I tried out this "Hi, I'm autistic" thing yesterday, and I'm still processing (over-processing?) how it went.
Talking to the hygienist at the dentist office, treatment preferences, she asked if I knew why I prefer minimal contact. "I'm guessing it's the autism," I said.
She stopped talking to me, after that. In the past she's a chatterbox. Next appointment is scheduled with a different hygienist, in the past she's always pushed to book herself.
Processing? Or over-processing?
@ScottSoCal @actuallyautistic
I'm going to go with, either she doesn't feel qualified to deal with your needs and the otherhygienist is. Or, and far more likely, you've just seen the reddest of red flags.
This really does give me flashbacks to teenage years and coming out. Not all of them good flashbacks. 🤨
@ScottSoCal @actuallyautistic
I'm not surprised.
@ScottSoCal @actuallyautistic
She sounds like an awful person. Hope the other one is better.
Before you even got to the disclosure bit, my hackles were already up because why did she need to know why you needed minimal contact?
I can’t think of an acceptable reason why she’d need to know that. Acceptable follow up questions would have been focused on how best she could meet your needs - not asking why you have those needs. “Why” is irrelevant to her role so asking is at best nosey, at worst judgmental.
I feel like maybe this is a “the trash taking itself out” scenario.
@ScottSoCal @actuallyautistic Hard to tell. There are a lot of possibilities, including the one where there's some shit going on in her life and she'd rather not talk about it and needs to lower her client load.
🤔
If I had been working full time during my divorce and interacting with people, I might have behaved like she did, actually.
@ScottSoCal @actuallyautistic possibly she’s just trying to respect your preferences
@ScottSoCal @actuallyautistic it's hard to draw any conclusions so if try not to.
Having said that, maybe she didn't want to show her ignorance, or to say the wrong thing etc. Until I started researching I might well have responded like that. I've done so with my autistic honesty to a wheelchair user who asked me to push him on three Street once, in the past!
Well done for experimenting BTW. I did something similar yesterday after getting talking to a guy and his gf while walking my dog.