"It's All in Your Mind"

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If you want to be sure she will never talk to you again make the following snide remark.

Ask how she can be so sure about your autism, after all maybe she just convinced herself autism isn't real, I mean that is what she claims right that you can convince yourself of anything.

I would advice against this though, but that is the first thing that popped into my mind, as it reminded me of all the people who have been like this towards me in the past, and sadly I've never convinced any of them.

When I was in college I had a teacher who did not believe I had ADD ( did not have my autism diagnosis back then) and went out of his way to let me know about this many times.

One time he told my fellow project members he would fail me on my personal evaluation because of my "behavior", the other people I made the project with told me this before the presentation, and needless to say I verbally beat the crap out of him about it during those 30 minutes, with a voice that almost sounded like he had to cry a little he yelled we all passed and had to get out of his face.

Still every time I have to do this it hurts, because I do not understand why people can be this biased and ignorant about disabilities.

Reading your story makes me sad, and I hope you find a way to salvage the relation, but in any case know this, you did not do anything wrong by sharing it.

And the thing with people is that they sometimes need to experience something before they believe it is real, like how people judge others who have a depression and say they are overreacting.

When I read the thread title I was like "Dur". It is all in the mind.

It's not completely of course, sensitivity issues with touch, smells, noise and such are external influences.

But the mind processes ALL information. So one could say truthfully that everything in the world is how the mind perceived it to be. Think colour blind people. The world IS, what you perceive it to be.

Unfortunately the woman you describe is not uncommon within society.

Funny thing is, if her nephew is completely closed off and non verbal, he probably has classic Autism rather than Asperger Syndrome.

And its not all in our heads (psychological) , its all in our brains (neurological).

Higgie, it sounds to me like she has repressed anger issues and bitterness. I thought about it more and I am not convinced that it's about you at all. You just happen to be a target right in her path. Try not to take it personally if you can.

@OP:

My grandmother is that way. She honestly thinks that my AS is a lifestyle choice, despite people telling and showing her otherwise.
I've also run into people online who think the same thing as well. The problem is, these kinds of people have never had any kind of problem remotely like ours, so they can't posibly understand what we go through or why.

It's kind of like describing color to a man who's been blind his whole life, or for that matter describing blindness to someone who can see perfectly fine. It's not posible because they have no frame of reference.

The worst part about it is, people who think this stuff is "all in our head", think they know better because other than that, they perceive us as being "normal". They know nothing of neurology, and their observation is completely based on how they themselves react to stimuli.

People are unable to think the way we do, so they only know if something is offensive to us if we tell them that it is. I think if nothing else, you may wish to make clear, what was offensive and why. They won't understand a lot of it, but at least the effort is being made and they can actually see effort, and in turn they see the difficulty in expressing this sort of thing as well, if you have that kind of difficulty.

In any case, I wish you well.

My other favorite is "everyone has that" to x-autism behavior, I got that last night at a gathering regarding my difficulties holding a conversation, typically I don't have conversations, its not like I don't know what a conversation is, I just don't know what to freaking talk about so I don't say anything at all.

Jaden-

Awesome response.

If someone is unpleasant to you, then that's enough reason to distance. Whatever causes her to act in such an unfriendly, unpleasant, intolerant, controlling way is none of your business. As KOR said above: the best you can do about this person is make sure you don't waste any time or energy on her and use your resources for things / humans with better prospects.

I guess my Asperger's is all in my mind, but so is my consciousness and everything I think and feel. This is basically just a phrase that people use to selectively tell other people to act more like a robot and less like a human in certain situations, because their human thoughts and feelings are stupid and irrational. People indirectly telling you that you should act more like a robot and less like a human, is kind of like them telling you that they wish your mind was dead and replaced with artificial intelligence, and if your mind is dead that technically means that you are dead, so technically they wish that you were dead, which is synonymous with hating you.

Sharp

Just respond to "It's all in your mind" with "Yes, as is all subjective experience". Done.

Color, an example brought up earlier in the thread, is also a figment of the mind. There is no such real thing as blue. That is simply how our minds interpret signals it receives, from sensors in our eyes that are activated by a fairly narrow band of frequencies of EMR. But blue isn't a thing. It is purely a subjective experience. Much the same goes for all the other senses, merely signals received and process "All in the mind" and converted therein into a complete, or somewhat complete, subjective experience of reality.

The pain someone feels if they get their arm torn off brutally would be 'all in the mind' too. But, no one says that to the guy screaming because his arm just got torn off. They'd be quickly identified as a cold heartless unfeeling a**hole if they did.

But to someone who cannot feel pain, how would you describe in terms they could even begin to process what pain is, why it should be avoided, why it causes so much misery... how could you explain to them that people experiencing chronic pain often slip into depression and sorrow? Or explain how someone could be so terrified to experience agonizing traumas? You can't. They'd have to possess a mighty powerful imagination to be able to follow wtf you were even talking about, and they'd never fully understand anyway unless they could experience it for themselves too.

Unimaginative people, those are the worst at this issue. They simply lack the capacity to imagine a subjective reality different from their own. I have a fairly adept imagination, and it isn’t possible for me to “actually” know what are people experience, though I can do a decent job simulating it, I’ll never “really” experience life like anyone else does, ever. But that is true for us all, really. We can imagine “possible” differences, and guess what those differences could mean, but it is an unknowable thing, the mind of another.