Admitting you have AS or hiding it?

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Yeah, I got denied health insurance after I got diagnosed. Health insurance companies are chock full of twisted people.

No one at work (FedEx) knows I have AS and I doubt that explaining to them why they don't like me will help anything. People try to give me a lot of s**t but I honestly just don't care any more so long as I am keeping up my end of the work. My boss pretty much loves me because I work both smart and hard. He's had me trained up to do any job in the facility. I just wander around looking for problems and I fix them. The good and the bad aspects of my work are both essentially caused by AS but I still don't think anyone knowing about it will change anything.

Yea I would say ASpies are good workers eh

well I am I usually say to myself... If I was hiring someone etc.. but hmmm... MORAL hardworkers honest etc..



I would think it would be better to disclose of your aspergerity after your boss has judged you (eg after X weeks)
as a good worker

then later say well Im a good worker because i have AS

I've been thinking about this a lot myself. This is my first grown up job and I've been here a little over a year and half. I always knew I had certain problems but I've always been able to work through it. Recently I've been having big communication and socialization problems at work. I started researching and found out about Aspergers. I haven't been diagnosed yet but I'm working on it. I think this is what has caused a lot of my lifelong problems and what is causing me problems now. If I am diagnosed I'm not sure if I should tell my boss. He is very patient and understanding. I think he and two other supervisors realize I struggle with certain things even though they don't have a name for it and I've never really talked to him about it. I know they would be willing to make accomidations for me if I asked. I think it would help me and them to figure out how best to help me. However, I'm apprehensive about it because I can't see one of my other supervisors being helped by it. She tries to be nice but is very condescending as is. I'm affraid she'd treat me like I was an idiot if she knew. Also I don't market myself well to the two supervisors highest in our department. I don't know if telling them would help them understand me better or would just alienate me further. I think it would be beneficial if my coworkers knew. I very much work in a team environment. They don't understand why I can't do small talk and why it is a struggle for me to ask them for help. I think if they knew they might be able to realize that socializing is exhausting for me and sometimes I need to focus on the more important communications for the day. At least then they wouldn't think I'm a rude jerk.
Like I said this has always been an issue and now that I'm in my first grown up job and already having problems I can see where this is always going to be an issue and I'd like to start working towards finding a way to work with it as soon as possible. I've never needed help before but the professional world is new to me and this might be a challenge I can't take on on my own. Any advice/commentary would be greatly apppreciated.

It sounds to me as though you have answered your own question.

I feel that telling my boss about my AS would damage me professionally. I work for a congressman on Capitol Hill, and work with people all the time. I can manage the people because politics has defined protocols of interaction, and there are many parts of my job that I love. However, finding out that I have a disability that prevents me from socializing doesn't work well there.

Also, we had an elementary school class visit us today. Some of the had AS, and when they left, my coworkers started joking about ass burgers. I wasn't offended, but I was obviously intimidated.

I told my boss. We were discussing psychological testing, so it was a nonthreatening way to work it in. He says I don't have it (get back to work). From the way he reacted, I think he may have thought I was just kidding around.

I think I am going to see if I can get a diagnosis without endangering my status with insurance. At the very least if they said I was NT, then I could close a chapter on my life. You know, you are now officially normal, that sort of thing. The behavior modification and the medications ended so abruptly, yet no one ever formally said I was cured. But then they didn't formally tell me what it was I supposedly had that required all that intervention. Just perceptual disorder. Defined as "the way you experience reality isn't the way it really is." And then people wonder why I have problems with self-confidence?

I'm a senior engineer. I've never even come close to bringing it up. I have a couple of weaknesses that I've made clear (presentations... good lord please don't make me do presentations). I also have some extreme strengths that make me very much worth having around. I don't think it would hurt my standing at this particular employer but I have worked at some in the past, one MAJOR NAME company in particular for sure, that would use something like that as a political tool to get you fired.

Both my partner and I are AS. We work in the same place. We told our boss. Not only told. We handed him copies of a diagnosis, and the DSM-IV definitions of AS, then walked him through it. Then we showed it to other employees, spent hours explaining that it was why we needed a less random shift pattern. Then our bosses wife saw it, and agreed that our boss could easily have it. I have a tendency to agree with her.

The result is that our workplace knows full well what we can and cannot do. We are almost never asked to do something that will cause us issue.. unless the situation is desperate, we receive routine shifts (as does everyone else now, and they are happier for it.) We have received greater responsibilities based on our skills, and even better job positions. Since starting, we are both more qualified than when we began, qualified enough that we can in theory open our own business with said qualifications. We are also now, on paper, more qualified than our boss. (He only has basic food hygiene certification, whereas LadyMacbeth has higher, and he has a personal license through grandfather rights, which is basically inheritance without the training, whereas I aced the training as the first person to do so since the training was implemented, other than the local licensing officer, who was on my course and was thoroughly nice.) If for some reason we are fired then we have a greater option to sue for unfair dismissal (assuming we get fired for an Aspie reason.)

