Revisiting diagnosis

Unknown said:

On a serious note i tried getting a diagnosis and because i can hold down a job i wasnt considered viable. 

This is one of the most discriminatory elements found in some parts of the NHS. Because you are functioning in society - i.e. not causing any trouble to neurotypicals - you cannot be autistic. What about all the trouble being autistic, and an undiagnosed autistic at that, is causing to the autistic person themselves?

If this is true about the NHS, I wonder what changes they will make to this policy or policies in the post-Covid era - will they deny services and/or support to someone because thier Covid vaccine/booster/flu shots record is not up to date and/or thier GP attendance record is not up to date? Or will they make it part of the process to update all of this before they proceed with any further services/support? 

The attitude is not systemic to the NHS as a whole, it is that there are too many backwaters where outdated attitudes to autism lurk, and are not effectively challenged.

The attitude is not systemic to the NHS as a whole, it is that there are too many backwaters where outdated attitudes to autism lurk, and are not effectively challenged.

It’s almost as if some people point-blank refuse to understand the condition and only want to see it in terms of a disciplinary or behavioural issue, where they constantly feel the need to “put one in one’s place” “knock someone back a peg or ten” and many similar (far ruder) things - being constantly told and reminded that one “does not understand that one is wrong” and that “one does not know nor understand the difference” between bullying/prejudice and thier particular brand of discipline, which they feel is essential to managing the condition and where any attempt to reason with such people results in being routinely screamed at to “pack it in” (which I endured for 30 years in supermarkets, on the shop floor in front of customers, especially in my last supermarket job for 17 years, with one middle aged woman manager from an ex-Millitary background, which eventually resulted in everyone at my last store constantly screaming the same things at me) yet people who have relatives with the condition and whose family work in the area of mental health, aside from any other differences should know better, so there is no real excuse for such attitudes - long before my diagnosis, it was always said to me that I “know too much” (about things that it was deemed that I should not know anything about) and “not enough” (about things I should know) - against this backdrop it is virtually impossible to be allowed to “win” with (or against) such mindsets 

That seems draconian, to say the least. To me, that clinical opinion seeks to rob you of your humanity.

One of the things that I was told by the therapist (in follow up emails) that did my online diagnosis was that I must not attempt to form, have/hold nor (especially) express any views nor opinions on any issue, because in all cases it was deemed that I would be “coming from a space of dysfunction”, of my not understanding in the (infinite wisdom) of “everyone else” that I was wrong (by default) on all issues because of my condition and that I should maintain total silence and only be “seen and not heard” because in her professional opinion, because of my condition, I did not understand the basic concepts of “common sense” and of “reality” - when she had reached out to others before doing my diagnosis, the replies she recieved had stated the beliefs of others was that a primary cause of my condition was insufficiently strict childhood parental discipline and serious flaws in my childhood parenting because of my parents own issues before I had been born, an observation that was also made by former employers, among many others including extended family