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What prevented you from accepting your autism?

I guess back then it wasn't recognised, so I spent many years in therapy working on myself, which was on the whole quite useful, before I came across ASD1 and autism through my work as a counsellor. I knew it answered some remaining issues I couldn't seem to change through therapy, and explained why there was a missing link in what I experienced compared to others. There's still plenty of issues for most of us that can be worked on and improved though. I am quite logical, and not anxious having worked on that a lot. So, I didn't see an option to accepting it, and indeed was quite relieved to find out what the issue was. We are different, not lesser.
 
Thinx said:
I guess back then it wasn't recognised, so I spent many years in therapy working on myself, which was on the whole quite useful, before I came across ASD1 and autism through my work as a counsellor. I knew it answered some remaining issues I couldn't seem to change through therapy, and explained why there was a missing link in what I experienced compared to others. There's still plenty of issues for most of us that can be worked on and improved though. I am quite logical, and not anxious having worked on that a lot. So, I didn't see an option to accepting it, and indeed was quite relieved to find out what the issue was. We are different, not lesser.
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No option but to accept it. Yup. I'm 5'9". No option but to accept it. I'm 67 years old. No option but to accept it. I am an Asperger's person. No option but to accept it.

Radical acceptance means you change the things you don't like. If you cannot change something, change your attitude towards it. If you cannot do that, the only remaining option is to accept it and move on. (It doesn't mean you approve of it. You accept there's nothing to be done for it and deal with it.) Refusing to accept it makes you suffer, alienates everyone else, and still doesn't change it.
 
More than acceptance, by the time I finished reading an article that talked about those on the spectrum, I was very curious and within a few months and after having read The Complete Guide to Aspergers Syndrome I had embraced it.

That being stated, I do recognize that growing up with the diagnosis comes with pros and cons, and the cons do involve a fair bit of baggage, though there are also a fair number of advantages, particularly financial ones, like funding for programs and activities.
 
  1. I thought autism meant ASD2 & 3. I readily embraced ASD1, once I was introduced to it.
  2. My mother & I thought that my giftedness accounted for my "weirdness."
 
Au Naturel said:
If you cannot change something, change your attitude towards it. If you cannot do that, the only remaining option is to accept it and move on.
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I think that the OP meant accepting it as an accurate diagnosis --and not something else-- rather than accepting having it.
 
Being told by others that it wasn't Asperger's because they knew someone with it and I didn't match them or to be accused of faking everything outright (mostly by my ex-teachers (so-called) who always told me I knew nothing and deserved to be picked on) or just covering up for being awkward, odd and slow. No wonder I keep struggling with accepting the diagnosis and get depressed.
 
I was diagnosed in or around 2017-18. The dates get blurry looking back. But I didn't want to accept it at first because of a number of reasons:

1) Perception. I thought autism was something that only the ASD-2 or ASD-3 people had, and that, since I do not suffer from it that intensely, that there's no possible way I am autistic. Finding out that I'm actually the way I am because of this brain condition was a huge eye-opener; I thought I had to be the guy with a weird personality. Nope, I'm just a bit weird.
2) Social stigma. Something that folks have cited above, and I remember looking at history & seeing where people in the past had been hidden away for experiencing mental illnesses. I always fear being mistaken as a freeloader if I try to seek any accomodations.
3) Fear of Change. Can you possibly get a more autistic reason? But nope. I changed how I treat myself. Much better.
4) Family pushback. My dad had a really hard time understanding how it worked, and accepting the diagnosis. Still does have a hard time figuring it out, I guess.
 
For me I was resistant to going for the diagnosis because it meant getting a label, which I did not want.

However, once I got past that, accepting the dx when I got it was fine
 
1) Social Stigma

i lost friends who I had thought would accept me and understand but that never happened. It didn’t help that I was perceived as weird either, I should have just embraced it but I wanted so desperately to fit in and be accepted. As cliched of a teenage response to this change. I felt like I would never be normal or fit in. That I’d be labeled forever, was difficult to get over.

It also didn’t help the perspective that being ASD meant being severely disabled or like how it’s depicted in films like Rainman. Being female with it, for some reason meant that I couldn’t have it because autism was a guy thing and I didn’t behave the same way as Rainman did.

And also considering the amount of people that are just plain ignorant. The amount of times I was told that I didn’t look autistic so I couldn’t be or “but your verbal though” was ignorant.

2) family pushback

She denies it now but my mom was a large component of the accepting it. She treated me very badly and completely denied that I had it until another psychiatrist did A re-evaluation and agreed. Then, it’s suddenly ok.
 
