My life right now.

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My parents confuse me. They literally exhaust me.
On Monday, after my psychiatrist confirmed he thought I was on the autism spectrum and was going to refer me to a specialist, my CPN encouraged me to finally get my parents involved. At first they accepted that I could have Asperger syndrome and I nearly cried with relief. We had a long chat which included them telling me stories about when I was little that I didn't remember (like crying and covering my ears at parties). They seemed to support the theory of ASD, at any rate.
Skip to today; I've been reading a "guide to Asperger's" and mentioned to my Dad that it was like reading textbook about my life and I was so relieved to finally have an explanation. Suddenly he turned on me and accused me of self-diagnosing myself and exaggerating symptoms. He said it was all just part of my personality.

So now I don't know what to think. One minute they're on my side, the next minute they're making me feel like a Munchausen case.

Meh, they're parents. I'm not a parent. But from reading other people's stories on what happened when they, as an adult, went for diagnosis I have pieced together this:

The initial reaction was probably relief and happiness that you finally had some answers to the problems you have been experiencing. The later reaction is probably because they suddenly realised they failed to pick this up earlier ... it's their job as parents to raise you the best they can and provide appropriate support and help along the way, and they guilty that they didn't recognise it earlier ... the denial is their way of coping.

I haven't told my parents.... because I don't want to face these reactions as I don't know how to cope with them and I'm having enough difficulties at the moment without that one being added.

I told my Aunt that I went to see a psychiatrist,

she replies "You don't need no fancy scam doctor goin around tellin people your crazy"

"WAs she foreign? I bet she was foreign? diagnosing poor kids and taking there money"

(How the hell do you respond to that?)
I didn't know if I wanted to leave and never come back, or shoot myself. I scratched my head and then went mute for about 5 hours.

sad part was I wasn't even at my diagnosis yet, Which I regret telling her because now my aunt talks about my eye contact every god damn time I see her.... it's not the only trait. like F. I'll just stare at her forehead, so I don't get bitched at.

ps: might as well vent while on this thread - My dad isn't sure If I'm ret*d, a genius, or crazy. And he spends quite a bit of time bouncing back and forth between the three.

Someone please assure me, that my only next step in life is to "grow up" and find my own place. I've only been here a few months, I thought people changed, I was wrong.

I can see where your dad was coming from, I did it myself with my NVLD. I didn't like the idea of weakness. That's the way strong men are supposed to be, unaccepting of weakness. It really depends, what everyone's telling me, there's nothing that can be done here in CT anyway, for HFA type stuff once you're out of school.

The way I look at it now that I know for sure I have NVLD, and that NVLD for all intensive purposes acts like Aspergers or is another form of Aspergers or whatever is, I simply know my limits and weaknesses, whereas before I'd more or less figuratively crash into things and just be confuddled as to what happened. Now, I know the reasons, and still unfortunately crash, and now I got a reason behind it at least. However, the hard part is, the world still moves, regardless of you and your issues, people still expect stuff of you. For me, I wish I could just pull out a "I got NVLD, f**k off" card when I don't want to do something, but I can't. The fact is, regardless of my NVLD, I've compensated and made myself more capable of doing stuff than most people I know, however, I'm less capable of handling the emotions attached with all the stuff I do compared to most people. So, for example, people expect me to fix their cars because I know how, and I don't think it's because other people can't learn how, just they know the emotional toll is too high. If you screw up, people get mad at you, you get mad at yourself, etc. I don't see those emotional consequences as easily as other people, but they still bite me in the ass.

I mean, if you can get help with Aspergers and all that, then you can, and life would be better. But, your dad's concern is valid. If you get an Aspergers diagnosis, you may limit yourself compared to what you could ultimately do, as with the diagnosis, you'll ultimately see things through an "I have Aspergers" filter. For me personally, too, I've been hurt a lot by psychiatrists. I got myriads of stupid "depression and anxiety" diagnosises, and they tried to treat them with "NT" methods and just didn't do anything positive at all. It took probably 2 dozen psychiatrists before anyone mentioned my NVLD, and even then, the person DXing me NVLD misdiagnosed me schizoid personality, too, it took a long long time before the "A word" of autism was mentioned. I'm not a fan of psychiatry, for what I believe are good reasons.

I don't know, maybe it's not what you wanted to hear, but that's my take on things, having the same thought process before.