I dont have AS and I need to get it together?

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I phrased the title in the form of a question because that is what people usually tell me to do. But I don't believe it nor do I think that people with AS or similar don't work hard, it's just what a lot of "neurotypical" people tell me.

So after years of knowing someone I try to explain to them what ASDs are. Usually I'm told that there's nothing wrong with me, that I'm just extremely eccentric and sometimes a bit dumb, and that I'm horrible with talking to people, or a bunch of other things. I have always kept in my mind the possibility that these "disorders" are truly meant to categorize people for ease and aren't real, and that we're just people with different mindsets, but some, if not many, of the problems I've experienced throughout my life have been disregarded as laziness or stupidity. I've been told to "work harder".

Perhaps I AM just spoilt, and these "meltdowns" are just me trying to "manipulate others using my lack of empathy and my horrible cruel narcissistic tendencies to show others dominance and try to take over other peoples lives", I mean, I would have no way of knowing. Who cares what the psychologists say (According to my accusers)? But in all honesty I don't mean that, again, this is what people tell me, not what I think myself. I disagree with all of what I just wrote as examples. I'm just so confused, I feel lost in a world where I stand out, but everyone refuses to acknowledge me as unfortunately (sometimes fortunately) different and try to force me into them only to result in horrible consequences (such as that spoiled angry little child thing I mentioned above).

So what are your thoughts? Have you ever had this happen? How do you deal with it, and IF you get doubting thoughts, are you ever afraid that you are just a failure without any reason, and that all the meltdowns and ruined friendships and speech impediments and clumsiness and all the rest are just being a giant spoiled narcissistic man-child? I don't mean this to offend or criticize anyone, only the issue of this post, just as a disclaimer.

My mother contradicts my diagnoses. She has told me I have AS and then told me I didn't have it and I only had symptoms and not enough for a diagnoses but was given it for my education. Then it was I only have anxiety and then my mom has told me again I do have AS and also telling me I have a learning disability and now she says I just have anxiety. She told me the AS diagnoses didn't fit and I only have symptoms but then she says I just have anxiety so it makes it confusing. So either my mom is losing her memory or I am just crazy and imaging my childhood and I must have been a terrible child and all my failures were my fault. She even accused me of putting the aspie label on myself when in fact I was diagnosed with it so I didn't put it on myself. Maybe she means when I was trying to be normal, I made it worse for myself and that is what got me the diagnoses. But what I don't understand is if you don't think your kid has it, why even tell them they do? I asked her about this and she denied it saying "I never told you you were true Asperger's" No she didn't tell me that in 6th grade or 7th grade or 8th grade. She also told me anxiety and OCD were part of AS so when she would mention my anxiety, I thought she was talking about autism, same as for OCD but she was using different labels for my condition. Plus I never really thought about my AS diagnoses until everyone started to make a big deal about it. Then my mom wonders why I "put this label on myself."

In high school I felt I wasn't aspie enough to be taken seriously about my problems so I was to suffer and this only happened at home. I was too aspie to be normal but not aspie enough to be a real aspie. She even thought I was trying to be aspie and telling me to be me than AS made zero sense because that is like telling someone to be themselves but don't try and be (insert their mental illness here or medical condition or mental illness here). You can't really separate them from the person. I was also going through this stage that lot of aspies seem to go through, who am I and what part of me is fake or real? after you have been changing your whole life and trying to be a different person. I know now that finding out about AS does not mean drop all the skills you have learned to be normal. Maybe that is what my mom meant by don't try to be Asperger's. She didn't want me to regress and then use AS as an excuse. But I also feel she used it against me too. She even tried to tell me I tried to be AS in 6th grade and junior high and my reaction to that is WTF, how is that possible if I knew nothing about it then? So I feel she used it against me because of that comment.

