Hello Friends. Should I go public or not?

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My name is Keith. I've been struggling with Asperger's Syndrome all of my life. Only in recent years have I become truly aware of it. The more I read about the condition and others who have it, the more my life begins to make sense. As of this writing, there is no official diagnosis but practically every social arrow in my life points in that direction.

I have had trouble forming connections with people for as long as I can remember. The only times I have had any degree of success was with other musicians/performers (I am a performing guitarist and audio engineer), and even then it was very difficult for me. When the thought that I might be Asperger's was first raised to me, I was immediately opposed to the idea. Instead, I explored other options such as ADD, Depression, and Sleep Dysfunction -all of which I am currently being treated for. In addition, I began a fitness routine and adopted better eating habits just in an effort to feel more confident and appear more outgoing.

I believe my efforts are counting for something, however the underlying social issues seem to still be there: Trouble keeping up in social gatherings (3 or more people), unintentionally rubbing people the wrong way, and just observing how others do not seem to want me around 15 minutes after "Getting to know me".

I just want to like and be liked -just like anyone else I suspect. But the harder I try (or lack thereof), the more I feel awkward and isolated. When I try to listen and chime in, I almost always wind up saying something random or insensitive. If I act like I'm quietly paying attention (just nodding my head and such), I come off as uninteresting or boring. If I don't try to interact at all, people think I'm Intraverted, or that I don't care and don't want to be bothered. As my awareness of this grows, the more I feel "Trapped", and Asperger's is the only thing that makes sense for me.

I have the same feelings and needs as anyone else and I want to treat others just as I would have them treat me. But somehow, I've lacked a natural ability that others seem to take for granted to do just that. The only thing that has gotten me by for the last 30 years is my intellect -which seems hardly enough.

So, I have been thinking about going public with it for some time. I'm not looking for sympathy and I don't want to be treated like a dysfunctional person. I just want to be understood. The problem is that Asbies or generally misunderstood so I'm not sure if coming out would be for better or for worse.

That's a tricky one because I don't think anyone could advise you one way or the other. You should do what ever you think is right for you. Personally I find it easier to keep it to myself because I see it as personal.

Telling people you have a neurological dysfunction you have not been officially diagnosed with is not going to make them like you any better, but it may make them think you're a drama seeker.

Even with an official DX, it serves no social purpose to talk about it, unless someone expresses curiosity. People do not understand - most people, unless they live with a close relative with Autism, have no clue what the word 'Autism' really means. If you think telling people you have High Functioning Autism (the term Asperger Syndrome was recently removed from the Diagnostic Manual) is going to cause them to be more understanding of your quirks and oddities you're fooling yourself. AS is a set of invisible handicaps and if people can't see it and you have to explain it, then its not real, its just a made-up excuse.

The condition itself is rather complex and virtually impossible to explain in any simplified "nutshell" version, because its not just about social skills, its also about crippling anxiety and stress and and sensory overload and depression and cognitive perception and Executive function. The only people who care to know about all that are Clinical Psychologists and people who have the disorder.

I'm not telling you to keep it some dark secret, I'm just saying don't expect telling people to make any appreciable difference. Many will not believe you anyway, and of those who do, most will not cut you any slack for it, because its invisible and they don't really comprehend it.

At least that has been my experience and when I was diagnosed, I was so excited to finally have an explanation for my lifelong difficulties I told anyone who would listen. The only people who even seemed interested were my parents and that, I suspect, was because it absolved them of direct responsibility for having raised a freak like me. It was no longer their fault I was such a loser - God did it.

Welcome to Wrong Planet, though - people here will take you seriously.

I'm thisclose to getting fired from my job. If I told them I was on the spectrum it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. They'd still expect the impossible from me. In any case, they either wouldn't believe it or also not believe the constant barrage of noise and work was too much for me. I'm actually in overload mode but they don't give a toss. I'm on my own.

That's why I'm always puzzled when people are so excited about getting a formal diagnoses because it doesn't really make a scrap of difference in the real world. You are right when you said that you're on your own. We all are.

Like you, I've just started to make sense of things. I am awaiting a formal diagnosis. I have told a couple of people my suspicions and I've found that helpful. My boss knows (at the time I felt I wanted to tell her due to something that happened) and she's been great with me. But I'm a manager too so it's not like I need that much from her, I'm very independent.

I think I'm lucky it's gone well telling people though. I certainly wouldn't want everyone to know, just the select few at work closest to me. For the most part I'm good at covering up my difficulties or avoiding them, and I don't see the point in people knowing and making assumptions about me if they already assume I'm 'normal' or 'just a bit eccentric' anyway. Why make it worse?

