What to do when people laugh about, dismiss your diagnosis

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So I've decided to tell a few of my NT acquaintances that I have Aspergers.

So far two of them have laughed at me. One was like "oh yeah okay, yeah, I bet I have it too then because I don't like people and don't want to leave my house" which sort of hurt my feelings because I expected that she would be as happy as I am that I found out why I've always been so different. Another is a male in the medical profession who dismissed it and said "it's like fibromyalgia, everyone gets diagnosed with that, it's crap. My psychologist diagnosed me with a bunch of bullsh*t that I don't have too, you don't have Aspergers."

Has this happened to anyone else, and if so, what did you do?!

My boyfriend should be sainted for putting up with, not only Aspie me on a regular basis, but currently obsessive Aspie me reading about ASD, autism, & Aspergers (things I knew nothing about before). He believes it/me and is so happy that I have a diagnosis, that it might help us move forward in our relationship and help me sort out my life a bit better. In the end all that really matters is his support, but I have a fairly large social media following I was thinking of talking about it publicly to. Now I'm not really sure. I'm used to internet people being jerks so I'm sure there will be some people who call me the worst names in the book (they do that anyway) but I also don't want to seem like this is an attention grab of some sort. I was stoked to get my diagnosis and while I had anticipated name calling or whatever, I never thought people would just straight up question the veracity of my diagnosis. Ugh.

Most people know nothing about diagnostic criteria for ASD. All they know comes from movies, television and radio programming, and bar jokes. But, your diagnosis isn't about them. It is about, and for, you. Don't worry, your real friends will eventually ask you for a more serious explanation. Meanwhile, anyone who gets a little too insulting deserves being told that "joking about it is one of its symptoms."

That friend of yours is probably in denial about his own problems. You´ll meet lots of people, who can´t deal with the "abnormal", who doesn´t want to acknowledge, what they don´t understand and who choose the easy defence, - ridicule.
Some people think it is a degradation, and when they don´t want to do that to you, they try to de-dramatize it and claim, that "everybody probably is a bit autistic".
Don´t jump into it and go public, unless you can take LOTS of that stuff.

Start by disclosing and discussing in groups like this.

Even those who are good at social "defense" are sometimes caught off guard. As I have written elsewhere on WrongPlanet.net about how, when I told a former partner in November, he laughed very briefly (it could have been that he thought I was leading up to telling him about a vastly different "diagnosis" and expressed relief). But, it didn't matter (nor did my decades of work in LGBT politics where I got a lot of misrepresentation, ridicule and humiliation), I was shocked. I wrapped up my conversation quickly and left.

Mine are sort of relieved to find out there is a reasonable explanation of why I'm so much smarter than they are. With experience I've gotten better at figuring out what NTs find useful and sharing those experiences or discoveries and keeping stuff they aren't to myself.

At least once a day people say stuff to me online that would make most people want to throw themselves off of a cliff and I take that in stride. Usually what people say doesn't bother me at all, except that I don't understand where they are coming from & I keep trying even though it feels like

I think this is more important because this means something to me, maybe?

Also I see now that this has been covered before, it's in the suggested topics at the bottom of the page, ha. I'm also reading those.

I also have had people say to me "I don't think you're mentally ill", "you don't have a mental illness", and the first time I was on SSDI (I am again) 20 some years ago "You're abusing the system...", and "Are you still on that welfare?"

Based on what my psychiatrist has observed and childhood difficulties (many which have not left me) I have told several doctors (this one is the second one to listen, but the first I have gone to for more than a year), he diagnosed me with A.S.

I'm going through this right now. I'm 25 and was just diagnosed a couple of weeks ago. I told a few people, and my friends who have family members with autism were all excited for me, because I feel like the diagnosis validates what I've always believed and kind of makes me feel better about some of my differences. But I was so nervous to tell my mom, and her reaction when I told her was exactly what I expected. She told me that my therapist didn't know me well enough to make that assertion, and that I need to "get over it" which she changed to "deal with it." My sponsor (I'm a recovering addict) is an elementary school teacher and she was kind of like, "really? Everyone I know who is on the spectrum doesn't function as well as you and has lower emotional intelligence." She thinks I just have social anxiety, and had some sensory issues as a kid. It kind of upset me because she's always very supportive and I care about what she thinks. She did apologize after she said that, saying, "i wish that wasn't my reaction." I expected the reaction from my mom, but the reaction of my friends and sponsor has me second guessing the diagnosis, even though I've thought I had asperger's for most of my life. It hurts to not be taken seriously.

