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Do I tell my clients that I'm autistic?

Tonik

I'm self-employed and since getting my diagnosis last year I've been wondering if I should tell my clients that I'm autistic.

As far as I can tell, being autistic only has a couple of significant 'negative' effects on my work:

  • Dealing with clients causes me massive amounts of anxiety (so far I've managed to hide this).
  • I need time and space between projects to recover, so I'm not as productive as some people.

There's 'positives' too, for example:

  • I have great attention to detail.
  • I'm dedicated to my work and not letting people down.
  • I'm great at picking up new skills/etc.

But even though I think my clients are  getting a good deal because I put in so much effort with no extra cost, I sometimes feel like it would be better and more honest to be open about being autistic.  Maybe some people don't want to hire an autistic person? Maybe I can be myself more when I work and communicate with people? But I also think that it might cause complications, and even though I'm 'high-functioning', being self-employed is a constant source of stress and anxiety already.

What do you think - do I tell my clients that I'm autistic?

Parents

  • What do you do?

    It might depend on what your relationship with them is like and the answer might be different in each case.  Some folks don't care who's providing it, they just want the goods or service.  Some folks like to build rapport with the people who they deal with.  Some I dare say would appreciate all that extra effort and attention to detail and be curious about how your autism helps you produce that, some might be more understanding of the anxieties in the social part of the process.  Others, I guess might not get it at all and have all sorts of misconceptions about what autism is.  Of course, you might have some clients who are neurodivergent themselves in some way and prefer to deal with you rather than another provider for that reason.

    Do you have anyone around you who might be able to help you judge who you should tell and might respond positively and who might not?  I can see it might be nice to take off the mask with at least some of your clients.

Reply

  • What do you do?

    It might depend on what your relationship with them is like and the answer might be different in each case.  Some folks don't care who's providing it, they just want the goods or service.  Some folks like to build rapport with the people who they deal with.  Some I dare say would appreciate all that extra effort and attention to detail and be curious about how your autism helps you produce that, some might be more understanding of the anxieties in the social part of the process.  Others, I guess might not get it at all and have all sorts of misconceptions about what autism is.  Of course, you might have some clients who are neurodivergent themselves in some way and prefer to deal with you rather than another provider for that reason.

    Do you have anyone around you who might be able to help you judge who you should tell and might respond positively and who might not?  I can see it might be nice to take off the mask with at least some of your clients.

Children
  • in reply to Dawn

    Thanks Dawn.

    I work in design. As it's a creative field I feel like being autistic will be more widely accepted by people.

    I didn't for one minute consider that some of my clients would be on the spectrum, but you're absolutely right. I know one of my clients suffers from anxiety too, and we have talked briefly about it which really helped me feel more at ease with them knowing about my anxiety.

    I could get advice on who I should tell, but I like the idea of either being an openly autistic designer, or not telling anyone at all. I would feel bad if I told someone 3 projects in that I was autistic because they might not feel I have been honest with them.