these 2 sentences have me thinking:
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I cannot change what others think about me or do, I can only change how to react to it.
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It’s not my fault, but it is my problem to deal with.
we had a merger and my department met our new manager. He seemed empathetic and approachable, asking us to stay at our current positions and work together.
I've been considering a change for some time because I don't get along with some coworkers, even though most are fine, but these 3 suck the life out of me.
So I sent this new manager an application that was rejected the next day:
"mr. X doesn't want to consider your application."
He didn't even read it. He seemed so approachable and friendly... this line seems specifically written to make me feel bad, or maybe I'm very thin skinned?
An adult would accept it and move on, but I'm so thin skinned I keep ruminating about it. I want to change how I react to this and other setbacks in life, but I feel powerless.
"It’s not my fault, but it is my problem to deal with"
I'm on the spectrum. I can hold a job, pay rent and healthcare, max my 401k..., but some of my coworkers find me robotic and rude and feel offended if I want to concentrate on my duties instead of talking to them, simply because if I don't do my job I'll be fired.
Not all of my coworkers are like this, but some simply don't see that I do the same they do, except gossiping and bantering, which I find a waste of time.
They feel offended because I like to keep to myself.
It is not fair and I hate it, but it is, apparently, my problem to deal with.
Except that I don't know how to deal with it. And I don't want to deal with it, because it is unfair that what others think and talk about you makes your career more difficult.
I didn't expect this post to be this long.
i'm on the spectrum too and one of the things that life has taught me the hard way is not to take life advice from neurotypicals; it's not that they're wrong or malicious, it's only that they don't have a life that's anything like yours so their advice usually doesn't work or it's not applicable.
neurodivergence requires you to build your own mechanisms for handling the shit life throws at you and it also guarantees that you'll fail more often than not if you don't get professionally trained help; what you're feeling will keep happening until you do get that help.
put that healthcare you got to use.
would you DM me to explain what kind of help you got and how it helped?
If you're talking about masking, isn't it hard? like constantly being on edge pretending to be something you're not, faking being what extroverted neurotypicals want you to be.
At the workplace it would mean working 200%: doing my job and then constantly placating them. Who does that?
masking is an extremely common coping technique that neurodivergents teach themselves and, yes, also exhausting. (and i would dm' but i don't mind sharing it here).
i've gotten several forms of help; but the most useful was talk therapy. i had to try with multiple different psychologists until i learned that they're not all the same and all of them are human beings with their own human foibles; so you'll have to actively listen and analyze your therapist as much as they're trained to analyze you. the worst help i got were from psychiatrists who focused and pushed medications that were mere bandages for the problems i had.