Published on 12, July, 2020
This is not me having a whinge. But does anyone on the forum had or have to deal with the expectation that as they are good at what they do they feel that there is a continued and increasing need to do and provide more and more to suit others.
I sometimes feel that I have just become a high functioning machine rather than human and that the challenging aspects of autism (where I am low functioning) are negated or ignored.
In my case, the difference between me being a super-achiever or a barely communicative fool is just the way I am managed.
With caring, helpful management I can do exceptional things - with bullying manipulative management I lose the ability to function and interact with people.
Exactly. Same with me. And I have done exceptional things in my current job. Now, though, I'm beginning to get seen as a liability.
I've worked in places where the supportive management created an environment where no-one would ever guess I was Asperger's - it wasn't an issue, there was no stress, I could get on and be exceptional.
Things only went wrong when I had bullying management that lied all the time and that's when all my Asperger traits came out - big time.
Unfortunately, those traits made it impossible to be able to fight back and my ability to talk to that manager reduced to just two words shouting in my head. One of those words was OFF.
I wouldn't be where I am right now, today, sick again and facing a money shortage because I'm now on half-pay, if they had stuck to the letter of what was suggested as 'reasonable adjustments' and not put me working alongside this woman on Thursday. We had a staff shortage, but they could still have managed things to ensure I was happy. They will say to me now, quite reasonably, 'Why didn't you tell us that you wanted the rota changed?' Firstly, because I shouldn't have needed to. Secondly, my head was so fixated on the prospect of potential problems that day that I wasn't thinking rationally at all. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. And then I hit overload, had a massive panic attack that led to a hospital visit... and the rest is history.
Had the same with plenty of great management and really @&#_@_#&&@___#&#_@__# awful people. (Insert your own appreciate adjectives above)