incredibly unsupportive response to diagnosis.

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I just ended a many years long friendship with someone after the following conversation

me: I now know I have autism,

him: Is it formally diagnosed

me: goes into long diatribe about how the puzzle pieces never fit before, my time spent in special ed, my inability to make friends, make eye contact, read facial expressions, my need for verbal scripts, to know how to react in situations, my hand flapping, my rocking, my tire spinning, my sensitivity to pain, sounds light and caffiene.
MY melt downs getting so focused on something i would have an accident and piss my pants (lol i mean as a kid)
my need for routine
NEED for routine
not a preference, a need.
how it all finally just fits and my past history of misery and social isolation finally make some damn sense

him: completely dismissive, yah yah you dont have a diagnosis.


sigh

id love to be wrong.
ID LOVE TO BE WRONG and be NT
please god let me be wrong

I'm not.

I'm Autistic.

Some people react poorly to hearing someone's on the spectrum, and what sounds really rude and dismissive isn't intended to be that way. They actually think they're being supportive by dismissing it. Similar to if I told a friend I was ugly and they said "oh no, you're nice looking".

Maybe it would be worth giving him some time for it to "sink in" and talk more frankly about it.

It is the same BS reason which motivated me to seek a professional diagnosis just so that would permanently silence similarly unsupportive responses I had encountered and would encounter in the future. Apparently society has this pervasive attitude that patients cannot come to any conclusions on their own and any opinion that doesn't come from a doctor's mouth is worthless and automatically invalidated.

If you can travel to Burlington you can go to the clinic I originally got assessed at for a formal Aspergers/ASD assessment. It was only 4 1hr appointments for $145 each to get a formal diagnosis. I later used the diagnosis I got from this assessment to participate in an autism research study at St Joseph's in my city for which I underwent the most comprehensive autism assessment available which woulda been $3500+, I got done for free.

http://www.autismsteppingstones.com/index.html

The wait lists for publicly funded autism assessments for adults(if you are an adult) can be ridiculously long and a pain to get a referral to as you need to get a referral from a doctor and most doctors don't understand autism, hence the problem and the solution of paying out of pocket.

That sounded like a tough and toxic situation, no one knows themselves better than themselves, really. Thankful that most of my family have been accepting over my own diagnosis. However, my older sister recently has taken on one-up manship tendencies around me whenever the topic of ASD is risen by my parents against my wishes, as I'm following through with a decision not to personally bring it up outside of the internet. Though I want the people around me to respect my silence on the topic, I also don't want them to feel they can disrespect the hard facts should someone else mention Aspergers, with any luck my sister will learn. You deserve more respect from your friend.