Disclosure

The seventh chapter of the employment biography is about disclosure. I will only summarise it briefly before moving on to the last and much more interesting chapter .

I am a member of various Asperger facebook groups, and before Google reader was closed, I subscribed to a number of aspie blogs. So on the internet, I have disclosed my suspected Asperger to hundreds of people, none of whom I've met in real life. In reality, I have told my husband and three other people. My husband may have told other people, our views on openness are quite different... He also bought me a mug where 'aspie' is written with the Pi sign, and if we have visitors he asks me to explain why I drink my coffee out of that mug. I have no intentions of disclosing my Asperger to colleagues, acquaintances or my parents, for that matter.

I should say here that I have booked a time at a psychiatrist in order to get a diagnosis. I score very high in all Asperger-tests on the internet, so I am rather sure he'll give me the diagnosis. However, I want the diagnosis in order to get the right treatment for depression.

Now what!

I started blogging about fifteen months ago. My Danish blog has centered around a dramatic conflict with my mother in July 2011. Later, I touched upon other issues such as my relationship with my husband and challenges involving my children. One central challenge relates to my youngest son. Since he was about five, nursery school teachers and teachers and psychologists have suggested that he might have Aspergers. I have (almost violently) denied. Through my blogging I came to realise that my maternal grandfather, my mother, my uncle, my brother and probably also my youngest son, all have Aspergers.

Now where does that recognition leave me? I started to think that my anger towards those people wanting to diagnose my son was related to all those traits of his that I had as a child or still have. Thus I felt they were criticising me... So maybe I was Asperger too? A lot of conversations between my husband and me, and between my best friend and me, touched on the topic of Aspergers.

So, after giving it a lot of thought, I took a test. That is, I took a number of tests. And scored very high on the Asperger scale. And spent the next couple of days searching the internet for implications of this finding. I found a number of blogs and facebook groups. Most of the Danish web-pages and facebook groups seemed to be dominated by people that couldn't get the help they felt they needed, from the municipality. So much talk of social workers and financial support...

I can't relate to that, I may be a little different but I am not a victim, and I can support myself. The American blogs and pages were much better. I subscribe to a number of them and I really enjoy reading them. They talk of being Aspie as a challenge AND a strength. Also with my newfound knowledge it is a pleasure reading about others being like me.

My strong preference for the American websites drove me to starting a new blog which is not written in my native language. My hope is that I can give a little bit back to those people that made me feel so... recognised...