Job-related challenges

Hi again, Belles,

Whether to disclose or not is indeed very difficult to judge - particularly when diagnosis is not yet certain.

In my case, I actually suspect that not disclosing much earlier than I did led to the loss of my most recent job.  My fear of speaking up led me to conceal my poor performance from managers who implicitly trusted my reassurances that nothing was wrong, and my promises that I would soon make good on projects that were slipping behind.

As I got further and further behind my targets, the extra stress led to my performance declining even further - to the point that I was spending a huge amount of time locked into a kind of "analysis paralysis", bewildered as to what I should do to get back on track.

One of the ways that I deal with stress is by using "thought blocking" behaviour.  This can be a good coping strategy if used in moderation, at an appropriate time, and in an appropriate setting.  However, daydreaming and obsessing about my AS "special interests" is obviously not what my employer expected in return for my paycheck!

The saddest part is that I did actually have a very understanding employer, who probably would have been amenable to planning a way out of the situation if only I had spoken up before things got so bad - regardless of my diagnosis only being informal at the time.

So, as you can see, non-disclosure can have as many risks as disclosure, and there is no single "right" answer that any of us could point you to.  Unless there is a crisis though, I would suggest doing nothing at least until you have a formal diagnosis - at least then, you have some legal redress if the worst comes to the worst.

Thanks for your excellent replies, understanding and insight.  Do you think that mentioning difficulties in such areas would be taken seriously?  I would hesitate to discuss these as I feel that I could meet the 'everyone struggles with these things to some extent, just get on with it' kind of response, alternatively being viewed as incompetent and risking my job security.  However I also worry that one day I may slip up and create a risky situation, as could potentially happen were various factors to coincide (which is unlikely but nonetheless possible).  Until now I have remained in this employment through being very good at specific areas at my job, only having caused some minor-medium severity of negative situations, and rubbing along with coworkers (mainly through learning the hard way to voice as few opinions as possible and be as polite as I am able).  I keep expecting to be uncovered, or like I say make a major slip up.  I will probably keep quiet and try to manage as I have been doing unless I am asked about any difficulties.

I see what you mean about the hyper focus.  Yes this makes a lot of sense, good spotting this link.  

I think that I am very lucky in that my current coworkers are kind and helpful in their treatment of me.  This certainly hasn't been the case in the past.  Like you mention Trogluddite, I can look back on many past jobs and relate lack of success/job loss to autistic traits.  Interesting about the accessability issues for wheelchair access, Longman, and rather unbelievable.  Given that this is a visible disability it is difficult to imagine adaptations for autistic people.

Ah yes - very ciritical point there in the close of Longman's reply...

"Able people cannot think disabled."

And the reverse is also true - though I think often rather less so, as we are forced to live our lives in the NT world, whereas NT folk never have to inhabit ours!

This is important if needing to discuss any "reasonable adjustments" with an employer, as you have little choice than to describe them in words that NT managers and colleagues can understand.  From personal experience, I can vouch that this can be very difficult.

For example, managers in my previous job were pretty open and sympathetic when I first began struggling and approached them.  However, when we say to our manager; "I have great difficulty multi-tasking", they will read those words in a neuro-typical way - they may take on board that you cannot persue two projects simultaneously, but it will not occur to them that this also means you will struggle to get a job done simply because you cannot tolerate "trivial" interruptions such as office banter.  (Particularly true because there is a pervasive, very trivialising, "truism" than men cannot multi-task!!)

Similarly, when describing difficulties in dealing with ambiguity, you are likely to find that they will make an attempt to be more specific, but still nowhere near specific enough - because they are totally unaware of just how many assumptions, and how much implicit information, their minds provide them with that an AS person simply does not have access to.

It is also very important to make sure that any adjustments are reviewed periodically.  Again, because the assumptions that NTs make are so "instinctive", they are very likely to simply slip back into the old ways of dealing with an AS employee.  Our "reasonable adjustments" require them to break with habits and ways of thinking that they have been familiar with for their entire lives and are contantly reinforced by NT society.

However, the list of very specific areas of difficulties in the original posting are a very good start - the more specific you can be, the better, and it is well worth keeping a note somewhere of any specific issues that come up in the course of  each working day or project to assist you when having performance reviews etc.

