#coming aut

[strangerdarkerbetter]

Day 4:  Reactions to Coming Aut

Day 4:  Reactions to Coming Aut

After discovering that I am Autistic, I had to decide who I wanted to tell. Finally having answers after so many years of feeling defective left me wanting to tell the world about my discovery. Of course, I knew that Autism is highly stigmatized and that it isn’t actually safe for me to just go around telling everyone. The first person to know about my discovery was, of course, my husband. He was…

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[autism-asks]

I told my friends I'm autistic and they were very supportive of my stims!! They said they'll try to remember not to draw attention to them

Congrats!  Supportive friends are a treasure!

-Liz

[strangerdarkerbetter]

Hey sorry if this is weird I just don't know who else to ask. I have an online friend that I'm going to meet soon and I'm not sure if I should mention that I'm autistic to them beforehand. I'm self dx (I'm afraid of a pro dx affecting my transition) which is why I haven't mentioned it to them before but I don't wanna feel like I need to suppress my autistic traits since they don't know. And I don't know if I should mention that I don't have pro dx if I do tell them. Advice?

I would suggest mentioning it to your friend before you meet so that they have time to process the information and ask any questions they might have. I would suggest simply stating that you are autistic without reference to diagnosis status and then explaining what that means for you. For instance, I might explain it as the following for myself:

“I’m autistic. For me this means that I have difficulty understanding people’s tone of voice/facial expressions, don’t always get sarcasm or other jokes, may need people to repeat themselves because I have a hard time understanding speech, sometimes can’t speak, move around a lot, among other things. I stim a lot which is the autistic word for repetitive body movements that we make like flapping my hands or bouncing or chewing on things. I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have about autism or how it affects me. I just wanted to tell you this before we meet so that you’ll understand why I may seem different than most people.”

Since this is an online friend, you can type up what you want to say and revise it before sending it to them which gives you a chance to get everything out the way you want to.

I hope this helps!

[autism-asks]

I had begun to suspect that I was on spectrum myself and after speaking with a friend about it, we both agree that I have a place on it. My mother denies that I have it so going about getting help is going to be a challenge. Do you know of any websites that provides help in a sense? Thank you.

Sure. What kind of help or resources are you looking for?

-Kath

[autism-asks]

I have been told by my boyfriend and a while ago by a friend that they think I may have autism, because of a lot of different factors, like my stims, my troubles with learning like other people, my lack of empathy for others, and other things that they've noticed. I want to talk to my doctor and try to get diagnosed, but whenever i bring it up to my mom, she doesn't believe me. She says she's never noticed any of my symptoms, even tho i have had meltdowns in front of her. no one really knows (1)

How i feel, and It's so hard for me to do things other people seem to understand well and normally. I feel alone in my feelings and it's hard. I have been diagnosed with GAD and depression, but my mom doesn't think i have depression, either, even though i went to the hospital and was diagnosed with MDD. How can I talk her into letting me try and get diagnosed? (2/2)

There are several asks similar to yours in our #coming aut tag.

Good luck!

-Kath

[autism-asks]

I recently reconnected with a friend I haven't seen in a year or so, and we're pretty good friends and I can trust him. I wanna tell him I might be autistic but I'm not sure how. How do you think I should go about it?

We can’t tell you how to let your friend know that you might be autistic, per se.

My only suggestion would be to frame the news as something that isn’t a “big deal” - even if is, considering how much being autistic can shape our perceptions and experiences.

The reason for this is that people usually look to you for information on how to react or how to view whatever is shared. This is especially true if they are learning about something for the first time and have no knowledge on the subject. Hence, a casual heads-up or “hey, I just wanted to let you know” may lead to better results than lengthy explanations and clinical terms which may frame the news as something bad or alarming. In the same way, sharing personal information in detail or giving explanations or reasons for all of your behaviours may also open the gates to intrusive question or questioning of your motives later on.

