responses to telling people you have a.s? IGNORED?

Post Reply New Topic

besides being constantly told 'you dont look like there's anything wrong with you' (ARRUUUGGGHHH) has anyone else has their comments just ignored, as if it was never said???

last night i sent an email to an old frind id not spoken to for a couple of years, and told him i had a.s..
part of the reason for sending the email was i think he shows A LOT of a.s traits, and thought he might find it helpful to understand himself better, if he does indeed have it. im still weird, but i do feel better knowing WHY im weird. obviously i didnt mention my suppositions, but gave a list of things i have, some of he might recognise.

got a lovely long reply from him, so nice to hear from you etc, but NO mention of a.s, which was about 1/3 of the email i sent him.
the weird thing is, he's not the sort of person to be too much embaressed by 'personal' things, and has disussed depression, pmt etc. so i cant work out WHY he ignored it- he commented on everything else in the email, and mentioned several times how nice it was to hear from me, i must reply immediatly etc.
will i be too mental to ask why the f**k he didnt comment? how can i say this without sounding insane????????
anyone else come across this? i feel very twilight zone-ey about this. i definatly sent the email, too, as its still attatched to tHE bottom of the one i sent him!

i feel a little hurt, weirdly.

it's a.s denial!

I'm just guessing here but perhaps he doesn't want to talk about the AS stuff yet. If he does, he'll talk to you about it in his own time. Perhaps he needs time to process it.

well, i disclosed to a friend of a friend for the first time that i had a diagnosis.

her immediate response was "who told you that?" "do you believe it?" "well if you believe it then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and you don't need it [can't remember because i was blanking out] and it's making you worse (etc)"

i cried for about 10 mins in front of her and 5 other NTs until i had to go because i didn't know what to say. what DO i say? usually i'm a great NT emulator and i usually try really hard to be NT in that circle of friends, but i've never invented scripts for that kind of situation and came up totally blank. not to mention upset at what she was saying (issues i have grappled with but finally been able to assess objectively).

i'd consider that AS denial too.

I guess the question that comes to my mind is "how long did it take you to come to terms with having AS?" (For me, it took several months, at least - from the time I thought I might have it, until the time I decided I must have it.) I think anyone you tell has to be allowed a similar amount of time for the information to sink in. A few months down the road, you might want to mention it again & ask if they have any questions or comments.

If they bring it up before then, great! You can go from there. But I wouldn't push them to comment.

Maybe he was glad to hear from you and wanted to reply, but didn't know what to say about the AS thing, wants to do some more research, think about it, or whatever, so he just replied to the other things in order to quickly send you a reply.
If he's close enough a friend to talk about it like that, then why not just ask? Or maybe ask him if he's done any reading about it or something?
I sent my best friend from high school a text message about it yesterday, and haven't heard back yet.. I'm absolutly sure she has it. For one thing, she's my best friend (LOL) but the way to describe her to someone who knows who she is but can't place her by name is "the strange girl who is obsessed with cats and has that bizarre stare." I tried living with her once, and just couldn't, because I can't guide someone as much as she needed. (Things like having to specify that needing to close the doors because the air conditioning is on ALSO means needing to close the windows..) So yea, I'm even surer that she has it than I am that I do. But maybe she didn't get my message.. lol, it was an SMS from yahoo... we haven't talked in awhile (But that's not unusual for us.. we can be really close for awhile, drift off, and then pick back up like nothing happened..) She'd sent me a facebook message saying I should call or text her.. my phone doesn't have texting, though, and she's no better at talking on the phone than I am, so I don't want to just like call. But then again, maybe she wants to process the comment, or talk to her shrink about it, I dunno. Introducing someone to a totally new diagnosis that'd explain most of their problems but that nobody has ever considered for them before can be a lot to process.

thanks all

ive been really upset all day about it, and i just think its TOTALLY weird.

hi zeichner- but i dont think he has drawn any inference from the email. i dont think he could have inferred i was hinting it about him...i was realy careful about what i said, and didnt in any way suggest i thought he had it, so there was no reason for him to get weirded out for that reason.
i sent him a link to the doctors failing to spot a.s. in girls article, and said it was funny that the big cheesen in uk autism is sasha baron cohen's cousin, who wrote a standard test, but the aspie quiz is better.
i mean- all you have to say is- 'no way' ' that must be a relief to know' or something similar.. but its the entire absense of ANY reaction at all, especially when id said how annoyed i was that all my other 'friends' were more likely to believe in leprechauns than me having a.s- it was so 'here we go again, another one...' it felt like he was being polite and just holding back.

if anyone i knew told me something similar, the only reason i'd have for not commenting would be because i thought they were making it up... which i tihnk must be the case- its what everyone else SAYS- 'you dont look like there is anything wrong with you'... arrruuugghhhh!! !!

sorry about your friend maggiedoll- just email her to make sure. oh, lirese- im so sorry about that. i love the way people get so freaked out and angry in being told stuff like taht- what is that about? its not like you're asking for moeny for a miracle cure.... SO weird.

anyway, sod it, ill just email him and ask stright off. im far too impatient, and its been bugging me all day.

enormous summer cloud burst outside, which makes me feel a gabillion times better.

i look normal as long im not stressed much so anyway, most people seem to think its someting serious

I'm not really that concerned about my message to Alicia.. I know I'll contact her eventually.

I was generally trying to point out that sometimes when someone doesn't know what to say, they don't say anything.. I know I do that all the time. or I go "oh, I'll try to think of something to say, and write back later" and then time goes by, and I don't.. and then it seems like it's too late to write back to something someone said to me awhile ago... Anyways, when I do that, I totally don't mean to snub the person, or to ignore what they said, or anything. I just have a lot of problems knowing what to say.
(Yea, GreenTea.. that includes the message I didn't get back to you on..)

I've told a few friends I had from high school recently. Basically they don't believe me, and I suspect it was because so many of my AS traits faded once I get to high school. That and they seem to think that all people with Asperger's don't feel or express emotion! Some of the responses I get are, "You were always very kind and caring. There was nothing about you that reminds me of Asperger's."