Published on 12, July, 2020
Do you ever feel guilty because of your behaviour due to your autism? I'm not really thinking extreme behaviour, more the little things.
I'm asking this because the other day I saw my parents for the first time in a while. I spent the whole time I saw them waffling on about myself and things I wanted to talk about. Afterwards I realised that it hadn't occurred to me to ask them how they were or what they'd been doing. I felt a bit bad when I realised this. I don't want them to think I don't care. I feel quite selfish when this happens but its not because I don't care about them and their lives. It just never occurred to me to ask and I find conversations about other people hard to keep going.
Do other people have situations like this and then feel guilty?
I mainly get it at work, and over small things. For instance, I may be focusing so much on something that I'll ignore something else and need to be reminded (I've explained to my manager that I have a tendency to do this, and at least she understands). An example the other day, too. I was working with a more experienced member of staff and we were performing a task that needed us to pay particular attention. Unfortunately, he'd started chatting about something I knew a bit about, so I got sidetracked and made a small mistake. It was more of an oversight. Fortunately, I noticed in time and no harm was done. But I felt bad about that for a few days, because it was a silly mistake to make. The truth is, though, it wasn't really my fault. We should both have been concentrating on the task and not chatting. It could probably have happened to anyone. I felt bad about it for a number of reasons - not least because it made me look incompetent.
I suppose in some ways I set quite high standards for myself, and when I don't attain them I feel guilty. I need to stop it. It's been ingrained throughout life, though - starting with that incident with the number 3s in the classroom when I was 6 - when I'd done something right, but was told it was wrong. I strive very hard to get things right now, so that they cannot be called into question, and when I don't quite make it I feel very bad about it.
I get where your coming from with this. I don't think I feel guilty when things don't go right at work but I certainly feel frustrated and dwell on them. I worry about the consequences of the mistakes.
I get the feelings from the criticism when you were younger. I was criticised a lot as a child and it has definitely had a large impact on my self esteem.
So basically, you are allowing your little 6 year old self, who is frozen in time, to rule your life.
How can you say the mistake wasn’t your fault? Who’s fault was it if it wasn’t yours? NT people can often have a conversation and still pay attention to what they’re doing. If you can’t, then it’s not the other workers responsibility to not talk when working with you, it’s your responsibility to not talk, regardless of whether the other person wants to chat or not. It’s your responsibility to say, I’m sorry, but I can’t chat and concentrate on the task at hand, at the same time.
But making a mistake doesn’t make you incompetent and I think you know that. It seems you were more interested in what others think of you because you said it made you look incompetent. Why do you care about not looking competent? While ever you care about what other people think of you, you will always feel bad, because no matter what we do, we can never please everyone or make everyone like us and why should we. If we like ourselves, that’s always enough.