Most of the time when I disclosed/revealed my Aspergers to people from my past, such as acquaintances, former colleagues and associates, "secondary" friends, whatever, the result was more or less neutral BUT there have been a handful of times where I never heard from any of them after - even after sending them an occasional friendly email, no response (whereas I got a response previously). I'm wondering if this is because the person you are opening up to automatically assumes that you are going to pepper them with questions on improving, or unload your baggage, etc, but that's not my intention. I just want those people to accept me for who I am w/o prejudice.
I suppose it's the same deal for homosexuals who come out of their closet to people within their circle - they never hear from those people again.
I've learned enough from non-verbal & emotional cues that there was a certain amount of discomfort from the person I opened up to, so it wasn't entirely unforeseen when I never heard from them again. One time, over lunch with a former colleague of several years who always thought I was "odd, but gifted" and he stood up for me when others were putting me down as weird, well, I told him about my AS and what it entailed, and he responded with a quizzical look "oh...so you only see things in black and white?" I said, sort of, think of it as having dyslexia when trying to read the grey area with people - it's not obvious on an instinctive level, I have to think about it some more to see it, so technically I don't always think in black and white." I could tell by his reaction, though subtle, that he was put off by it - the rest of our lunch was kind of stilted and awkward.
My asking him to lunch wasn't with the overt intent of disclosing, but maybe he took it that way. I just decided to do so because things were going well and I thought, hey, why not - it would lift a weight from my shoulders, so to speak, and if everyone would be more enlightened and understanding, it would be him. Was I wrong!!
My suggestion to those who think about "coming out of the Aspie closet" would be to use an NT trick of beating around the bush: after explaining your AS, say "you know though, it's truly uncanny - I've told other people that I have AS, and then I never hear from them again." Of course, you have to say it w/o coming across as naive or pathetic...
15 Apr 2012, 12:53 pm