This is not to say that you cannot share your thoughts and feelings about being autistic with your friend. In fact, being unable to share what is important to you would not be a good sign in a friendship. How much you can share and how it needs to be framed really depends on the kind of friendship and communication the two of you have, how open-minded and accepting your friend is etc.

Hope this helps, even without a detailed script! Good luck!

-Kath

[autism-asks]

My mom doesnt think i showed autistic signs as a child (though I think i did). The problem is now all these traits are super apparent because of stress and being forced into situations that bring them out, but she thinks they developed at a later age which would mean it isn't autism. So now I question if I even had those traits as a kid because even though I think they were there maybe... idk maybe it's all just anxiety... Idk any advice?

If your mum doesn’t know much about autism, it is possible that she doesn’t believe you had autistic traits as a kid because you don’t match decriptions or stereotypes as they are commonly presented in the media. It is possible that she thinks of autism as something ‘bad’, making her reluctant to consider the possibility of you being autistic.

While many autistic people do have at least some of the well-known traits or stereotypes, even those who show a lot of them may still be missed due to the way traits are frequently exaggerated in the mediaas well. If your traits present in an atypical way, i.e. being able to mask symptoms that would draw attention, having friends, having less stereotypical strengths and interests etc., your traits may not be read as autistic, even if your traits deviate from expectations just enough to register as ‘weird’ to others.

Learning more about autism might help your mum move away from her preconceived ideas enough to listen to you and consider the idea. However, getting her to listen so that you can educate her in the first place might still be difficult. One thing that could help with this might be referencing experts in the field, as she may be more inclined to consider their opinion or things that are backed up by research.

When I talked to my own mother about being autistic, I found it helpful to connect autistic traits to examples from my own life in such a way that the traits were able to make sense of situations that had previously seemed ellusive and confusing to her. This helped change her perspective on autism from ‘scary, overwhelming, non-sensical thing that intrudes on my life and challenges my ideas about the world’ to something that could potentially enrich her life by providing answers. Telling her “hey, I think I’m autistic” wasn’t effective because there were so many other things that could have explained some of the things I was dealing with just as well and much more conveniently than being autistic, from being a teenager to depression to ‘being lazy’ or ‘oversensitive’. Despite having many other autistic traits, the thing that made her believe I may really be autistic was hearing about how autism could explain this one thing that nothing else had been able to explain well. After that, she was open to hearing more.

That said, you don’t need to ask her about autistic traits specifically. You may be able to casually ask about traits without mentioning that you are trying to find out if you showed traits as a kid. You could just ask her what you were like as a kid in general and take note of any traits in your mind. In case you feel self-conscious about asking too many questions, you could also start talking about something random from your childhood and slowly work your way up to what you are interested in.

Another possibility could be mentioning the experiences of others, be it friends or fictional characters, and then guiding the conversation to where you would be able to start comparing the other person’s experience to your own. An example could be: “(Friend) and I were talking earlier about how they used to have lots of people over for their birthday! That got me thinking - I don’t remember if I ever did that?”, which could lead to talking about whether or not you did have people over for your birthday, if you had a lot of people over in general, if you were a people person, what else you would do instead if you weren’t etc.

In case the above don’t work, talking to someone who knew you as a child could be just as useful. This could be another family member, a friend of the family, a coach, teacher or even a childhood friend. Depending on how comfortable you feel around the person and how likely you think they are to take you seriously, you could tell them that you suspect you may be autistic. Personally, I would probably keep it more general so as not to let prejudice or doubt affect their answers, but this is up to you and what you feel comfortable with.

Followers, can you think of anything else?

-Kath

[autism-asks]

im thinking of bringing up the possibility of being autistic to my parents, but i have a really hard time starting conversations (especially if theyre about important things). do you have any tips on how to prepare for bringing these kinds of things up with family? i should be fine once i start talking, but the problem is really in getting the conversation started on the first place. thank you for spending time reading this

I’ve answered a similar question here. Does this answer your question?

-Kath