Are You Able to Hide Your Aspergers?

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Im cappable of masking about 90% of my aspie traites durring my work day. It takes a lot of mental energy I would not be able to keep it up all day with out lunch break. My coworkers take me mostly as being excentric shy and brainy.
My wife tends to share the fact that Im an aspie with more people than I do with hope they will have pitty for her.

Even before I knew I had it, and I thought I was just strange, I tried to hide what made me odd. Sometimes I was successful, but sometimes I was not. Now that I know what Asperger's is, that has not changed. I can hide it sometimes, but other times I just can't.

I've always gotten a mixed reaction from people, but I generally get this: "she's smart, funny, and a bit odd".

I've always tried to use humor to distract from my oddities. It works a bit.

however, a few years ago I developed PTSD from being involved in an abusive relationship and ending up arrested and jailed for a week. Since then, I haven't been able to hide aspie features nearly as well. Also, anytime my stress level is high I am less able to act NTish.

I don't try to hide it, I just act like I always do. Apparently it passes for semi-normal in the NT world.

In my case I never tried to blend in. I never thought there was any reason to blend in. Until I was 50 years old nobody ever told me that I had a problem that I should be seeking help for. Maybe sometime in my 30s, when I was still unable to hold any type of steady employment, some of my family tried to talk to me about my mental health condition. But I think they were just concerned about my depression. Which my response was for them not to worry about it.

If any of my school teachers ever suspected something was wrong with me, Im sure they never said anything about it. They just wrote me off as a behavioral problem, and put me in basic skills classes. School reports just said that I wasn't putting forth any effort. Of course even if my teachers or my parents had figured out that something was wrong with me, it not like they could have gotten me any help anyway. No one had ever heard of AS anyway.

And I agree that most people are even now are clueless about ASD. Hell I'm beginning to wonder if even my psychiatrist or my therapist understand it.

People think m normal but about a week after they think I'm a bit "off"

There's no hiding my akwardness even when I try my best to act like a normal black teenage girl it just makes me even more akward

Yeah I can be pretty good at hiding it at work most people don't know I have it unless I tell them. After I tell them they are like oh my you hide it so well.

When I was younger, there were times I too never wanted to "blend in" with the crowd. Heck, in my childhood, other than my few friends, the crowd did not exist. I was in fact, terrible at anything resembling conformity until my college years. While the bullying let up a bit in Senior High School (partly because my family kept moving! Arrggghhhhhh!!)the social isolation started getting worse. No dates, school dances, clubs or anything else. I wasted those years. I tried to make up for them with a sort of desperation during college, but even there, one too many melt-downs & I started getting bullied again. Of course, I was too busy getting drunk & partying to take it all that serious.
But in the workplace, keeping jobs often means pretending to be "Normal" these days. My stress level usually dictates how well I accomplish this however..

Sincerely,
Matthew

Many people say they either never would have guessed I have Asperger's/autism or try to argue with me about how I am not because I appear so "normal" or do not "look autistic". What is an autistic person supposed to "look" like? I had a psychiatrist tell me that I had "outgrown" it and that my diagnosis needed to be changed. He was so adamant I was bipolar and needed to go on Ability. He said he also had a son with Asperger's and basically that since I didn't present the same way his supposed son did, I didn't have it. I didn't believe him in the first place and figured he was lying in an attempt to try and convince me I was Bipolar and needed Ability. Anyway, he's the worst person I ever had to deal with about the issue. Most people don't have a conniption fit and make a federal case out of it like this shrink did. When people tell me I am oh-so "high functioning" or practically normal, I reply, "I was really messed up as a kid." "Messed up" seems to be a phrase on the level most people can understand.

I can hide my AS and blend in, but no matter how hard I try I will always show something to make people guess there is something a bit wrong. But I can hide it to the point where AS can't be easily suspected by other people (even a proffessional psychiatric nurse was surprised when I told her I am on the spectrum, she just thought I had an anxiety issue). Almost everyone I know have suspected an anxiety disorder, and some have also said that I ''suffer with my nerves'', and others have suspected depression. So I can't hide anything completely but can get away with just telling people I have an anxiety disorder or Social Phobia (which I do have aswell anyway, so I'm not lying to people there).

I am able to show my emotions, hold a descent conversation (only with one other person though, in a group I tend to go quiet but still listen and take it in and laugh when they laugh, etc), I can use tone of voice and face expressions, etc, and I don't stim in unusual ways or in stereotypical Autistic ways, and I make normal eye contact and can do small talk, greetings, etc.

Well I thought I was able to hide it, but it seems I wasn't doing as good a job as I thought!

