Who knows you have autism??

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I'm very open about it, I don't mind people knowing at all. If they have a problem with it then that's their problem, I don't have to be friends with them. My autism isn't very hidden in the sense that I think it's quite obvious to others that i'm not in the same world as them so for me it's ok to be open about it.

Don't touch me! I have RaNdoM DoCtOr DuDe DiSorDEr! !!


No worse than Ass-Burgers, I suppose.


I think as you become more familiar with ramifications of the condition (a very real brain dysfunction), and just how much it subtly affects your entire life, you may come to see that these properties are indeed a handicap, and a rather serious one. To my mind, the worst part is the fact that it's virtually invisible, therefore very difficult to make people understand when you really are having a problem and need help (or at least a little slack), that you are not faking or making excuses.

But Hans Asperger didn't just 'classify' a bunch of RaNdOm personality traits. He identified a group of behavioral symptoms that pointed to a disabling set of limitations. A learning disorder that restricts an individual's ability to perform what are for most people many normal functions of everyday life.

Hard sometimes to realize you don't got it, when you've never had it to miss.

It's hard for me to realign my self perceptions from 'this is who I am and these are the problems I have' to 'I am who I am because I have this condition'. I'm not disagreeing, but it requires a major shift when what you always thought was your "self" turns out to be a diagnosis. The concept of self is so highly charged. Or is it more complicated than that?

I think it's nice to not have to care about social conventions. I think that it frees my time to do stuff I think actually matters.

Nobody, and it's staying that way. Well, ya'll do. But that's it. My therapist who diagnosed me does too, but I haven't seen her in years. When she told me what I had, of course I thought of Rain Man or something and she explained about Aspergers and that yes I really really have it and that there are all sorts of degrees of it. I just told my family that she said I have a disorder that causes <and I went into a whole long explination of what it is without using any names>

Everybody else just thinks I'm plain crazy. Which could be true. But they probably drove me there.

PaganMom

Yeah, there's definitely a paradigm shift in self-perception involved. But for me, I'm gradually coming to terms with it, sort of phasing the "self" and the "disorder" into a single picture, like a single diagram on two transparencies. Until they align properly, the picture is a bit blurry and difficult to define, but when they line up, you see they're just parts of a single multi-layered and more complex unit. The Executive Function issues have really been a magical key for me in understanding why I am who I am.

As we've been discussing in other threads the past few days, I've always known that somehow my peers were growing past me in certain ways, becoming grownups and interacting with the world at large in ways that mystified and eluded me and left me feeling like a lost child, when before I'd always thought of myself as a bit more mature than most of them. Its one of those things I knew about myself but had no explanation for except that I was just a loser by nature. Now I understand. Understanding hasn't erased the limitation, but I know its useless to beat myself up about it. And I feel a little less ashamed at asking for help.

Willard-
Yes, it just bothers me when people talk about a cure. A cure of me? Excuse me?
Did you ever read Speed of Dark? If you didn't it's about a young man with Asperger's who has an opportunity to undergo a experimental procedure to change his brain to that of an NT. The woman who wrote it has an adult son with Asperger's. I read it some time ago, I may have to read it again now that I understand more about autism. It's funny, even as a child I was curious about autism (only LF back then) because on some level I understood it.

No, I haven't read SOD. It sounds similar in concept to Flowers for Algernon.

The first time I remember hearing the word Autism was when ABC's 20/20 news magazine started doing stories on kids with autism back in the early 1980s. I remember it specifically because the reporter (may have been John Stossel) asked a doctor why the kids rocked and stimmed the way they did and the researcher told him "We don't really know for sure" and I thought "F**king idiots. I know why", 'cause I'd been doing it myself for 20+ years. I kind of suspected from that point on that I must have some form of it, but had no access to information back then, much less diagnosis.

2 of my teachers at school know for sure, and my mom knows (but I never talk to her about it). Only one student at school, who has AS herself, knows. My friends know, as well as people at support groups that I attend. I discuss autism with many people, and sometimes, if I have trouble with doing certain tasks I just say that I suspect that I have a learning disability, yet to be assessed. I'll definitely tell more people after I get diagnosed with whatever I have.

Willard wrote:

Only in the broadest sense.

Everyone. I used to not tell, but now I find no reason not to. I believe it makes things easier on me, when people know about my difficulties.

Most of my family knows, though they know because I was diagnosed young. A few of my closer friends know, but not very many. I don't think I'll tell, say, my boss or my class instructors about it.

My family on my mums side already know about it but my dad and my uncle (on my dad's side of the family) only knows about it.

I've told a couple of my friends about it and they didn't seem at all that fussed, the last person I told also happened to hav autism aswell and that really shocked me. I knew me and him had alot in common.

My friends back at school all know I got autism because I was in a special needs secondary school so I missed out my normal secondary school life.
That's how me and my girlfriend got together happily ever after but it was like on and off though

normally I don't tell anybody unless I know and trust them

Here is who knows I have AS/autism:

my family and my wife's family
many of my co-workers
my students
people who attend my music ministry
several at my church
numerous people I know (for example, parents of my sons' friends)
teachers I had while I was working on my gifted endorsement
people in my youngest son's autism support group

There could be more.

I don't keep my autism a secret.

Everyone pretty much

I'm telling everybody, but only one person at a time, because I don't want to tell everybody at once. There might be some people I don't want to tell, but that's not the reason. The problem with this is that I end up telling the same person twice, and I hate doing that.