People Doubting your Diagnosis?

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So, I'm fairly decent at making myself come across as NT if I have to (well, better than I used to be at the very least), but I've started to notice a trend whenever I finally do tell someone - usually a close friend, ect. - that I have aspergers.

A good portion of the time when I mention that I have AS, the person stops and asks me something along the lines of 'You mean you really do?' as though I hadn't just said that. I can think of four separate occasions where I've had to clarify that I indeed have been diagnosed before the other person even considers the idea.

I know there are some people out there who claim to have AS to excuse their bad behavior or just plain self diagnosis via internet tests when they clearly don't have the syndrome. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced similar problems with people reacting with general doubt of your sincerity or the assumption that you've just read about the disorder and have a psudo diagnosis?

The only time I ever experienced doubt was when I told my new therapist, Manny Misdiagnosis the Wonder Therapist. But I'll wait him out until I see the actual psychiatrist. I've already been diagnosed AS, and this is just a re-diagnosis for bureaucracy sake, which makes Manny Misdiagnosis's skepticism even more irritating.

I haven't told a lot of people IRL. I don't think I have told a lot of people because of my fear of rejection and disbelief. Everyone I have told has been supportive and has wanted to know more. It actually seems like telling them flips a switch in their head, like they suddenly understand me, like I "make sense" now.

Edit to Add: The majority of these people don't hang out all day on the internet so they aren't exposed to a great number of people who claim to have all sorts of conditions to make themselves seem interesting. They haven't become disillusioned by the nonsense and can actually take another adult at her word, especially if she's been to a psychiatrist for a proper diagnosis. So I believe we may be talking to different groups of people here.

Last edited by wefunction on 20 Feb 2011, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i get doubt a lot from people. my own dad (who admittedly i don't get along with) thinks that i am a hypochondriac, even though I was officially diagnosed. I am pretty high functioning though, so most people think im lying or just being dramatic.

My parents do.

Steffy's experience telling her dad is why I never told my mother, who would have denied it.

I know she would have denied it because when I was in my teens, she decided all my headaches, noise sensitivity, inability to cope with high school (and so on and so on) were because I was having petite mal epileptic seizures. She took me to a neurologist who had me all kinds of tested, determined epilepsy was not a problem and then talked to me for an hour. In talking to me, he suggested to my mother that I see a psychiatrist he gave a referral for, that I needed to be tested for possible Autism and that I could benefit from regular counseling, too. My mother took me running from that office and we never went back. She instructed me to only tell doctors about my headaches and say the noise sensitivity was only during the headaches. She managed to get a neurologist to say I had petite mal epilepsy and I took tegretol for no reason for 2 years.

So, if I had called her to tell her, "I have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. It's a high functioning Autism that explains all of my abnormal behavior since I was born. I'm taking medication now that will help me and I'm in counseling that's specific to my needs." she would have rejected that information based on her own paranoia. It would not have been, "Oh that's great! I'm so glad my daughter is getting help and her life is improving!" It would have been, "Oh no! I was wrong and everyone will now know that I'm imperfect and they will hate me. I must destroy this before anyone else finds out!"

I think a lot of aspies tell people that they really could live without telling. They could spare themselves the aggravation and disappointment. You don't have to be an open book. Every teacher, every co-worker, every neighbor, every friend, every parent, every child... not everyone needs to know. Consider those who are trustworthy and trust in them.

I don't experience doubt, but it does make me angry and frustrated. I hate it when people already have their mind made up about me, saying things like "Oh, well, if you had this, you would've been diagnosed as a kid..." BS. First of all, my family always refused to have me evaluated even though I had obvious issues, I guess because it would've hurt their pride or what the hell ever. Plus it didn't help that AS was virtually unheard of in my area back then. And once I finally figured out how to seek out help for myself as an adult, I happened to get in with one of the shittiest mental health centers imaginable for many years, until only recently I got in with a better one with people who would finally evaluate/diagnose me properly. (Sorry, those of you who may have seen me mention this about 90324782879 times already...)

I have to say, the worst thing of all is probably when I have OTHER ASPIES doubt my diagnosis. It can be very upsetting and disgusting to know you meet the criteria for a syndrome 100%, go for so many years with people in general thinking you're full of s**t, and then to find that a lot of people with the same syndrome even think you're full of s**t, just because you had to figure your condition out yourself before it was confirmed by others.

I KNOW. My son's school psychologist is upset because he's in fifth grade and his AS wasn't diagnosed sooner. He's not blaming me but he's blaming the pediatrician and the previous psychologist at the previous school who did an evaluation and determined he was fine. He said, "How could they have missed this! He's 10 now!!" I had to calm the man down by saying, "I wasn't diagnosed until I was 32. I think 10 is progress."

