Published on 12, July, 2020
I was diagnosed Autistic 3 weeks ago and I’ve only told a handful of people, I’ve put off telling my parents because I thought they wouldn’t believe me and I was right. Today my dad came to my house and we were on about secrets and as you autistic people know, we can’t lie, so I told him I had a secret and so he badgered me to tell him and I said I wanted to tell him and my mum together, but he kept pushing me and in the end I told him, he asked me what made me autistic and I explained about my social awkwardness and he just said that I was quiet. He didn’t stay much after that, which I thought was weird, would have thought he’d want to ask me lots of questions, as he was leaving he looked at my pots that were piled up and said, I guess you are gonna use this as an excuse now for being messy. He left for home and I know he would have definitely told my mum and she hasn’t bothered to phone to discuss, which I’m not too happy about. This experience has made me doubt my diagnosis and has left me feeling flat
BipolarZombie said: This experience has made me doubt my diagnosis and has left me feeling flat
Hmm, so you would consider two laymen with little knowledge to be more relevant to understanding your condition than trained, qualified professionals that do it for a living?
The older generations often have a stigma around anything to do with mental health and don't want to talk about it. This is their failing, not yours.
Remember that autism has a very high probability of being inherited from your birth parents (I think 80%) so there is a good chance that at least one of your parents could be on the spectrum, although possibly not to the point they would be considered autistic.
Your experience is a common one and there is no quick fix. You can pass them info to read but chances are the are stuck in their ways and won't try to learn more.
Your best option is to connect with those who do understand it or are willing to learn and open up to them. With between 2 and 5% of the population being autistic we are quite a sizable crowd now.