Job-related challenges

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.

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.