You can't have AS

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I only recently discovered my afflictions had a name, now that I know it a weight is lifted really but no one seems to believes it.

I'm not too into telling people now that I know but there are a few people that have been in my life for awhile and always agreed something must be up because of my eccentricities. When I told them mostly I heard "no I know someone with aspergers, they can't even take care of themselves" or "there's no way my cousin has it and he's in special classes and can't even talk" it's like no one believes it's possible because I never knew and I've managed to learn how to function in life. No one knows how hard it was growing up trying to watch others and figure out all the things that seem to come natural to them.

Anyone else run into this upon discovering AS later in life? I know it shouldn't bother me but it really does

I recently cut off contact with my parents because they - for several years - similarly wouldn't accept my diagnosis when I told them at age 27 - even *after* I sent them a copy of my evaluation, signed by the psychiatrist who diagnosed me...

What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men (or women) you just can't reach.

I believe that people will think the same if I get a diagnosis.

Hey, I even believe it myself. It doesn't matter how many times I research and learn, and everything fits and I can objectively say "yes, that's me", there's that bit of me that still says "no, you function too well, there's no way it can be true". That bit that starts to convince me that everything I know I had to overcome is actually imagined, because I can do it better now.

I've only been honest with one person who knew me that I consider myself to have autism, and her response was 'Really? You wouldn't know!", which I think shows how people that aren't as close to me may not take the news easily. The person I told was the person that I'd consider to be my closest friend, so there was little doubt that she'd listen and believe me without thinking that I'm attention-seeking, and for her not to have noticed anything indicates that it may not be obvious to anyone.

That's crazy. I told my mom but she believes anything I say at this point in life, my dad probably wouldn't care either way so I haven't bothered.
It just pisses me off when people say you can't know or can't have it despite all the evidence to support it, feels like banging your head against a wall taking about it.

I'm in the same boat on that one, I've known my whole life I don't really behave like everyone else and when it caused problems I started studying others and found ways around it. It benefits today in the fact that I can imitate other people's actions and get the response/reaction out of the person I'm talking to that I want but it won't be the real me talking to them. It makes me seem "normal" I suppose but it took a long time and a lot of heartache to get where Im at.
I get that same feeling though when people don't believe me, like maybe all the struggle is imaginary.

Yeah, I get that too. NTHubby told my family he was taking me home early on Thanksgiving Day 2014--before I was formally diagnosed, but after we'd both read Tony Atwood's guide and decided it mostly fit--because I was on the edge of a meltdown. He said something along the lines of "my wife has Asperger's and she's getting overwhelmed" which seemed a weird way to phrase it, talking to my mom and brothers and sister and nephews and niece, all of whom have known me longer than he has.

Later I got a call from my mom asking what was that all about, and she said my sister's take was that he didn't know what he was talking about, my problem was that I'd lost a baby on Thanksgiving day once and was easily upset because of that on that day. Most of my family still doesn't think I really have an ASD, because when they think of Autism they think of the little brother of the guy who was my brother's best friend in high school. He was diagnosed autistic at an early age, obviously different, very extraverted with no concept of social boundaries and when to shut up and stuff like that. To them, I'm nothing like Tony, so I can't be autistic.

Same thing with a few people at church. Some people nod and I can see a light go on behind their eyes, like o okay that explains a lot. Others, though--notably a very eccentric teacher who actually works with special needs children--say things like "I don't get that from you at all" or "I would never have guessed" or "I couldn't tell, you must be very high functioning" or even "but you seem so normal, just a bit shy." Others don't really know anything about autism, and they don't pretend to which is easier because then you can explain why you do the weird things you do and they'll believe you because they don't have any preconceived notions for you to contradict.

So yeah, people don't want to believe stuff like that, it makes them uncomfortable for some reason. I get the same sort of mixed reaction at work, only even more extreme. Honestly some of the pediatricians are like "yeah I already had that figured out, I diagnosed you just from our interactions" because obviously as pediatricians they're trained to recognize autistic traits so they can get their patients the help they need. Others don't expect it in staff and co-workers, or just aren't looking for it so they ignore the signs. I do also try to keep a handle on it at work, doing my best to be as professional as I can, but mostly keeping my head down and doing my job without causing anyone any trouble as much as possible. Still others don't really know much about autism beyond the way some of the profoundly autistic kids act in the waiting/exam rooms, with their outbursts and meltdowns and stimming, and don't think I could be autistic because I don't act like that. But that's because I've grown up and learned to pass as much as possible, because I keep it clamped down as much as I can so as not to get in trouble, and because I am "high functioning" (Autism Level 1 without learning disability without language impairment) and able to hide most of my symptoms most of the time.

I do get overwhelmed, sometimes; I do get cognitive dissonance, I do sort of blank out, I sometimes lose all semblance of executive functioning. Sometimes I say things that I didn't realize would be rude or offensive until after the person or people who hear me are pissed and I don't know how to fix it or sometimes don't even know why they're upset. Sometimes things happen on the social level that leave me completely bewildered. Sometimes conversations happen so fast with so much unsaid undercurrent that I get lost. So there are hints at work, and the supervisors all know because they've read my official eval. report.

