About making mistakes and following vague instructions.

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Hi,

It's been quite a long time since I last posted in this forum. I think that's mainly because I had to stop myself from obsessing about whether or not I've got some form of ASD. I've gotten much better at not obsessing about it that much (I've even started to think that I probably don't have it, but I really can't know that for sure) though the whole situation is still an unsolved mystery. I'm still not diagnosed and I've been waiting to get assessed for over a year now. Last time I spoke to the people who are going to assess me they said we'll start sometime in the beginning of 2014. That's all I know right now. Anyway, I decided to write here again because I'd like some advice on something. I hope that's ok. Sorry in advance for the wall of text.

I'm a biomedical student, which means I spend quite a bit of time in the lab. I haven't been studying for that long so I'm still not comfortable there (though I really like being in the lab in general). It takes a long time for me to adapt to new situations and I'm really scared of making mistakes (not only in the lab but all the time).

Last week we did a synthesis lab in organic chemistry, which means we've been dealing with a lot of dangerous chemicals. Chemicals which can cause burns, are toxic when inhaled, irritating to the skin, harmful to the eyes, toxic to the environment, very flammable etc. There are a lot of safety precautions you need to take and rules you need to follow. I get really worried about making mistakes and for example accidentally pouring something down the drain which should be disposed of in the "hazardous waste" containers. I sometimes also get "flashes" about things exploding as I handle them etc. I worry about making mistakes that could mess up the projects/experiment as well, so not only mistakes that could potentially harm myself or others.

Besides all of that I also have a really hard time following vague instructions. I want clear and specific instructions or it's like my brain stops working. I get overwhelmed and anxious and it's like my brain "freezes" instead of solving the problem. The synthesis lab last week was our third lab. That means they've upped their expectations on us and they expect us to be able to follow vague instructions. I can't. I've never been able to. It freaks me out. Today is our final step of the synthesis and we're supposed to spend about 5 hours in the lab. I dread it. I'm very anxious about it. Not being able to follow vague instructions plus the fact that I'm so anxious and scared about making mistakes leads to me asking the lab assistants a lot of questions. Sometimes repeatedly. I feel like I ask a lot more questions than the other students (not sure that's the case) and it makes me worried that the lab assistants (they're often PhD students by the way) think I'm stupid or unprepared or something.

I've been so anxious and stressed out about the sessions in the chemistry lab and about my huge exam (due to perfectionism, fear of failure etc) which is in two weeks that I'm even dreaming about chemistry during the nights and wake up feeling incredibly anxious.

Does anyone have any similar problems? What should I do about it? I don't even know how to calm down right now.

Thanks for reading.

I hear you loud and clear. My inability to follow vague instructions is probably the No.1 problem I have in the workplace.

One thing I know I should do, but really struggle to do, is ask questions. Even the 'dumb' questions. I think it's a really positive thing that you are able to do that. Do the lab assistants mark you on your general lab behaviour? If not, whether they think you are stupid or not is irrelevant. And unprepared? Well, I think the fact that you have questions to ask possibly makes you sound more prepared. You have understood that there are gaps missing in the instructions, while others have not realised this (or don't care) and are therefore more likely to make a mistake.

Everything I'm saying you probably already know. I already know it and I still struggle with the same issues as you. So hopefully someone else has some advice on how to stop stressing about these things.

Your brain must be similar to mine. What you've written there is pretty much my life experiences. It's as if you'd written that post for me though I didn't major in biochemistry. To tell you the truth, I always read your posts because most of the time you write what I am experiencing in life. So I believe you must have AS/autism though you still need to be formally assessed.

Unfortunately I cannot give you any solution to your problems. I'm still struggling with life in the same way. I am very capable of understanding complicated things but I cannot follow vague instructions. Unless I can do/understand something perfectly, I cannot show confidence. That often causes some people to initially think I'm stupid.

Although by now I realize that it's not other people are more intelligent than I am but they simply don't care about being perfect and can feel confident without being really good, I still cannot be like them and I tend to stress about making mistakes and not being able to perform some tasks. And the worst thing is that my lack of confidence makes other people look down on me even if I produce good results.

I hope someone can give us some solutions for those problems.

Lab work in Sweden... sounds like a beautiful campus!

My hobbies and career are also riddled with such pitfalls as lots of expensive gear to avoid destroying, legal grey areas, unbelievably complex instructions, hard-to-find resources and endless misconceptions about what I actually do. Technically, for the moment I'm a hacker. Not a malicious one mind you, but still a hacker, my mom's a biopharma PhD, I can't even remember how educated my dad is and I'm well aware of how much one can wither under such people's gaze. No matter how hard I work, my dad persists in his opinion that I'm not a programmer until I put myself through the convoluted mess that is the old school of coding, effectively becoming a one-man software corporation. In my discipline I have the luxury of coming back to something when I know I'm calm enough to see the task through, but servers break, companies fight and sometimes fail, OSes corrupt themselves and I don't often allow myself to ignore these facts long enough to really disconnect from what I may have viewed as a crucial step towards my technical goals. I've never been able to get much done under close supervision because ordinarily it was a school task, and fear of reprisal for a job done incorrectly prevented me from focusing in general. There was a lot of said reprisal too, but that didn't stop the faculty from demanding my help on a daily basis in the absence of their skeleton-crew IT staff. Shortly before I went to a school for autistics, I began developing my personal methods for handling these environs, it's a short list but it sped up my life more than I thought possible:

