Preparing to Disclose Diagnosis

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I have decided that I will eventually tell two people that I have AS: my mother and my boyfriend. It took me almost a year to arrive at this decision.

Now I am in the process of preparing to tell them. I have casually brought up the possibility of ASD's in the family with my mother; her reaction implied that she also suspected ASD's might run in the family (autism was once a special interest of hers, and I think she's a pretty obvious aspie). So telling her may be fairly easy, and I may ask her if she would like to go with me to get an in-depth assessment, now that I live near an ASD specialist.

I am also collecting resources that portray AS in a way that is more consistent with my experiences than most resources. I have a file of web archives and I just bought 2 of Tony Attwood's books last night. I am going through the books and underlining things that I relate to in particular. I also put check marks next to the diagnostic criteria that apply to me.

With both people, I am going to wait until a time when no one is dealing with a stressful situation, and there is a convenient way to bring it up. In both cases, I think it will be for the best in the long run. It will help them both to understand me better and this will have many advantages.

Has anyone else gone through a similar process of taking a long time to make such a decision, then spending a long time preparing for the disclosure? If you eventually did disclose, how did it go? And did you find the preparation you did to be helpful?

I have never had to do that, because most people already know.

But should such a situation happen, I would let them know when I feel it's appropriate.