Published on 12, July, 2020
When someone does this, what's the word?
I can't get it into my head.
Anyway, I was with a family member recently and she said these things to me:
There's no way your sister is autistic (I believe that my sister is).
She doesn't show a single trait.
I described my sister's sensitivities and communication difficulties.
The family member said that she'd worked for 5 years with autistic children (dismissing my own knowledge).
She said that children are frequently misdiagnosed with autism when it's just trauma etc.
I said to her that in older women it manifests quite differently from children.
She patronised me by explaining bias when completing the questionnaires - I said I knew about this but autistic people are very unlikely to complete the questionnaire with answers that were going to lead to a diagnosis, simply because that's how are brains are wired - to be honest and accurate but I think she was basically saying that this is what I had done when I completed the RAADS-R as part of my diagnostic assessment.
She said back to me that autism is a lifelong condition - you don't suddenly develop it!
I said I know that and tried to explain about masking without hitting her.
I had to shut up because I was getting very annoyed.
It was quite clear she was telling me I'm not autistic either.
This is very much playing on my mind.
Do you have similar experiences and/or do you get 'imposter syndrome'?
Some people need to wind their necks in and your relative is one of them, as autism being recognised in women and girls is quite a recent thing, espcially how differently women express autism, I don't see how your relatives experience with children is relevant. Maybe she has experience of children who suffer badly with autism and have other conditions too, but that does not invaliate you or your sister's experience or diagnosis. What's in it for psychologists and others to over diagnose or ignore the obvious? Underdiagnosis has been the case for such a long time, I'm sure there are some bad apples among those who diagnose autism just as there are in any profession. It sounds to me as if you relative has what I've termed diagnosis envy, where neurotypicals want what they see as the attention given to those with a diagnosis of something, autism or anything really. I agree that you were being gaslit.
I do get imposter syndrome, probably because I'm "high functioning", so on the surface I seem "normal". I hate the term High Functioning, because whilst I might be able to do somethings well and can get by in everyday life, there are other things that I can't do, send me into meltdown and where I cannot get by with. I feel it sometimes on here, so many people seem to be so much "worse" than me, that I sometimes feel fraudulent
TheCatWoman said:Some people need to wind their necks in and your relative is one of them
I couldn't agree more
TheCatWoman said:as autism being recognised in women and girls is quite a recent thing, espcially how differently women express autism, I don't see how your relatives experience with children is relevant
I agree, with this and all that you say - thanks.
TheCatWoman said:I hate the term High Functioning, because whilst I might be able to do somethings well and can get by in everyday life, there are other things that I can't do, send me into meltdown and where I cannot get by with
This has come up before in discussion and when I use the term now I use it with inverted commas.
The context of the term of course is within autism - we aren't 'high functioning' in society but higher 'functioning' than some other autistic people.
It's the spiky profile thing you are talking about I think.