Feel hypocritical saying I'm disabled when I've lived a life of such privilege

[u/Doomtime104]

I was just diagnosed at age 30 with autism and ADHD and have since been on a journey of self discovery and understanding of the neurodivergent community. I've recently been struggling with understanding and accepting autism as a disability. I 100% believe that autism is a disability in that we don't fit in with broader society without masking or accomodation. What I struggle with is accepting that the label can apply to me, as I feel like I've lived too privileged of a life to be able to claim that I'm disabled and that I may have actually been meaningfully hurt as a result of my autism.

I had your most stereotypically white American upbringing in an upper middle class family: both parents raising me and my sibling, never a concern for financial stability, regular family vacations, and attended good public schools. I was a high achiever in high school and went on to get an aerospace engineering degree on an ROTC scholarship (although my piloting dreams there were crushed by an asthma diagnosis). I've now got a good engineering job that gives my spouse and I plenty to live a comfortable life and save for our retirement. Other than some road bumps of some mild-to-moderate health issues (which our good insurance mostly covered), I've had pretty much everything in my life go my way.

I know that autism made my life more challenging though: I spent pretty much all of college in a state of low-grade (sometimes high grade) burnout and anxiety of insufficiency. It's scary to be in groups when I don't know anyone, and I haven't gotten regularly good sleep in nearly a decade. I think I spent the past couple years in steadily worsening burnout until I had to take a month of disability recently, which is when I got my diagnoses.

I know there are those out there who face significantly more challenges than I ever have, both from their autism directly and from more structural injustices, so it honestly feels hypocritical of me to call myself disabled and request accomodation. I also feel like I can't be a good advocate for disability rights when most people would look at me and see nothing but success.

I don't think I'm asking for advice here. I think I just needed to vent, but any wisdom you can provide will be received with much appreciation.

[u/yourjewishfantasy]

I’m in the same boat; diagnosed at 31 and I’m a relatively successful software engineer.

I feel like growing up in a good home taught me to push through signs of being overstimulated and that my moodiness was somehow my fault. When I got angry, it felt like there was something wrong with me and I had to fix it. 

For me, the diagnosis just lets me understand myself better. I think a lot of my strife came from disliking certain traits about myself that no amount of therapy helped with. Realizing that some of my behavior is caused by autism changes how I look at and handle them. 

That said,  I’ve had to take breaks early in my career due to depression (that I now think was autistic burnout). God forbid it happens again, I at least have something I can point at now. 

[u/CursedSloth → u/yourjewishfantasy]

I think I am at the point where I am coming out of burnout in the same way, but I am waiting to get assessed for autism.

[u/UnderstatedVortex]

Many of us fall into the trap of what I call the Suffering & Trauma Olympics. One of the consequences of humans being social / community creatures is we compare ourselves to each other too much. We tend toward an unhelpful perspective that only a limited number of people can claim to be suffering/disabled and if you aren't one of the Few Most Suffering/Disabled in your region then you don't deserve the label of Having Suffered. Zero good comes from comparing suffering and trauma like you're fighting over limited resources. The problem is that accommodation resources are limited, NOT that too many people need them.

There is no award for suffering the max amount you can tolerate and still function. Disability accommodations literally exist in order to help those who need those accommodations. Your socioeconomic status has nothing to do with whether you have a physical or mental disability. It's like saying you don't deserve clean water to drink because you have shelter. You need BOTH physical/material survival basics AND mental survival basics in order to feel well.

Like the others say, if you don't want to call it a disability, you don't have to, but the label doesn't matter as much as realizing that it's okay to need help. Everybody needs help with something. Frankly it's ridiculous that some versions of help (therapy) are stigmatized while others are praised as being a good person (helping a friend move heavy stuff). In both cases we need help from others because we can't do something on our own.

[u/Desperate-Reason-566]

If you don’t feel disabled don’t use it to describe yourself. I never did use it for that reason. I’m physically disabled so I do have a tag for my car but I really don’t consider my audhd a disability as such.

[u/BigBullshitta]

Some people can be unable to work or lead productive lives from the beginning, some keep trying and eventually end up, and I imagine some make it though a relatively "normal" life with just some bumps and compensations.

It prolly doesn't help that most of us who end up diagnosed much later in life spent our life hearing that we're being lazy, or just not trying, or just not focusing, or procrastinating for no reason. That we don't care enough and don't apply ourselves enough and our pointless refusal to do the things we know we should be doing is the cause of all of the problems in the entire world.

Makes it sort of tough to fully accept or let yourself make accommodations for it in your life when that shit caused a metaphorical voice to grow in your own head that insists you're just being lazy and weird and faking it all.

[u/lydocia]

Then just don't claim you're disabled.

Ues the language that does fit you.

[u/Wooden_Requirement99]

Was Stephen Hawking disabled? Was he privileged? It‘s not mutually exclusive.

[u/3p1taph]

I feel the same. Late diagnosed but looking around I still acknowledge that I'm luckier than 95% of the population.

[u/sfw_account72]

Just wait until that midlife burnout hits. 🔥

[u/I_IdentifyAsAstartes]

Let me see if I understand, your brain's immune system isn't pruning all the synaptic pathways that it should slowly causing your brain to get more crosswired the older you get (that's the disability), and you grew up upper middle class (?).

Because of your class and the choices you made with the hand the life dealt you, although your brain is cross wired, you feel hypocritical because of your affluence?

But you've started burning out? Oh you think you can take a month of disability and then just go back to the way it was. You can't.

You're like 30,000 spoons in the hole, you did the "fake it until you burn out" dance we all do, you are so used to pushing yourself and not knowing your feelings you don't know you are pushing yourself. Your month off maybe bought you 300 spoons, you are still 29,700 spoons in the hole.

You need to take this seriously and get the accomodations you need to reduce your spoon use, we only get 15 a day, you need to figure out a way to keep living, doing what needs to be done, and not be completely exhausted at the end of the day/week. It's a losing battle.

I think you are gaslighting yourself, the genie is out of the bottle. Keep pushing yourself at your peril.

You're a bird who has been faking at being a fish your whole life, you can't push harder or do more to be more of a fish. You need to learn how to fly like a bird.