When I first saw a psychotherapist about ten years ago now (or thereabouts) I refused to accept a label, so we did everything around my diagnosis, we talked about autism and how I would deal with the outside world - that was huge denial and I stayed like that until just over a year ago when an Aspie friend said I had Asperger Syndrome. I refused to believe it but decided to look into it. I was utterly convinced that I may have had a few traits when I was much younger but that I was now completely neurtotypical, well apart from the odd moment or two. I decided on a diagnosis from a completely different source and this time, I could not go into denial about it, it was told to me very straightforwardly that I did, officially, have AS.
There comes a point when the truth is just so completely unavoidable whether we like it or not.
However, finally I did come to accept it and have had peace from that and have settled into my life after fighting with the denial for a good year or more.
It isn't easy finding out when you have lived most of your life believing yourself to be perfectly 'normal' even in the face of obvious difficulties and really quite obvious symptoms and it can take a long time to accept it.
My year of struggle and at times half accepting it, disbelieving it and denying it sometimes all within the same hour, had me acting strangely at times, losing confidence, doubting everything about myself; you may find you have to just look at everything about your life, your family and friends, your beliefs and experiences over and over to make sense of it, but at some point, there has to be acceptance or there will be no peace.
I wish you well in your searchings.
28 Mar 2008, 3:02 pm
