To Disclose or Not to Disclose your Diagnosis to Friends
Story and Art By Haley Moss
In my twenty years as a person on the autism
spectrum, I’ve learned that friendships and
relationships outside of my family are one of the
most fascinating concepts and one of the most
complicated things out there. To begin with,
humans are naturally social creatures. Since the
dawn of time, pretty much, humans have found
ways to communicate and cooperate with one
another. However, this social component of our
existence isn’t exactly natural for me or anyone
else on the autism spectrum, and the friends we
do have are pretty special people.
I’ve often run into the “to disclose or not to disclose” conundrum when getting to meet people
and when moving past the acquaintance level to
being friends or more than friends. Feelings on
whether or not someone should share a huge part
of their identity vary. Some only talk about autism on a need-to-know basis while others wear it
on their sleeve like a badge of honor.
With disclosing, I have figured out that people
usually fall into one of three distinct camps:
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Zoom Autism Through Many Lenses
1. Those who accept, understand and are willing
to learn alongside me;
2. Those who accept and say nothing changed
until it personally affects them; and
3. Those who are completely in the dark, so we
go our separate ways.
Not knowing which of those three responses you
will get is scary, but for me, choosing to disclose
to possible friends, current friends, or partners
is worth the risk. This is a personal choice, and
I am not saying my choices will work for everyone. But I share with you how and why I have
chosen to disclose in certain situations so that
someone else out there who may be on the fence
on whether or not to open up and/or how to may
be helped.
Haley = Autism
I used to only disclose to very close friends since
I did not want to be judged any differently. Once
upon a time, the only people who knew of my
autism were my family, my best friend, and
school administrators and teachers. Today, the