It's been odd, watching management readjust to realizing that my needs might be different, and require a little adjustment in their parts.
Yesterday, the debacle over my OT issue had been resolved; I'll get comp time, pretty much at my own discretion, if I just "shave" days--an hour here, two hours there, a longer lunch. Works for me. And it sent me into a reflective mode.
Two weeks into my new job, I had a meltdown: dry heaves in the bathroom, tears-down-my-face meltdown. Someone found me on the floor and asked what to do, and because I am an idiot, and overwhelmed, and no longer cared, I mentioned a coworker who's friendly. Said coworker showed up, with water and a cold rag, and did not pump me for details (thank you!). Let me lie there. There is nothing like a tile floor to comfort some pains.
I was washing my face and curling over the sink, breathing, when the next person came in. She asked me if I knew there was a room people went to so that they could be quiet, and personally guided me there.
My manager eased me out of the quiet room about ten minutes later to listen to me. Really. That's what he did. And he knew when I was self-censoring, and said so, but he also didn't push me on it.
Ever since then, it's been interesting noticing how various different personalities have adjusted their approaches--generally softer, not less demanding but more intentional about how they demand. A little less of the grim-this-is-a-machine-and-you'd-better-perform-like-one-or-else from the authorities most proximate to me (also fairly new at the job). A little more awareness that they've taught fear, and hadn't meant to. A little more awareness that I'm not the person they want to vent at when their days are ugly and I happen to be the unfortunate "last straw."
The accommodations take the form of friendliness-in-motion: a taught behavior here is "smile, look at people, say hello, keep moving." It's contact, not conversation. The speed of the interaction is nothing like how I experience this exchange that I hate:
"Hi."
"Hi. How are you?"
"Fine, thanks. How are you?"
Friendliness-in-motion does include conversation, too. One person revealed to me, as he left early for the day, that he was sorry he couldn't meet with me but his brain had just gone "flat"---one of the in-house expressions for just can't think anymore. I found it kind, to admit that it's not just me, that others also feel what I feel.
One person asked me to join a minor prank: sing happy birthday to someone. I realized suddenly I was the only white person in the room, and one of the few women, and I felt warm because a "person" to him didn't mean "looked like me." I needed that. His generosity got him a pleasant surprise: the only person in the room who's on key and fearless about being heard in song.
One manager has inadvertently defined the limits of oversharing--I'm the 4th person she's told, at length, about how it feels to be sandwiched between an Alzheimer's parent and an autistic teen. Other managers are now looking at what to do both with and for her. I learn from this that I don't have to name myself. I just have to make it clear what specific thing I need that most people don't ask for often, if at all.
Yesterday's fire drill was interesting. Staggering down in the human stream from the 7th floor in a concrete-and-metal stairwell, klaxons blaring, people shouting over it, I had my fingers jammed in my ears all the way down. I almost ran across the parking lot. I didn't know until the all-clear that my admin had followed me down and was still near me. It's been clear for a while now that my auditory & emotional sensitivities are well-known among a tight circle, and not always this obviously, but it feels...comforting.
My admin was also the person who told me that my ability to articulate had made it possible for other people to work with the problem. Since she isn't someone I'd confided in, I see the hand of my administrative manager at work: I only spoke with him once since I started work--at the meltdown--and I now realize that I must have exhibited two behaviors that told him what to do:
I hear, from time to time, some resentment over "accommodations" by people who don't have aspie issues, or who are stuck on "but everybody does that." An aspie accommodation isn't asking for much more than suspending suspicions and prejudices about someone and measuring what they give for what they take. Aspie accommodation is not about how others change who they are--but that they change small things about how they are, so that I, too, can be fully present.
It's about not assuming aspie sensitivity is a scam. It's about appreciating "if aspie, then aspie" where the accommodation provided in the form of other people's minor adjustments means they also see my own performance jump--because it is a social impairment and if you do meet me where I am, you will also see measurably better performance because I can now care where you are. Accommodation is not about weakness but appreciation.
After all, there's not a lot of professionally useful things I can do from a tile floor.
Yesterday, the debacle over my OT issue had been resolved; I'll get comp time, pretty much at my own discretion, if I just "shave" days--an hour here, two hours there, a longer lunch. Works for me. And it sent me into a reflective mode.
