The game is rigged, you can't win.

Post Reply New Topic

I grew up in a home of chaos. There was always too much noise and, well, chaos. My family are all type-A personalities that are set in their ways and can’t be told anything. They also like to argue and bicker all the time. Growing up in this environment was rather toxic for me. I have overpowering emotional responses to many situations and I don’t deal well with these emotions. I would frequently get so wound up that I lost control of myself and had very intense behavioural episodes. Breaking things near me was a common occurrence. This was a routine pattern for most of my childhood. Both my parents worked full time jobs and had very little time for my sister and I so my closest friend growing up was my dog. I actually had a better relationship with my dog than my family growing up.

My family routinely mocked me for being over sensitive to, pretty much everything: noise, smell, taste. The most frequent example of this was playing music and singing. Today I like most music from heavy metal to classical however, as a child, I hated all music. It was noise in my head and it cause me stress. I could be in the car and I would complain that the music was hurting my head, to which I would be told to “give it a rest” and the music would be turned up and/or my family would start to sing along.

My teenage years were some of the most painful of my life and nearly led to my suicide on several occasions. What I learned from this was that I had to suppress all emotion to be able to function around others. I started implementing logic and rule based administrative controls to prevent me from ending up in situations that would lead to me going off the deep end. These rules work and have worked for two decades. Unfortunately, the mechanism by which they work is my complete emotional and social isolation from the rest of the world. I only have three people I can call friends and the list over the course of my life is less than ten.

At 19 my anxiety and depression were so bad that I could not function and ended up with a government disability pension. I committed myself to being successful in other ways in my life. After dropping out at age 16, I returned to school at age 23, completed my high school, attended university and successfully attained an undergraduate degree in engineering. After university I got an excellent job managing multimillion dollar projects.

When I got this job, for the first time in my life, I was placed in an office environment, which is when my world started to come apart at the seams. I attacked my duties and responsibilities with the same vigour and tenacity that I do all endeavours and I was quite successful at my work. The issues were with my interactions with others. Some of my rule based controls are only effective if I have the option to walk away, which I cannot do in an employment situation. After a couple of years I was brought before HR and told that I had violated the code of conduct by hurting people’s feelings. In depth discussions led to the conclusion that when I get excited about something, I raise my voice and wave my arms and get very intense and other people are afraid of me or think I’m angry or too forward or something. I still don’t completely understand the offending mechanisms.

I have proven that I can be successful at anything I commit myself to over and over. The one thing I have never been able to do is fit in with other people. I’m disgusted with the world at times. It does not matter what I try to do or what my intentions, I’m the bad guy. When I do things solely to help others at my own expense I find people are generally ungrateful and even disdainful at times.

I'm almost 40 now and looking back over my life I can see how I got here but I have no idea what I could have done differently given the information I had at the time. The things that have been constants for me in interacting with others over the years are fear, anxiety and depression. I do not deal well with failure. When I was not completely successful, I have always redoubled my efforts but this does not work in my efforts with others. I’ve even been told I don’t fit in because I try too hard.

I’ve changed myself so many times over the years to survive that I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m constantly at odds with myself and I’m tired of beating my head off the wall. I wish I didn’t have a need to connect with others but I do. Everything I do fails completely or causes me more grief than it’s worth. I don’t want to leave my house anymore, even to go to work. I’m tired and I don’t’ know how I’m supposed to live anymore. I feel like I should go back on permanent disability so I won’t have to leave the house.

Are you seeing a therapist or counselor? I think that would be a good place to start.

You can and probably should develop better interpersonal skills. A support group or an interpersonal therapy group may be places where you can observe yourself and others in interactions.

I kind of would not recommend going back on disability, since you do have the technical skills to be employed. It would be a shame to throw those away, without first trying to smooth out the social problems. Maybe you can tell your supervisor you recognize these are problems for you at work and you have a plan in place to improve.

I can really relate to what you are saying. I too am almost 40 and I can see many, many ways that things might have been different in my life. But those are all circumstantial things related to the environment I grew up in. I don't know of too many things that *I* could have done differently. And I also really don't want to leave the house most of the time and feel like I would be better off if I could just keep to myself and not have to interact much with other people. My problem is I have an almost pathological level of vulnerability, and I get hurt very easily, and/or feel so irritated by other people that i just can't tolerate being around them.

The one general thing I might have done differently, and really should have done in a lot of situations, was to be a lot more protective of myself, basically to trust my own instincts more. But my natural defenses were worn away by the kind of unbringing I had: I was trained to be excessively polite, punished if I ever spoke up for myself, and put on a guilt trip for not being nice enough or friendly enough to people. And also like you mentioned, was teased or ridiculed for being sensitive to anything.

