A couple of days ago, a colleague in the library I work at posted, via Teams, a link to a support network for people in the profession who are neurodivergent. A number of people, myself included, indicated appreciation for the information vai the usual shorthand custom of a heart/thumbs-up emoji type response. I also signed up to join the resource in question, just to get a sense of it (especially with it being geared towards library staff across the UK) and to open up another avenue of potential support/feeling seen. All in all, what a nice, helpful, and positive thing has been set up there. And yet...
The reason I'm mentioning it is that I found exploring the site curiously triggering in a way that I know I need to admit is a 'me' problem, and not anything that they have, even remotely, done 'wrong'. How do I explain...
Well, I think it was two things really.
The first is that when I looked at the section introducing its committee, a no doubt lovely bunch of people, it was almost exclusively (one library assistant aside) people in managerial or high level posts in the profession. Result? Something that I'd struggled with before, but worked hard to put into a dormant state, suddenly came to the fore again- a feeling of 'ah, ok, if they're autistic and are managing/functioning in top grade positions - in other words take a career trajectory I've come to think of as predominantly an NT one- then how do I deal with processing that alignment? Also, I've for a long time known with certainty that I neither could cope with, nor want, ascendancy to top grade posts/positions with that level of responsibility (And associated complexities/pressures) and when my diagnosis came I had a reason... an 'excuse' in a sense (though that would be an NT framing of things of course, so I use it hesitantly and only because it's a shorthand for what I'm getting at) for why I want, even need, total continuity of my exact post, duties (basically a steady record to record 'conveyor belt' of highly predictable stuff Mon-Fri and recovery nonetheless at weekends) that I've been doing for years to continue until -if spared- retirement. Nothing would be more certain to give me an immediate and total nervous breakdown than taking on the impressive alchemy of what those in the managerial posts do - my brain (certainly my executive function) could no more manage that than it could come up with the answer to life, the universe, and everything (or at least explain why that answer is 42). Now, I know that nobody's going to hold a gun to my head tomorrow and force me to apply to be a (disaster of a destined-to-be-sacked) professional grade librarian with all the unwanted burdens that would bring. But... I have in the space of one day lost the sense of comfort I had in thinking that the majority of autistic people working in libraries would be, like me, in lower ranks and because of similar challenges. But maybe I'm in way more of a minority even among autistics in the profession (and therefore even more so societally) than I thought. It's not a catasrophic axis shift but it has rattled me a little, and that old 'I'm a total loser' refrain is back in my head a little more strongly (albeit still more muted than in the not-too-distant past) than it was when I got up this morning.
The second is that a discovery, via its resources page, led me to a couple of interesting autistic-leaning podcasts that I have now downloaded sample episodes of (I'm hoping to like them). But it's kind of, again, left me feeling a little unmoored from some solid conceptual ground I thought I'd painstakingly but successfully put in place. One of the podcasts is called 'The Late Discovered Club'... well at first glance I thought 'that absolutely fits my situation, let's hear some of these stories and they will productively resonate'. Maybe that will be the case, but scanning the episode list I was seeing person after person who was a high achiever, often someone like a busy mum who'd found time to set up an ND-supporting organisation in their spare time while working some high level job, that kind of thing. Again, an uneasy sensation of 'well... where are all the autistics like me then, barely coping with the basics and knackered/burned out even without parenting etc. on my plate?' The other podcast (which I think will be the more entertaining) is called Autistic Culture, and it seems to have a mission statement to covera all sorts of programmes, public personalities, etc. with the suffix '...is autistic' featuring heavily in episode titles: eg. 'Ghostbusters is Autistic', 'Taylor Swift is autistic', 'Greta Thunberg is autistic' and so on. Now, while the Greta example is well known, the first two seem more blind-sideing and that seems to be the podcast's remit: cast the net wide and label as many people as possible autistic or potentially so seen through a specific filter. Sounds fun on the one hand, and yet... does it almost lean a little too far into the 'we're all a little bit...' thinking that can already be so damaging for us? I hope that when I listen I can re-calibrate on this and will hopefully find myself applauding what they're doing. But it's stirred up (even before listening!) a bunch of conflicting thoughts and emotions and reactions that have me ill at ease and unable to focus on much else just now... despite needing to! especially work stuff... ironically :-)
Sorry for the stream of consciousness ramble - thinking 'aloud' like this can sometimes calm my dysregulation, and I'm grateful I can do so in a safe space like this where any potential respondent can hopefully somewhat relate and offer thoughts on the matter. Ideally in a way that reassures! But not at the expense of factual realities I suppose, or what would be the point?
Also, does anyone have their own version of this sort of thing? A well-intentioned act, resource, signpost to the notionally therepeutic and supportive that - intially at least- threw the lever in the opposite direction entirely... pending a restoration of previous perspectives hoped for but that might never come...
