My brother is nine years older than me and has picked on me my entire life. Shit happens though it doesn’t matter to me. His methods have changed over the years from snuggies and swirlys when we were younger to more verbal jabs at my life/career/hobbies/whatever else.
He is married to a very nice gal who worked as a child psychologist (I think that was the title) for a school before she had their kids.
When she graduated graduate school there was a party and I was a shy awkward 19 year old who only knew how to work and go to school. Up to this day it’s much the same only I’ve graduated college and am happily married with a great job. Still rather shy and awkward but I’m happy in my own skin.
Evidently at said graduation party I supposedly met one ot my SIL’S professors. I don’t remember this but evidently she pulled out her clipboard and did a diagnosis on this shy young fellow at the party. Only she didn’t say anything to me. She instead said to my brother and sister in law “I think he might have aspergers”. Now from what I read about said syndrome i don’t believe I have it. I’m pretty darn good at picking up sarcasm and other social cues. I just typically don’t care about what’s going on. Not typically interested in much and therefore don’t have much to talk about.
Now the point is not whether I have aspergers or not, it’s whether this broad was at all professional in telling my brother and sister in law. Knowing my brother that added more fodder to his favorite past time. He even made a song up making fun of my supposed aspergers.
As I said I don’t remember meeting this women but good lord does she sound like a pretentious know it all twat.
What do you guys think? I know my brother is a dick but that is besides the point. Is it professional for any doctor to be giving unsolicited medical advice in such a manner?
It isn’t the most professional thing in the world, but not the least. The prof might have just been making an off-the-cuff observation, the same as you or I might.
It would have been seriously unprofessional to have made it a formal diagnosis. “That young man has Asperger’s and needs to be in therapy right now.” That’s practicing medicine, and, even with a license, you don’t just go around doing that to strangers.
But as you describe, it sounds more like an informal comment, without being a real “medical diagnosis.” Again, you or I, at a party, might do the same thing. “Boy, that guy over there hasn’t stopped talking the whole night. Wonder if he’s ADD?”
Besides, from this short post, I can clearly diagnose you as someone who merely displays a detached emotional reserve as a coping mechanism following years of abuse.
No, seriously, whatever she allegedly saw in you (that is, in the unlikely case that your brother and his wife aren’t making it all up) is probably not a positive marker of autism spectrum disorder, which is diagnosed with interviews and some amount of self-description.
If yor brother has a pattern of using anything he can to pick on you, you have no idea what actually happened, so there’s no way to tell whether she was being unprofessional. Maybe she did make an unsolicited diagnosis based on totally inadequate info, or maybe it went like this:
Brother: That’s my brother over there. He’s really shy and awkward and doesn’t socialise much. Do you think he could have Asperger’s?
Professor: Sure, it’s possible. No way to know without proper evaluation.
Brother: NANANA A PROFESSOR SAID YOU’RE AN ASS BURGER
Not the most professional thing in the world, but hardly a mortal sin. She supposedly said she thought you might have aspergers.
But really, even that’s unlikely. She might have said that you exhibit signs of being on the autism spectrum, but I find it pretty unlikely that she actually gave a flippant, concrete diagnosis about a stranger she met at a party to the husband of one of her students.
Anyway, the real twat in this story is your brother. Not the professor.
Well if it did happen and you were completely unaware that all this was going on, that is consistent with what someone with Asperger’s might experience. Just sayin’.
Thanks for the responses. Maybe my failure to properly pick up on the way this so-called diagnosis came about is another symptom of Asperger’s. I don’t know.
I know my brother is a bully but he’s my brother. Can’t rightly cut him off completely. Sometimes he’s not too bad.
What is fun is calling him out on his own issues. If I were to say something to him along the lines of “if you felt better about yourself you would treat me better” it would totally go over his head and he would deny having any idea what I was talking about.
His need to pick on me is on the subconscious level. How fucked up is that???