My mom also says there is nothing wrong with me but yet she has admitted to me in the past she knew I had something and when I asked her how come she didn't tell me about having ADD and other conditions I had been diagnosed with when I asked why I was so different and what was wrong with me and she said she didn't know what was wrong with me. To her I just come off as ignoring my own children and self absorbed and not caring what people think. These were her comments and she also says I am in a rush. I am an adult now so I don't think she tries to understand me anymore so it's not her place to figure me out like she did when I was a kid and plus she is in her 60's. Because I look normal and don't look all that different or act all that different, I come off as self absorbed and like I don't care and having a hissy fit and having an addictive personality. Those were her words too about me. She also thinks I can just stop it and has told me so to my face and I really wanted to tell her what was the point in the diagnoses then if I could just stop it, get rid of my IEPs and my aides because I can just stop it. Punish me for not doing my school work and for failing my grades and not trying hard enough because I could just stop it. What was the point in a diagnoses then if I could just stop it? I could just get through school on my own without an IEP since I could stop it. Maybe she meant I can control the symptoms and keep them inside and to myself and not let them out imposing it on other people. Or maybe she meant I can overcome it and get better if I keep working at it or maybe she meant I will get better once all the anxiety goes away and I am passed my teen years. Or maybe she meant when my anxiety is gone, my AS is gone but that never made sense because I have still experienced learning disability and still have taken things literal or had a hard time working in groups when I wasn't even anxious and I have still been mistaken as being slow or incompetent or ret*d when I was fine and I wasn't anxious at the time. When my mom saw this one woman treating me like I was ret*d, my mom thought she was a weird woman and I told her that was how I was treated when I was a kid and a teenager. Like that by other kids so obviously that lady had never left high school.


How I deal with all this, I quit attending my autism group because I was feeling like a fraud. Though my husband says I am not a fraud and AS was the best they could do for a diagnoses that was the closest that fit me. Maybe I just have a condition that has not been discovered yet. I did actually write a document about it about a fictional disorder I made up and wrote about how it affects children with it when in fact I was writing about me. But sadly I can't just claim to have that disorder because it doesn't exist and only doctors can make up conditions. No one will take it seriously if I say I have (insert my last name here) Syndrome because they will google it and no such results will pop up. Think of how aspies lived before they even knew they had AS and how they described themselves without knowing what they had. But too bad there are no groups out there for people who have disorders but don't fit in any DSM box. But in the end I just say Asperger's is just a label because if we get so hung up on them, we will drive ourselves crazy and go accusing each other of lying about being autistic because some of us don't fit into a perfect box so we were given a diagnoses because it was the best they could do. It's like me describing my car as being the color purple because no other such color exists to describe that color and even violet doesn't fit but it's the closest match for my car color. But if someone decided to get so hung up on color labels, I would just say "Dude it's just a label."

My boyfriend is one of those people that are on the fence as to whether psychology and mental illnesses are real. It's really frustrating. He's never struggled with any depression or disorder and can't comprehend that some people aren't like him.

Before I knew I had ASD he would sometimes complain that I was trying to control him. I wasn't. I was trying to control myself and my life. He does understand that now though. He gets that I can't control all of my actions like a NT can.

I think it's hard for people to GET us and have compassion because we are so behind closed doors and not out there making ourselves heard.

I appreciate and can relate to both responses.

From more research, because I was slightly disappointed by my encounters with rude people in my life I jumped to post this immediately as soon as I logged on, I found that there seems to be a large number of people who have the same dilemma as we do.

I have pretty noticeable communication deficits. I can speak well, and I would say my passion for specific subjects is massive. When I talk about things I know or I'm with someone who's personality I like, I get very calm and I can annunciate everything well, as well as very cheerful and extroverted (but I'm not sure when this is too much).

But when with any other people, or people that I find upsetting or rude, I shut down. I just become cold and disliking towards them. I do this to a lot of people. I'm very sensitive but I feel like I have justified and logical reasons. An example of a "justified and logical reason" is this: When someone gives me constructive criticism, and I don't know them, and it wouldn't benefit them in any way, then what is their other motive? For example.

I don't know if this is my ego or I am justified to want to believe this but I sometimes fear that I am just stupid because I can't pass any of my exams, I can't keep up in the education system, I have erroneous speech construction and I can't keep ANY relationship. Perhaps if it's not AS then what is it? I don't like being told I, and I quote from other people "just need to work a little bit harder than everyone else because I'm moderately delayed." People, my IQ is 152, and these SAME people saw my scores yet they still think I'm slow. How does this society thing work?!