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I thought I was special! (no but seriously...)

Shardovan

Not really sure how to articulate what's bothering me so much right now, but it may help to try and do so. Here

goes...

So, I got my assessment in early Jan, the result (confirmed Level One) in early Feb, and have been feeling relief above all else about that making sense of things for me. I'm 44 and have felt different, been easily exhausted, etc. all my life. 

I was giving myself  a very hard time for a few years there feeling like an underachiever in life, and now I think instead that I've done well. I have a job, it's a really good fit, I have my own house, I live independently, I manage my mental health struggles and anxiety about as well as could be reasonably expected.

And key to relaxing a bit on all of this has been realising that I'm something like a societal 1 in 100 - I can be different because I am different, it's how I was made, who I am. I work in a profession (libraries) though where I think that my workplace probably has a few more '1 in 100's  (diagnosed or otherwise) in it than most others. I think I did the right amount of calibrating this in my head to come up with a reasonably accurate figure of something more like 1 in 30 in the place who know thay're autistic (either through diagnosis like me, or having been sufficiently affected day to day to at least suspect it). And maybe about 1 in 3-5 others will at some point have joked about being 'on the spectrum', but only in a half-serious way at most. 

After dipping into the online community a bit (here, and also YouTube vids from Aucademy), being open about being diagnosed autistic seems to be the consensus best thing to do for taking pressure off oneself and making a small contribution to societal progress/acceptance of neurodivergence. So I sent an email round my particular dept. mentioning it, explaining why I was doing so, etc. To their credit, I got only nice and sensitive responses, and appropriately it hasn't otherwise been talked about since as there's been no real need. 

An additional  positive for me out of that was feeling understood, it being apppreciated why not seeking future promotion is in my case a healthy and sensible thing, etc. A recognition that I'm doing the best I can, and what's right for me, with keeping the stability/continuum that I have. 

Cut to today, and meeting a returning colleague and friend (he'd tried a different job he didn't like and comeback to - essentially- his old one) for a lunchtime walk/chat. I mention to him my diagnosis, and he says 'oh, my brother has that, and I think I probably do too. Also, I'm fairly sure my dad does.' While I didn't show it outwardly, this triggered me: here I am, having found peace in my neurodivergent scarcity, and literally the person stood next to me is also autistic, and at least two of his family. So suddenly it feels commonplace, and that  I've been letting myself off the hook too lightly. Which, rationally, is insane - probability easily allows for two '1- 100's to be in the same place at the same time, and it doesn't magically make the other 99% of society magically transform into autistic people too. So why am I still so unsettled by it? Is it a childish impulse to want to be special? Or is it that I now have to start re-running the mathes on this to check whether I thought I was rarer (even in my profession) than I actually am? And do I now have to start saying, well if we're all autistic (maybe) then perhaps I am, once again, an underachiever, since there are library staff at all grades/levels, including managerial posts? 

As I type all that, I'm not sure how rational/irrational I'm being in getting so jittery and uncomfortable about it - just because of one conversation with someone who is enough of a kindred spirit that what he said oughtn't to have been a surprise anyway. But typiong this helps try and get a handle on what I'm feeling. It's almost a mutation of the 'imposter syndrome' feelings I was getting a few weeks back, but with a different flavour. The fact that this has consumed my thoughts for an hour (preventing me from getting focussed on work tasks again) probably tells me all I need to know about the authenticity of my own autistic experience (like the diagnosis wasnt enough!), and I'm probably just feeling a bit off-balance today and letting paranoia make e feel like the butt of a cosmic joke. When I look back at this post in a while, maybe I'll shake my head and think 'what was I on about'? Does this kind of all-consuming spiral make sense to anyone else here? And am I OK in feeling that I still did the right thing in 'coming out' even though, here at least, maybe I'm nothing 'specail' enough to warrant it? 

Parents

  • Something relevant to this that just came up, and has left me feeling unsettled and annoyed, so I'm venting here even if it's stupid and irrational. Maybe doing so will help with perspective, or instead make me feel more vindicated in my being privately upset - not sure. 

