wishing....

[lark265]

I'm wishing that society's reception of AS would be more like it is of deafness, having to use a wheelchair, vision impairment, etc etc.....that is, I think that if I had a visual impairment, I would have absolutely no problem letting my boss know. I guess I would divulge this fact during the interview, so as to be honest. Then if I was hired, I would trust my boss to (with my help) make the supports available for me.....I would know that everyone knew about my disability and was more or less OK with it. But with Aspergers, I have to keep it a secret at my workplace. I don't fully understand my AS and so I guess I can't expect others to. I desperately want people to know what it's like to have AS...and how it affects my work. The secret-ness is brutal. And because I don't tell people about it, I feel some shame. I mean, my brain thinks that because I am unable, for whatever reason, to disclose my condition, it must be something shameful. But I know in my heart it's not.....part of it is just a matter of "coming out of the closet." Shedding light on who I really am. Then, I think, if I felt I was more accepted, my disabilities and little quirks would seem to me to be less of a big deal. I keep reading (usually places online) about negative experiences for people who have "disclosed" at work.....they ended up being prejudiced against and even fired.......that's a shame........so my brain (again) reasons that AS must be a shameful thing...............OK, thanks for listening

 

[Harrison]

In the last decade that I have know I am aspie I have applied for two jobs. I got them both and told my interviewer that I was aspie, my current boss reckons I was the best choice he made that day. Prior to those jobs I was self employed so didn't have to worry.

Shameful? No, I'm not ashamed of who/what I am but then I don't hide it either.

I know from some of the posts that it's different in the US, seems like there's a whole bunch of prejudice in the land of the free.

 

[RaphaPower]

I'm wishing that society's reception of AS would be more like it is of deafness, having to use a wheelchair, vision impairment, etc etc.....that is, I think that if I had a visual impairment, I would have absolutely no problem letting my boss know. I guess I would divulge this fact during the interview, so as to be honest. Then if I was hired, I would trust my boss to (with my help) make the supports available for me.....I would know that everyone knew about my disability and was more or less OK with it. But with Aspergers, I have to keep it a secret at my workplace. I don't fully understand my AS and so I guess I can't expect others to. I desperately want people to know what it's like to have AS...and how it affects my work. The secret-ness is brutal. And because I don't tell people about it, I feel some shame. I mean, my brain thinks that because I am unable, for whatever reason, to disclose my condition, it must be something shameful. But I know in my heart it's not.....part of it is just a matter of "coming out of the closet." Shedding light on who I really am. Then, I think, if I felt I was more accepted, my disabilities and little quirks would seem to me to be less of a big deal. I keep reading (usually places online) about negative experiences for people who have "disclosed" at work.....they ended up being prejudiced against and even fired.......that's a shame........so my brain (again) reasons that AS must be a shameful thing...............OK, thanks for listening

Yea I get you man. That really hard. Especially when a majority of people think that autistics are either crazy or the whole autism thing is fake to have bratty kids. It annoys me to. But people won't accept something they can't see on our faces or in our ears. It's hard. I sometimes feel that society or nuerotypicals a lot of them can't empathize and that's what they are lacking. Everyone lacks something and we should accept everyone but that's hard when you can't be ok people different than yourself.

 

[Spiller]

In every job I had before I started my own business I was ostracised and ridiculed - before I knew about AS. But I don't believe that knowledge would have made any difference; it's my experience, both first- and second-hand, that invisible disabilities are viewed by others as an excuse to be lazy and receive unwarranted sympathy and state benefits you don't deserve.
Also, having worked with a number of obviously disabled people over the years, it's my experience that they tend to remain solitary, or within their own community and only relate to 'ableds' when they have to, simply because they justifiably feel judged in some way.
Not meaning to 'NT bash', but the attitude of anyone with the pure luck not to have suffered a disability or long term illness just sucks!

 

[HappyHermit]

I'm glad I don't feel shame anymore, but I understand the mental 'unmentionable = shameful' equation.

I never disclosed during job interviews or after getting a job. I don't know how it would have been received if I had, because that's the reality that didn't happen. I suspect, though, that in many cases they wouldn't have known much about ASD and would have arrived at an unfavourable opinion on the basis of something between Rainman and vaguely remembered hearsay, or else believed that I was straight up making things up.

With my current employer, where I've now been the longest I've ever been anywhere, I don't think it would have been advisable to say something during the job interview, but it might have gone over reasonably well (that is, without negative repercussions, though not necessarily leading to improvements) if I had said something a few months in. Although I truly loathe the type of work, the way that it happens is fairly tolerable: I have my own office that I can close the door to, I don't have lots of face-to-face interaction, most of the communication happens by email and there is little pressure to participate in after-work get-togethers. So, at the moment, I don't have anything that I can see to gain from disclosure.

In my opinion and experience, being relatively capable cognitively and creatively tends to compound the problem of ASD remaining invisible. People seem to have trouble understanding that someone who is reasonably intelligent (in the way that intelligence is commonly understood) could seriously be struggling with social interaction.

I have in fact recently told one colleague, and it went over quite well. But I had known them for six years and we had already become fairly well acquainted. Otherwise, I would never have said a thing.

It's still mostly a crapshoot.

 

[Aspergirl4hire]

I finally divulged my status to a former boss. I was shocked to discover that he didn't have a problem with it, or me; he saw it as an energy field kind of thing. I'm embarrassed by my typically aspie history of being hired for my skills, praised for my deliverables, and then found wanting because "work" turns out to be more than that. It's harder to find work than it used to be because so many people don't accept project work as stop-and-start...pretty well suited for an aspie, but I miss my tenures in IT, where there seem to be a lot more of us.