Autistic Hedgehog

I actually had a very similar experience with my psychologist a year or so ago. He liked to talk about how I was “hardly autistic at all anymore” and, when I talked about things like being overstimulated by a crowd, he would insist that all people experience such things.

It frustrated me so much. I know he thought he was saying something positive, but for me, he was dismissing the realities of my life. He was dismissing all the hard work I’d done and the bullying and ableism I’d suffered to seem “hardly autistic at all anymore” when they’re so relevant to who I am. He was dismissing the pain—real physical pain—I feel from the presence and noise of large crowds of people and the panic I feel when I have to get on a crowded bus. He was dismissing the sense of hyperawareness I developed from those years of bullying and ableism, that makes me freak out when I trip in public, that makes me assume a crowd of people laughing nearby is laughing at me, that terrifies me when I get something on my shirt because I’m positive that people will notice and think I’m a slob.

It sounds like this neurologist evoked similar feelings in you, and you do have a reason to be upset. No matter how “high-functioning” you might appear, that will never erase the problems you had and do have.

But when she talked to you like that, I’m guessing it made you feel like she was erasing and dismissing those things. To people like neurologists and psychologists it might seem like being called “normal” is a reassuring thing, but it’s very easy to hear as “There’s nothing wrong with you, so what are you even complaining about?” It’s easy to feel like someone is telling you that you should be fine and perfect and any troubles you have are overreactions. That would make anyone feel uneasy and insulted. 

There’s no such thing as pointless whining over ableism, and in the end, that’s what it was, regardless of her intentions.