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New Diagnosis - I'm ok about it - Family in denial

Sinclair ZX80

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.



  • in reply to Alan

    Thank you Alan, 
    And well done on getting your diagnosis and moving forwards with it. You sound like a great team and I can only express my envy of the support you're giving and having together.

    Yes - my relationship is quite different, and has been downhill since 2016 which from my side of the garden fence has seen my wife crippled by anxiety brought on by early peri-menopause that has only *just* been diagnosed and *not quite enough* HRT taken on through this last year. The effect of that is new clarity of thinking, but coupled with belief that all previous experiences were real and not tainted by crippling anxiety means to her that the conclusions reached then were completely valid and still are.

    I am finding the additional doubt about my diagnosis deeply painful and hurtful, and it's almost a refusal to want to understand why - as opposed to an ability (it's not as if her engineering degree and MBA mark her down as unable to comprehend things). Hence a pattern of denial and classical blaming and objecting to smaller and smaller points and then changing those points once those disputes have been resolved. Denying like a denying thingy.

    The combination of undiagnosed menopause and undiagnosed ASD is a terrible combination in a relationship, but having someone in denial about both these realities is hard. 
    I'm left with the paradox of being able to show and share all the information that I have, books, support knowledge, my diagnosis evidence, but ultimately they/she has to come to her own conclusions in her own time.

    Her stress coping mechanism has always been conflict avoidant and shutting down, and physically disengage from situations, and this time she's doing the same, just more literally and I recently found out that she has rented a house to move into two months ago, and has been slowly furnishing it and making it comfortable.

    So not only is she in denial, she is literally running away from the whole situation, and I'm stood here feeling somewhat drifting at sea.

    She hasn't fixed a leaving date, I expect I'll find that out by accident too, and in the meantime I can only go about setting healthy boundaries now that I think she's set on leaving ("but only for 6 months") on things like finances/kids/work so expectations are set. How or if it's only 6 months I'll be very surprised, but nobody wants to end up like Ross off Friends and spend the rest of their lives saying "but we were on a break!".

    So again - if anyone knows any websites, explainers, online courses for information that could possibly help my wife to grip the reality and accept my diagnosis - I'd be eternally grateful.

    (PS thanks for the clarification of the terms ASD and Aspergers, I hadn't seen that from the definitions regarding the delayed language on the V5 diagnostic classifications.)

  • Wow, there's a lot to unpack here. I too am late diagnosed, (50). My partner is very much on the journey with me though and supportive. She's been quite the trooper to be honest, encouraging me to seek additional support and understanding through link workers (which she's attended meetings with me) and she was also present during my diagnosis offering evidence to help the assessors come to an informed decision. She does so much for me around the house that I have always struggled with, but now she understands why. 

    The relationship you have sounds quite different, but you will find the community will be incredibly supportive. I've popped on here just because I'm updating my bookmarks, I find the autism community on reddit is more active. The behaviour around attacking the diagnosis seems quite destructive. But we feel your pain, and can only encourage you to seek out your own truths. Dealing with a diagnosis this late on in life is challenging enough, without additional doubt being cast on it. 

    Edit - Also, Aspergers isn't level 1 ASD, many people (in the community) aren't fans of Aspergers because of the history. I thought it was 'Autism lite' pre diagnosis as well, but it's not. My assessor informed me that the only difference is whether you had delayed speech in your early years, if you did, that's ASD. If you did not, that's Aspergers, but like I say, many in the community are trying to move away from the word because of Hans Asperger.