Have you been subject to an "intervention"?

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Like, a situation where a bunch of people in "your circle" (whatever you construe that to be) somehow ambush you in a room and say "we need to talk [about you / your behaviour]" and try to convert you or get you to modify the way you act and think?

I had this happen in the workplace once, which was kind of embarrassing...but at least I got some pointers and got to keep my job, as they saw plenty of positive qualities in me otherwise despite the stigma of having a psych disorder.

The thing I detest about these, is you just know they're doing it mainly for THEIR collective benefit, not yours

Like, I can understand interventions for alcoholics and drug addicts, but our behaviour isn't destructive per se...it's just off-putting to some. It would be like confronting a burn victim and asking them if they could try harder to get plastic surgery approved faster under their health insurance

I have never been subject to an "intervention" before due to being autistic. If people did that to me like I can just magically change my autistic traits I'd be offended and very pissed off.

Only when people tried to get me to "loosen up" and go carousing with them.  It always seemed to turn out that the real reason had more to do with my ability to pay for their drinks and "loan" them money for their "No-Tell Motel" rooms.

I don't know, I don't think so. But I have had a couple of people who I worked with at a volunteer job I used to do who called a harmless quirk of mine out in the most humiliating and bitchy way.

I think that if your autistic/ADHD quirks are quite minor and aren't hurting anybody, people don't really have the right to try and change who you are. They should just try and ignore it and see you for who you are. Obviously if your quirks/behaviours were (emotionally) hurting people, like if you were always tactlessly honest or got easily aggressive or whatever then maybe it's a good thing to point it out to you, in a tactful way.
But ganging up on someone and making a big deal out of a harmless quirk is just bitchy behaviour in my opinion, and can emotionally harm you.

Specifically what sort of behavior(s)/attitude(s) did they want you to modify? (Ignore this question if you don't feel comfortable sharing it.) Was it something you could modify, without too much discomfort, or was it something you couldn't modify, at least not without a great deal of discomfort and/or loss of productivity?

And how did they call you out on it? Did they do so in a really nasty way, or did they try to be constructive and reassuring?

Was it, or would it have been, possible for you to try to negotiate a win-win compromise? Would this still be possible, if you didn't have the presence of mind to do this at the time?


That's good. Hopefully they expressed to you these positive qualities they see in you.


Depends on what the behavior is and how "off-putting" it is, and in what way.

If it's affecting your co-workers' productivity or making the workplace generally unpleasant for them, then that's a problem that needs to be solved somehow. In some cases the only way to solve the problem would be for you to change your behavior, while in other cases, e.g. a harmless but needed stim, there might be some other way (e.g. by changing the seating arrangement in the office) to make it less of a distraction to other people.

The problem is in the real outside world these things are subjective and I’ve found the decision makers who are nearly always NT both unsympathetic and lack understanding.

For example starring could easily be misinterpreted as sexual harassment or even racism if black on white.

There’s definitely a hyrachy in woke issues these days racism before sexism with mental health way down the list.

Probably why so many of us if we do get a job get fired so often.

It never happened to me but people did it to this guy who was being a bit of a jerk in an after-school club. Basically, even though he was the newest of us he would get angry when people tried to give him advice and he was always trying to prove he was better than everyone else by trying to embarrass others. I have to admit, even though I wasn't the person in the center of this circle, and even though he kind-of deserved it in this particular case, it felt very uncomfortable.