How to tell someone they may have Aspergers

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someone said it to me a few weeks ago after there was a fist fight
over someone touching my stuff

I think that my biggest social idiocy is asking people if they are autistic. It's something that has just "leapt" out of my mouth when I have been impressed with someones behavior. For example, when someone has stood up against obvious lies that a mob has chosen to believe I have said "OMG! You have such integrity. Are you sure you weren't at least KISSED by the autism fairy?" When I say something like that, I am so impressed with the behavior of the NT i am addressing that I forget that being autistic is a "bad" thing.

And um, yeah... I have done it more than once [understatement]

I guess I'm an "uppity" autistic.

I'm keeping quiet! Apart from guiding situations for my friend and continuing to make his path easier in whatever way I can.

My friend gave me great detail about all sorts of things and looked me in the eye. For an hour. Then he looked away and we got to the meat of the trouble - realise when the buttons are being pressed, consider if the response is appropriate. I almost missed it and I'm not sure I really got it. Something important was said and I didn't understand.

He has never looked away before. Although I do it out of courtesy.


I admit to thinking about the self satisfaction of saying 'you have Aspergers'. What will that get me? Nothing apart from a few seconds hit and possibly alienating a fellow.

Hope he finds out. But it hasn't happened for 40 years and I guess isn't going to happen now.

I would advise cautiousness.

Coming to terms with autism is something that people do in their own time. I was diagnosed with HFA as a young child but it took over a decade for me to acknowledge that anything was different with me.

A diagnosis is only going to be beneficial to him if he is willing to embrace it.

I think you are deliberately trolling here. Devil's Advocate is a wise and helpful role in a debate. But you have overstepped the line of usefulness by starting to insult well-meaning individuals ["ignorant" to describe well-informed amateurs], using hyperbole inappropriately ["mass murder" to describe offering a potentially helpful perspective] - and ignoring unassailable truth [most people self-diagnose CORRECTLY before receiving a formal DX], because it doesn't fit your premise.

Medical training in more enlightened institutions these days makes an absolute point of "Listen to the patient", because it has been belatedly understood that the greatest expert on a person is themself. Duh.

I [DX+, after several years of being well-informed and pretty sure though uncertain - I never called it "self-diagnosed" BTW] came to this page because I was thinking about sharing this perspective with a longtime friend who is baffled and distressed by multiple relationship failure despite being a caring, decent, principled, intelligent man who has followed all the rules - with obsessive special interests, a preference to work alone, distressing history of falling out with his closest friends, complete inability to empathise with others and a state of complete gobsmack when he discovers his behaviours have been perceived as hurtful and unsupportive by those he loves.

IMO it would not be the act of a good friend if I were to have this insight and deny him the option of sharing it. We have experiences and characteristics or traits in common. Despite terribly delayed insight into how my life f*ed up so awfully despite so many apparent advantages, DX has still been an amazingly positive experience for me. A single explanation makes a single solution possible, offering real hope of a custom-built positive future and transforming a sad history into the foundation of something good. What sort of friend WOULDN'T share that possibility, seeing another's sadness and frustrated resignation to a loveless or repetitive future?

That said, the discussion here has convinced me not to say straight out "Hey, I think you might have ...". So I reckon I'll just describe experiences of my own, and just casually drop in the AS/HFA thing. Maybe.

Someone suggested, based on my traits and behaviour, that I look into it. I looked into it, then studied it in depth, and came to my own conclusion. I only had my experience with it, so I can't say for sure how I'd have reacted if it was different.. but I think if someone flat out told me w/o a lot of valid justifications for their guess at a diagnosis I'd have probably felt insulted and told them off. Maybe. I don't know since it didn't go that way for me.

I decided that the best way to tell my closest friend that he, too, is on the Autism spectrum was a 20 page letter detailing such. It took me many months to write & I gave it to him about 5 months ago, so it's been well over a year that I've known and haven't really said anything to him about it save for one time I tried to have a conversation about it and he had a bit of a meltdown about it. He hasn't read it yet, so I don't know what his reaction will be yet for sure. I did try to write it in the most loving way possible, so I hope he takes it well. Time will tell when he gets around to reading it. On Christmas morning he said he'd read it as my Christmas present, which is perfect because it's exactly what I wanted for Christmas. Now I'm waiting until he gets around to actually reading it... and then I'll finally get to know what his reaction is, and will have some feedback on my delivery method. *keeps fingers crossed*

One problem with the poll: it is asking people who already have a diagnosis or who are self-diagnosed - it is not really reaching those who never got a diagnosis because they didn't want one. So it is a biased poll.

It is like asking in a poll: Do you like WP? Obviously most people who might have answered "NO" would have already self-selected out of the poll by not bothering to come to WP at all.

The people on WP are generally people who have been diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) and are interested in participating in the autism community. People who would be mortified by the thought that "they have a disability - AUTISM!! !" (and many people would think this way) would in general not be posting here or voting on polls.

I am glad that I got a diagnosis. But then, I was seeking it. I know several people who I think are on the spectrum, but who I suspect (or know, in one case) would react negatively to any suggestion that they have a "psychological problem" like ASD. There is a huge stigma surrounding any "mental health" issues, and autism in particular carries a stigma of severe disability . To tell people you are on the autism spectrum can be a little like telling them you are an alien who comes come from planet Alpha Sigma Delta (that's "ASD" in Greek!) The people who think having ASD is cool are almost all on the spectrum themselves (and a few psychologists). The average person is more likely to think that ASD is a tragedy and practically makes you a different species. The undiagnosed Aspie is more likely to have that background than "Cool! Now I understand myself."

