My Love-Shyness
& Asperger's BLOG
Parental Disbelief
With all the problems surrounding a diagnosis of love-shyness or Asperger's Syndrome, not having your parents and family provide emotional support is an extra burden.
My family still cannot accept that I have Asperger’s, even after reading a draft of this book and after I started speaking professionally about my Asperger’s. Parents may not accept their child’s Asperger’s diagnosis for various reasons. Parents, and others, may be blind to their child’s Asperger’s when they see the child as high functioning in most other areas of life. Parents may harbor guilt that they caused the condition or did not do enough about it. Or parents may worry they have aspects of the genetically influenced condition and deny it in themselves. My parents view me as inheriting both of their shyness and other traits and don’t need a syndrome to explain how I am. Since professionals can misdiagnose conditions like love-shyness and Asperger’s, parents can be wary of unfamiliar diagnoses.
Unfortunately, people focus on the obvious problems of the stressed-out offspring rather than the successful parents who have no complaints about themselves. Since not accepting their son or daughter as he or she is is a documented trait of parents of loveshys, do not expect your parents to accept your diagnosis easily. Do not expect them to convert to a new type of thinking, which would require them to remove a whole belief system and replace it with a more enlightened one that illuminates how poorly they treated their extra-sensitive child. Parents already prone to avoiding their sexuality issues will likely deny yours.
As you deal with these issues, your family may not stand behind you.
Additionally, people may not accept a diagnosis of Asperger's because they associate it with severe autism. Parents in general have a hard time accepting any physical disability with their children and often have an even harder time accepting an intangible mental disability. A late in life diagnosis may cause parents guilt, that they could have done something to prevent it, even though AS only became an official diagnosis in 1994, well after I had already dropped out of college.
I consider parental non-acceptance of an Asperger's diagnosis a form of abuse that should not be tolerated. Imagine receiving a diagnosis of cancer and not having your family believe you and instead question the doctor's credentials. While not afflicted with such a life-threatening condition, I felt my emotional devastation was on a similar level since I had no wife or girlfriend and only few friends for support. Unfortunately my siblings showed no sympathy for me and instead sided with my parents. But what to do about it even after my parents visited the therapist who diagnosed my AS? No extended family members wanted to get involved, nor did any therapists, with what seemed to be an internal immediate family matter.
I read my parents a letter I wrote to them explaining that I am not going to stand for any abuse and gave them repeated warnings; all to no avail. So I ceased all contact with my family. I generally don't recommend this action to others, but I felt I had no alternative. There are no facts to debate; there is only the truth to accept. All I can do is wait for my family to come around.