Two weeks into my new job, I had a meltdown: dry heaves in the bathroom, tears-down-my-face meltdown. Someone found me on the floor and asked what to do, and because I am an idiot, and overwhelmed, and no longer cared, I mentioned a coworker who's friendly. Said coworker showed up, with water and a cold rag, and did not pump me for details (thank you!). Let me lie there. There is nothing like a tile floor to comfort some pains.
I was washing my face and curling over the sink, breathing, when the next person came in. She asked me if I knew there was a room people went to so that they could be quiet, and personally guided me there.
My manager eased me out of the quiet room about ten minutes later to listen to me. Really. That's what he did. And he knew when I was self-censoring, and said so, but he also didn't push me on it.
Ever since then, it's been interesting noticing how various different personalities have adjusted their approaches--generally softer, not less demanding but more intentional about how they demand. A little less of the grim-this-is-a-machine-and-you'd-better-perform-like-one-or-else from the authorities most proximate to me (also fairly new at the job). A little more awareness that they've taught fear, and hadn't meant to. A little more awareness that I'm not the person they want to vent at when their days are ugly and I happen to be the unfortunate "last straw."
The accommodations take the form of friendliness-in-motion: a taught behavior here is "smile, look at people, say hello, keep moving." It's contact, not conversation. The speed of the interaction is nothing like how I experience this exchange that I hate:
"Hi."
"Hi. How are you?"
"Fine, thanks. How are you?"
Friendliness-in-motion does include conversation, too. One person revealed to me, as he left early for the day, that he was sorry he couldn't meet with me but his brain had just gone "flat"---one of the in-house expressions for just can't think anymore. I found it kind, to admit that it's not just me, that others also feel what I feel.
One person asked me to join a minor prank: sing happy birthday to someone. I realized suddenly I was the only white person in the room, and one of the few women, and I felt warm because a "person" to him didn't mean "looked like me." I needed that. His generosity got him a pleasant surprise: the only person in the room who's on key and fearless about being heard in song.
One manager has inadvertently defined the limits of oversharing--I'm the 4th person she's told, at length, about how it feels to be sandwiched between an Alzheimer's parent and an autistic teen. Other managers are now looking at what to do both with and for her. I learn from this that I don't have to name myself. I just have to make it clear what specific thing I need that most people don't ask for often, if at all.
Yesterday's fire drill was interesting. Staggering down in the human stream from the 7th floor in a concrete-and-metal stairwell, klaxons blaring, people shouting over it, I had my fingers jammed in my ears all the way down. I almost ran across the parking lot. I didn't know until the all-clear that my admin had followed me down and was still near me. It's been clear for a while now that my auditory & emotional sensitivities are well-known among a tight circle, and not always this obviously, but it feels...comforting.
My admin was also the person who told me that my ability to articulate had made it possible for other people to work with the problem. Since she isn't someone I'd confided in, I see the hand of my administrative manager at work: I only spoke with him once since I started work--at the meltdown--and I now realize that I must have exhibited two behaviors that told him what to do:
- Cried and raged without losing coherence; even in my misery it's possible to hear what I'm upset about.
- The flip of the switch as the rage recedes and my thinking self can come out of the shadows--fueled by vestigial anger and fear, I say the things I've been strangling, and my compassion emerges also: I know that I heard myself articulate other points of view and then insist on the validity of my own. No blame, but no concealment. And I talk about what I don't know in a different way that the way I talk when I do know--I say when fear, not fact, is the source.
I hear, from time to time, some resentment over "accommodations" by people who don't have aspie issues, or who are stuck on "but everybody does that." An aspie accommodation isn't asking for much more than suspending suspicions and prejudices about someone and measuring what they give for what they take. Aspie accommodation is not about how others change who they are--but that they change small things about how they are, so that I, too, can be fully present.
It's about not assuming aspie sensitivity is a scam. It's about appreciating "if aspie, then aspie" where the accommodation provided in the form of other people's minor adjustments means they also see my own performance jump--because it is a social impairment and if you do meet me where I am, you will also see measurably better performance because I can now care where you are. Accommodation is not about weakness but appreciation.
After all, there's not a lot of professionally useful things I can do from a tile floor.
