as small as a world and as large as alone

2:32pm March 23, 2014

realsocialskills:

voiceofanamaranth:

realsocialskills:

Anonymous asked realsocialskills:

I’m autistic, and my mom outs me against my will to anyone she has known for more than 5 minutes. How do I get her to stop?

realsocialskills said:

Unfortunately, I can’t think of any way to get her to stop that seems likely to work. I’m posting this in hopes that someone else has ideas.

Have any of y’all succeeded at getting a parent to stop outing you?

voiceofanamaranth said:

I don’t know what your relationship with your mother is like, but maybe ask her if you can talk to her privately for a moment, and be firm but gentle, use words like “This is important, we need to talk.” Vocalize in the nicest way possible about how you feel about what she does when she introduces you to people. Think of an agreement when you want to “out” yourself as being Autistic, if you even want to out yourself.

You can even write all these feelings in a letter if talking to her face to face is too intimidating.

realsocialskills said:

That kind of thing is much more effective between equals. I haven’t seen it work well as a strategy to get someone with power over you to treat you better. Have any of y’all?

I have, but not in an instance where I really need to force the issue.  Like this sort of thing works when someone with power either already cares enough to listen, or can be made (by forcefulness of communication and personality) to care enough to listen.  It doesn’t work when the person has power over you and either doesn’t give a crap or doesn’t get it and sort of refuses to get it.

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