Confidentiality

Post Reply New Topic

As a person with AS, I have had a real problem with confidentiality over the years. Its not the fact that I want to know everybody's business and use it against them, but sometimes to understand what events are happening and to make order in my life. I am a very open person about matters in my lfe, why can't other people be?

A couple of events that come to mind involve medical emergencies and personell issues at different places of work. Companies keep very mum on even the name of who was carted out by ambulence, and whom was fired. Another event that comes to mind involved the firing of a minister in our church a number of years ago. The board did not even let the congregation know what happened.

Does anyone else with autism/AS have problems with confidentialilty? If yes, why do you think that we need to know this information?

I blurt out lot of things about myself. I even talk about my husband and he doesn't like it. I don't see why he has to be so private. Who cares what people think, they won't ever see him and they won't ever see him again. People are just paranoid.

The way I understand it, everybody has natural curiosity about "special" events that happen around them. However at the same time management, medical personnel and the like, have an obligation to respect a persons privacy.

If the issue does not directly relate to you, you have no right to any information about it.

In fact, bosses and doctors (etc) are much more 'in favour' of protecting the person to whom the issue is concerned.

For example: suppose you began having a lot of difficulty at your workplace, and you broke down and had to take a leave. To get the leave you had to tell your boss you had Asperger's Syndrome, and explain why that meant you needed a leave.

Then Joe from another department wondered where you were, why you were gone, what happened?

Would you want your boss to tell Joe all of your personal business?
Most likely not. Probably you only told him (your boss) that personal information because you HAD to in order to keep your job. But you didn't necessarily want your personal issues broadcasted to anyone who simply asked.

I dunno if that explains it properly but that's the best I can do.

I'm inclined to think that there should be a presumption of the right to know unless it's clear who could be harmed by revealing the truth. Problem with that for Aspies is that maybe we're not so good at predicting emotional harm. Once the truth is out of the bag, it can't be hidden again, whereas if you keep quiet then you can always reveal the truth later. So I think Aspies need to be careful.

What makes confidentiality "important" is the competitive nature of society - if we all really cared about each other, there would be little need for secrecy. Being still quite an idealist, I tend to balk at doing anything that might be perpetuating the nasty rat-race system we're in. I was against the recent court ruling that said the papers were wrong to reveal the weird sexual antics of a right-wing politician......he said it had been an invasion of his privacy, I say that when people are deciding who to vote for, it's in the public interest for these things to be known. I've always been against secrecy about people's earnings - it was always considered very rude to even ask what a person earned, but I don't see what harm it can do - and I strongly suspect that the only ones who want it private are the higher-paid ones who fear that divulgence might lead to a pay cut when the public finds out how big the differentials are.

But apart from my political views I'm wary of blurting out the truth these days - in social situations particularly. If it's an authority figure I'm talking to, I'll be especially careful what I say to them.

I also have a strange feeling that personally I'm entitled to the truth about everything, whether it affects me "directly" or not. It could be argued that a lot of it is none of my business, but the social/moral activist in me says that it's OK for me to make it my business. If somebody is hurting somebody else and covering it up, then I might be able to intervene if I can tease out what's really going on. I suppose my scientific background helps to shape that attitude - the right to pursue knowledge out of sheer curiosity.

Absolutely, I am an terrible confidentiality klutz! I was almost fired from my old place over a certain incident and because of it I was the only person in my year group who didn't get a promotion. It was a huge, huge faux pas. Somebody asked for a very senior person's pay details and i sent them a file which had everyone in that divisions' pay details.

At the time I had no idea that I'd done anything wrong, which makes it even worse. It was only when I was pulled up by someone senior telling me that the head of HR had complained, that it dawned on me what i'd done. I was thrown off that team.

I'm always very careful now about sending anything out in my current job and if in doubt i will check with the boss first.

I'm bad with personal stuff too. I'll talk about something that happened to someone and when it comes back round people will be furious with me for talking about it. I don't know how you're supposed to know about these things!

Oddly enough, the best bosses and companies that I have worked for have had a culture of openess about them. I find it quite funny that a company cannot even release the name of a person that suffered from a medical incident, when it obvious what was going on and the incident happened in fron of everybody.

All the company would of had to of done is send out an e-mail of such (a previous boss used to do this).