I was basically taught to defer to other people, consider them first and put myself and my own feelings last. It sounds like a similar thing happened to you, that you learned to put other people first and do things for them even at your own expense, and other people really don't appreciate it.

I feel like I've been unpacking this baggage for years and gradually learning to be more self-centered, not to be hurtful to other people but to be able to look out for myself more and walk away from situations that are hurtful to me. And I've also had to realize, though this is brutally cynical and harsh, maybe no one person in my life will ever truly love me or appreciate me or understand me for who I am...BUT I still have the right to love myself and seek my own happiness in life. And I also have the right to tell someone to f*ck off if they try to stand in the way of that.

The HR issue was a few years ago and I’ve managed to slip back under the radar by masking my shortcomings.

My interactions with other people are damaging to me. I have intense paranoia that people are going to twist my words around and use them against me as has been done over and over. I’ll relive a five minute casual conversation over in my head for hours, analysing everything that was said. I’m constantly trying to determine the underlying reasoning in the other persons head and figure out if I missed any unspoken language. I never really know if I’ve done or said something wrong until I’m under attack for it and trying to defend myself. I don’t trust my judgement when it comes to others anymore and I definitely don’t trust others.

I know the issues are in my head and I’ve repeatedly tried to change the way I do things to accommodate the rest of the world. My problem is that these programs I’m running in my head have started to take over all other functions. I spend so much of my time worrying about protecting myself from others that everything else in my life is suffering. I’m finding it more and more difficult to get the routine daily chores done. My finances are going down the toilet because I’ve not been paying enough attention to them, I’m having issues cleaning up my house, getting laundry done and my work is suffering too.

I’ve retreated into my head and put up a wall between myself and the rest of the world. When I spend too much time alone in my own head I get some pretty screwed up ideas that seem perfectly logical to me. No good can come from this.

I don't know if things are "rigged"--but it might seem like it is because of some of the inevitable results.

You have your special interests which you delight in.

Where are you located? You might have beautiful scenes of Nature which can't be taken away from you, and which won't give you smart-ass answers to your inquiries.

It seems like everything is coming down on you at once. Please resist the temptation to withdraw and go on permanent disability. Permanent disability is a world onto itself--and much of it is worse than the corporate world

What sort of work do you do? What is it that makes you frustrated with the other workers? Is it because you are good at what you do--and are a perfectionist?

My credo, basically, is to let my work do the talking.

Again, please resist the temptation to withdraw. There are good people as well as bad. It'll make your life MUCH worse than it is now.

What would help you to change your mind about withdrawing?

I live in Canada and I do have some pretty awesome natural beauty around that I would love to spend the rest of my days in. Being out in nature away from society is one of the few places I feel completely at ease.

I am an Engineer and work in Project Management. I am good at what I do and I am a perfectionist. My credo has also been to let my work speak for its self and I’ve been repeatedly told my work it top notch and that I am one of the “better” people in the position I hold. I’ve even had one of my Clients try to poach me from my job to come work with them.

My problem with other people is that many of them are emotional train wrecks. The emotional responses I get from other people are completely illogical and I do not understand. I always try to make everything about the work and leave my personal feelings out of the equation. I accept that I cannot change other people and that I don’t have any choice in who I work with. As such, I try to accommodate these emotional train wrecks, I mean colleges, as best I can. Now I send all my time worrying about other people’s feelings though and I cannot get anything done.

I do not fit in and never have. Trying to do so at all expense has left me in a constant state of dread and panic. I feel I have screwed myself trying to do the right thing all the time. Doing right by others is one of my basic fundamental rules but it seems like the best way to do that is to just go away.

Last edited by This_Space_Intentionally_Left_Blank on 24 Apr 2016, 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

You didn't answer my question about whether you are seeing a therapist, so I take that as a "no." Your interactions with others are going to continue to baffle you, to seem illogical, until you work this out. It's kind of like taking a class in statistics, or quantum theory, after you have enjoyed introductory science classes where everything was "true." It's a shift in world view, and doesn't come easily.

Good luck. I repeat, you have achieved some career success, and it would be a shame to throw that away. You know Nature restores you, so use that. Maybe it's time for a vacation? Summer is on us. Can you take two weeks off and have a trip somewhere?

No I do not have a therapist. I do not live near a major metropolitan centre so the services I have access to are slim. I have asked my GP to refer me to several different people but counselling services are not a priority of my local health care system and I have only limited coverage through work.

Basically it comes down to money. If I needed $100k in surgery that’s covered but if I need $15K in therapy, that’s not and I have to pay my own way. There are lots of services available for people under 18 but that's the cut off age. I guess anyone over 18 is a lost cause.

