NC for this, long-time poster. My DS is in her late 50s. Following a grievance raised against her at work by a colleague who accused her of being aggressive and bullying, she was referred to a therapist/ psychologist by her workplace, who suggested she might be high-functioning autistic. DS has spent serious money and time obtaining a diagnosis and now officially carries the ASD label. Her workplace has taken note and is now supporting her. I think the grievance really shocked her. She's revealed that she left her previous work after colleagues 'ganged up on her' in her words, and made her life there difficult. She felt victimised. In the more recent incident, she was shocked to be accused of being the bully.
The diagnosis explains a lot. Her very black-and-white attitude to everything, the lack of shades of grey. Her loudness (apparently, I didn't know this). Her apparently lifelong anxiety and depression (this was all news to me, she has never mentioned it before). The angry, indignant flare-ups over minor issues that have meant that I, and most of the other people around her, tiptoe around her and, frankly, limit the time we spend with her. You can see from her face what an angry person she is: she's had deep frown lines since she was in her 30s.
She's said awful things to me and others. She's always said she just tells it as she sees it. She's very intelligent and super-rational. Most of the family is low-contact because, although when she's good she's pleasant and interesting to be around, there is always the risk of an explosion. All three of her children limit the time they spend with her. They are really nice young people and they love her, as do I — but my goodness, she can be difficult to be around.
So anyway, we met up a couple of weeks ago and she told me all this. She's very relieved at the diagnosis. She says she'd always suspected that there was something going on that made it difficult for her to relate to people. But from what she said she seems to feel that, having been diagnosed with ASD, everything's all right now. 'They can't sack me now that I've got a diagnosis,' she said when talking about work. She seems to think that it's okay carrying on flaring up at people and that the ASD explains everything. I think her expectation is that now we can all be one happy family, knowing that if she's foul to us it's the ASD talking, not her. I did ask her what she intends to do to improve things and reminded her of something she'd said to me earlier this year, insulting me because I happen to hold a different view from her on a particular subject. She apologised but said that she still thought she was right and I was wrong, and I could see she was about to take another pop at me when fortunately someone else interrupted us and I escaped.
I've been mulling it over all week and feeling increasingly annoyed. Sad and glad, too, obviously, because it explains things. But I can't forget how dreadful she was to our lovely mum, or all the times she's put me so firmly in my place that I've had to walk away for weeks and months at a time to recover.
Where do we go from here? Has anyone else been through something similar?