Just selfish?

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Recently I told my mother I was in autism spectrum, she said people with autism are "just selfish", and the wife isn't much better.

It seems to me that normal people without experience or training about mental illness just seem to play ideas like mental illness like pieces in a chess game.

"Your childhood was unhappy! No my childhood was unhappier than yours." Things simply become a game and even though you were trying to inform people as to the actual state of your thoughts and feeling your mind simply becomes trivialized.

Does my experience sync with other people out there and if so how did you deal with this considerable problem?

I think a lot of AS behavior comes across as selfish, though I don't believe that is often the *motivation.* I think it's worse when someone is high-functioning and doesn't always "look autistic." It's more obvious that people who have a lower level of functioning have a problem, so people expect them to act (or not act) a certain way. But those who don't "seem autistic" just get it all blamed on character flaws.

I suppose I'm pretty high functioning in a way but I have no friends and am incapable of making any.

How can I communicate this experience to people without sounding like simply a failure.

For me autism has become an important way to explain the narrative of my life to myself and to other people.

But I'm meeting with some considerable resistance from my family members.

I am not diagnosed. But, in my experience, mentioning ASD-stuff as it *may* pertain to me really makes no difference. If someone has already accepted me as I am, then they are interested in what I have to say about it (partly because they'd be interested in *anything* I had to talk about because they've accepted *me.*) But, if someone hasn't REALLY accepted me or keeps me at a distance, then they will blow off anything I have to say about how ASD-stuff might affect my interaction with them.

My relationship with my husband is very good, so as I did research I would share with him what I found. We would laugh A LOT about it because some things I did were matching up SO MUCH with what I found it is was ironically funny. We watched a Youtube of a video of a young woman (early 20s) who was diagnosed and my husband said it was like going back in time seeing how I was when I was her age. He, along with me, saw how much ASD made sense.

Would your wife be willing to look at research?

Your mother is your mother. I think the family members you grew up with can be the hardest people to talk about it with because they have their set notions about who you are and who you were growing up. It is hard for them to re-frame their ideas about why you are the way you are. I don't think it is a matter of just being "blown off", rather it requires them to make some serious adjustments in their thinking. That can just be too hard for some people.

My mother works with kids on the autism spectrum, along with kids with other disorders. When I mentioned I might be on the spectrum (and my dad as well), at first she said "no way." Then, the next day she said, "You know, you might be onto something..." But, she already had a frame of reference because she works with these kids. My sister, on the other hand, reacted by saying "no way. That's not it." She didn't think my reasons for thinking I was on the spectrum were valid, but neither could she explain why I have so many difficulties with making friends.

My parents are more accepting of me than my sister. But neither does my sister "reject" me. We get along but are just not that close. This is the same sister who, while we were growing up, repeatedly told me how weird I was and that I would make a terrible mother, who got frustrated with me for not liking to play dolls and always wanting to be the teacher while playing "school", and who wouldn't ever play outside with me. I was a tomboy and she was a girly-girl. People have remarked (family members and others) how amazing it is that two such different people could grow up in the same household.

You're right about the idea adjustment thing, its a tough ask for some people. Seems like things are good for you in your family situation maybe I can eventually get that in due time.

Older generations have different ideas about things. I am 58. When I grew up men were supposed to figure things out and deal with them by themselves. If you "burdened" other people with your problems, that was considered selfish.

That was then, this is now. Many things that were considered charactor flaws now have diagnostic labels and are accepted. And people are much more open about thier problems. Many in my generation feel that these labels are excuses or ways doctors and drug manufacturers are fooling people so they can make a profit. In many cases that is what these labels are. In other cases like the autism spectrum or LBGT the label is truly a result of new understandings. It is easy to take the truth that there is made up labels and use that fact characterize all new labels as fake or political correctness. Unfortunately because of the massive increase in diagnoses and the fact that autism is such a wide spectrum, Autism has become symbolic of labels that are given to too many people and to used make excuses.

Of course some people in every generation are just stubborn and closed minded.

I had a great childhood. In fact, I didn't want to grow up.

I never did give a hoot about what other people said, did or thought. Perhaps that's why I'm so well adjusted. LOL.

Live your life and make yourself happy - and please don't give a damn about what others think because, what the hell would they know anyway!

