recently two friends of mine brought up autism in a conversation. one of them knows about my diagnosis and the other one is a nurse and regularly works with autistic children.
They brought up lots of things I disagree with and that kind of hurt me… They said things like “there are severely autistic people and there are others that are pretty chill” “being autistic is fashionable these days” “people use their autism as an excuse for bad behavior” “autistic people should keep their diagnosis for themselves because society is not really ready for that yet”
I tried to argue against it, but I wasn’t really good at that. I also didn’t feel comfortable to say I am autistic. I felt really devastated when I got back home. I texted one of my friends (the one who knows I am autistic) and said the whole conversation made me feel really bad.
Since she is gay I said that I am feeling the same way you would feel if two of your friends talked about homosexuality the way they talked about autism (“being gay is fashion these days” “people use their homosexuality as an excuse for bad behavior”, “gay people should stay in the closet because society is not ready for them”…) She got really angry at me, literally told me to go fuck myself and that I am victimizing myself…
I feel so hurt by this. invalidated. I don’t know… I just wanted to share :I
First off, I’m sorry that this happened to you.
If it were me, I’d drop that " “friend” " (extra quotes added for emphasis) like a boulder off a cliff. People that are actually friends listen & make amends when told their words caused pain & invalidation.
If it were me (I’m not familiar with your life situation outside of this post), I wouldn’t contact her in any way/shape/form, and the only words I would say if she contacted me would be:
“Actions have consequences,” and walk away.
I know that some of what I’ve wrote may come across as harsh & nuclear, but I have no patience for people that do this. Life is too short to keep people like around.
In spite of the negativity & pain being spewed out of our screens, there are plenty of people that do care & empathize.
thanks a lot for your answer! The thing that makes think so much is that she has so many autistic traits herself and I actually believe she should consider getting assessed herself. She likely identifies with a lot of autistic traits and assumes they are normal, since she experiences them too, and dismisses autistic people because of that. She suffered from various episodes of abuse in her past (emotional, physical, sexual) and I believe that she never truly understood the kind of abuse she has been through, and therefore reproduces it. And all of that kind of alligns with autism. I don’t know if she is actually autistic, but I wish she would at least consider it… I am not really sure to tell her that sensibly (she feels attacked and manipulated really really fast), and since she doesn’t treat me well a lot of the times it is really difficult for me to keep up her friendship. On the other hand, I relate to her in a lot of ways, which is one of the reasons I feel so hurt by this…
Yeah, it’s never a cut-n-dry deal.
I didn’t research autism for myself until my late 30’s. My thinking for many years was “I’m fine, it’s everyone else that’s weird,” so I totally get the thought process of autistic traits not applying to her struggles.
It’s never easy cutting someone that you care about out of your life, but letting them drag you down with them isn’t healthy, either. This is why you don’t jump into the water to help someone that’s drowning.
Regardless of the path you choose, you have friends here. :-)