Give

It is very secure

My research is so specific that I would doxx myself if I explained what I do.

I am sorry to hear that. I think your mother ignoring autism can be as harmful as her telling you have it while you don’t. In both cases, you are not seen and accepted for who you are.

I have an official document stating that if I am incapable of making decisions, my parents are not allowed to make decisions for me and they cannot be with me in the room by themselves or touch me. I feel quite guilty about that, but I just cannot deal with what will happen otherwise.

Yes, definitely. I did have a lot of symptoms of trauma as a child, in hindsight. This provided an explanation for that in which my parents weren’t blamed for it and it was just all on me again.

No apologies necessary, in my opinion. You did not mean anything negative and you did not know. I just wanted to explain the other side.

I can see that you did not mean anything offensive by it. However, I have had similar things happening to me (misdiagnosis of autism so my parents did not have to take responsibility for tramuatising me) and I might have responded similarly.

When someone imposes a diagnosis on you that is wrong and does it for selfish reasons, when you are a child, it is very harmful. It hurts your feeling of self worth to the core and makes you constantly question yourself and who you are. It takes a lot of strength to stop the selfdoubt and finally conclude that you do not have autism and that what you feel and think is correct and not what you have been told all your life by the people you were supposed to be able to trust. That is really a very difficult thing to do, because the anxiety that something is “wrong” with you after all is always there. It takes courage.

If you have been struggling with questioning yourself in this way and if you state that you are not autistic after all, then it is difficult to deal with a response suggesting that you might be wrong. That is almost painful.

I know that you did not mean it that way. There is no way you could have known if this is something you have no experience with. Also, I cannot say something about why someone else responds in a certain way. I might be wrong about that. However, when I read your question, I immediately got quite triggered as well. I guess I just wanted to explain where a response like this can come from in some cases.

Are you still in that situation or do you mean that that happened in the past? For me it got better once I left home. Although I was still in contact with her. Now it is much better, because I only occasionally have contact with her and only via text. It took me years to get there, but I did. I hope you do too if you have not already.

The same thing happened to me. I did not know it is a common thing! I was told I am autistic, but it turns out I have CPTSD. I think telling me I was autistic it was just an easy was to blame the ways in which I responded to being traumatised on me again.

I thought I was the only one! I really did not know that this is something that happens more often.

My mother managed to convince her psychiatrist to diagnose me with autism when I was 13. He told me that I had autism and that if I did not get treated, I would be alone forever and I would never be able to make friends. He also called it a handicap. No treatment was started, there was no help or anything after that. The psychiatrist told me and I never saw him again. My mother told everyone around her I was autistic and they all felt very bad for her, including me. I felt really sad she had me for a daughter and I hated myself for being who I was. I also was bullied in school and I thought it was my own fault because I was autistic and therefore I did stuff that made others bully me. I was the one in the wrong and it was just a response to that, I felt.

Turns out I am not autistic at all. Like, I had it checked out thoroughly and there was no doubt about it. I actually an able to emphasise with others better than average etc. I also have some really close friends, which I made once I was able to leave home. I do have CPTSD though from severe emotional neglect and psychological abuse.

It is so weird to see similar stories here. I know my social skills are fine, but I still feel insecure about my social functioning. I am always looking for stuff I might do wrong that confirms that I am autistic after all. I also still feel like something is fundamentally wrong with me and as if my existence is somehow an enormous burden for others. (This is not how I feel about autistic people, but it is how I was made to feel about myself by that diagnosis.) It is a feeling that is very difficult to change.

Sorry to hear that. I have PTSD as well (but from other causes). For me EMDR, imagery rescripting and psychosomatic physiotherapy helped. It did not completely solve it, but it made it much better. Maybe some things to try if you have not done so, and you want to.

That is just really sad. Evil is defined by a lack of empathy and this way of thinking clearly shows a lack of empathy.

Yes, I can completely respect that people do not want to have an abortion themselves or maybe even have difficulty with it. But I think it is not right to impose this believe on others. It is very good to meet people like that sometimes and see the other side. My christian friend is the same.

Even if you are against abortion and feel your opinion is so important you need to force it upon others, it makes no sense to block this medication. There are many medical reasons for needing it. I needed it twice myself because I was pregnant, but the pregnancy was not vital and my body did not miscarry on its own. I would love to have children, but in those cases there was no unborn life to protect as it would have never become a baby. I was very happy to have access to this medication, because being pregnant for months while wanting a baby and knowing that you will not have a baby is very difficult and confusing psychologically. Taking the medication was difficult as well, but in the end I was glad I did.

(I am not against abortion, I just cannot see why it would be logical to ban this medication even if you are.)

Yes, looks good!

I agree with that. Part of the point that I was trying to make is that when you only consider IQ, you have a very narrow view of intelligence.

When you consider intellectual giftedness, there are some definitions that just say you should have an IQ of above 130. However, there are also psychologists who consider it more like a complex syndrome with many attributes of which IQ is just one. The psychologist who worked with me had the latter view.

The ‘diagnosis’ of intellectual giftedness helped me to understand myself better and to understand some of the issues I have. It explains how and why my brain works differently from most other people and why I run into problems sometimes because of that. That helps me to deal with it better. So, it can be important for people to know about their intellectual giftedness in the broad sense and it should not just be ignored in all cases.

I do not think I view myself as belonging to an IQ caste or something like that. The word ‘caste’ suggests a hierarchy between people based on IQ. I disagree with that and I think people should not be considered worth more because of their IQ. However, at the same time, I tend to feel very bad about myself when I feel I am dumb. So, there is a bit of a discrepancy there between thinking and feeling that I need to work on. I should apply the idea of equal worth not only to others, but also myself, which I am working on. Apparently, I cannot just reason that feeling away.

I am intellectually gifted (officially diagnosed by a psychologist and psychiatrist) and 90% of the time I feel like I am very dumb. The other 10% of the time I feel like other people are very dumb. That is why I did not believe I was actually gifted for a long time. Apparently, smart people are sometimes more aware of mistakes they make and things they do not know, which can result in them feeling dumb.

Additionally, I am actually a quite dumb with practical stuff. It is boring, so I cannot concentrate on it and then I mess it up. I think that is also quite common.

I do not think it is that black and white. IQ is just one way of looking at intelligence. If people are walking around feeling like everyone is dumber than they are all the time, they either have a very narrow view of intelligence, or they might lack self-awareness considering their own weaknesses.

B

Yes, little brother vibes are good vibes. 👍

Interesting. Thanks!