That said, the small team I work with have benefited from understanding my sometimes brutal honesty and my intense frustration if things aren't just right. They also support if I have to have difficult conversations with people.

In short, if you decide want to tell people, tell just one or two you trust to be quiet about it. Then see how it goes before you tell the world.

To kwarm,

I'm in the same boat as you at the moment. Had difficulties all my life, only in recent years recognizing myself in things I started to hear about Asperger's. Years of denial -- basically even wondering inside my head if this is me was about as welcome to me as wondering if I had herpes. Not something I was gleeful to imagine might be true of me, yet, like you, everything in my life pointed toward it and suddenly made sense.

Have not sought a formal diagnosis as I fear what effect that may or may not have on "official" stuff.

About telling people anything, particularly when one is not formally diagnosed......I understand completely where you're coming from in thinking telling people will help a situation. It may not, but I get why you think it might. I'm talking about hoping that perhaps if you explain to someone why, for example, you just had a meltdown, are feeling sensory overload, had to leave the office party early or whatever, it's the hope that it might help that person see that it wasn't you just being a dick or something, but that you seriously started having difficulties handling a situation and it's a brain thing.

I totally get why explaining feels like a ray of hope -- NOT in making excuses for yourself but in thinking it might make all the difference in someone either thinking you're just being weird or realizing something is genuinely hard for you.

The same way someone might have to explain they can't go in the sun because they suffer from porphyria -- a person can stop saying "Why the hell won't you come out into the sun with us?" and instead go "OHHHHH okay, that's different, that's a reason," and leave you alone instead of thinking you're just being difficult.

Although, seeing the responses of people here, apparently it doesn't help to explain after all.

Realizing now, in myself, that there may be a name to put to some of my difficulties, has allowed me to accept myself a little more. Again, not excuses but reasons why.

What I've decided to do -- if something comes up in which I have to -- is just explain a symptom rather than give my whole self a label. And even then, only if I feel I really have to explain something to someone in a situation that might need it in order to have a better outcome. In other words, only if it might really help the person not get the wrong impression, I'll say something about having a hard time dealing with {insert problem of the moment here}. I've decided not to mention suspecting I may be on the spectrum, but instead just address one issue if that issue arises around someone.

Official diagnosis...make friends with it. It'll give you at least some relief to know what's going on.

I've had no concept of using AS as an excuse for myself. I'd rather see it as an obstacle to overcome. My goal is simply to be a better person socially.

Just last night, a co-worker and I were talking over drinks. The night came to an abrupt end when she got really upset with me saying, "You don't stop to think about how what you say affects others feelings!". I've gotten that all of my life and its brought me a lot of sadness. Its only recently that I've discovered, its NOT my lack of thought but my lack of social intuition or natural empathy.

Even now, I am at a loss as to what I said or did that seemed so insensitive to her. I asked her about it the next day and she replied with "Its fine". So now I'm just being shut out. This is something that happens a lot. Most people won't say anything to me about it at all and simply avoid me instead. So I have to stay in the dark about it. I can't learn from my mistakes if I don't know what they are.

I don't mean to hurt anyone. I just have a different way of viewing and approaching things and so I get mistaken, often to the detriment of an otherwise potentially good friendship.

Hi Keith,

I can't really advise for or against your going public. They never have figured out which came first the chicken or the egg but I have a sneaking suspicion it was the chicken (to hatch the egg). My point is that if you don't like the outcome you can't undo it.

I have other labels and dealing with Aspergers is new to me, but then it is also the only thing that really makes sense. Even my husband, once I opened up to him with my thoughts, started naming off a bunch of things that apply and I never thought the problems were that obvious.

When I first got sober, I thought that it would fix all of my problems. Wrong. It just gave me more recovering alcoholics to talk to about the issues. People who weren't alcoholic had a lot of preconceived ideas about alcoholics that can be a detriment. I've been sober since 1/1/91.

But I came into AA somewhere around 1987 and had alot of difficulties. A social worker helped me. The mental health people kept putting me on drugs and doping me up and the drugs almost killed me. He helped me talk to those nuts (doctors) at mental health. And he also helped me find a specialist.

I was diagnosed with MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in 91. I was so relieved, after the initial denial was overcome, to find out what made me so weird and different from other people I started sharing it. OVERLY sharing it. I was the first person in the state of FL that was put on disability for MPD.

