Have you ever been in denial about having a disability or ha

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Have you ever been in denial about having a disability or having autism? I used to be as a child and teenager. I'd complain if anyone ever said I was disabled or autistic.

When I was in school teachers thought I had a disability but I didn' t believe it. When I learned what Aspergers Syndrome was, I knew immediately I had it and never doubted it afterwards.

Neurotypical People are predjudice (evil) and sometimes hate those who have a cognitive disability of any kind because they are ignorant and uneducated. Knowing this, I can understand why people are reluctant to tell Neurotypicals that they are autistic or if they have any kind of cognitive disability.

I still am kind of in denial about my AS. If I wrote down all the traits of AS I DON'T have, I would be like "wow, I lack so many AS traits, am I really on the spectrum?", then if I wrote down all the traits I do have, including traits I had as a child but not now so much, I would be like "yeah, that's pretty Aspie all right."
I get all hopeful and feel more self-acceptance when I think of all the traits I don't have, then when I think of the traits I do have, I get all depressed. I think I'm living in hope that I am misdiagnosed or something, but it seems like I definitely have it and I just have to live with that.

I don't know why I feel so ashamed of AS. It's like I'm afraid of it.
It makes me feel like NTs are superior to me.
Autism sounds "tragic", although it shouldn't be, but if someone says their child is autistic everyone's reaction seems to be oversympathetic, like it's cancer or something.
AS has always made me problematic.
I have a very sensitive, thoughtful and caring nature, but the nasty AS makes me behave like a bad person sometimes, even though naturally I am not a bad person at all.
AS has so much stigma attached to it, and the way murderers claim that they have autism gives autism and AS a bad name. Also the "lack of empathy" thing gives people the wrong impression about AS and erases all the insensitive things people do to us.
There are so many stereotypes that people go by when trying to understand autism, and when you're an Aspie with none of those stereotypes, people say you haven't got autism and that you are just weird instead.
Having AS makes you an odd person and more at risk of being socially isolated and/or bullied.
AS makes me think I'm stupid.
AS behaviour feels like madness, like Dementia. That's how it makes me feel.

These are the reasons why I cannot bring myself to accept AS, so I stay in denial to help me forget about it. And seeing my peers succeed around me makes me hate AS even more. It feels like it's a disability to me.

Took me two years to accept I had been affected deeply by mental illness all my life no matter how hard my therapist tried to get through to me then I kind of went into exile and didn't go back to any form of psychologist for several more years until I warmed to the mental illness concept and explored the autism concept and I'm only just beginning to unravel that riddle, I always considered myself merely inept and outside of an existence touched by anything deeper than the ineptness I'd somehow brought upon myself, pretty twisted but that's how denial and debris rains down upon you isn't it.

The antidepressants help control my outbursts. I've been on them for nearly 3 years and I haven't had one outburst since. So I want to stay on them for that reason.
I'm nearly 27 and I am still just as angry and ashamed about having AS as I was when I was 9. I can open up about it more, but I can't accept it. I think it's to do with being the only one in my family with an ASD, or with any disability really. And then seeing my own related peers getting into success with their careers and here's me just a cleaner, makes me feel so unhappy. So I blame my AS for it. Also I feel thick and stupid for not excelling at anything.

Yes, I definitely used to be.

No. Other people have about me, though.

Very much so, it's ongoing struggle for to get support for myself and it took me a long time to even get to the place where I even asked. I've come a far way in the last couple years but it's hard not to be ashamed of yourself and think yourself not worthy of help.

I used to hate it when my parents told doctors I have cerebral palsy because I felt sort of like they didn't really need to know and that it was my secret I didn't want anyone to know about. That's because I thought if they knew, they might think differently about me.

Yes.

In the late 90's I was told by my employer that I might have a little bit of autism and he was teaching me eye contact. I did not know anything about autism and I thought he was trying to bully me and wondered why he was using such a strange technique.

When the TV Series "Bones" came on in the mid late 2000's I did relate to the character and read the character probably has Aspergers. I did see the connection and concluded I probably had it but that mild interest is as far as it went. I still had the mentality I grew up with. Psychology, specifically looking into oneself is a female thing. It was really "crazy" people needed to do or something wealthy people with too much time on their hands did. Therefore I had no idea of the importance of it. When I was in college in the late 1970's 90+ percent of the psychology majors were girls.

I started taking it seriously after "Autistic meltdown" followed by sibling intervention.

I don't like to think of myself as autistic

The whole low and high functioning makes me uncontrollable and I don't know where I fit so I would rather not associate with it much. In real life anyway.

I think PTSD is pretty undeniable right now though,

I still can't accept I have it. When I was in high school, I didn't really like to consider my AS as a disability. My mom on the other hand didn't agree. I got offended when people that knew me said I had autism instead of AS. I also got mad when my mom picked on me for doing certain things and mentioned autism. It just reminded me that I was different even though I didn't want to me. Ignorance really is bliss. I've been dealing with my diagnosis for 10 years. I don't want to admit I have a disability still. Even in high school I didn't want to have any accomodations. I was ashamed and I didn't want to be different. I didn't take an extra time on the SAT either or in my freshman year of college. I would look at certain traits I have and wonder if I did indeed have AS. Other times I would look at other traits, realize I don't have them and wonder if I do have AS. Or even I would look at traits I have that seemed so unique to me and wouldn't be sure if I had AS or if I had some secret syndrome because I was scared no one else had them.