I was accused of faking my autism for attention
Hey, I’m a 21 year old female. I was formally diagnosed with autism as a child. To prefis this story I struggle with interrupting people during conversation. Not when they are in the middle of speaking, but sometimes if a gap is to long in a conversation I start making my next point while the other person is making their’s. This is something I have been on working on for a long time and will continue to work on. However, I will likely struggle with this for the rest of my life. It may also be important to note I am high functioning. I was having a conversation with 2 people in a airport, a woman and a man ( turned out to be a trained psychologist). The woman called me out for being rude and always interrupting her. Usually, in this situation I just explain I have autism then allow the other person the choice of resuming or ending the conversation. No harm, no foul. On this particular occasion, the woman told me she didn’t believe I had Autism and was just faking my disability as an excuse to be rude. She then proceeded to yell at me and shamed me publicly. In response, I told her that’s fine I find your ignorance amusing. The man then said he was a clinical psychologist and also didn’t believe I was Autistic. In response to that, I told him he must not be very good at his job. He got upset and started trying to get me to describe personal experiences from my life to “prove him wrong”. He said if I was actually autistic I’d do it. I’d like to reiterate the fact that we are talking in a public airport. I have never been able to hide my Autism before. The issue usually is that people can tell I have Autism to quickly and get put off by it. I never knew I was capable of masking so well. Has this happened to anyone else before. Is this some kind of discrimination. Does anybody else have any similar experiences. I don’t know how to feel about this. It makes me feel sick thinking about how people even badly trained psychologists think they can invalidate a persons struggles and life experiences, publicly.
Posted Jul 29, 2024, 11:15 PM UTC