"As you all are aware, Joe Blow collapsed at work today. Please offer your thoughts and prayers to Joe for a speedy recovery. If you have any further questions or comments about this incident, please direct them toward your supervisor or other members of leadership."

This is all the company would of had to of done to settle everyone's curiousity, but at the same time be respectful of the person. I know that confidentiality causes a person to "save face" and gives a person dignity and respect, but there needs to be a middle ground that entities need to find to honor that respect, but again satisfy the curiousity of those that would like to know.

Would people know where to draw the line though? That's my thinking.

EDIT: ahaha I mistook confidentiality for confidence. Biggest idiot ever.

Last edited by monsterland on 07 Jan 2010, 6:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I am an impulsive talker. Millie referred to it the other day as "inappropriate over-disclosure" and said it has to do with Theory of Mind. I am unfailingly curious about things because I miss SO MUCH. I am always left 'out of the loop' and I am not going to pick up on it normally so I am an enquiring mind. I think underneath I resent the fact that I am never in the circle and people leave me out...maybe I have justified my curiosity this way sometimes.

That being said I wouldn't try skirting HIPAA laws. Not worth your job.

I at times am open but learned some people don't want to help with it. For example therapist/psychiatrist I tend to mention the College issue and it's usually take another pill or just talk about your problem and get over it etc. So "opening" up to these people for me haven't been helpful. (This is why I'm debating on what to tell my Psychiatrist Monday) I described AS and he said perhaps I could have it and here's another pill. (So much for opening up and trying to get help!) Overall with people in general I'm very open which I hear from family isn't a good thing but oh well I choose to be.

Strangely enough this is one of the main reasons why I have never been promoted to a higher position. People have indirectly told me that I can't keep my mouth shut. This runs different to my personal beliefs, I think that there needs to be a culture of openess in the workplace, by unfortunately due to paranoia about litagation on the part of the company, companies are extreme about doing just the opposite.

Has anyone ever noticed, the higher you are up on the food chain, the greater access you have to company information?

I'll make my own food chain! f**k their food chain!


I am not a private person. I'm actually a very public person, one who wants to be famous, one who confesses my whole life and reads other people's private stuff and is very curious. I do not hold anything against them tho. Honesty is my policy. I don't lie to impress anyone. Or maybe I tell the truth to impress... I want to impress the people who are like ME!

Sometimes I blurt out stuff about myself that can seem a bit inappropriate to others, but then there are things about myself that I share with virtually nobody. I am just a very honest person and I don't see why people have a problem with that. But I do appreciate that others may not be so open as myself (it's all down to personal choice really) and so I never really ask anyone any questions that are too personal. If people really want to tell me something, then that's fine, but I will never ask for or induce something out of anybody.

There might be a very good reason why they want to keep whatever he was fired for a secret. The truth might have been very harmful to the state of mind of those within the congregation. Churches have a community to think about and, if the information was something that may cause distress to many people, that community would then be rocked and altered permanently. The parties that know about why this minister was fired may well be badly affected with what's happened and may want to recover in peace. This would be a difficult thing to do if, perhaps, the whole community knew about it too, particularly if they keep getting asked about their personal affairs by nosey busy-bodies.



This is how I feel. If the person in question wants to inform me for whatever reason, then that's fine. But they will also be reassured by me that I will not pass that information onto anyone else.



I would also find this to be acceptable, provided 'Joe Blow' did as well, as it does not detail the reason why he collapsed if he doesn't want people to know. However, if 'Joe Blow' did not want people to be notified at all whatsoever, then that is his right too. When people get ill, sometimes they don't want to talk about, mainly through embarrassment or because they feel their pride has been dented. Or because they are just extremely private people. That's just how some folk are.

"Inappropriate over-disclosure" is a fantastic term for it.

I have no sense of the broader nature of things; if someone tells me something, I guess I assume it's common knowledge unless they specifically say it isn't. This got me into some trouble at work recently when I disclosed something to someone who didn't need to hear it. I didn't realize there was an overall strategy going on that I wasn't aware of; I had one detail of the thing, but that detail was enough to sort of "give away" the rest of the plan.

I absolutely can keep a secret. It's just that I need to be told that something IS a secret. When I was young, I'd say something to someone and my mother would interject with "Tell all you know" very sarcastically. So I guess I've been doing this a long time!