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Inspired by @jabancroft and some recent struggles that I've had and that I've seen friends have lately I think it's time to do a thread about being #autisticAtWork - there are just so many things that never get explained, with high consequences for not knowing them. Let me help!
1) Understanding Truth - look this took me SO LONG TO LEARN and I must have been SO OBNOXIOUS until I did. Look: I have an autistic understanding of truth - that means that, all else being equal, I'm just evaluating words spoken against observations I'm making.
Like many autistic people, I grew up being taught that it was important to tell the truth - which is lucky, because maintaining falsehoods over time is really hard for me! So it's important to tell the truth - but NT's mean something very different by that, professionally.
An autistic person may come to a meeting and hear someone say "We have a great technical solution to this problem!" and say something like "Actually what we have won't scale to our full user base and it was a mistake to have shipped it." Maybe this is FACTUALLY TRUE!
The thing that's so hard for us to understand is that there are a lot of other "facts" implicitly stated. They're things like: "We embrace old mistakes" "Feelings matter as much as facts" "We seek positive energy" WE HAVE TO LEARN THIS MANUALLY!
Part of this is because so many of us have all of our "flaws" and "shortcomings" pointed out to us regularly and we're expected to not have emotions around it. It's just facts. Part of it is we have different social impulses than NTs. But regardless: we have to learn this.
The guy who is always technically correct but who never gets invited to any meetings because his phrasing always makes everyone else feel like an idiot? That guy is not going to have a happy career, he's going to be hated and passed over regularly.
What I mean is that it is, unless someone tells you otherwise, a *fact* that your professional office environment implicitly agrees around these or similar values. They're just not posted. Does that make sense? Thanks for the opportunity to clarify! :) https://t.co/8GOUWhdwrL
@jabancroft 3) Rejection Sensitivity - this is a doozie! A lot of #actuallyAutistic people, like a lot of people with #ADHD, struggle with something called "Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria" - basically, we get "corrected" so often in our lives that we perceive constant threat of invalidation.
This can be really bad! It's why a neurodivergent friend of yours may get really quiet and withdrawn if they make a joke and nobody laughs, or if you give them critical feedback, or really if they just feel like they disappointed you. It sucks. At work, it sucks a lot!
My first programming job I was doing great - I was naturally good at it, successfully building stuff out rapidly, delighting everyone! Then there was a design review and I got feedback about some pixels not being perfect to the comps. Readers it *hurt* me. I pushed back!!
But to me, the idea that I submitted work that was below expectations caused a cognitive dissonance that was deeply uncomfortable to sit with. I learned to define "being a good person" as "not disappointing others", and I think of myself as more or less a good person!
So, dealing with RSD is hard! It really requires some cognitive tricks. If you find yourself in this situation, ask yourself these questions: 1) Is this person upset with me or just not drowning me in praise? 2) Is this *blame* or is this *feedback*? 3) How can I fix this?
That's kind of it. Honestly most people are not spending too much time thinking about you AT ALL, and most of your perceived mistakes are TOTALLY NORMAL AND FINE WITH NO CONSEQUENCES. "Critical Feedback" is just an opportunity to do even better next time, right?
So that's what I know today about dealing with rejection sensitivity at work. I still *really* struggle with it - if I annoy someone by asking too many questions, if I submit work that has a glaring mistake, I feel a wave of shame and fear. It's cool! It's not real, I let it go.