Please read (and maybe reply) if you have an NT friend!

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If you have an NT friend and have told him/her that you have Asperger's Syndrome or whatever, how have you told him or her? What did you say? How did you explain it?

I would love some answers, thank you.

Regards, mightyzebra

I have not told my NT friend. He knows there is something different about me, but he doesn't mind, he accepts me for who I am.

I first started talking about it to people when I had to explain to my friend that I was cancelling a DJ set because of too much trouble from psychological issues, for which I had an appointment with a mental health nurse. When another friend came to that club night and asked why I wasn't DJing, the first friend told him I'm been sectioned.

When he told me this anecdote I laughed my head off, and told him it was all proactive and I was probably going to get diagnosed with aspergers syndrome. He said it was cool. I think he always knew anyway.

I only told one other friend and that was because she'd been waffling on about her ex all evening and I decided it was 'my turn'. She also said it explained a lot.

[quote="mightyzebra"]If you have an NT friend and have told him/her that you have Asperger's Syndrome or whatever, how have you told him or her? What did you say? How did you explain it?

Hi There! When I tell people that I feel comfortable with that I have many Asperger traits, and this really relates to who I am, they will say that they did not realize this, that I seemed perfectly fine..What they do not understand is how agonizing it is , how exhausting it is trying to maintain conversations, feeling at ease amongst people in places,etc... I try to stay calm, and most times, I do, but it is as if I must muster putting on a "courage face" to those I am dealing with..Also, as for friendships, I feel that I cannot have more than 2 friends, that I am betraying one by befriending another...Does that make sense? Have a great day! Peace, Rushfanatic

I have talked to very few about it but those I have are those I have known for some length of time (20+ years) and were quite obviously aware that I am a different sort of normal and at least one suggested outright that I'm a bit autistic before I told him.

Most people even NT's are a bit weird anyway.

It's pretty much no one who doesn't know about it.
I only have one other friend I know of that has AS, all the others are NT, more or less.
Most of my friends have every letter combination from ADD to OCD, so we're all a bunch of broken robots.

Usually, if I find that it has any relevance to the situation or conversation, I'll tell them and eplain.
There's nothing to be ashamed of. I'm not ashamed at least. If they can't handle it, it's their problem.

Like previous posters, i've only really told people when it seems like a relevant topic, for example i've been at uni since september and on a couple of occasions i have mentioned that qualify for extra time with assignments because of my diagnosis of AS and a second opinion that it's probably schizotypal disorder, which i always stress is not actually schizophrenia. i think in the first instance it was ok because the first group of people know me well enough to know it doesn;t make me a needy person and that i don't make revelations about myself for attention, however you may have seen the post that describes how i told a girl i'm less well acquainted with but who has always been very friendly to me, and she probably doesn't know me well enough to make that distinction. i think i could have explained it better than i did though. but that said, i do tend to think that people have to be pretty narrow-minded to discount someone or attribute dubious motives for disclosing that sort of info. i mean, it might cross people's minds that you might be a psycho or an attention seeker, but most decent people don't make judgements based on things like that and will at least give people a chance.

Yeah, stay away from the brain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29
I'd also stay away from most internal organs.
I mean, you can use some of them, like the stomach, to hold water or whatever, or perhaps baiting traps, etc. but generally it's not very good.

Well, it took a while. There's sum NT friends I haven't told and probably wouldn't. I got one NT friend who I get along with great. After I told her, she was confused but accepting. I don't think she believed me at first since it's under the autistic spectrum. I could understand since many movies portray autistic charactors as ret*d like. Eventually she wanted to know more about it. She believes someone in her family has it. I gave her a book on it. It's taken sum burden off my shoulders. I feel like I can talk more freely to her. There's sum other friends, I guess I would consider them acquaintances, who I don't feel comfortable telling. I don't think they'd understand or educate themselves about it. I also worry that they may put a subconscious label on me if it would deal with the word autistic.

How best to tell depends on the friend obviously, not two people are the same, and so a canned explaination just wont cut it.

I told my best friend (Whom I have known since age 6) shortly after I found out myself. "Do you know what Aspergers' syndrom is?" I asked him, and it just went from there.
I explained the symptoms. He probably realised where I was going, when I started listing parts of my own personality, because he said "Do you have this?" and I said yeah I did.

It was the happiest moment of my life when I found out that he had researched it throughly after our conversation. Nothing has changed in our relationship though, although I suppose he now has a way of explaining me to his parents

I don't have any courage to tell anyone about asperger, since I don't have official dx. I keep it for myself.

But I think my NT friends already know that I'm somewhat different, and some of them is very nice and accept me the way I am. I'm so grateful for that, although none of them I feel connected with.

Well I just infact told one tonight.I dont have a problem with people knowing but as long as they'll be accepting. Many times I just fall into that situation where it'll come to me telling them. Often its to explain things. I'll tell them if I know well enough that they'll be accepting. Often times Ive used it as more of an explanation for whats going on with me. Often I want people to have a better understanding of whats happening.

If there your real friends, they should be accepting towards you telling them this.