In other words, telling all was the best idea we've had, and given how WE are still employed and pwning the job, yet the NT who hired us got fired at christmas and is still unemployed.. who exactly is the disabled one?

I wanted to update my last post. I did talk to two of my bosses. They've been amazing. I explained it to them and they are relieved. This is not the reaction I expected but it has been great. To quote one of them he now understands how I can be so nice and such a b***h.

He had heard of me being a dependable friend and knew I would go to extreme lengths for my good friends and family. He would also see me at work not making small talk, responding rudely to people and not saying hello in the mornings. I was aware I was kind of rude but even after they pointed out some of my problems I didn't see to what extent. As he was encouraging me to tell my other bosses he let me know I was a b***h at work. It all made sense then and I saw to what degree I was being perceived as mean. It helped so much and now I plan on telling my other bosses.

As I explained it to them and they read a little of the books I have they pointed out some symptoms that I wasn't even aware I have. Apparently you're supposed to say goodbye when you hang up the phone even though you're in the same building. This is just dumb, I'm not going anywhere but it apparently bothered them. And I always thought I was one of the lucky ones that didn't stim. As I told my bosses some people with Asperger's do this but I don't they both looked at each other in a way that made my sentence trail off. I've always had a habit of messing with my ears. It annoys me sometimes because I'm aware I'm doing it while talking to people and it distracts them. They notice it and pay attention to it instead of what I'm saying but I can't make myself stop. Sometimes I do it and don't realize I was doing it until later. In school my teachers always asked me if I had an earache. It was embarrassing because after it was pointed out I still couldn't stop. The bosses think this is my stim. It makes sense and I'm going to ask my shrink about it.

They understand me better and I understand me better. They've also learned blunt and to the point is the way to go with me. It has made work sooo much easier.

I'm also a lot more comfortable with my goofiness at work. I write out everything I need to say before a meeting. I don't respond quickly/clearly to questions asked impromptu or in a meeting but they're patient when I bring it up again an hour later or send them an email later on. They know that I'm making sure I've communicated clearly and not that I'm obsessing over something. They also believe me when I tell them I'm very excited about a project even though I'm not smiling. They know my happy face is most people's angry and disgruntled face.

I can't really offer advice for other people but for me it has helped immensely. I think I'm kind of lucky in that I have the greatest bosses ever.

Sorry for being off-topic, but this quote, where is it from, who is it from? I know I know it, but can't recall it somehow, and the monogram doesn't help either. It makes me go crazy.


To go on topic: I just had a meltdown in front of my co-workers and it was not the first time. So I guess I don't have to tell anything (also because I'm not diagnosed with anything).

If it's for an interview for a prospective job, yes i will try to hide it, the place I am currently located has very small minded people(not all of them but there is a majority) and it would already be tough to get a job in the first place without throwing my AS into the mix as well.

You mean you work for a Congressman that discriminates against the disabled? If that's not the case, why would telling be a problem? If anything, it might be an opportunity to testify about Autistic Spectrum Disorders at a Congressional hearing. You are correct about the name however, that's why calling it "mild autism" is a better choice.

ZGM are my initials, added as a monogram because I made the quotes in the first place. Not wholly sure if I was inspired by anything else I might have previously heard, but that wording is defintely mine.

my boss seems quite accepting of my difficulties at work - communications being the major one along with being a misfit at any social occasion, these issues have been a reoccurring theme throughout my working life

i don't think i will reveal anything anytime soon though

I haven't told them, but I left a booklet about AS in my boss's intray anonymously & since then he has started making more accommodations for me - so I guess he must have put 2 & 2 together!! !! !

(He probably doesn't know it was me who put it there though - maybe he is sitting there wondering if I know that I have it? )

I know my AS must be obvious to others, because in a previous job my then boss told me I would never get a promotion because I had a "personality defect" - which at the time was a devastating shock for me because I'd had no idea.

The personnel officer had me do a personality test "for his DMS project" & said he'd never heard of someone score so high on interest in psychology at the same time as scoring so low on empathy! (Now I know these scores make perfect sense....)

Umm... do they hire lots of spectrum people? I can get science jobs fine, but last fall trying and mostly failing at finding another job, the only places that hired me was McD's and a store that also had an Autistic employee. Thats when began it suspect spectrum disorder in myself...