I didn't know I had AS until this year, I just thought I had a horrible personality and anxiety issues and I was happy enough with that. I made a big effort to cover up what I now know to be my Aspie traits. When I mentioned AS to my Mum she wasn't surprised (in fact she had come to that conclusion herself already) but I thought my boyfriend would have been shocked but in fact he wasn't surprised at all. All the things I thought he hadn't noticed (stimming, sensory issues and overload, meltdowns etc) he had noticed. The other day he clapped his hands the way I do as I joke, and I was shocked because I didn't even realise that I was doing that in front of him.

Now I feel paranoid that his whole family know there is something 'wrong' with me. His sister is a teacher, she is presumably trained to spot these things. I suppose it is hard to cover something up when you don't fully understand what it is you are trying to hide.

Now I am more aware of my behaviour I realise I must look very odd to other people, and I wonder if people have been laughing at me behind my back for years, while I thought I came across as relatively normal

Most of the time, yes. Sometimes (quite rarely), I fail to do so and become obviously weird or quirky, especially in unexpected/unusual situations.

However, when someone have been around me for quite some time (like three weeks to a month or so), they would be able to recognize that I'm odd, wierd, and not 'normal'. I make mistakes, I can't keep myself NT-like at all times, and these mistakes add up.

Yes and no. People may just think I am rude or shy or anxious or nervous or think I lack common sense or that I am dumb or think I am childish. I can hide my traits with excuses and I go out and walk around if things get too much and I hide my stims by wrapping my legs around the chair legs and sitting on my hands. Plus people may think my traits are just my quirks. But no one looks at me in public or looks at me funny. If they do, I am not aware of it. They only look if I am drawing attention like if I get into an argument with my husband but that still doesn't tell them I have AS. They just see a normal woman bickering to her husband about something. I think people mistaking your symptoms for other things or just as your quirks counts as hiding it. But yet they can actually see them and don't even know it so in another way you can't hide it.


My mother tells me people would never guess I have a disability. But I know some people may guess because they know what to look for because they may have impairments themselves or because they work with kids with it or because they have a special needs child. Heck even my husband could tell when we first met. My mom can tell if someone has impairments even if they do look normal. She goes by how they talk and act and processes information, their choice of words. She said one of my doctors had a learning disability just by how she processed things and her choice of words. She wonders if she probably had AS also. She could even tell my first ex had other things going on besides ADHD and told me he is socially ret*d. But sometimes I wonder if my mom just easily pins labels on people or thinks anyone has a disorder if they act different somehow. Does her being a nurse makes her qualified to do that? I don't think they diagnose mental conditions or neurological ones.

I have told people online I have it while chatting and they would say they can tell and I would ask them how so and they would say by how I think and communicate and things I say. But what did they think before they knew? I never asked. But I think I hide it well and if people know me long enough or see me often enough, then they can start to tell.

I hide my true nature almost naturally after years and years of being forcibly moulded by social interactions, all the while unaware of the truth that I should have been aware of: I-AM-FREAKING-DIFFERENT-TO-THESE-PEOPLE-NO-WONDER-THIS-IS-SO-BL**DY-HARD-AND-WEIRD-AND-WRONG-AND-EXHAUSTING-AND-NO-WONDER-PEOPLE-ARE-LOOKING-AT-ME-WEIRD-AND-GET-UNCOMFORTABLE-WHEN-MY-POLITE-SMALL-TALK-RUNS-OUT.

For example at family weddings (with my huge family of some 11 aunts/uncles and 30-something cousins, many now with husbands/wives/partners of their own) I can last a good long time (sometimes hours, with breaks) with my almost perfect girly chit-chat friendly person act, until I do or say something that I only 5 seconds too late realise was incongruent/rude/odd/random/awkwardness-inducing.
At that point, I shut down internally but smack a giant smile on my face, listening to my heart thudding in my chest all the while. Smile still stuck on extra-smiley mode, I say ever so politely "will you excuse me please, I'll be right back" and then I pretend-slow-walk my way out of the tent and into the building to the bathroom stalls where I can sit in the silent, peaceful, ALONENESS and panic about the fact that I can't escape from the wedding. After a while I know it's been so long (stretch it more than 20 minutes sometimes) that when I come out I'll get a load of "WHERE'VE YOU BEEN", so I put my "face" on and come back out, via the bar where I sneak in a few extra socially unacceptable double vodka shots.

Sigh.

I hide well, but it slips out. I have to watch what I say AT ALL TIMES. I have to be on guard for inappropriate things that I say and will regret later and beat myself up about for months.

Many people don't really notice I'm an Aspie. I'm very good at detecting it in other people though. (I even think that's logical?)

If I'm around people too long my natural quirks come out I guess