    Basically, my boss was chatting to a colleague about 20 minutes ago. She happened to mention that her son teaches autistic kids (presumably Level 2 diagnosis or above based on apparent context), some of whom later enter the world of work. My boss goes'Sure just tell them to come and work here (a library)  as we're all... [I think he was going to say autistic before changing to...]... I mean we all like our routine and order and things.' 

    I think he maybe altered the trajectory of his sentence so that he didn't explicitly say 'we're all autistic here' or 'we're all a bit on the spectrum' - either of which would make my diagnosis (which I shared with the office not too long ago) feel minimised. I feel like it maybe revealed an underlying attitude of  'why make such a big fuss about your  clinical diagnosis of Level One' when we're all a bit, y'know... and we don't all use it as an excuse not to 'get on' (as in advance to management positions or whatever). I feel a bit hurt by it, even though it's not something I could jump in on and challenge, as that really would be making the conversation about me. And yet now I'm left, once again, with that confusion of  'if I'm one in a societal 100 minimum but 60 maximum, why does everybody in my orbit presume to have it too, thus taking away the thing that helps me make sense of why I struggle more than them?' 

    Even if libraries do have a higher concentration of the more generally neurodivergent working in them, as we discussed above, why so offhandedly pull the rug from under my feet just as I was beginning to think 'it's really OK to  know, not just believe, that I'm wired differently from the vast majority and that I'm doing well on that basis, not objectively 'underachieving' or whatever the general NT verdict about my life situation wouuld be? It almost feels like subtle gaslighting or intentional mischief, except it's probably just been more of an unintended overspill of an otherwise not-usually verbalised assumption about me 'you're an imposter, and no different from the rest of us - odd, yes, but nothing as societally uncommon as you think'. And so I feel back to square one on the 'is it OK to feel I'm functioning at my maximum capabilities here?' front. Because I really feel that I am, but maybe I'm just pathetic. 

Reply

  • Something relevant to this that just came up, and has left me feeling unsettled and annoyed, so I'm venting here even if it's stupid and irrational. Maybe doing so will help with perspective, or instead make me feel more vindicated in my being privately upset - not sure. 

    Basically, my boss was chatting to a colleague about 20 minutes ago. She happened to mention that her son teaches autistic kids (presumably Level 2 diagnosis or above based on apparent context), some of whom later enter the world of work. My boss goes'Sure just tell them to come and work here (a library)  as we're all... [I think he was going to say autistic before changing to...]... I mean we all like our routine and order and things.' 

    I think he maybe altered the trajectory of his sentence so that he didn't explicitly say 'we're all autistic here' or 'we're all a bit on the spectrum' - either of which would make my diagnosis (which I shared with the office not too long ago) feel minimised. I feel like it maybe revealed an underlying attitude of  'why make such a big fuss about your  clinical diagnosis of Level One' when we're all a bit, y'know... and we don't all use it as an excuse not to 'get on' (as in advance to management positions or whatever). I feel a bit hurt by it, even though it's not something I could jump in on and challenge, as that really would be making the conversation about me. And yet now I'm left, once again, with that confusion of  'if I'm one in a societal 100 minimum but 60 maximum, why does everybody in my orbit presume to have it too, thus taking away the thing that helps me make sense of why I struggle more than them?' 

    Even if libraries do have a higher concentration of the more generally neurodivergent working in them, as we discussed above, why so offhandedly pull the rug from under my feet just as I was beginning to think 'it's really OK to  know, not just believe, that I'm wired differently from the vast majority and that I'm doing well on that basis, not objectively 'underachieving' or whatever the general NT verdict about my life situation wouuld be? It almost feels like subtle gaslighting or intentional mischief, except it's probably just been more of an unintended overspill of an otherwise not-usually verbalised assumption about me 'you're an imposter, and no different from the rest of us - odd, yes, but nothing as societally uncommon as you think'. And so I feel back to square one on the 'is it OK to feel I'm functioning at my maximum capabilities here?' front. Because I really feel that I am, but maybe I'm just pathetic. 

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