Being in AA, taught me to share openly, so I shared about how the MPD affected my sobriety openly. And I've always researched everything to death and I was devouring the material that was written on it so I knew a lot about it from a clinical point of view after awhile.

I thought that sharing about the MPD would explain to others why I was so weird and for them not to take anything I did, or didn't remember as a personal slight. I would lose time and not remember people who I had talked to and not remember conversations.

Sharing that information though didn't actually help a whole lot. It caused people to avoid me even more. Like I had suddenly grown two heads. Even those that thanked me for what I shared because it helped them, would otherwise avoid me. Talk about confusing!

Everybody has a need to be understood. That's basic human nature. However, my experience has been that trying to be understood can sometimes backfire. If the individual is incapable of being objective about what you tell them then some people take it as an excuse to distance themselves from something they totally don't comprehend. All they have is stereotype to rely upon. That's bad.

On the other hand, let me play devils advocate. I had one friend that I shared on a regular basis with. He didn't reject me. We actually became more than friends, but then we split up over misunderstandings. I went my way he went his. Twenty years later, after we have both gone through hell and back in other relationships, we are married.

What I learned in the interim, is this. When you let people know you are vulnerable, you make yourself an easy target for evil people. I never knew there were so many people out there that preyed on others that they could try to control and manipulate. When I just stayed to myself I didn't have as much a problem with it. When I opened up about it, the pervs came out of the woodwork. It's like they've got radar and they pick up on what they hear and if you share the wrong thing then they will target you. I don't mean to make that sound paranoid, I mean to warn you that there are evil people out there that like being mean.

Today, people have to earn my trust and even then, it is hard to trust. Then, I'll let them know what's going on with me. But, perhaps that can backfire too, I am currently friendless, unless you count my husband and my therapist in the state I just moved from.

I found my "best friend" of twenty years making fun of me behind my back on facebook. We had just gotten off the phone and she immediately posted stuff online. I believe she forgot that I finally got a facebook account after all of these years and posted without worrying about it. Perhaps we shouldn't have been friends. I was always the listener. Maybe that's all she wanted from me. As soon as I started trying to assert myself and speak my mind (therapist's suggestion), that's when we started having problems.

I'm no expert. All I can do is share my experiences.

There are a few good reasons to share openly. One, you can't own something you refuse to acknowledge. Since Aspergers affects our relationships with other people, and sometimes we hurt those people or they hurt us, owning it is the first step in cleaning house.
Two, no man is an island. It's that need to be understood again, as well as, companionship. Three, anxiety is a core problem with aspie's and we can't deal with that issue unless it is acknowledged. If you keep all of that "junk" bottled up, soon it will break out in another area of your life.

My 25 cents worth.

Wow! You've given me a lot to think about there! Very helpful insight. This is why I started posting here. Thank You. If I had to sum up part of that in my own words, it would be that experience is something you don't get until after you need it. I guess thats true of everyone. Why can't life have an "Undo" button? I agree there are people that prey on people's weaknesses. I do protect myself and try not to be naive, but I'd still rather believe that people in general are good and be disappointed time and again.

It seems I can't quit being naive. Even though I know everything I stated above I still find myself getting clobbered emotionally by people because I like to think the best of them until they hurt me. The only problem that I've realized over time is that I was not getting a good return on my investment. If it were a business, I would have had to file bankruptcy a couple of times.

My therapist said that among those with PTSD it is normal for us to trust those we shouldn't and mistrust those we should, but I'm hearing some of the same stuff with Aspie's.

I've gotten very, very selective now and the investments are reaping better rewards. It's okay to be alone for a long time until you find someone that deserves trust.

Ludicrous, your posts are filled with wisdom. And sadly this part is true of some things I've been through myself in recent years:

I'm still trying to regain a place I had my life before, figuratively speaking, mentally, emotionally and circumstantially, in which this wasn't happening to me. But I too have PTSD and it tends to be a vicious cycle of attracting just the kind of people who get their kicks controlling and harming when they sense or become informed of vulnerability. I too can be naive enough to think that surely if someone is informed that one has extra difficulties or vulnerabilities, it would surely bring out the compassion rather than the instinct to "rub it in." But sadly no.

.

Thank you for the compliment!

I don't know about wisdom, but I do know about experience. I've gotten a little better at steering clear of some of those perv but not all of them.

welcome to wp. imo, no need to go public. I've shared and been ridiculed for it. Now I realize that I wont be able to share with anyone because many think it means I am not human or something.