So many kids slip through the system with a mislabel of being a bad kid... or a shy nerd... or whatever reasoning they want to put on someone who is acting abnormally. That may have been the status quo decades ago but Psychiatric Medicine is catching up and there's no excuse to let kids go undiagnosed now. There's no excuse for the overlooked kids go undiagnosed as adults now, either.

But I'll bet you there's still parents - people in their 20's and 30's - who are afraid of ASD diagnoses and would avoid taking their child to the doctor for help if the school suggested it. At least we can call that ignorance now.

It took me 6 hours of talking to get my parents to accept me having Asperger's. They kept denying it and saying it's because of this or that.

I can't read facial expressions or walk normally or talk normally or hold conversations because I don't go out. Apparently I also was sensitive to noise, smells, taste, touch, and light, because I don't go outside often...

My daughter was recently diagnosed but I've 'known' for a few years. My husband was in denial until a developmental pediatrician told us all the things I had tried telling him for years. In my research for my daughter, I came to realize that the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree. I'm most likely Aspie too. He refuses to acknowledge that possibility. He won't listen to my councel on Asperger's and he refuses to do any research on his own yet feels justified in telling me I am approaching my daughter all wrong. All of my habits and idiocincrasies that he dislikes so much, he believes can be retrained. He thinks I can be 'taught' to think differently and so can my daughter. He doesn't get it and refuses to try to.

You are so very NOT alone!

I don't tell friends unless I know them well enough to know they aren't going to betray me (which for me means you have to prove yourself over the course of at least 5+ years of friendship). I've still had people go "Uh, are you sure you have that? None of those symptoms really sound like you, you're so normal". My favorite one though (no sarcasms here) was a friend who went "Wow, you'd just need a degree in Comp Science or programming and you'd fit right in in my workplace. I'm pretty sure half the people I work with have AS", that guy I do love, he not only knew what it was and had no problems believing I had it but he also knew it didn't mean I was stupid or incompetent.

Health care professionals I don't like to tell but apparently you do have to, even if it means they will either flat out believe you're lying or believe you're barely capable of tying your own shoes, let alone be able to hold an intelligent conversation. But yeah, in situations where we've had to disclose it people have either dismissed it as something that I couldn't possibly have, or they treated me like I was completely ret*d and had no opinions of my own (or my opinions could be swayed by talking to me like a very slow 5 year old and promise me sweets).

I have never had anyone doubt my diagnoses except for online. I don't tell people is why. I have never had doctors or therapists question it to my face.

It's generally not something I go around telling people. My family, who would have a difficult time believing I didn't have it, knows, obviously, my roommate, who thinks it's entirely irrelevant, one friend I've known for 15 years, who it's entirely irrelevant to for entirely different reasons (his mom actually has it), a classmate who seemed shocked as his only familiarity to came from watching "My Name is Khan", one therapist, two therapists who did seem to doubt me momentarily...but only momentarily, and learning disabilities specialist who's momentary skepticism was broken under the weight of the file on the desk containing my test results.

People just aren't familiar with adults with AS, or women in particular.

I've told three people in real life - counting my therapist. None of the three doubted me.

I've told several people online. The NTs tend to doubt me with a few exceptions. The autistic people who know me tend to agree with me. Three (one NT, two autistics) told me they'd suspected all along.

I'm not counting anyone on this forum except probably Pensieve, whom I talked to first - although I didn't really know her at the time.

Almost everyone is surprised. I get a lot of "Really?" and "I never would have guessed" and "Wow, you don't seem autistic". Only a few people have directly said they doubt the diagnosis, though. A couple of people have made comments along the lines of "They'll diagnose anyone these days". One person actually went so far as to insist that I did not have Asperger's. I do seem like a shy, awkward NT most of the time, so I can more or less understand the surprise. It's the skepticism that bothers me, especially since the most doubting comments (like the person who was adament that I was an NT) come from people who hardly know me.

I'm in the same boat as everybody whose parents didn't seek a diagnosis of AS for them during their childhood years. Many parents don't want to consider that their child is in any way "different" from other kids, god forbid autistic (even if it's mild, like AS). Yeah, seeking a diagnosis might hurt a mother and/or father's pride.

Only a few people close to me (immediate family) doubt my AS diagnosis.

"Where did we go wrong?"

Ouch.

Oops:

I floated the idea by my mother recently, and she immediately denied it as completely impossible.

Now that my therapist has said that she thinks I could easily get a diagnosis, I think I need to bring it up again, so she'll stop telling me I have a ptsd-related emotional shutdown.

My mother also brags about my early reading, my early speech, refers to my echolalia as cute, and brags about how I was an easy baby (I only cried when I was hungry).

She loves to tell stories about my hyperlexic faux pas, as well.

Last edited by Verdandi on 21 Feb 2011, 3:51 am, edited 1 time in total.