The Decision to Stop Hiding

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Given I didn't even consider the possibility of having Aspergers until the last month or two, I can't say I hide my Apsie traits much at all. I force myself to be more diplomatic away from home, and to more readily acknowledge the existence of others, but that's about it.

I don't try to hide anything. I'm just me and I've always been me. Honestly, I don't even know what "normal" is. In my mind, there is no such thing as "normal" people. There isn't. I'm Asperger's and PROUD OF IT! God made me different for a reason I'm proud of who I am.

Last edited by balletangel on 02 May 2012, 10:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Since I don't even know want "normal" or "average" is, I can't pretend to be that way anyway. I know all sorts of different (and weird) people.

OMG, if I didn't know better, I'd have thought I wrote this. I was self-diagnosed, but I talked with my primary care doctor about my concerns and I have now officially been diagnosed. When we were young, nobody had ever heard of Aspergers and even Autism itself was rarely spoken about. We were just expected to fit the NT mold and we did the best we could.

I have just recently come to this understanding and these past few weeks have been a real rollercoaster for me as I decide what, if anything, I want to say to people. At my age, it really doesn't change anything... it is what it is, and I am who hiding it has made me. At least now I know why I always felt like I missed orientation everywhere I went. It has changed forever how I view my own thought processes.

That's also true in my case, especially as a female since it wasn't until I was 28 that I was able to get a diagnosis. During my childhood, only low functioning boys were diagnosed with autism, and as late as the mid 90's, a therapist said that "if there were such a thing as being a little bit autistic" that would fit me. I actually ran into that therapist not too long after my diagnosis, and she agreed with the Asperger's diagnosis. Until Asperger's was more widely known, or that autism was a spectrum, I was always too high functioning for a diagnosis until I was an adult.

I don't hide my autistic traits. I am myself most of the time. It helps my interactions with people, I think. I have brain resources to talk instead of monitor what I am supposed to be doing and what others are thinking about me or themselves and expecting me to do, and this is mostly stuff that I don't know anyway.

I don't care for the poll options. I am obviously quirky at work but I am not trying to hide my autistic traits really (possibly a little). Mostly just my odd sense of humor. Someone dropped a little thing of raspberries and it fell open on the ground, I immediately said "wardrobe malfunction!". Got some good laughs

Yes, but I'm not good at it. <- Mostly this.

I can appear as just a fairly odd NT in public and when dealing with people. If someone was to spend enough time around me they would figure out that I'm not "Normal", though.

Like others who were diagnosed late have said, I hid without realising it for many years. I got so much negative feedback from others when I was young that I disguised myself entirely by becoming passive and silent. It wasn't the best strategy to take, but I wasn't even a teen at the time.

I spent a lot of energy and repressed so much of myself doing it that I no longer know who I am. Now that I have a diagnosis and know that there was nothing wrong with me to begin with, I'm looking forward to finding out!

There are a few things I do that I know freak other people out and I try to repress those. I talk to myself a lot, so much so that I have to be careful not to speak passwords out aloud. For some reason, mumbling or singing to yourself while walking down the street tends to make people edge away. Obvious stimming, ditto. I often catch myself swaying in public - started doing it in my seat at a lecture today - and switched to jiggling my foot instead.

At home, anything goes.

As soon as i got my diagnosis i stopped hiding as before i had been acting like everyone else as uchas i could.

I'm not sure what pretending to be NT or hiding one's aspie traits means. Does pretending to be NT mean trying to be like the average person? I think most people try to appear more normal than they are, simply to fit in with everybody else and avoid being singled out as different.

That said, I don't tell anyone that I spend most of my time alone reading foreign language texts obsessivels for no reason. I don't let people know that I have no friends. I hide the fact that my girlfriend and I have lived in separate apartments for ten years due to my aspieness. I only engage in stimming when I'm in private (My parents trained me not to stim in public when I was a small child). I have learnt to control my facial tics, though I blink a lot, as an alternative. In general, whenever I am with others I try to work out what a "normal" person would say and do in a given situation and then say and do that, in order to avoid having problems. I feel I'm acting the whole time but somehow I thought everyone did that. Maybe they don't.

I think they don't. That's been my "epiphany" since my diagnosis. I think the two primary sets of people are characterized as those who are and those who only appear to be NT... the second set is most of us at one time or another, even if you don't actively try to hide your traits. Somehow, they got to set the standard that we are all expected to adhere to.

I've played their game for nearly 50 years of my life. I'm tired. I want to take my mask and go home.

I've tried to hide my weirdness as best as I can for most of my life. It's only in the last few years that I've learned to open up about myself and take pride in who I am. Yes, I'm sometimes (even in aspie groups) seen as a b***h because I speak my mind, but honestly, I'd rather be a b***h than a fake

Hiding is so, so energy-sapping.

As an aside, I wonder if I'd been labelled as a child whether I'd have gone on to be who I became? A scary thought actually.

Married 30-something professional. But undiagnosed.

I would too, but I don't seem to be able to accomplish that. I'm just a wall-flower.

I find it's a good idea to come out as an Aspie in cases of social conflict.

I am not suggesting you blame your Asperger's on your bad behavior, but

it helps when demystifying some of your more annoying traits.

I would say that most people would feel relief to find out you weren't being

an a**hole, but rather you were acting the way you were acting simply

because of a "medical" condition.

People are more forgiving of medical conditions than they are of conscious

bad behaviour, I find.