I have recently been told by my employer that I sometimes respond sharply to my colleague, this is normally when I'm trying to do other tasks. I dont mean to be rude is this my Aspergers or am I rude I am trying to alter my behaviour but find it difficult.
I was also made to apologize still unsure what I did
In a way then it's not resolved. Part of an apology is to say you won't do something again. If you don't know what you're not supposed to do, then it's unhelpful to both people.
I can think of one or two incidents where I've had this. Basically someone NT, knowing I'm autistic, has expressed only an emotion, being upset or uncomfortable, in reaction to something I'd said. They couldn't tell me why they felt that emotion, nor how they would like me to behave differently. I would probably have been happy to amend my behaviour if I'd known, but basically had to accept this.
So one can either go with some working hypothesis about being 'sharp' (for example, you expressed the need to be alone when they needed acceptance themselves, or gave an answer, without any 'frills' when they needed knowledge and an expression of equality); or try to get more information. If it's potentially all water under the bridge, you may not want to take the risk of aggravating the situation further by approaching the colleague directly or boss to mediate. Ideally it would be the colleague, but I wonder if you have spoken about it to people you trust yet to see if they recognise this 'sharpness' in you.
U shouldn’t have to “change your behaviour” if anything, if they know you aspergers than they should be making adjustments to support u. Ie pulling the person u spoke to a side and explain to them that it’s not ur intention to speak sharply or to hurt their feelings and to take it with a pinch of salt
P.S. The Game of NIGYYSB involes the game of Blemish ~ which is essentially defamation of character for desired effect.
The game seems to run like this:
They ask you about something.
You talk **** like so many NTs do
They are pleased that you are now on the hook, having declared that whatever it is shall be possible /delivered on time etc.
Later, they can say it's all your fault if things go badly.
This Social Game, is called "Now I've Got You You Son of a B i t c h" (NIGYYSB) in terms of Transactional Analysis (TA).
The game involves Mr white hiring Mr Black to do a set job at a certain price by fixed date, and in certain knowledge that Mr Black will not be able to complete the contracted task ~ in the allotted for time-frame.
Mr white gets a cut price job done, as any costs after the contracted job completion date ~ become Mr Black's problem.
Ah, I've noticed that sometimes there seems to be another game afoot:
somtimes people might want you to own an issue, including taking all the blame if things go wrong.
The game seems to run like this:
They ask you about something.
You talk **** like so many NTs do
They are pleased that you are now on the hook, having declared that whatever it is shall be possible /delivered on time etc.
Later, they can say it's all your fault if things go badly.
But by telling the truth rather than telling lies, they can't as easily make you responsible for something that is full of risk. Typically it means that they themselves are stuck with carrying the risk, (maybe because they already, stupidly, declared the thing to be possible to someone else?). Until they can find some other gullible sucker to pin the issue on, it is them in the cross-hairs, not you.
I have no idea what I sound like when speaking. It has been said that I can be a bit blunt. The more frustrated I get with people, the more blunt I become.
One tip for hearing what you sound like is blocking one ear when speaking, and going off that adjusting the pitch, tone and volume of your voice ~ which can be habituated to remain at a particular level with a bit of practice.
Especially when they interrupt, then try to finish my sentence for me - but with something utterly different to what I was going to say! Then I get even more flummoxed, so that even I can't work out what it was that I was going to say!
I make mistakes like that too. For me it's the other way round; sometimes I may ask for help or I'm answering a question, then the other person interrupts me (also speaking sharply or angrily) when I'm half way through explaining! This is very frustrating for me and I don't understand how the other person gets away with it!
Hi Togluddite. This factor of multi tasking of doing social stuff while concentrating on a work task i find incredibly difficult. It has been something i have noticed in my current job and has always caused me a great deal of stress. A simple task of trying to.photocopy 14 sets of 2 double sided worksheets so they are stapled together from an original becomes difficult when someone pops over with "hi how are you did you get me email?!" The worksheets end up coming out wrong and i feel frustrated because a)ive wasted paper b)i need to spend precious time doinh it again and c)tje social interaction wasnt meaningful bevause i couldnt focus 100pc on it. If this is in the morning it can put me on the back foot for the rest of the day.
