stopped hiding my diagnosis today

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I was diagnosed with ASD in 2012. I was vocal about it, attended a group, participated in studies, but as time went on, I ran into several doctors who said things like "theatre is an uncommon interest for someone with autism" and "but you seem so engaged". Even my own GP said "well you don't seem too affected." So for the past 2 years or so I've told no one.

My new GP doesn't know I have autism. My psychiatrist doesn't include the diagnosis when sending out reports to new doctors for me.

The eating disorder program I just finished has no idea I have ASD and I was with them for 6 months. I don't know, maybe they can see traits but they never asked and I'm so tired of defending it that I didn't want to tell.

Today I had an assessment at an anxiety clinic to see if I could access their services. The intake went well. I spoke about how I have few friends, dislike parties but not for anxiety reasons, am not interested in romantic relationships, have extreme debilitating anxiety when things are ambiguous and when directions are not clearly spelled out.

About 2/3 of the way through, they asked me if there were any other medical things that were relevant. So I tentatively told them about my diagnosis. The woman I was talking to seemed to understand why I was so hesitant about bringing it up immediately. She was very sympathetic to the fact that so many medical professionals dismiss the diagnosis in people who can pass as normal for short times. We discussed how theatre was a natural special interest for me to pursue because I was already using scripting to get through life and it taught me to make it look like I was looking people in the eye and I could always get through small talk with a script.

She said she sees people in my situation a lot, because people with ASD can definitely have anxiety. Now she is going to make a report of our session to send to my GP, my psychiatrist, and the eating disorders program that referred me there. And it will be like coming out to them as autistic. And it's scary. But the woman I talked to today, she understood autism. More than my psychiatrist, more than any doctor I've seen in the hospital. I don't know how all of these people who are getting the results will think.

But the anxiety program said that they can help me not mind so much what others are thinking.

So after 2 years of radio silence,pretty soon any medical professional I work with will know I have autism. And if I don't meet up to their perception of autism, it could be a tough fight.

But I want to do this anxiety group. I don't want to turn into the life of the party, but they said they could teach me how to improve the relationships I'm comfortable in, to communicate better.

So yeah, I'm out of the closet.

Invisibleboy,

Well done, my friend, well done!

I can't hide anything.

Lumi, I think I know what you mean, autism is pretty hard to hide, but I spoke with this woman and we came to the conclusion that since theatre has been my special interest since I was a toddler, it really helped. Since I've immersed myself in that world, learned how to write scripts for social interactions, did improv classes and learned how better to react in situations that change quickly, learned through character development how certain people may react appropriately in certain situations and emulating them. It's like my whole life is a theatre rehearsal. If I need to do something unfamiliar, I rehearse it first until I'm more comfortable with doing it. I still struggle with a flat voice and people constantly assume I'm unhappy or bored because of something about my face that I can't control.

To people unfamiliar with autism, I am no different from them because some of the things that are impossible to hide aren't necessarily screaming autism. I have learned through theatre to take on a personality that can be engaging (within a limited script) who is maybe a little weird. That's what I mean by hiding it. And the personality I adapt in order to work even part time is not something I can keep on forever. Meeting important people, working 6 hours a week, I can do that (especially since my work day is shut by myself in an office doing repetitive data entry) but I can't do it constantly. I use it when I need to, and then need tons of quiet time alone to recover.

My life is very, very solitary. I have 2 or 3 friends, and I see one of them every few weeks. My social life is so close to non-existent. And that's because I'm working so hard at masking the autism symptoms that I don't have any social processing power left. I'd like to spend more time with the 2 or 3 friends. I just don't have enough processing power.

So I can hide SOME things, for short periods of time, but it always costs me in the end.

If all of these doctors saw me in the world outside of their office, they'd probably agree with the diagnosis.

I'm really happy for you and I hope they r not dickheads about it.

Congratulations, I realize how hard this can be for people. Though Personally I don't give a F**k about what people think so yeah.

I told one of my closest friends about it yesterday and she asked if it had been validated by more than one doctor. That felt kind of crappy, like she was doubting it. I said yes, because multiple doctors have agreed, as well as psychologists and several studies that screened me to make sure I could participate. I explained that specialists can see it clearly, non-specialists are more suspicious. And we had a talk. She said this information was "interesting"... she apparently is interested in autism (I didn't ask her what her experiences were, didn't have the ability to figure out I wanted to ask her that in the moment) and we had a discussion about how doctors are always looking for the stereotypical signs, and the people who aren't so stereotypical.

I guess it's finally time to own the diagnosis - it might cause waves among my doctors who don't see it so clearly, but at least the anxiety program the other day seemed to understand completely and they said they've seen other people like me.