NT's generally either ignore people who are different, have difficulties or disabilities, or go too far trying to help. They're human like us after all.
I get to see both sides of the picture, as my wife has cerebral palsy, and uses a wheelchair to get around.
I've been guilty on occasion of trying to do too much to help her, I've also been guilt of being impatient with her when she takes forever to get dressed, undressed, or shower, but that's the nature of a marriage, the things you experience day in day out do get under your skin from time to time, and you have to learn to deal with it.
For a time we worked for the same organisation, and I was really frustrated to see how she was treated differently to me.
Not special treatment, not extra help per se, but how she was accepted as equal to others.
At that stage I had only been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, having put the misdiagnosis of schizophrenia from my youth to the back of my mind.
I found that I was expected to multi task, to rapidly switch from one task to another, and to go from taking phone calls, to emailing to actively moving about with little understanding or concern for the difficulty I have in transitioning from one task to another.
My wife would be given more leeway for the same transitions, as it was visible that she was in a wheelchair, and may take some time to go from one task to another, yet if I had the same difficulty, as there was no physical evidence to see why (and I didn't understand this was the case), I was seen to be slow, lazy, or incompetent.
For this reason, my wife was able to move up the ranks and is now in a fairly senior role.
On the other hand, I changed branches and sections, had difficulty finding understanding and accepting supervisors, and in the end quit my job after 6 years, after never having gained a single permanent promotion. During the same period, my wife was promoted three times into increasingly senior permanent roles.
I sometimes wonder if I went back to my former employer with my diagnosis if I would be treated differently.
They went so far when I was there as to accept my request to work 4 days per week rather than 5, but this was at the cost of me accepting and unwritten and unspoken condition that I would not progress via promotion, nor would I be able to have as much choice about where I work as others working full time hours.
I'd like to think things would be different with a diagnosis, but I suspect the reality would be - because my disability is invisible - that I would still receive the same shabby treatment, but would perhaps have more grounds to complain and seek remedy, though of course in the work environment where I was - where the HR section were really only looking out for themselves - things would not be so different.
Sometimes I wish I had a visible disability like my wife, so at least people could see that I struggle, and I wouldn't have to pretend I was doing okay when I wasn't.
I learned pretty early that when people ask how you are they really don't want to know the answer if it isn't good.
05 Aug 2013, 4:36 pm