1. Watch your caffeine intake, you'd know better than I the kind of havoc this stuff plays on your nervous system. When I cut out coffee for a year, switching to tea, I found myself interacting with everyone on a slightly more genuine, less timid level. I've been buying my tea in loose leaf and drinking it almost daily, my depression flares up when I forget this regimen. Same goes for herbal relaxants at night. I haven't quit drinking coffee entirely, but I think that's only because I've long since let go of other stimulants. Three shots of espresso is the absolute threshold for my weak composure and weight of ~60kg, and I've since learned that cream with one's coffee creates the right caffeine isomer to cross the blood brain barrier faster, I prefer this now because it helps me realize sooner how much I'm straining my energy reserves.

2. Treat yourself, the reason I stopped drinking coffee was to deal with my own anxiety. The reason I started again a year later was because I had reached a point of such frugality that people started to think I could accomplish technical feats with barely any resources. Sometimes I can, but my abilities belie their necessities. It took ten months to convince my dad I needed a new computer, when in fact all the while I was barely getting by with my aging laptop. I certainly wasn't getting much studying done on scavenged monitors and aging devices. Whiteboards, binders, highlighters, calendars, all these things are really instruments of torture; sometimes you actually do need a touchscreen!

3. Go with the swarm; you have to envision yourself as part of a whole, even when working solo. The work starts at your fingertips, this kind of professional detachment took me years to understand, since I began teaching myself computers in 6th grade. In your case, you might try to imagine focusing the combined mental energy of your whole lab on the safe handling of a substance, or stepping through the routines of using the equipment in terms of your jobs and everyone else's - estimating when to open a shroud, start a mechanism or stand your ground and await input.

4. Measured breathing - my psychologist recently reminded me that my separation from my personal identity could actually have a physiological basis; low CO2 levels in my blood could in fact contribute to symptoms of my own depression. Exhaling slowly in order to balance O2/CO2 in my body actually seems to return my equilibrium and prepare me for socially confusing times, when otherwise I might have been totally unable to maintain a conversation. Hyperventilation is involuntary, no matter how much medical knowledge you've gathered, you are still a mammal. I can't even guess at how much of my life I've spent acting like a robot.

I hope these help! Feel free to correct me if anything here doesn't fit into your life, I love a challenge and I'll probably learn something about myself anyway.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

I'll reply to your posts later. Right now I just wanted to say that my lab starts in 5 minutes and I feel like I'm going to panic! My heart beats so fast and my breathing is shallow. Really anxious.

Much prefer written instructions to verbal ones.

I need extremely specific instructions, too...

...and once I get them, I'd better write them down.

All I know to tell you is, go ahead and ask questions. Some of the TAs will get annoyed and think you are stupid. Those are the bad ones. The good ones know it's better to ask stupid questions than to make a stupid mistake, especially in a biochem lab.

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

Yellowtamarin, I'm back home now. I obviously survived the day. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be today (it was much worse last week). I think that's because the lab assistant I had last week wasn't there today so instead we had another PhD student helping out. She even told me that "it's better to ask questions and be sure you're doing what you're supposed to do instead of doing something stupid". That helped. The instructions were still vague and difficult to handle though.

jk1, I'm happy to hear you read my posts. It's good to hear I'm not alone in feeling like this though I often feel like I am. We'll see if I've got AS or not. Sometimes I think that perhaps the fact that I believed I might very well have it was part of a pretty severe obsession (as in OCD). It's still there but not to the same extent as before. I still show the same "traits" or whatever but I don't really think about it as much nowadays. I'm still trying to solve the mystery that is my life though.

cberg, thanks for taking the time to write all of that. There's some good advice there. Not all applicable to me though (I for example don't drink coffee at all). I must understand I don't really understand the following:

Yeah, I have the exact same problem. I think this is a very common problem with ASD and I'm really sorry to hear it is causing you so much anxiety.

The good news is that there is a very easy way to practise. It involves watching instructional videos for board games. Board game instructions often contain many confusing and ambiguous multistep directions so you can practise listening to them and trying to understand what to do.

How to practise
1. Choose a game, whose rules you do not know.
2. Go to Youtube.
3. Search for "How to play X" where X is your chosen game.
4. Watch the video and try to understand the instructions.
5. Repeat for many different videos. See if you get better at it over time.

Example: How to play UNO.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dicgjskLVJc[/youtube]

What I meant is that you should try and imagine your share of the lab's procedure as a variable routine with the goal of remaining unobtrusive and of course keeping everything contained. Try to retain an idea of what your colleagues are doing when you're busy, that's what helps me feel equitable next to the monoliths that are technology companies.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos