Experienced a lack of understanding of my autism again

Hello @TheCatWoman,

Thank for relating to my experience. I am sorry to hear that you have felt like that when you have conversations with others.

Hello DormouseAtRest_25 

Thank you for sharing your experience and for the compliment.

It was horrible. I have done well to continue to share my feelings despite experiences of invalidation.

I can only grit my teeth in sympathy, I've had similar conversations with people who are supposedly there to help me and have come away feeling that I would have better off talking to my cat, at least I would of got some mrrps and purrs in response.

 overwhelmed & underwhelmed (overwhelmed) Hello. It is like toxic positivity. Like being told to just think positively, many autistic people are told to focus on their strengths if they mention their struggles, like in my situation.

Thank you for sharing your story. It sounds like a painful experience. You would expect your challenges to be acknowledged when studying a course about a disorder. It is supposed to be where you get support. Good on you for making a complaint.

Thank you also for your support. I will probably do that.

 Iain Hello. At the beginning of the chat, I told the volunteer that I wanted to talk about my feelings and feel validated.

I know he meant well, but his approach made me feel dismissed, regardless of his positive intent. I shared with him that I thought my experience was dismissed and invalidated.

I appreciate you trying to get me to consider what the helpline worker was likely trying to do to help me feel better. However, it feels like the helpline worker’s perspective is being prioritised over my own, making me feel unsupported and invalidated. The focus is mostly on his intention rather than his words' impact on me. It is unlikely that was your intention, but I feel the way I do.

Thank you for your support, but I was not seeking solutions. I just wanted a space to share my experience and feel validated.

Oh, my goodness!  That would have been just horrible.  I am not comfortable that helpline person is in the right job at all 

I think you did well to complete that chat.  I am not confident I would have stuck with it to the end.

Your experience reminds me of having attended a course (6 hours duration) advertised as being about Mentalizing - taking feelings into account or tracking changes in feelings - (something, in common with some Autistic people, I know is not one of my strengths - but I was up for the challenge of trying to learn more on the subject) ...only to experience - a lot (I really do mean a lot) - of the content instead kept circling back to very personalised explorations of other people's examples of how borderline personality disorder - perhaps now better now known as emotionally unstable personality disorder - affects their lives.  (Not what I had signed up to attend and experience).  I hope the BPD / EUPD contingent got something out of the course.  What I got out of it: I went home and cancelled most of the remaining courses which I had booked with that training provider.  Thanks all the same, but no!

I am still smarting and mulling over the best way to clean up my thoughts since that unexpected course experience.  I can only imagine you doing likewise with your experience of that dismissive individual.

Cre8tiveDaniel said:

While the intention might have been positive, it completely missed the point.

This was part of a tactic to try to change your direction of thought from the negatives to the positives as it has a marked influence on mood and has the potential to make you feel better.

The challenge is that sometimes we don't want to feel good - sometimes we just want to feel heard which is your situation.

The helpline worker was following his scripr trying the "fix" the problem and leave you feeling better so it sometimes pay in this sort of situaiton to be blunt and tell him exactly what you want.

Sometimes doing this actually makes us realise we are being miserable and can give you pause to reconsider if it is healthy or if you want to carry on in that vein.

If you are able to identify this mood it may be better calling a different sort of helpline like the Samaritans to find someone trained to listen to you.

Better still, if your budget allows consider a psychotherapist with experience with your areas of need and they will work with you in the way you direct them, but can also give "solutions" or ways to improve things when you are in a receptive frame of mind.

Sorry this was a rubbish experience for you.

I had a similar experience some months ago.  I'd describe this as a form of 'toxic positivity' really - and it seems to be prevalent in a variety of mental health settings right now, with the focus on getting individuals to 'pull themselves together' and snap out of negativity where possible.

In my case I was attending a course with several others about PTSD.  This course lasted several weeks, and those running it demanded to hear positive news from those taking part at the beginning of each session.  Several didn't have any good news to report, and were visibly upset because they felt they were failing as a result.  Nevertheless, the tactic persisted. 

I ended up making a complaint about this, because it was doing more harm than good - and I feel you are right to flag-up your experience.

Of course the two experiences aren't quite the same, but they are both examples of the client being railroaded into a position that invalidates their feelings in order to get them off the phone or out of the system as quickly as possible. 

I suggest you contact your provider & register your dissatisfaction.