Might need to shut down my small biz

DontEatMe said:

I just find it so overwhelming interacting with multiple people per week.

You have identified a key trigger for your autistic trait here. Is this the only trait causing you serious issues in the workplace?

You do need to recover from your burnout first, but once this is achieved, would you consider spending at least some of your time developing techniques for managing these traits so you can endure them better and for longer?

They will never go away but you can learn how to relax more effectively to lower the stress levels that the interactions bring, and you can learn to understand them so where you need to interact you can cope better.

If you can afford it, a psychotherapist is the best tool I can recommend as they can teach you techniques in ways that work for you, but if the budget does not stretch that far then you can self learn techniques like meditation and mindfulness that allow you to manage your level of stress.

Learning about how to interact socially is also a great skill to learn, and if you are a very rules based thinker then reading up on the dynamics of social interaction makes it suddenly less opaque and easier to interact with. You will need to mask and script no doubt but this becomes easier when you have developed a much better understanding of what is happening in any interaction.

It sounds nice and easy on paper but it is months or years worth of part time study to do all this, but the skills will benefit you for a lifetime.

These are just my thoughts on what may help - hopefully something is of use.

I've already spent my life studying people and memorizing and scripting to make myself palatable to people. I've done it successfully enough to run a sole trader business for 10 years. But it's exactly what's wearing me into the ground. I'm 35 and it's still hard work for me. I have never found it easy, my brain has to go on overdrive to do it and I never feel certain that I'm doing it right. It's like trying to run a program on a computer that can't actually handle it so it overheats and the fan starts whirring like crazy to keep up, that's how I feel. 

And I can't just choose not to mask on this job. Nobody wants their piano teacher to be rocking or fidgeting next to them while they're trying to concentrate on playing something. Nobody wants a teacher who never looks them in the eye, or who has a monotone voice or a flat facial expression. Nobody wants to discover that their teacher is briefly zoning out sometimes from sheer overwhelm.

As long as I'm masking, I keep customers but I lose my mind. But if I stop, I'll lose customers and have no money of my own. But how long until I snap? And in a society that values money and money-making above all else, won't I be more isolated than ever if I don't force myself to keep going? I'm so lost!

DontEatMe said:

I have never found it easy, my brain has to go on overdrive to do it and I never feel certain that I'm doing it right.

This is where meditation is a great tool to be able to take back control of the racing mind and bring the stress levels down before the spiral.

Mindfulness is where you can take that fear of doing it wrong, look at your experience and work out realistically how often you got it wrong, how you learned from it and in the case you start to mess up again, how well you can react. 

It builds your self confidence in being able to tackle the tasks day after day.

It is this combination that let me be a consultant in fixing broken IT support teams by showing then how they can do the task under pressure, with angry customers and inadequate resources. I could show others these techniques, teach them when to make time to catch their breath and be able to get back into the storm again while keeping their sanity.

As you point out, simply masking and scripting are only part of the way to do this. Without meditation and mindfulness it is not sustainable.

This has been my experienc anyway.

Thanks for being open with how you feel about these things - it isn't easy to admit our vulnerabilities.

DontEatMe said:

I'm confused, masking isn't just a bunch of racing thoughts? It's constant acting, both in the sense of playing a role that makes me not repulsive, and in the sense of taking constant actions

I think you are overthinking it. I do the least amount of masking needed and am happy to cultivate the quiet bloke appearance and say the least I need to.

If I have a resting *** face then too bad. I don't complain about their ugly mugs so why should I accept them complaining about mine.

The interacting I try to keep about the work wherever possible. This plays to my strengths as I know my job inside out and I have scripted my responses through the years to avoid infodumping, instead relying on making my answers as concise as I can.

DontEatMe said:

Check my face, check my body, check my voice, check my choice of words, check my focus, check check check and by the time I've run through my checklist one of those things is starting to slip already so I have to go again.

It sounds like you lack self confidence - the masking physically becomes a second nature thing I found once I got it right so I could "feel" if things were OK or not.

Mindfulness should help you build that confidence based on past experience.

A bit of scripting for the silences helps a lot - either use a deflecting script to change to a different topic, a dismissal script if you are done (eg "if that's all, I'll get right on it) or a prompt to the other party for more info (eg "was there anything else?", "does that answer the question?" or ""are you happy you have the info you need?")

These become very repetetive over time and this makes them easer to use.

In general don't try to be perfect. Be your own version of quirky and own it. So long as it reduces the processing overhead for you it is worth it.

DontEatMe said:

I'm confused, masking isn't just a bunch of racing thoughts? It's constant acting, both in the sense of playing a role that makes me not repulsive, and in the sense of taking constant actions

I think you are overthinking it. I do the least amount of masking needed and am happy to cultivate the quiet bloke appearance and say the least I need to.

If I have a resting *** face then too bad. I don't complain about their ugly mugs so why should I accept them complaining about mine.

The interacting I try to keep about the work wherever possible. This plays to my strengths as I know my job inside out and I have scripted my responses through the years to avoid infodumping, instead relying on making my answers as concise as I can.

DontEatMe said:

Check my face, check my body, check my voice, check my choice of words, check my focus, check check check and by the time I've run through my checklist one of those things is starting to slip already so I have to go again.

It sounds like you lack self confidence - the masking physically becomes a second nature thing I found once I got it right so I could "feel" if things were OK or not.

Mindfulness should help you build that confidence based on past experience.

A bit of scripting for the silences helps a lot - either use a deflecting script to change to a different topic, a dismissal script if you are done (eg "if that's all, I'll get right on it) or a prompt to the other party for more info (eg "was there anything else?", "does that answer the question?" or ""are you happy you have the info you need?")

These become very repetetive over time and this makes them easer to use.

In general don't try to be perfect. Be your own version of quirky and own it. So long as it reduces the processing overhead for you it is worth it.