Tying requests to specific events or tasks is useful because it helps to overcome the problem that, although AS and NT employees appear to use the same vocabulary, generalities can very often be mis-interpreted by both sides - your real needs can be "lost in translation" unless they are very concrete.

I can certainly concur with Trogluddite. I wasn't diagnosed until mid fifties. I struggled through life thinking the difficulty was the same for everybody, just that I wasn't good at resolving these issues.

It takes having the diagnosis to realise that these difficulties exist as a result of the disability, and that other people generally aren't so encumbered.

The difference between able and disabled is nowhere more apparent than in the context of using a wheelchair. I do voluntary accessibility assessments, sometimes with a wheelchair user, sometimes on my own just thinking wheelchair (I cover all disabilities including issues for autism, but wheelchair is the commonest application). Seeing a wheelchair user in a situation exposes many of the failings of able-thinking designers, but sometimes just getting into a building needs a walking assessor.

You would think by now that people sufficiently understood what is involved with wheelchair access. Just to give a simple example, seen in a recently built disabled toilet - a Dyson hand dryer at normal height. You might just have to think that through for a moment.

Another one is a disabled toilet in a new supermarket - perfect - but in a passageway accessed from the shop area on one side, by very heavy doors opening inwards, which don't allow enough space to get the wheelchair into the corridor and able to turn round to reach it.

A common problem is outside doorways where a disabled ramp is on one side (so as not to get in the way of people walking) but faces the door frame side panes not the doorway.  Another where the entrance was at the top of steps, the disabled ramp to the side, but requiring the wheelchair user to be in position in front of the power-assisted doors, which opened outwards, necessitating the wheelchair user to back away towards the top of the stairs!

Able people just cannot think disabled. You only understand the barriers of autism when you've got it, and know you've got it. No-one who doesn't have autism can really understand.

Like you, I am also awating a formal diagnosis, so my opinion is surely not definitive - however, I've been working with a counsellor who is used to working with autistic spectrum clients, and much of what you describe has come up in our sessions.

Like you, I have been very conscious of the problem of not having a "yardstick" to measure these things by.  However, my counsellor has reassured me that the very fact of being so anxious about those things is probably a pretty good indicator that they are not in the "normal" range for such things.

There seems to be a common thread running through the items in your list - I'll run it past you, and see if you think it rings true...

Most of what you mention seems to be related to hyper-focus - quite often put colloquially as; "having a single-track mind".

Hence it is slow or difficult to switch from one task to another, and difficult to make new memories (or recall old ones) that are not related to the current task.  Combined with perfectionism, I find that this can make it hard to begin a task until I have looked at it from a million different angles, and planned everything so that I am certain that the outcome will be perfect.  Hence the difficulty with ambiguity and the rigidity of planning - it is impossible to plan for perfection unless the specification is unchanging and precise.

This kind of single task focus seems to be a pretty common autistic trait.

Depending on the task, such hyper-focus can be either a blessing or a curse. it makes multi-tasking almost impossible, but is a boon for tasks requiring extreme attention to detail (e.g. proof-reading, scientific analysis).  In my experience, it does make working as part of team rather tricky though - I always need to perform a whole project all by myself, and find it hard to delegate or have others contribute work not done in my "style" or to my perfectionist standard.  I also find that I need to understand the whole of a system myself, and often "reinvent the wheel" just so that I know my knowledge is thorough.

Like I say, the fact that it makes you anxious, easily irritated etc., and have obviously spent some time analysing it to make your list, suggests that it is probably above and beyond what a neurotypical person might experience.  At least, the professionals that I have spoken to have said as much about my own, very similar, experiences.

These traits may be putting you under a great deal more stress than neurotypical colleagues.  It really took me by surprise when I realised this about myself.  "Passing for normal" takes a lot of energy and is very stressful - but like me, you may well have just taken this for being "normal".  Without that "yardstick", it's easy to think that this is just what every other human around you is doing all the time.  But the chances are that most of them are not having to work so hard to achieve a similar level of results.

I realised only recently that this extra burden of stress has cost me my job on several past occassions.  So do consider speaking to your employer once you have your diagnosis.

Of course, only you can judge if that is appropriate in your situation - but even something as simple as asking for all task requests to be done via e-mail can make a huge difference.

As a 'noob' here, I'm curious myself to see what other folks here think anout this, but I hope that my comments can give you at lieast a little re-assurance.