People Doubting you have Aspergers

Post Reply New Topic

Does someone, or people you know, doubt that you have Aspergers, and down right deny it? How does that make you feel (Question for those diagnosed and undiagnosed)

Annoyed.

But I never had that problem in real life. I don't tell anyone and lot of people are still clueless about it so if I told someone I had it, no doubt they believe me.

I get doubtful of myself. I feel like a fraud, like I'm not Autistic enough.

Which is ridiculous. Because I've been diagnosed twice, five years apart, and I meet the criteria for Autistic Disorder, and as a child was virtually identical to Kranner's patients, andandand just because I can talk and want to have friends doesn't make me non-Autistic!

Sigh.

People seem to think that if you're open about your AS, you don't have it, and/or are just using it as an excuse to get special treatment. What a crock of BS.

I haven't experienced that. In my case when they find out it helps them understand, i.e., that I'm not ret*d, because I don't speak particularly well, and/or mentally insane because I otherwise look and appear intelligent. God, I hate my life sometimes!

given i dont care about what others think, it wouldn't affact me

Only if they think autism means mental retardation. Which an awful lot of people seem to think.
Once somebody who knows me at all actually looks at what Asperger's is, it starts to get kinda obvious.

Mom. One of my art teachers.
I told both. Mom laughed and said "You not autism! What are you talking about?!" And so I never talked about it ever again. So I never got diagnosed...
I told my graphic design teacher during class break after she chided my aspie friend for being "arrogant" and told her about his and my aspergers. And then she said shed talk to my mom about it more and I told her she didn't know. And told her it's because I never got officially diagnosed. And she said "Okay, so then right now you have nothing, right? So you don't have aspergers. Because I don't really think it's an aspergers problem."
I kind of hate her now.

However my uncle probably has it (works in physics, likes outer space, knows everything, blank face most of the time). I never told him. But he's one of the few people who inadvertently support my aspergers.

I've told a few other friends, and they all accepted it, so they're cool.

I'm not diagnosed, no one thinks I have it. Or they say it might be mild.
But then they complain about my obsessions, that I don't trust anyone, about me being in control, being crazy.....
Read this article about girls with As.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women ... inary.html

I've been told many times that I don't look autistic, after telling people that I have AS, which is a form of autism. How is an autistic person supposed to look, than?

My best friend has this idea that it's rediculous that we are naming all these mental disorders. He says that sometimes it's just a label given when it's not real.

CockneyRebel, I totally hear ya. I don't "look autistic" either, whatever that is supposed to mean.

I can pass for NT well enough when I put a ton of effort into it (which has exacerbated my anxiety disorder and has led to my recent burnout, as I've mentioned in other posts). Sometimes I wish I were lower-functioning, because some people don't believe that I am on the spectrum. Skeptical people just make it that much more frustrating to be so agonizingly close, but yet so far, from whatever "normal" is supposed to be.

But then again, my therapist has classified me as having "moderate" AS, not "mild," so maybe I wasn't "passing" as well as I thought I was.

OK, now I'm getting myself confused.

(Geez, think I used enough quotation marks in this post, LOL?)

I occasionally feel similar sentiments when reading certain threads around here - not the part about things not being real, since it's not my place to judge, but that it's sometimes better not to over-analyze everything about yourself in the context of a disorder. Sometimes people seem to obsess over the label a little bit too much, searching for minor links to autism in every minor facet of their behaviour and then assuming those things are fixed and unchangeable. The labels are valuable to an extent for getting help and understanding yourself better, but beyond that I don't think it's healthy let them define everything about you - especially if you're still young. I'm a very different person now to who I was five or ten years ago, but if I'd been diagnosed earlier and let myself obsess over it, I doubt I would've grown nearly as much as a person over that time.

For those reasons I don't think I'd be extremely upset if someone doubted that I had Aspergers, provided they weren't also dismissing the difficulties I suffer as a result of it, which are much more important than the name. If the person doing the doubting was someone whose opinion I respected then I might actually feel good about it to an extent, and could see it as a form of acceptance.

Either way, the only people who know I have it are immediate family, and I have no plans to reveal it to anyone else.

Last edited by Vance on 19 Dec 2009, 12:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've gotten "You seem normal" when I'd be talking about my childhood and how different I am. I know lot of aspies would be upset by that comment but to me, it was a compliment because as a child, I was treated unfairly because kids thought I was ret*d and even the school treated me unfairly so now I am being seen as normal and that's a good thing. At least I'd get treated right by them. I never took that as "You're not different" or "You don't have anything" or "You don't have AS."

Good point! There's a HUGE difference between someone who doubts because they think you pass for NT well enough, and someone who is actually "dismissing the difficulties."

Yes, I've been told this lots of times. Actually to everyone I've told about my diagnosis, even my mom and dad. When I tell my mom about my diagnosis she says, "It's because you had such a bad childhood and you were tramautized!" I try to tell her lots of people have abusive childhoods and they deal with it. They're in extreme denial. They just never payed attention to me enough as a kid to realize what was happening. The only one who did was my ex-stepmom and she believed it right away and said that it explains a lot.

It makes me doubt it for a second, but then I remember all of the repetitive interests, stereotyped movement, all the days I sat alone at lunch, and all the self injury. After that I just think, "If only you knew..." I guess it's a good thing though.