I am running into issues that are along this area. The idea of things as being selfish when suffering is really strange. My daughter thought suicide was a selfish act until I talked to her about what it felt like at the time of attempting suicide.

And, if what I am learning is correct, we may appear selfish due to communications issues. Also, harsh, mean or just something out of the blue.

And, then I have to remind myself that I am just as much a mystery to them as I am to them. I have no grounding in their experiences and they have none in my experiences.

And, everything that ASPartOfMe is true. Generational differences do color things. And it seems to get bollixed up from both directions. But even that doesn't explain the population at large and how it's being perceived.

There's the usual explanation that autistic folks are more self-centred (hence the name autistic) than selfish, that we might seem selfish because of our mind-blindness, pathological honesty and social ineptitude. The other thing that occurs to me is that mainstream society itself could well be considered rather selfish, so I'm not sure what standard our accusers are measuring us by. How many people on higher-than-average incomes do you know who willingly and consistently hand back the whole of the excess to the poor? How many employers give their factories to the workforce? May as well accuse a person of breathing as accuse them of being selfish, in the vast majority of cases.

We do appear selfish and disrespectful sometimes but it is not because we are. Well some people might be but that has nothing to do with being Autistic. I was blamed for deliberately disrespecting people that I did not even know were there. People said my body language disrespected them. I have no idea what my body language was, or who they were or when it happened or what happened. I know that I was dealing with a lot of personal stresses and a couple of painful injuries so I was probably more tense than usual in my muscles. I think a lot of times we get blamed for bad social things like selfishness or disrespect and we have no idea that anything is going on.

As far as your family, the best thing they can do is to become educated about what Autism Spectrum is and what it is not. If they are not familiar with Autism, and it's pretty obvious that they are not, then they have no right to judge Autistic people. That is what I would tell them. That's like saying all black people are filthy because they have brown skin so it must be dirt making their skin dark. I would tell them that they have no basis for making any comments about Autism until they learn what it is.

I've never been called selfish, but I can definitely relate to the naivety of people without mental health conditions (and even those with).

The simple trick I've learned is to test people with small amounts of info, gauge their reactions, then decide whether they are worth the full convo on the subject or not. Most of the time, I don't openly talk to people about my issues, and if I do, it's certainly limited and not at length.

Trouble is, you end up never talking to people, but it's kind of easier that way. There is a balance to be struck. Those without mental health conditions can't relate, and when they can, it's only through similar experience, or something they've seen/read. My wife can barely understand my issues, and the only times she has is when she watched a movie with some autistic-like main character, and then she's thought "that's like you".

I totally understand your feelings when you said "Your childhood was unhappy! No my childhood was unhappier than yours.", that's my mum all over right there, lol. I've come to learn that her opinions have zero impact on my physical life, so why worry about it.

I don't expect anybody to understand. I am pleasantly surprised when they do understand. I don't tell people unless I absolutely have to. I tell my supervisors at work. I tell potential girlfriends. I tell close friends. That's it.

I don't think people with ASD are selfish. I suspect that the problem comes about because we get things wrong socially quite a bit (well I certainly do) and this can cause problems for others. I think, for me anyway, sometimes I do or say things which seem selfish when my motivation is quite the opposite.

I saw an interesting scientific talk on YouTube the other day about the difference between psychopaths and autistics. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZxfeA8thjc) Basically they said that psychopaths (the ultimate selfish people) are really good at cognitive and motor empathy (which means they can work out what others are feeling pretty accurately and perform appropriate empathic responses with their bodies when they want to,). But they foudn that they are bad at emotional empathy - which is having emotional feeling for others when you know they are sad / lost or whatever. They said that autistic people seems to be the opposite - bad at figuring out what's going on for other people and bad at making their bodies do a response which is helpful, but really good at emotional empathy, so when an autistic person knows someone else is feeling unhappy they really care. In fact the research seems to show that many people with ASD have the capacity to almost fuse with another person's pain when they understand that it's happening.

This seems to say that the reason people sometimes think autistic people are selfish is because autistic people often fail to realise what someone else is feeling and when they do realise they find performing the appropriate response difficult. This is misunderstanding and neurological difficulty though, not selfishness. In feeling terms autistic people appear to be very compassionate.

I do know how you feel when people are dismissive or negative about a diagnosis. My experience is that they sometimes do and say these things because they need time to understand and process what you've discovered.

I do hope your situation resolves with time.