This is just one example of interrupted tasks but i wpuld be here all day. You get the idea. Usually it happens more than once yjroughout the day.
Before i had read about AS i had many thought processes about it and tried ways to manage it a) cant they see i am busy? Why cant they leave me alone? But i need a way to manage this... B) stop what i am doing and engage in the interaction. This put me on the back foot still as it was taking time out of the task then concentration to get back into it. Anyway i was accommodating myself to others, why couldnt they do the same for me? C) after reading inyo AS thinking maybe its my body language which isnt strong enough. So made a concentrated effort and this seems to be paying off e.g. not looking up or pretending to ignore then go "sorry what were you saying? Or "il be with you soon" or just general uninterested "ohhh riiiight". I have found this to work because its probably what other people do themselves.
I think its because you treat people how you yourself want to be treated. They wouldnt be bothered by the interruption so its never occurred to them it might bother others. Similarly if i see someone busy i wouldnt interrupt them cos i myself dont like to be interrupted.
I am still unsure if i havr AS but the more i read the more its helping me to manage life.
Thank you for your reply, not so good at examples last week I was working hard on something I answered my colleague sharply and my boss pulled me up for it. I didn't even realise I'd done it, I'm now expected to change my behaviour so not to hurt my colleagues feelings I was also made to apologize still unsure what I did.
Sounds familiar to me. When I'm interrupted from a task that I'm focused on, my brain seems to struggle to go into "social analysis mode", so my interpretation of what's being said and how I should answer is very factual - the part of my brain which would normally mask my autism and consider the social consequences just doesn't get engaged in time. There are times when I'm hardly even aware that I have spoken to the other person; I'll find myself minutes or hours later thinking to myself; "Did I just speak to X? What did they say? What was my answer?". This can even be for the simplest of things; if someone asks me "how are you?" when I'm flustered, it's not unusual that I'll respond with something like; "hot", "cold", "sweaty", etc.
I think that the problem very often is that non-autistic people are looking for implied value judgements and "reading between the lines"; but when my "social processing" isn't on-line, I don't take any of that into account and expect my response to be judged literally for the words that I'm saying - any more than that requires a shift in attention that is difficult and time-consuming, especially if I'm desperate not to lose the "flow" of whatever it is that I was doing at the time.
I'm actually not bad at talking a load of ***. I've noticed other people doing it, so assume it's acceptable to speculate, mouth off, and so on merely to fill one's niche in the conversation.
I probably do find it hard to juggle two claims on my attention at once, so yes, I may be sharp, but rarely get complaints.
Stevie, do you have examples of things you have said that people thought were rude? Sometimes it's not what you say, but the way you say it, or the context.
It's the 'reciprocal social interaction' that they look for in tests, that sounds so simple and obvious that I can miss it.
In my case, I've noticed I can kill a conversation with people I don't know well. I may change the subject to something I'm interested in, and that's usually accepted. But sometimes I throw something directly relevant into a conversation, and anecdote or obscure but illuminating bit of information, and there's a silence, not because of what I've said, but because I didn't leave 'conversational openings'. This is a type of 'bluntness' that might cause minor offence or people putting one down as a bighead. I should probably have an open-ended question in mind when talking to avoid that awkwardness. (An objection to that is if it's something you're really interested in, you've probably already investigated the answer. That cannot be true all the time though, particularly about personal stuff, unless you're a stalker.)
If someone asks me a question I answer it as quickly and concisely as I can. That just seems like good manners to me. It drives people nuts for some reason. Also if I don't know the answer to a question I'll say "I don't know". Would people really prefer me to talk rubbish for a while rather than saying " I don't know "? I try very hard to fit into the neurotypical world but I draw the line at wasting my own time talking a load of *** (he said abruptly).
I have no idea what I sound like when speaking. It has been said that I can be a bit blunt. The more frustrated I get with people, the more blunt I become.
I'm sharp when interrupted; pretty sure this is an aspergers thing. I find it very uncomfortable when my train of thought is interrupted and along with my state of hyper-focus on the task in hand (the one being interrupted) I simply do not have the ability to moderate my speech to make it less so.
I am very open about the aspergers, though, so most colleagues (once explained) accept that this is a thing and that I don't mean anything negative by it.
