@hopperrock
This thread is an absolute godsend to me, thank you all. Another question for those diagnosed as adults, who did you tell and what kind of reactions did you get?
A range of responses. The thing is, you know how you see your diagnosis (or at least you have a muddled bunch of feelings about it) but you can't know how people will receive it or what they will think.
I find with other people that I sort them into categories. This is the first time I've talked about this so it might be a little muddled. There are the tricksy difficult people where I get physical internal anguish dealing with them. I will avoid them or deal at the minimum possible level.
There are people in general.
There are people who don't quite get me or who I'm aware that I'm a bit off the mark dealing with but I like them and they like me and so to me they're worth investing the bit of extra overhead that the relationship entails. But I'm never properly me with them.
Some people say "Oh right. My brother has autism.". Then they move onto the next thing.
Then there are the "safe" people. I can relax around them. They don't find me weird. They accept me. I don't have to be checking myself all the time. They are so rare.
Some people just nodded a silent "of course". Mostly the "safe" people.
Most people just say "oh". Good luck interpreting that.
Some people (a few quite violently) denied the possibility. Sometimes because it was a surprise and they'd always seen me mask on. Sometimes through ignorance - "My friend's son is autistic, he can't even speak. You're not autistic!"
Some people have wanted to know more, to understand and have asked questions. But it's so hard to explain. Someone at work asked how it was best to talk to me. I always say to be direct and clear and say what you mean. But it gets difficult when I try to explain "the overhead" of constantly double checking and gauging yourself and working out the ways the conversation could go if you don't get it right and trying to interpret the messages that you're getting. An example I gave to one person is that if a colleague says "Have a great evening!" it completely throws me off, because my train of thought is "well, on average I'm going to have an average evening because I'm just a normal person who will finish work and have a meal and some not-work time and go to bed, I don't even know exactly what I'm going to do this evening anyway and frankly what business is it of yours whether I do or don't have a great evening and if it's not a great evening should I feel bad about that and do you want to know if I didn't have a great evening because you probably don't even care if I do or not, you just made some pointless noise and now I'm having to process it".
The take-away of the person I explained that to as an example of the overhead was "OK I'll make sure never to tell you to have a great evening.". I need to find better ways to articulate this!
The experience of the responses I've been getting is what has guided my adoption of "I have a diagnosis of autism", which is objectively true and they can't deny it.