Published on 12, July, 2020
I have came out to 4 people in my life about my autism so far. I have considered all of them as caring empathetic people. 2 of them were very nice, offering to listen to me since it's a lot of things in mind and lot of feelings. The other two had a reaction that surprised me. One said nothing but "thank you for sharing" and right after that asked me for a favor. It felt like this big reveal of mine ment nothing to them. The other one asked me "is it officially diagnosed?" And didn't respond to my answer only a day after writing a message "do you want to hang out?". I'm sad because of these reactions and I honestly don't know how to interpret them.. it felt like they don't care or understand how huge of a deal this is for me.. did anyone have similar experiences?
I found that other neurodivergent people were very positive and neurotypical people were unsure how to respond. They weren't openly negative about it, but they did things like asking me if I wanted congratulations, and I couldn't really tell if that was genuine confusion about how to react or just snark.
I think that for people who have never been through this process themselves it's very difficult to understand how it might feel- which is ironic given that so many believe we're the ones who can't empathise.
Seems like very uneducated about the topic..
Yeah, I definitely think it's a lack of knowledge. They're gonna find out all about it now though whether they like it or not
Could be worse, at least nobody's told me I don't look autistic yet!