Public Disclosure of ASD Diagnosis - Good or Bad

[sport]

Your boss can't disclose your medical record's can he?

 

[SDRSpark]

Your boss can't disclose your medical record's can he?

Legally no, but some people are gossips and word could have gotten around, even if it's as much as "they're working from home now because they're autistic". I've known people who really can't keep things under wraps...it's not necessarily malicious, they'r just habitual oversharers and it slips out. (Sometimes though it's malicious.)

 

[MeghanWithAnH]

That reminds me of my approach in grad school. We had a class on autism, and the professor started the class by asking people what experiences they'd had with autism, so I decided to just go ahead and say I was autistic. It went over well, probably because that professor was so good at explaining autism in a respectful way that neurotypicals could understand. Later, I 'disclosed' to an even larger group by speaking on a neurodiversity panel that was open to the whole university. I got used to it just being a normal background piece of information about me while I was there, which was much nicer than in previous schools and places of employment where I had to put much more effort into seeming entirely normal and had no justification to ask for even the simplest thing that I might need.

Unfortunately, now that I'm back out in the work world, I have no idea how to disclose my ASD without making it a big awkward thing. My field of employment knows plenty about nonverbal preschoolers with ASD, but can have trouble translating that into a competent autistic coworker whose job it is to help those kids. On the other hand, I did disclose to one supervisor in this job and got a cubicle in the quietest part of the office, so it's gone well at least once.

 

[Lemming]

I have disclosed at a couple of different places of work with mixed results. In non-covid times, I tend to work in big offices which stresses me out so much that I behave quite anti-socially - hardly saying a word, focussing intensely on my work to shut everything else out, always going outside and sitting on my own for lunch to try and get some peace, etc.

With that behaviour, I've found that if you don't tell anyone you have ASD, then most people are understandably frustrated, as shutting everyone out isn't friendly behaviour. I've received so many sarcastic "Yeah. It was nice to talk to you today." comments.

When you do tell a team, then people who don't care will continue to not care, and people who always look for a chance to put someone down will find another opportunity. But the nice people will now gain a better understanding of you and your relationship with them will likely improve because they're no longer thinking that you just don't like them, or that you are trying impress everyone by working super hard. Instead they will understand that your behaviour is just you trying to deal with ASD.