They were only trying to help!

During a lifetime of searching for a name for what was “wrong” with me, I saw a number of therapists and assorted mental health professionals. The first one I saw as an adult yelled at me and called me a “spoiled little girl” (I was 20 at the time) because I wasn’t able to answer some of his questions. The second one yelled at me, too, for not talking. He took my silence as an intentional effort to “hide something” from him.

The one I worked with the longest was pretty good. As I struggled to change myself into a more acceptable version, she consistently told me that I was fine exactly the way I was. Until the day I couldn’t answer a question, something to do with feelings, I don’t remember. “I don’t think I have a word for that,” I told her. “I don’t believe you,” she said. She explained that I had an excellent vocabulary and that she had read some things I’d written and of course I could say this simple word. And with that, the trust we had established was broken.

I kept going back, for months after that, because stopping things, making changes, was harder than working with someone who thought I was a liar. One day I went into her office and couldn’t talk at all. After hello, how are you, I am fine, I sat in my chair and looked out the window. For forty-five minutes I sat there not saying a word. She did the same. It was a technique, I guess, meant to teach me something, I’m still not sure exactly what that would have been.

I can’t quite blame her for not understanding. Asperger syndrome wasn’t heard of in those days; autism was still considered very rare and generally associated with children who never spoke at all. People who behaved like I did had “personality disorders.” They needed a swift kick in the behind to get them motivated. How could it not be intentional and disrespectful for a person who has spoken (almost) fluently in the past to suddenly turn up mute? How could an intelligent adult fail to answer a question anyone who had seen a couple of Sesame Street videos would know? I couldn’t answer these questions myself.

This is one of the ways having a name for this helps me. I no longer question what unconscious mechanism or buried trauma might be driving this unpredictable loss of language. I don’t see myself as stubborn and difficult; just a few years ago, I thought they might all be right. I can explain to people that something like this might occur in the future, and that this will not be their fault or mine or a comment on the state of the relationship. Before, when I said it, without the benefit of the words autism or Asperger syndrome, this was always met with suspicion.

I do not condone the methods these professionals used to deal with their lack of information. I think they were wrong, regardless of the lack of a DSM category to properly describe me. I remember these experiences when I am tempted to write someone off as stubborn or to ascribe unconscious or conscious motivations to behaviors I have no real way of understanding. They helped me learn to be less judgmental. I understand that, though I may have arrived at a logical interpretation of someone’s behavior, one that is consistent with what I’ve seen before, I might be wrong.

Sometimes terrible things are done in the name of helping. In my case, the damage was minor, hardly worth mentioning. I got up from my chair and handed the silent therapist my check for the session. I never went back. As a non-institutionalized adult, I could make that decision.