Once I realized my behavior made sense, also explained my circumstances, unable to get promoted even though I was constantly told I was each companies best employee. even after changing positions my Paradyme was different then the management team and mine was usually correct. Get sick of being called a genius when the answer should be obvious, why can they not see the obvious.
 
I accepted it right away after my diagnosis. It was the "missing piece of the puzzle" for me. About a year later I was diagnosed with ADHD Inattentive type. Between the two I feel the ADHD is a disability since it adversely affects my life far more.

I bring up ADHD not because it's so often co-morbid with autism as it is in my case, but because a PhD therapist who facilitated a group I've been in recently said there is a current theory put forth by a researcher that Level 1 ASD and ADHD are just one in the same.

After being diagnosed with ADHD, I have questioned my ASD diagnoses because there are SO many similarities in the two.
 
I actually accepted it very well because it explained a lot of my behavior and issues and proved that I wasn’t doing it for attention or just being bad for no reason. The school psychologist claimed that I “demanded” to be the center of the teachers’ attention for selfish reasons when it was more because I couldn’t understand what they were teaching me and I needed help comprehending what I was being taught. They even claimed that I was “lazy” and “stubborn” for no reason at all just because I would sometimes quit working on a test because I was becoming frustrated and very stressed out and stopping was the only way I could think of to not have some screaming fit from frustration and the only way my mind could get back to normal because I could actually feel my brain shutting down rapidly and causing me not to be able to think clearly which made things even worse. It also didn’t help that I was the younger sibling of a past student who was super smart and well liked by the teachers while I clearly had something wrong with me that caused me to have trouble learning certain subjects and I was constantly feeling like I had to prove myself to these teachers that I was just as worthy of being taught as my sister and that I wasn’t some wasted space in their classroom. I sort of had my suspicions that some teachers were secretly judging me because I wasn’t as smart as my sister and saw me as not being worth teaching when a former teacher got his car worked on at my dad’s shop. I helped do some of the work and so this teacher starts talking about my sister and how smart she was and how she was one of the best and hardest working students he had ever taught and that came from the school district right in front of me. He did this for ten minutes and it really hurt my feelings because not once did he compliment me or say that I had tried to do my best or anything nice about me. I was ready to scream at him to leave the shop and never come back while hurling something heavy at his head but I held myself back. He never did come back and I am glad because I now despise the man for talking about how wonderful it was to be my sister’s teacher when he also had me as well and ignored my obvious hurt look on my face. The Asperger’s diagnosis proved that there was a reason for how I was acting and that it wasn’t my fault at all.
 
Captain Jigglypuff said:
I actually accepted it very well because it explained a lot of my behavior and issues and proved that I wasn’t doing it for attention or just being bad for no reason. The school psychologist claimed that I “demanded” to be the center of the teachers’ attention for selfish reasons when it was more because I couldn’t understand what they were teaching me and I needed help comprehending what I was being taught. They even claimed that I was “lazy” and “stubborn” for no reason at all just because I would sometimes quit working on a test because I was becoming frustrated and very stressed out and stopping was the only way I could think of to not have some screaming fit from frustration and the only way my mind could get back to normal because I could actually feel my brain shutting down rapidly and causing me not to be able to think clearly which made things even worse. It also didn’t help that I was the younger sibling of a past student who was super smart and well liked by the teachers while I clearly had something wrong with me that caused me to have trouble learning certain subjects and I was constantly feeling like I had to prove myself to these teachers that I was just as worthy of being taught as my sister and that I wasn’t some wasted space in their classroom. I sort of had my suspicions that some teachers were secretly judging me because I wasn’t as smart as my sister and saw me as not being worth teaching when a former teacher got his car worked on at my dad’s shop. I helped do some of the work and so this teacher starts talking about my sister and how smart she was and how she was one of the best and hardest working students he had ever taught and that came from the school district right in front of me. He did this for ten minutes and it really hurt my feelings because not once did he compliment me or say that I had tried to do my best or anything nice about me. I was ready to scream at him to leave the shop and never come back while hurling something heavy at his head but I held myself back. He never did come back and I am glad because I now despise the man for talking about how wonderful it was to be my sister’s teacher when he also had me as well and ignored my obvious hurt look on my face. The Asperger’s diagnosis proved that there was a reason for how I was acting and that it wasn’t my fault at all.
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Don't feel bad I had a older brother who was a genius a younger brother Mensa member who I was constantly compared to always felt like the dummy. Even years later when one on my employers hired a new foreman who sang the praises of another brother younger again drove me nuts if you think Ron's bright you should meet his brother.
 
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