Published on 12, July, 2020
Am I wrong in feeling offended that a task I've been performing for over a year has now been assigned to someone else, with someone other than myself supervising them?
Said supervisor hasn't consulted me and has disregarded my documentation / process.
Feels like a massive FU to me.
My work colleague tells me not to take it personally.
I'm growing tired of people spouting things like...
"Don't take it personally", "You're not the only one this affects", "I don't understand your problem", etc.
Management at work do my head in.
If you want to feel offended, go ahead, there's no right or wrong to it.
I, personally, would instead ask, does it benefit me to be offended?
It is common for autistic people to take offence at things like this because we live in our own little worlds so we think the world evolves around us, therefore anything that happens around us, we think it is all about us and we therefore take it personally and feel offended. NT people are generally not as self obsessed as we are and therefore they are able to not take it personally and not be offended and they're able to see clearly that, even if they don't like the changes, they can see that they have absolutely nothing at all to do with them but in fact, something much bigger than them, like they have pointed out, you are not the only one that the changes effect.
So go ahead, if you want to take it personally, like you're the centre of the universe, by all means kick and scream like a two year old, who also thinks they're the centre of the universe and if it works for you, there's no right or wrong and no judgment. You don't need anybody's permission to be p****d off. And I'm sure you equally do the heads in of the management at your work, it's just how it goes, life is but a mirror. But yeah, get that anger out one way or another and if blaming someone else works for you and makes you happy, go for it. The others who you blame won't care, because they know it's not actually true and they'll just think you're acting like a two year old or something, unless they know you're autistic and then they can be much more open with you, maybe?
Anyway, no. it's not wrong to feel offended, that's your feeling, your choice and you can feel what you want.
A bit harsh.
Your use of language and your implication that I'm having a tantrum like a 2 years offends me.
You don't know me, so I'll thank you not to generalise.
I'm not generalizing, show me an autistic person who doesn't live in their own bubble! And that's me added to the list of people who offend you then :)
Me. I don’t live in my own bubble. I have a thriving social life and I understand humility, discretion and other people’s feelings. I got assaulted by a bouncer on my birthday and all my NT friends said to let it go as though it is so easy. Does that mean I live in my own bubble? No it means that external stimuli can overload someone with autism. I feel violated and confused because someone who has no right to lay hands on me while I am waiting patiently for my friend to pay for me to enter a club as he had offered, does so anyway. It is a criminal offence and yet the police won’t follow it up.
It’s them not us who are disabled if they design a system which is supposedly inflexible but then conveniently always seems to be flexible when it’s convenient to them. They are inconsistent without any valid reason and they have the audacity to further fuel their ego’s and further their assumption that because they are the majority they are automatically the correctly functioning individuals. In my opinion people who aren’t inconsistent and can’t make their minds up are the disabled ones. We struggle because we are the minority, not the disabled. There is a difference.
Former Member Honestly? I think you've completely misunderstood that article.
For a start it's framed as a question, not a statement: "Autism – ‘autos’: literally, a total focus on the self?"
Then it talks about 'self-focus' rather than 'self-obsession', being focussed on yourself - essentially on something you can control.
It also rolls out the old saw that Autists aren't interested in other people because "they don't have empathy..." which I think is now widely discredited and there's a good argument that we have too much empathy which contributes to sensory/emotional overload.
The original (Kanner) derivation of 'Autism' from 'Autos' = 'Self' was related to the fact that the patients deemed to be 'Autistic' seemed happier when not forced to engage with others... again, I think this 'withdrawal' is exactly that - moving away from the stress and overload that interaction with others brings rather than 'toward' the self.
A bacteria that moved away from an acidic environment that it found 'harmful' would be described as 'acidophobic' but it would be inaccurate to infer that it was 'alkaliphilic' i.e. movement away from one thing does not infer an attraction to its opposite.
Self-obsession is being "excessively preoccupied with one's own life and circumstances; thinking only about oneself."
That's not what SciFiGreg has described.
He's saying "I feel like I've been treated unfairly and I'm pissed off about it... and it's being made worse by people suggesting I just 'get over it'..."
The article you refer to says in the conclusion:
"People with AS may have trouble empathising, which imprisons them inside their own self, but they are frequently highly moral individuals, who think deeply about how – in novelist Nick Hornby’s words – to be good. Through their good logic, they typically have a strong sense of justice, for others as well as for the self.
I'd argue that it's Greg's sense of injustice that's been triggered and this is difficult to 'get over' - I have the same issue i.e. when what is 'right' or 'fair' is ignored for the sake of convenience or 'politics' or simple incompetence it drives me nuts... that's not me being self-obsessed, it's me being frustrated that things aren't how they should be and no-one else seeming to care.