So I got my formal diagnosis this week. It was a relief to have the psychiatrist tell me I'm not "a bad person / curmudgeon / slacker" like I'd been hearing for decades (I'm late 30s M), but rather that I have an invisible disability.
And then I told friends and family. And then the polite/cheerful-and-indrect-but-persistent dismissing started:
- "this changes nothing about you, you can do anything you set your mind to"
- "you managed to (work full-time / live independently) before, which means you can do it now"
- "you know, my friend so-and-so has ADHD and for years she didn't do things 'because of her ADHD' but turns out, she was just lazy - don't let this limit you"
- "you know, when I worked at X Company, one of my favorite coworkers was Asperger's - and he did really well, full-time work, good salary, had a family..."
...And so on. Basically, some version of "you're fine, we don't believe you genuinely struggle, sounds kinda like you're looking for an excuse to slack off / not push yourself".
Now I'm not saying someone IS their disorder - of course there's things that make you, you. But the way many people seem to treat 'high-functioning' autism seems to veer towards the other end of the spectrum (no pun intended): believing it's ALL you and your disorder plays no role and in no way limits you.
And that's exactly what the psychiatrist who diagnosed me brought up: all those other previous diagnoses of "Major Depressive Disorder", "Generalized Anxiety Disorder", etc, were likely not accurate and often what gets people with Asperger's feeling like crap, is the constant invalidation of their struggles.
She said it's kind of a double-edged sword to be in that part of the spectrum because there's this apparent competence that gets people believing you're fine and just exaggerating/being a drama queen. "It's like with ducks", she said "they look fine above the surface but nobody sees the feet paddling like crazy underneath. And if you don't know how ducks work, you'll assume they're just chilling".
And that felt like a perfect description of what I've been going through for 15+ years: I push myself far beyond my natural limits, OVERfunction to keep up with the normies (study, get a FT job, make friends, keep the house reasonably clean/tidy, etc), and this is seen as proof that "Ant can do X, he's fine - just melodramatic". Meanwhile the invisible effort guts me from the inside out - constant severe depression and anxiety, suicidal thoughts (when I was younger, not anymore), regular bouts of burnout that get me bed-ridden for days/weeks at a time...just to do what most would consider the bare basics of adulting.
But since I'm not sitting in a corner eating paper and not talking, people decide I'm "fine" and "just making excuses" when I struggle to sustain the effort.
I'm not saying I plan on using "sorry lol - I'm autistic" to get out of everything, but when I hit my limit (which seems to be significantly below the average person's), I want to be practical and fair with myself instead of pushing on and paying a massive, disproportionate price every time.
Is this A Thing most of you/us deal with, and does it get less irritating over time?