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I was once told by a therapist that I can’t be autistic because I’m married, not quite obsessive enough over my interests, and was teaching college classes at the time.
Proceed to talk for 3 hours about the train unloading and smelter setups I made in Factorio.
And to his horror, Luke proceeded to name every train ever made.
By SERIAL NUMBER AND PATENT!
So… You guys want to talk about fire alarm systems?
Do you know how many different types of trains there are?
Let me talk to you about why we need more trains
Not exactly the same, but I had a psychiatrist who said that because I was able to laugh I couldn’t have depression. Like??
Same. My therapist told me “you don’t look depressed”.
I’ve been told I don’t look autistic. You should see them collapsing when I ask them what autism looks like
I had a similar conversation with a date a few weeks ago. I told her that I am getting tested for autism in a few weeks.
“You don’t seem autistic.”
Then spent the next 15 minutes talking about Magic: The Gathering cards. She was very to forgiving and said, “Oh. I get it now.”
I’d be so happy if a psych would spend 15 minutes talking to me about ISO8601 timestamps or IPv6.
That and also not being diagnosed at all because the psychiatrist gives you the reasons listed in the dialogue at the bottom. Yeah…
To be fair, the psychiatrist is deciding whether or not to diagnose you with a disorder. And it’s only a disorder if it causes significant negative impacts to your function in daily life. If you’re managing to cope with it so well that your life is entirely on-track, then you might have a condition, but you don’t have a disorder.
I tried multiple times to come up with a purely positive comment since there’s enough negativity out there, and these sort of situations is why I tend not to use any form of social media, but this is the best I can do.
You felt the need to comment about a situation you have literally zero knowledge of, about a psychiatrist you have zero knowledge of, and about my experience you also have zero knowledge of.
To have the difficulties (as defined in the DSMV-TR for the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum) in this society is inherently disabling and a struggle to navigate. Period, end of story. That I’m not on the ground crying and nonverbal 24/7 does not invalidate this. The internal struggles are the same. She, as well as too many others, invalidate the whole concept of Autism by falsely claiming everyone struggles with these things. That was the whole point. They don’t. If you do struggle with these things then ipso facto, you’re Autistic by definition.
As far as levels or “significant negative impact,” it’s subjective and best decided by those that are dealing with those negative impacts as to the severity of them.
“Everyone’s a little bit autistic”
“You’re too normal to be autistic”
Litterly my coworkers used that first one… It annoys me so much. “We are all not normal here”
“Yes Janine. We all pee everyday. But can you understand the difference between peeing everyday and peeing so often each day that it disrupts other parts of your daily life?”
I swear I’m gonna use this next time I hear “everyone is a bit autistic”.