Pay for it yourself. There are also counseling services offered only through the Internet, to reach people who otherwise could not go (agoraphobics, people in remote areas).

I mean, you make pretty good money. Pay for the counseling yourself.

I know it's frustrating dealing with people. Just like you can't help your frustrations, they can't help their lack of logic. Most people, instinctually, rely on emotion because of an ingrained characteristic, augmented by millennia of experience. Appeal to emotion was essential to survival in previous days.

Where is your wife in all this? Is she on the Spectrum? If she's not, is she assisting you in dealing with this crap? I hope, in the future, that she could serve as some sort of "interpreter" for you, offering insights into the motivations of your co-workers.

How long have you been with this job?

Your wife must see something in you

One day, you should surprise your co-workers by bringing bagels, various types of cream cheese (with plain cream cheese predominating), and butter.

Yes, it's phony....but this would go a long way towards establishing a rapport with your co-workers.

Ask your wife about this.

Something like Donuts might work as well.

Lots of good advice on this thread.

Getting support is huge, I was in your position I ended up extremely unwell and hit burn out. At that post I had to accept and arrange support.

I've never been happier and now I am starting to get back into work in a way which is more healthy,

They best bit, my value to my employer has gone up as I am more creative. Simply being visibly autistic and happy to talk about it has helped my employer and they recognise diversity as a good thing.

Employment wise, does an agency like Specialisterne have an office in your country? They may help you find an employer and help arrange a suitable support package.

I totally understand, I have done this too. For me, it can become an OCD ritual. It's also a matter of having delayed processing as I really struggle to keep up with what is going on in the middle of a conversation. I will have an uneasy feeling afterward that I didn't catch on to something and then analyze it to pieces trying to figure out what it was. I will also try to think through the simplest verbal exchanges ahead of time to make sure the other person won't "trap" me with something.

Traditional therapy isn't always helpful because they tend to take the approach that the anxiety or obsessive thinking is the problem and if they can just get you past it things will get better. It's not the problem, it's just a symptom, the real issue is that autists think and communicate in a different way from most other people. We can try to understand the differences, but we can't reprogram ourselves to think the way they do, and they can't think like us either.

I just saw this quote: "Other people aren't against you, they are FOR THEMSELVES." This is what is has taken me a lifetime to understand, and also realizing that just because I start looking out for someone else's feelings, doesn't mean they will reciprocate and look out for my feelings as well.

It's great to be considerate of other people, makes things better all around, for them and for yourself too, but there's a point where it goes too far. It's like an investment with diminishing returns: if you put in too much time and energy, or even money or other resources trying to accommodate other people, understand them or help them out or whatever, and it just drains you. You need to do something that is replenishing to you instead of draining, something that you enjoy.

I've spent so many hours just thinking and thinking, trying to understand a person, trying to get where they are coming from, trying to figure out how to make things better when we interact, hours upon hours upon hours that I could have spent instead of something that would make ME happy. Sometimes it would just be so hard to turn off that thinking, I'd TRY to do something else but it would keep going around in my mind distracting me. But ultimately the moment comes when I make a decision to just STOP.

It can be really hard to let those things go, especially when I feel like I might have done something differently, and I keep thinking and thinking about how to fix it or prevent that thing from ever going wrong again. It can be useful to think through those things but there's a point where it's just not productive anymore. It can be really hard to stop though, unless and until you just have enough of it. It's kind of like having a virus that just has to run it's course.

One thing that really breaks the cycle for me is realizing that I probably care a lot more than the other person(s) in question. While I am still thinking about something that happened, or something that MIGHT happen, they are probably not thinking about it at all. They aren't thinking about how I feel or how they can do right by me. They are just moving on and doing other stuff they want to do. This is something I've had to learn the hard way by finding out people I cared about, cared NOTHING about me, I mean absolutely nothing, had not one iota of concern for how I might be doing.

Do something for YOU. Even if you have to just start small, treat yourself with something you normally wouldn't do. Do something that is just for you and no one else. And notice how you feel about it, does it feel good, or does it trigger feelings of guilt, or fear that you are being too selfish?

Maybe do some reading about people pleaser syndrome - not saying that you have it but you might relate to some aspects of it. And something that frequently ties into it is emotophobia (fear of other people's emotions). I have this, I fear seeing other people have strong emotions, especially negative emotional displays like anger where the person's behavior might become threatening. This can lead to trying to caretake other people's emotions so you try hard to never upset anyone and have to deal with their outbursts. There's not a lot online about emotophobia but here's one page: https://gentlementalannie.com/2015/06/2 ... nd-c-ptsd/