Good morning everyone,
Has anyone else had difficulty with partners and immediate family exhibiting every behaviour of denial possible about your diagnosis ?
I'm autism level 1, (aka Aspergers). The realisation that the diagnosis is based in truth and evidence of the diagnosis and my personal history is and has been a massively challenging gut-punch of personal disappointment and a feeling of having let myself down personally for so long and not having been able to modify my behaviour with all the help possible for so long.
It was a 5 year wait for my diagnosis and I'm now just into my 50's so I have a real sense of lost time and opportunity to have been able to do something more positive and change for the better and learn better coping mechanisms. My previous counsellor self-declared no knowledge of autism - whom i've seen on and off since my 30's feels like a real unfortunate and opportunity missed.
Anyway, my partner is really struggling with the diagnosis.
I've shared all the reading, books, diagnosis, my evidence report, learnings and counselling thoughts. This seems to cut no mustard.
Most of our communication breakdowns are centred around my tendency to seek facts and explanations and understanding - which wholly comes from a good place.
Her very strong belief is that it comes from a place of egocentric narcissism and a sense of privilege and that I'm not autistic. Her continued denial of my diagnosis allows her to support her theory of me being a narcissistic domestic abuser.
Whilst I'm well aware of the overlap between traits of autism and narcissism - and how things like strong questioning of the facts and establishing truth can be very demanding - for autistic individuals it's very important to be aware that this comes from a place of positive intent, and to remove uncertainty and confusion and to establish grounding and truth. (whilst a narcissist would want to establish ego and sense of superiority).
If she accepts the diagnosis - it destroys her long held belief about me, and then that would force her to change her own self perspective and how she behaves and understands these (poor) communications and also fundamentally - what sort of person I am as well as assess what sort of person she is. And that would be difficult.
She's currently on another popular support forum casting doubt on the clinical diagnosis process - which frankly is horrendous to witness, as well as the support she is encouraging. I have not mentioned this yet to her.
So - anyone else had experience of family denial about their diagnosis and what did you do to help get them onside ?
All experiences and thoughts greatly appreciated.