When I was diagnosed, even though I was actively seeking it, I had a strong negative reaction owing to internalised stigma and prejudice: "I am broken, defective - will my wife think I am weird", etc. Imagine facing all that internalised negativity without any desire to understand your differences, without any preparation or time to learn what ASD really is?

Lovely! Now please tell me, a person with autism, how I am supposed to work out, with my own lack of empathic machinery, on the basis of my purely intellectual recognition a friend is probably HFA, what he will like as a "special gift" ... short of me rocking up to his place on the motorcycle of his dreams, in high heels. A more inappropriate action it's hard to surmise ... but even if I were so empathically equipped, a special something perfectly targeted to his autistic senses is far less likely to connect than the NT cliche, it seems to me, since he has not the slightest aspiration to anything other than the NT life. In fact, I will go so far as to suggest it is a common aspie trait to have stronger-than-normal attachment to the cliches of NT life, precisely because they seem so nearly-within-reach-if-only-we-would-try-that-little-bit-harder.

Back to square one, but still listening.

Like aaronzx said
I would advise caution.
There was I time in my life that if I had been told
that I was on the autism spectrum I would have commited
suicide.
Looking back at A stay on a pych ward I now feel
That if it had been suspected they knew it would not have helped,
who knows, it was a small town over twenty years ago.
Remember depression usually comes with ASD.

I started talking to someone who told me she had a kid whom she (and her shrink) suspected was on the spectrum, and so I skimmed over a few articles, recalling the movie "rain man", and figuring that was "what autism was". Only later did I meet the kid, and though he didn't talk much, he warmed up to me very fast (she was surprised about that) and though I didn't know her for long, or see the kid too much, I certainly felt he was "just shy/hesitant like me". We did talk about why she was "worried" about him being on the spectrum. I got interested in knowing more and found out about the variation. Somehow she presented the idea that I might have a few similarities. I don't quite recall how, but I didn't quite take it seriously at first. It was 6 months or a year later that I came upon wrongplanet. I went into the "you might be an aspie if" thread. About halfway through (I was identifying with most, but in a humourous "bah these are everyone at times" way), when I saw a post that opened up my eyes on my poor relationship with my father - let me see things from a "omg do people actually think/feel/react like that? I don't!" perspective. I kept exploring here, and realized that AS or not, I have quite a lot in common with the majority of posters. And delved deeper. I still don't have a formal diagnosis, but learning about "the AS experience" has changed me - saved me? - for the better. The first thing it allowed me to do was look back on my past and realize that the world is not filled with people out to get me, but rather people who legitimately didn't understand me - and were responding negatively to that confusion rather than to me myself and I.

There was of course more to it, but that was the start. And I think that if you have a close enough bond with someone that they might turn to you, and allow you to see that they are having trouble coping with the outside world - if they ever say it - and you are suspicious that they might be on the spectrum, then mention it. If you have to, make up a fictitious person who who recently met, who told you they were on the spectrum, and totally changed your mental definition of what autism is - that it's nothing like rain man, or whatever perception your generation has. "He was awesome, knew everything about elephants, the same way you know everything about trees", or whatever it was that made you think your friend might be on the spectrum.

Otherwise, stay quiet.

But in some cases, knowing the facts (or suspicions - I'm not formally diagnosed) can lead to a greater self awareness, and be a conduit to self improvement, self awareness, and self actualization. It just clears up a lot of confusion in the past, and sheds an understanding on the future. Enlightenment. Or something.

My first encounter with the concept of Asperger syndrome came from running across the word "Aspie" somewhere online. I happened to be in the company of someone I was close to but, priding myself on my grasp of the English language, I lookeed it up.

At this point, the friend gently suggested that she had suspected for several years that I might be an Aspie.

I don't resent the fact that she raised this: if anything, I resent the fact that she waited so long to tell me.

(I'm going to throw in one event here when I was out for a walk with another friend, some years ago. I stopped to look at some unidentified scat, and she said "You can always spot the naturalists. They stop to look at the s**t." She then added, "At least you're not autistic". Leaving aside the offensive nature of this comment, I do wonder if she was angling for information that I in fact was autistic.)

I did a lot of reading, which explained a lot of data (recently even an odd EEG readout from a lab class during my Psychology degree!), and then went through a massive personal existential crisis, where I reviewed all I believed about my empathic abilities, and had to deal with the fact that I'm utterly incompetent when it comes to recognising human facial expression and predicting human motives and reaction to the point where, even then, humans felt like a separate species (and still do). This was not a pleasant process, and I can see how there could have been an instinct to blame the messenger.

I went through a process of seeing AS as a mental illness (wrong), then as a disability (arguable), then as a disorder (technically correct, but badly lacking) to the point where I now see it as a difference, and where I'm wrestling with the contradictions of my (and others') need for acceptance and the fact that being "odd" makes many people, especially many NTs, deeply uncomfortable).

The fact remains that I think I'm much better off having an explanation for all the problems relating to just about everyone else than not. If that friend had not raised the possibility, I probably wouldn't know. I now have a formal diagnosis.

That said, given much of what has been said above, I can see a reluctance to raise the issue.

Since then, however, I have raised the possibility with another friend that she may be on the spectrum, but from the ground where she already knew that I was. She responded quite positively.