Recently Diagnosed

I feel I resonate with that, I was drawn to counselling I feel that helped me develop social skills . The part you shared in reference to Brazil sounds fascinating! I've always wanted to expand work into supporting other autistic people, it sounds so fulfilling! I'm glad to hear it sounds good at present 

CinnamonAlien said:

I'm wondering what employment has been good for others?

I worked for 32 years as an IT techie and later manager so work has always been present and a challenge.

One of my odd defence mechanisms to things that generate fear or anxiety is to stare them down and take them on so I have lived most of my life in a state of fairly constant stress. Not healthy.

I wasn't aware I was autistic for 30 of those years so my approach was that if I was scared or something them the best way to deal with it is to go into it with both barrels and prove that I could do it. It worked but it always took its toll.

Later on with management I found dealing with people challenging as I found it hard to read them so I started to educate myself on social interactions, body language and management techniques to the point I could handle them effectively.

The good thing was that I became good at building and motivating teams and it became a speciality to fix teams that were performing really badly, but this sometimes involved cutting the dead wood in the team who could not perform.  I always privately struggled with the consequences of doing this.

I retired early 2 years ago and now renovate properties in Brazil (long story) but also get to create social housing as well which is a great feeling, plus I mentor school leaving age autistic teens from some local schools to give them the sort of pracical advice that I wished I had beem given when I was young.

Life these days is much more physical and yet relaxing but so much more fulfilling.

Thank you for your reply. I'm also struggling with driving incredibly anxious. I also love aliens! Watching documentaries and listening to podcasts. It sounds like you found a pocket of space in which you can be the best you which is most important!

Hi and welcome to the community! I had quite many interests in my past. Now I’m tired of everything but still feeling joy when I see or hear anything about aliens, space, ancient aliens etc. I work in a warehouse of a hardware store and I like my job, my colleagues, and my job does not damage me mentally like the previous ones where I was a customer service assistant and had to make a lot of small talk and eye contact and doesn’t matter how hard I tried it was always wrong and I was never good enough. I’m underemployed I believe, my peers after graduation found good jobs on high posts only I can’t. Autistic traits and my issues with communication, interactions, eye contact etc explain perfectly why I never managed to get a better job with higher salary. People wonder why I do the lowest wage jobs while speaking 3 foreign languages fluently (English, Russian, German) having good pc skills AutoCAD photoshop and ms office. I often hear that I could just make a driver license and make a good career. No, I know it doesn’t look like… but I can’t. I can’t drive a car due to sensory issues and my attention going too strong to details (if I concentrate on lights and signs I may not notice a pedestrian and hit them). And all this is basically too much for me. I’m not diagnosed, suspected autistic. This forum is the only space where I feel comfortable. I appreciate what and whom I have in my life. And my low salary job, which I like and often fear loosing it.