One person laughed in my face when I expressed my suspicions before going ahead and getting the ball rolling on my evaluation. That felt hurtful and dismissive. After I got my diagnosis he went very solemn and seemed to actually have decided to believe me. But I still get a feeling that he thinks it can't really be true.

For background info, he knows practically nothing about the autism spectrum and he actually knows not enough about me too, upon which to base his none the less clueless doubts. For this and other things we've started to drift apart as friends. Because I realize he doesn't know enough for my feelings of hurt to be valid, still, it does hurt not to be taken seriously by a friend, even when you remind yourself that the friend is reacting out of ignorance.

I've also had the "Oh I think I have it too" thing from another person. Who am I to judge her either, in turn -- yet she strikes me as one of the most NT people I know.

Last edited by BirdInFlight on 28 May 2015, 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

When someone does that to me I reduce my assessment of them as someone it is emotionally safe for me to be around.

I think that's very wise, Marky9, and good advice.

I think that's how I feel now about my friend who laughed and doubts. The friendship altered and cooled a lot because I realized this is not a person I feel emotionally safe to share things with after all.

That's how it is with me! My friend (I hate using that term) said when I first disclosed that I had high functioning Autism "Well I've seen those kids (lower functioning kids that wears helmets and spins,flaps etc) and your nothing like them"...I've seen rain man your not like that person" I've tried explaining to him that it's a spectrum disorder ranging from the more "stereotypical" low(er) functioning individuals to the more high(er) functioning individuals that holds a college degree I'm somewhere in the middle towards the high(er) end of the spectrum possibly Asperger (yes he cracked a joke about that term too) if they hadn't changed the DSM
I tried telling him growing up I was a totally different person then what he's seeing today I had speech issues I'd hit my head when I would get mad at things I'd retreat to a dark closet in school/home if I felt I was getting over stimulated and I'd have really bad meltdowns both in school and at home and socially hey I'm not that good in social situations tho I'm hell of a lot better then I was when I was a kid/teen.

But he tends to dismiss it as saying "oh you must have a "touch" of it because you seam pretty normal (looking) to me and you can hold down a conversations tho from time to time you have issues finding the right words" I even went as far as to show him a summery report from the person whom screened me to which his reaction was "Oh"

How do I deal with his dismissive attitude much like how I tend to deal with life I internalize it and just shrug my shoulders while not showing much emotion..(I wonder if that's why I'm starting to grow more grey hairs and that I'm only 34 years old mmm)

Oh yep, I got the "Rainman" thing too! "But you don't act like Rainman."

Later, the same friend who said that started to absorb more of what I told him about it being a spectrum, and I felt pleased that maybe he was learning something he didn't know before (always a good thing no matter what it's about).

But I still get the feeling he "defaults" to a kind of "Nawwww!" place.

I also relate to trying to tell someone that the person I seem like now is very different to what I was like as a child, teen and young adult, when it would have been much clearer (by today's standards, though sadly not that era's) that I was on the autism spectrum.

Sometimes I think that statement actually does help to give someone pause for thought.

The most insulting thing about Dustin Hoffman's portrayal is that it made the character far more extreme than Kim Peek ever was. Kim could be intentionally amusing, engage in back-and-forth conversation and loved meeting new people despite some socializing problems. His presumed autism (again, because of the movie) had no basis in fact. He had FG syndrome. All of this combines to show how little some people know about autism.

Yes indeed. I tried to tell my friend about that too (the real life person's actual condition. Funnily enough that only brought us to yet another thing not a lot of people know about (the fact that Rainman wasn't even autistic!)

Kind of like misconceptions piled on top of misconceptions, egads!

I watched Rain Man for the first time in a really really long time Saturday Night and the for the first time since I was diagnosed. I found him to be a super duper extreme version of me.

Spoiler Alerts
In the movie the Tom Cruise character eventually accepts his autistic brother which is far better then a lot of today's "enlightened" depictions which use characters are used to be laughed or to be feared and pitied. Raymond Babbitt represented a very small segment of the the spectrum but no smaller then the socially awkward geniuses depicted today. At least in the movie unlike many of today's depictions they were not afraid to use the word Autism.

The movie was made in 1988 and was a big step forward at the time introducing the concept of "high functioning" (those words were uttered in the film). We should not s**t on the people involved in making the movie 27 years ago because that people have not moved forward or have even moved moved backward since then which of course is an important reason diagnoses are not accepted.