Problems with family members who are psychologists?

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My older brother recently got his PhD in clinical psychology. He has for a long time maintained that I am not on the spectrum (even though I have been diagnosed) because he claims that I am "making choices to make my life difficult" and that I "haven't been socialized" yet. Our mother also suspects that she is on the spectrum and he tells her that she can't be but he also tells her that he doesn't want her around his friends because he is afraid she will say something awkward. So it seems like he treats my mother and I like pariahs without entertaining the possibility that we might have legitimate reasons for having social difficulties. He also met my (diagnosed AS) husband and after a 5-minute conversation determined that he couldn't be on the spectrum because he could understand jokes. He generally sees autism as a stigma and feels like people who pursue a diagnosis are just trying to get special treatment. He uses his degree in psychology as a way to act like an authority and discount the feelings/diagnosis of family members.


I just wanted to know if anyone has had similar experiences with family members who have degrees in psychology.

Sounds like that's not a psychologist problem, that's a 'your brother' problem. He probably has a fair number of spectrum traits himself, running in families and all, and he's obviously done well for himself. He potentially has struggles that you don't know about that he overcomes, and he feels like you should be able to overcome them too. People who are very similar to you like are often the hardest ones to convince that you're actually different from them.

I'd point out to him that a lack of cognitive empathy is a an ASD trait that he portrays every time he does not accept your and your mother's difficulties :-p

I don´t think what he is doing is ethical. You can´t make that kind of judgement on people you barely know (in the case of your husband) and psychologist dont treat their relatives because they have to be impartial.

All sorts of people can be short sighted and prejudiced, whether they are licensed psychologists or not. People who are already prejudiced will take everything they've learned and continue to claim that all evidence points to their own predetermined point of view. His being a psychologist will only make him more annoying because he will claim scientific evidence and special knowledge to "prove" his point. I am thinking that he may be a regular bigot who got a degree.

The hardest part about him rejecting my diagnosis is that I was only diagnosed about two years ago. For me the diagnosis was empowering as it gave me concrete evidence that I had legitimate reasons for experiencing things differently and for having difficulties that others might not have. Before then all I had to go on was the general feeling that I was broken and weird. My brother asserts that I *am* just weird and that's my fault for being so. I know that he's saying this stuff because he's my brother and he can't think straight about his own family--wants to fix us and make us into his ideal of a perfect family--but it is rather demoralizing. From my own perspective, autism is painful but also beautiful and I wouldn't trade it for the world. One kind of likes to be open about identity with family. Perhaps a few decades my brother will have matured.

Just keep reminding yourself that expertise doesn't mean he's using it. He might even fully know that you have an ASD but refuses to acknowledge it to himself. Sounds like he's got a few issues himself.

Honestly, things this are why I don't really speak to my family much, avoid them even often. I have a lot of issues, and now that I'm trying to deal with them much more head-on than I ever have before, I have a lot of anxiety with interacting with them. Even though they're also the people who I can (or have been) be the most comfortable with. And I don't have anyone nearly as bad as your brother in my family.

In your case, me, looking in from the outside, your brother sounds like a narcissistic as*hole. But it's always different from the inside, you see it as him wanting you guys to be better out of desire for your betterments. Anyways, narcissists (if he actually is one, I'm just some random internet person) seem to have some serious self-esteem issues, and adopt actions and faces and beliefs not to fit in, but to try and be better than everyone at everything because that's where they draw their self-esteem from. What they use as measures of 'better' are anything and everything that society defines as important. Because they don't draw self-esteem from an internal place, or at least very weakly, and doesn't understand a way to do that, he probably also sees you as probably being more unhappy than you are, because you probably don't measure up very well on a lot of those things that society (and therefore, he) values. Like, if he were in your position, he probably sees himself as being absolutely miserable and as a complete failure.

He knows that he tries to be and succeed at things that matter to everyone else, sees that he can change himself to be better (in his eyes because he only has the eyes of what others say is important) and thinks that that's what everyone else is like because we all like to think other people are like us on fundamental levels that they actually aren't.

Also a very NT thing to think and see 'just try harder' because that person had success with some form of 'trying harder'.

More of my 2 cents at least *shrug* Could be wrong.

It's called "The Bootstrap Theory". You can supposedly lift yourself out of your difficulties by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. This is a common saying which wealthy people normally use to degrade poor people by blaming them for their own lack of financial success. But of course it works just as well to degrade disabled people.

Well, again, it's something that actually seems to help people who think that it works. There's definitely a 'trying harder' thing that I have experienced for a lot of things that helps-like running a race for instance, or reminding myself how much I want something so I will continue to do something that is not easy for me to do but will help get me that thing. And it arguably is the difference between being 'good' at something and being 'super amazo-awesome' at something.
The problem with it is that for it to work at all it requires to have the fundamentals of that thing in the first place; if any part of your mentality or physiology is not allowing you to do that thing, trying harder doesn't change that part that does not work that way.

Um, I'm sorry. I didn't know it was a personality disorder as you described. Why are you attacking me? Is it fair of you to call him an a** hole if he can't control his behavior?

I just meant to say that I hope that someday he and I would be able to have a conversation without all the game-playing and bullying. I suspect that he will always be as he is, personality disorder or not. But he is my sibling and I'd like to be able to have a relationship with him.

According to this, the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder usually do decrease with age, typically by age 40-50. Also I don't think my brother hopes that I will grow out of ASD because he doesn't believe I have it...

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/narci ... -symptoms/

^ It does sound a bit like my brother. He's in his mid 30s now so maybe in another decade or two the symptoms will be less noticeable.

Thanks for your input.