And sometimes even NTHubby doesn't really believe it, he just says I want an excuse to behave badly and I studied autism and Asperger's Disorder very carefully before I went in for an evaluation so I'd get the diagnosis I wanted. As if a person who didn't have a personality disorder would want one, or want people to believe they had one when they really don't. It's ridiculous but what can you do? Most of the time people believe what they want to believe and absolutely nothing will persuade them otherwise. Anyone who knows someone else that's autistic, and doesn't think you are because you're not like that other person, is forgetting or unaware that "if you've met one person with autism you've met one autistic person. But I've always known I was different. Just none of the other theories I've had over the last forty or more years have fit as well as ASD.

LOL....you can't be autistic; you're not like Rain Man!

I guess I'm "fortunate" that my autism was evident from an early age.

Awareness of the high-functioning part of the Spectrum is minuscule at best.

My parents knew "something", but I´m not obvious at first sight. In fact, I can look like the most leaned back academic - even with a chaos inside. I´ve lost friends, who didn´t understand my behavior and my anxieties. "Just be like anybody else, or..."
Even my mentor thought, that everything was under control - until I wrote her a desperate letter.
She had an AHA and now she is going to get me another mentor with insight in AS - maybe through the specialists.
What a relief to be understood.

That's because they only think of autism as severe autism. I myself need to be cared for, am in special classes and don't talk etc. But I made a post here a while back, about how on another forum they were accusing me of "faking a mental condition", because I mentioned having it. They said I write too well and get things like sarcasm to really be autistic.

Yes, it´s difficult to understand a SPECTRUM. As very late dxéd Asperger I still can´t identify as "autistic", even 2½ year after dx and the big AHA.

LyraLuthTinu: "I do get overwhelmed, sometimes; I do get cognitive dissonance, I do sort of blank out, I sometimes lose all semblance of executive functioning. Sometimes I say things that I didn't realize would be rude or offensive until after the person or people who hear me are pissed and I don't know how to fix it or sometimes don't even know why they're upset. Sometimes things happen on the social level that leave me completely bewildered. Sometimes conversations happen so fast with so much unsaid undercurrent that I get lost. So there are hints at work, and the supervisors all know because they've read my official eval. report."

So spot on! - And then I get fired for not listening.
Last time at the jobcenter, the jobconsultant exclaimed: "But you look so normal and you speak well. Isn´t autism like Rainman?"

I get a combination of 'no, you can't have it', 'you must have been faking it in your evaluation if you can hide it at times', 'really, you seemed quirky' and 'I thought so'.

Generally the more familiar someone is with mild ASD, the more they tend to think I have it. Shocker. I think even people who accept I have it often don't grasp how many areas it affects me in.

Yeah...

Just because we've learned a few coping skills doesn't mean we're cured or never had it.

Just because sometimes we have good days, doesn't mean we made it all up and are faking a mental disorder on our bad days.

When I can't, it's not because I choose not to or don't feel like it. It's because there are times when I literally can't.

That refers to acting normal, talking to people, deciding what to do when there are too many options...all those executive functions. Sometimes my brain is willing. Sometimes it just isn't possible for me to do what NT's do naturally, and expect everyone to be able to do. Because they do it so effortlessly, they don't even think of it as an ability. They think it just is.

But for Spectrum people--sometimes--it isn't.

Brilliantly written.

I only recently realised that other people don't script every conversation they have. That they don't plan in advance, by seconds, minutes, often days or weeks, before each thing that they say.

I thought I was 'socially a bit rubbish', but it didn't occur to me that I had a whole different process going on in my head and that others can be spontaneous, and it explains a lot about why I often say the wrong thing, or talk over people, or cut them off.

And it also didn't occur to me that NT people can just use the voice in their head, whereas I have an articulate voice in mine that talks well and says the right things, and that I believe is the real me, and then that voice hits a wall on its way out and the few words that I do say manage to get through, but they're not detailed or articulate and they're often jumbled.

It takes a big understanding of yourself to realise that other people aren't the same.

Yes, I've had people react with disbelief. One person was a friend of my wife's who works with autistic kids. She didn't come out and say she disbelieved my claim, but it was the "you must be really high functioning" sort of response that tells me she may have thought I was lying. Of course, since she works with kids she probably hasn't talked to a lot of adults who have had decades to learn coping/ social skills.

Honestly, sometimes I doubt my own diagnosis. But then I go back and review the things that impelled me to seek out a diagnosis in the first place and I'm reminded that there are too many examples of how autism has impaired my social world to deny it. I went looking for answers because I knew - as did others close to me - that there was something that made me different from most other people I knew.

My mother remains skeptical, and I suspect other friends and family have their doubts since, as others have said, I'm clearly not Rainman. But I have my formal diagnosis, and it has answered more questions than it raises, so I'm OK with not everyone believing me. The constant onslaught of media coverage focusing almost exclusively on the worst cases, and almost always in children, does a lot to perpetuate these myths about ASD.

EzraS: Yeah, that is the reason this is like this. The weird thing is that the High Functioning side of the spectrum was discovered before the Low Functioning side. Han Asperger's discovered it like a decade or so before Kanner's It just wasn't "Known" here in the States.
Interestingly enough, I've never got this. Even though I've told many people.

People are always talking about others motivations and feelings. I always thought it was very arrogant of them to be making these pronouncements. That this is a natural inborn ability people have still blows my mind.