Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone, it's me with a question again.
I find professional relationships very hard. The main reason is because I feel that they seem so fake to me.
Small talks? People who don't really know me or care about how I feel nor have time to hear my real answer still ask me "how are you today?", "How was your weekend?".
Lunches and team activities?. People whom I don't know but I can't actually get to know or ask personal questions because we are just colleagues and not friends. Still it's expected to find something to talk about for more than an hour?!. Most topics in that setting don't interest me and seem superficial.
Team work? Ok, that one is easier because we actually talk about work and it fits our relationship description "colleagues" and it doesn't seem like a superficial talk, but they confuse me at times when they change their opinions about the same thing or it comes across as if they want to push their views and opinions over others. I become very unmotivated to share my view because I know that most probably eventually it won't be applied anyway and it's just waste of my power and energy.
Sometimes I say things that cause their face expressions to suddenly dramatically change. I spend hours trying to figure out where the misunderstanding was. In one occasion they were talking about an awful accident and I found something about it funny and I started laughing and everyone looked at me as if I'm a psychopath. I'm actually hypersensitive and have overwhelming high empathy.
The style of talking as using formal sentences and professional words to sound smart and so on. Dressing in an office suitable manner which is so damn superficial because it serves no real cause other than sounding and looking in a certain way even if it doesn't reflect your true self in anyway. I can't present myself as a professional. I can present myself as Ree...
How do you manage professional relationships? Any tips on how you make it true to yourself and not exhausting while thriving in professional relationships?
While I cannot offer much advice, I can help with validation. I have been working for 25 years. Four of those years were in the US Marine Corps. The other settings were office work, university, hospital, mental health counseling, and philanthropic non-profits for both civilian and military populations. The settings I have been able to manage the social arena effectively have all been military-related. I think this is because military social culture is quite accommodating to autistic characteristics. People are stoic, forced to socialize with each other, goal-focused, collective orientation, thick-skinned, and generally welcoming of each other due to camaraderie and diversity.
In the civilian settings, things have been more difficult. I could not make one friend in the office positions as I somehow upset everyone, was too weird or blunt. The hospital and counseling settings were difficult too. I usually made only a few work friends, and I believe it's because people tend to be more educated and goal focused in these settings. However, despite university settings being highly educated, I had difficulty there too. I believe that it's because the output of university work is vague. What's the material product when teaching a class and how can it be measured? It's possible, but not as clear or frequent as improving a patient's health on a daily basis. University setting are thus unexpectedly political. The best civilian settings I have worked is still the university, but entirely online were socialization isn't expected. Here, I control my own schedule to accommodate burn out and rarely interact with co-workers aside from quick work-related emails.
The one thing that has helped me is to find the good people. There are good people everywhere, so I would gravitate towards them. While in grad school, I had 4 professors that took me in as their own and would protect and guide me. In the hospital, there were good people that saw me for what I was, and would also protect me from harm. These weren't friends. Instead, they were almost like parents or older siblings. That has been the most helpful adaptation I have been able to implement.
In the office there are 4 people who i consider genuinely 'nice' people, she is one. Problem being, i have absolutely no idea how anyone sees me. It could go from the tolerance due to having to work with me even though they want me to f off, to, 'he's a nice chap, i wonder if i've pissed him off because he isn't talking to me'.
I have no clue - and if i guess wrong, am i risking getting fired.
Have you disclosed your autism at work?
If so, you can ask your colleague if you can have a chat - explain about the autism and the fact you have problems with knowing the rules of social interactions and that you feel you may have done something to upselt them.
Ask them to be direct (preferrably not rude) and explain it so you can understand and not do it any more.
Tell them it means a lot to you as you think they are really decent people and you hate not knowing if you have upset them.
I found openess and asking to put right any wrong you may have caused will get the decent people to open up and get you back into a better relationship - and it they are just being a grump because their goldfish left them for the cat or whatever, then they are probably best to leave to themselves until they find a new goldfish (and you have one less thing to worry about).
That is what I have done before and found it worked.
That's great news. I can imagine that would be funny! I hope having this increased awareness in your professional relationship together helps things run smoother for you at work
Yep ... I feel good. She did say that there had been a few occasions where I had been, lets say, not as accommodating as I could have been ... aka rude, but that i was generally good.
I did have a funny moment when I was trying to describe the problem of eye contact, and realizing that I was looking out of the window!
I'm so glad to hear it went well!!
Well, we had the chat ... she was great about it! So glad I picked her to be my first 'victim'! :-)I was really nervous but she was supportive. She was trying to e encouraging when talking about getting help to learn how to read faces better ... it's the thought that counts.
Altogether a really positive experience!
Just need to identify the next person now!
No problem, I hope it helps.
I wasn't, but i am looking now, thanks.