Disclosure

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I was reading another post and it reminded me of an incident that happened a number of years ago which has to do with something that I am still facing now. I have tended to be a sort of private person who has issues with disclosing information about myself and what I am doing unless it is absolutely essential for that person to know (close friends are an exception, but I even am secretive around family). I don't know why, but I have always been this way. Does any one else operate this way and of those of you who do this and find it as a problem in some cases, what do you do to become more comfortable with disclosure?

I have the same issues, but I have no idea why! It really does have to be a 'need to know' basis with most people. I even had problems with people from work knowing which town I live in!
I have been trying really hard to be a little more giving in this way, and nothing has gone wrong so far, but even typing about it now makes me clench up inside....
Part of the problem was that I had a year long relationship with a well known person in my organisation. This culminated in me being chucked out. I maintained what I like to think of as a dignified silence, but it has taken 3 years to even begin to go there and talk about it to anyone else.
However, I have been a closed book for as long as I can remember.

I'm not very comfortable with it, and I certainly don't volunteer the information unless I am specifically asked. But even more so, it always puzzles me as to why someone who barely knows me - and, in some cases, is never going to see me again - would want to know these personal details. I'm certainly not interested in the same information about them until they have given me other reasons to be interested in them as a person, such as their ideas and opinions.

It's funny, but after all those years of supposed AS therapy as a child, no one ever advised me on how I should disclose my condition!

They didn't even describe to me what my condition was. I don't think even they really knew at the time. All they knew is that it was called "AS", it was scary and mysterious, and for some unfathomable reason, some of the other kids wouldn't talk to me. It's true: I've met support staff who haven't grasped the non-verbal and detailed/object orientated concepts of AS. They were playing the whole thing pretty much "by ear" and on a "shoe-string budget".

I mean, surely, the most important thing is to teach the social and information imparting skills to describe his/her disability/difference/situation in a sensible and balanced way to other people?

As an analogy, it's like not telling a colourblind person what colourblindness actually means and the science/genetics behind the condition. It's as if all that the colourblind person is told is that s/he should really "try harder" to distinguish between red and green because that's how other people see the world. It's as if the colourblind person is told that s/he not being able to distinguish red and green is in fact his/her fault and is therefore abnormal/puzzling. It's puzzling because the colourblind person "should really be able" to see red and green as distinct shades, because that's everyone else's' perceptual experience, so it must be obvious