A circus act.

Post Reply New Topic

Ever feel like you might become a bit of a circus act to your friends if you tell them about your autism/ aspergers?

Or, are you already one to your friends/family if you've told them?

Yeah sometimes its like, well this girl has autism what are we supposed to think of her now? She's probably some anti-social freak trying to be cool and fit in. Not sure if I am making any sense but that's how I feel.

No, and I'm out with everybody. Adults tend to be more understanding and accepting than college-age people and younger, and people generally like me. It helps that I generally like people.

Most people know, and if they don't know I'm autistic they assume something else anyway (usually physical or cognitive, occasionally emotional).

Some people turn me into a circus act (i.e. "Look, the Thing types!", or else outright trying to trip me up to prove that somehow all my responses are cleverly programmed into a machine I'm actually hitting random buttons on or something). I don't tend to like them very much unless they learn to stop that. Most people don't, although most people don't have the best responses to me either.

As far as people who already knew me and then I was diagnosed, I've heard a few reactions:

"Oh so that's what was going on." and/or "That explains a lot." (The majority.)

"Autistic people don't (communicate/show affection/spend time around people/etc) and you (do one or more of those things), so you must not be autistic." (Various people who don't actually know the first thing about what autism is.)

"Oh, my (insert relative/friend/acquaintance here) is autistic, too." (A lot of people.)

"You're not autistic, dear, you're (insert amateur diagnostician's impressions here). Now me, they really thought I was autistic, because (insert a trait or two from person's childhood here)..." (A specific response from a person who had Psych Student's Syndrome (diagnosing yourself and all your friends/relatives/friends' relatives/relatives' friends/dog/etc. based on your textbook, a variation on Medical Student's Disease). Said person also had a weird tendency to feel like they had to be the only person in the room with whatever condition they thought they had that week. A different week, the same person called me autistic, go figure.)

"What is autism, anyway? I mean I've seen Rain Man, can you do that kind of stuff?" (A fair number of people.)