Type 4: Label Avoidance
Label Avoidance is when a person chooses not to seek out a professional or school diagnosis, therapy, or even community support to avoid being assigned a stigmatizing label.
You can find this behavior in both parents and adults. It derives from the other types of stigma. When people have mistaken ideas of what autism is, what it means for the future, and what autistic people are like, they can be very closed-minded to even the thought of being autistic themselves, or someone they love being autistic.
The classical example of this is the parents of an autistic child noticing their child is different, taking the child to the doctor, receiving the suggestion to get them screened for autism, and promptly going home declaring, "well that's clearly not it, that doctor is a hack." This, and variations thereof, are repeated endlessly in "my family's experience with autism" books. Naturally, ignoring a developmental disability does not make it go away.
Usually it's the mother that gets past the reluctance first. She sees her child struggling and understands that something is up, regardless of how she feels about the label. She eventually takes the child for testing, and receives the label. There may then be a period of anger, resistance, and mourning while the parents adjust their expectations for their child and come to grips with reality... but this mourning is often overblown. The stigma about autism is that it destroys lives and the child can never have anything close to a "normal life." (I have Opinions about "a normal life" and its expectations, by the way.)
You can also find this behavior in autistic adults and teens. There are several reasons for this.
First, there's the same basic misconception that parents start out with: "If I acknowledge this difference and receive this diagnosis, my life [my child's life] as I've dreamt it will be over and I'll [they'll] be confined to an institution." The reality is that a diagnosis doesn't change who the person is, nor does it change their capabilities. It's simply a word or some words that you can use to start understanding yourself or someone else, or even use to acquire support in doing what you want to do with your life.
Then there's the fact that autism has been used as an insult in some circles (including in online video games) to describe people who are being thoughtless, rude, stupid, cruel, or otherwise acting intolerably. While these adjectives are a poor description of most autistic people, this alternative definition can fuel a rejection of the psychological diagnosis.
There's also the deep end of, "I'm a person (not a cripple/weird/whatever) and I want to be treated like everyone else." Often, we, like any person, want to succeed on our own merit. After years of being expected to act "normal," autistic people may reject any label that would acknowledge the impossibility of that expectation. Or even after acquiring the label, refuse to use it in college or in the workforce (when we typically have a chance to make our own decisions for the first time).
In general, because of how this stigma and the other stigmas work, I tend to only tell people to seek out a diagnosis if they think it'll help, and not bother if they're not sure or think it'd be negative. In a perfect world, the diagnosis would only help people and give them a path forward, a community, and a better understanding of themselves. In the world we live in, all these stigmas and more exist, and we have to do the best we can under the circumstances.
You can find this behavior in both parents and adults. It derives from the other types of stigma. When people have mistaken ideas of what autism is, what it means for the future, and what autistic people are like, they can be very closed-minded to even the thought of being autistic themselves, or someone they love being autistic.
The classical example of this is the parents of an autistic child noticing their child is different, taking the child to the doctor, receiving the suggestion to get them screened for autism, and promptly going home declaring, "well that's clearly not it, that doctor is a hack." This, and variations thereof, are repeated endlessly in "my family's experience with autism" books. Naturally, ignoring a developmental disability does not make it go away.
Usually it's the mother that gets past the reluctance first. She sees her child struggling and understands that something is up, regardless of how she feels about the label. She eventually takes the child for testing, and receives the label. There may then be a period of anger, resistance, and mourning while the parents adjust their expectations for their child and come to grips with reality... but this mourning is often overblown. The stigma about autism is that it destroys lives and the child can never have anything close to a "normal life." (I have Opinions about "a normal life" and its expectations, by the way.)
You can also find this behavior in autistic adults and teens. There are several reasons for this.
First, there's the same basic misconception that parents start out with: "If I acknowledge this difference and receive this diagnosis, my life [my child's life] as I've dreamt it will be over and I'll [they'll] be confined to an institution." The reality is that a diagnosis doesn't change who the person is, nor does it change their capabilities. It's simply a word or some words that you can use to start understanding yourself or someone else, or even use to acquire support in doing what you want to do with your life.
Then there's the fact that autism has been used as an insult in some circles (including in online video games) to describe people who are being thoughtless, rude, stupid, cruel, or otherwise acting intolerably. While these adjectives are a poor description of most autistic people, this alternative definition can fuel a rejection of the psychological diagnosis.
There's also the deep end of, "I'm a person (not a cripple/weird/whatever) and I want to be treated like everyone else." Often, we, like any person, want to succeed on our own merit. After years of being expected to act "normal," autistic people may reject any label that would acknowledge the impossibility of that expectation. Or even after acquiring the label, refuse to use it in college or in the workforce (when we typically have a chance to make our own decisions for the first time).
In general, because of how this stigma and the other stigmas work, I tend to only tell people to seek out a diagnosis if they think it'll help, and not bother if they're not sure or think it'd be negative. In a perfect world, the diagnosis would only help people and give them a path forward, a community, and a better understanding of themselves. In the world we live in, all these stigmas and more exist, and we have to do the best we can under the circumstances.
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