about my son. These are great ideas and definitely help with insight into his character...

Redacted

Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 3:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

An update:

My son and I had a great conversation a couple of days ago. While the social stuff is still going to be a challenge, I talked to him about "remember when..." Like "remember when you were younger and handwriting was so difficult?" and "remember when we asked what you learned in school and you couldn't recall?" I found it was easier to talk about his new diagnosis in terms of the past and how, now we know that he is wired differently we can do things differently as parents. We also talked about how much he has struggled academically in school, usually due to a lack of focus and organization, though he has an above-average IQ. We can now start to get help for him and get him headed in the direction he wants to go.

I should have added: his father, my ex-husband, validates his feelings of denial. My ex and his family believe that our son is a "normal" child going through "normal" teenage angst. So, my poor child has one parent and a host of professionals telling him "yes, you are different" and the other one (which he trusts unconditionally) saying "no, you're not." My ex does not believe in "labels" for children. Though I somewhat agree, I also know that now we have a "name" for why life has been such a struggle and I can research it and I can recognize it.

My son is almost 21 now (gack! I'm getting old, lol!). He was diagnosed when he was seven years old and we had a problem for years with his denial of his having AS and of there being anything different about him whatsoever. I was told that that was part of the "condition", that denial often occurred and happened for years, it's part of their way of both looking at the world and dealing with their being different.

I certainly don't know if what we (my parents and I.) did with him would work for everyone, but I can tell you how we handled it. We actually used reverse psychology, not discussing or referring to it all the time, and talking about the advantages it gave him. And there ARE some advantages. He was able to focus intensely on some things (as long as he was interested in them!), he was able to come up with some original, creative, unique ideas and ways of thinking that others would never have thought of. We tried not to relate every difficulty he had to AS, so he wouldn't continually make negative associations, although that was hard to do, I admit.

How we handled his social and empathy difficulties was to do as the "experts" suggested and tell what's known as "social stories", where we take a situation where he's had difficulty socially and empathizing and turn it into a "story" involving him, making him the central figure, so that he could understand more how the other people felt and how better to react. That often seemed to help.

The problem is that my son was much younger than yours when he was diagnosed and I think that makes a big difference. Given that your son is a teenager and was in a behavioral facility, he's not likely to easily accept any diagnosis as being real and not out to "get" him. I'm not really sure how to deal with that particular situation, except to continue to follow the advice of the psychologists. AS often do have trouble understanding that they have social and empathy difficulties because that's just not how their neurological perspective is. It's very hard for people with a social sense to understand the difficulty for those who don't have it, and the frustration that results on their part because they know they're continually getting things wrong and they don't understand why. Hopefully, with good treatment, he will be able to understand that and work on it more.

I'm sure you love him very much and are quite frustrated by this, that's understandable. Make sure he understands that you still love him no matter what and no matter what condition he's diagnosed with, that's important for him to realize and understand. I had to constantly reassure my son that he was loved and cared about, he was very insecure about that, especially when he "misread" a situation socially and knew he'd embarrassed us. I know this is difficult for you to deal with, I sure hope things get better for all of you.