where my diagnosis came from... aka my mother...

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well if you've seen my post, i do suspect i may not actually have aspergers, and i will explain....

i am a gay woman. a tomboy as a child (more ladylike these days) it's something i have always known since early childhood. so at this young age i knew and my mother and others around me that i was "different". i also had/have a.d.d. and some math disability( not sure to be specific) but i have always had trouble in school and to an extent socially. as a child i would constantly make jokes to other kids that only i would understand, play jokes that they thought were weird (harmless silly jokes) and do ridiculous things to get them to laugh. (this was my way of trying to make friends. enter my mother : she is the one who insisted i was autistic from day one. she never understood that i was aware of my social surroundings and what was going on, yet she thought these behaviors came from a lack of understanding. sometimes i would throw tantrums which she would mistake for meltdows. when i would get into mischeif (again nothing harmful) i would convince her that others had led me into it when in fat it was all y idea. i lied to avoid getting in trouble, not to hurt anyone. i would try to make my mother laugh but she would always assume i was just being weird. keep in mind i was into girls even in elementary school (not sexually of course) but i would talk about girls i liked and my mother thought this was strange. i was very inattentive and it would look like i was in my own world (i kind of was) . my zoning out of course my mother mistook for autistic fantasy (yes thats a real term) . so she took me to a few specialists and heres where things get iffy... apparently they did diagnose me, however i am sure they used a lot of my mother's misinformation. they observed that i " was atypical but social,did somersaults in the office, had anxiety, and apparently "replayed video games in my head") not sure where that last one came from. i had a few good friends but in wys i was a loner (knowing i was different made me shy). so anyway

flash foward to middle school, i was invited to social gatherings here and there but my mother would never let me go. her reason for this was that i am autistic. she would say nothing more...
she also had/has a habit of introducing me as her "autistic/disabled daughter". this was always the first thing out of her mouth when she talked to anyone about me. she also frequently told me point blank that i will never have friends, drive a car, have a relationship, move out on my own e.t.c. despite having completely normal self care skills. i was never allowed any identity or validation of my feelings because i am autistic and she needed to think for me!


luckily for my sake i never listened to her, being the defiant, strong willed scallywag i was. high school came and i developed a regular group of friends (who i was allowed to hang out with to some extent), i was not popular but i was content. i developed my own real interests like music and anything fun lol. senior year i had my first girlfriend (still together today!) and for the first time i realized that i was not a defective person and was worthy of love (clich'e i know).

to my mother however, i was still nothing but an extent of herself. she had grown noticably resentful of my blossoming by this point. her attitude towards me became more angry. this is when she also decided that i was bipolar and schitzophrenic and began making up stories about me to anone who would listen. i heard voices, talked to myself, whatever she decided to say.(none of thie happened). she also called me a sociopath when i had the nerve to stand up to her. to her i was satan himself.

when i got jobs she would act like i was disappointing her. she did not want me to have a relationship of any kind. she didn't like that i was gay and even attributed that to...AUTISM. I was proving her wrong and she hated it.

i struggled with drugs and alcohol as a way of coping with everything and this of course meant i was crazy. i also was apparently manipulative (was not aware of aspies having this trait).



so long story short, my mother may have some issues of her own. i also want to talk about her and my brother, but i am so tired of typing right now!

thanks for reading and i would love any insight you have with the information given!

sounds like your mom has a mild case of munchausen's by proxy. your instincts to minimize her influence and perhaps even minimize contact are good.

yeah she definitely has her "quirks" i am not saying im sure i don't have any form of autism. i am not devoid of symptoms, i just wonder how much of it is nature vs nurture. i was a very strong willed kid and maybe this led me to cope with some issues as i desperately wanted to prove her wrong.

sorry this read like an amature self aggrandizing memoir, i didn't even realize how long it would be.

Sounds like your mom acted in a really confusing way. Somehow she "wanted" something about being the mom of a disabled child... what, attention, maybe? People thinking of her as a long-suffering saint? I don't know. It certainly couldn't have helped you.

If you're autistic, though, she didn't cause the autism. Parents who do this kind of thing to their children are as likely to exaggerate an actual illness as they are to make one up out of nowhere. She might have seen mild autism/Asperger's and exaggerated that, treated you like you had a lot more problems than you did, discouraged any moves toward independence on your part.

Whether you're autistic to begin with--well, that's a different question. Might be; might not be. Your description of your childhood behavior doesn't rule out a mild case of autism, with social behavior in the "active but odd" category.

Whichever it is, the crucial fact is that neither autism nor disability in general are what your mother made them out to be. They do not turn you into a tragedy, nor define your existence, nor make you helpless. A parent of a disabled child is simply a parent, who could a good parent or a bad one or in between.