Coping with coworkers

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Hello, I was diagnosed about 10 years ago in my forties I never could hold a job and two years ago, after staying home for 10 years to raise my kids I decided it had to get a job and keep it. So here I am two years into the job and as happened in all my other jobs, I didn’t get along with my coworkers. For reasons that I cannot understand, the three adults I work with in a school cannot stand me. Although I try to be courteous and show interest in their lives, they show none in mine and pretty much ignore me. It’s like middle school, but not so great when you’re 47! Fortunately I have four wonderful children and a great husband, but going to work everyday takes a real toll on my self esteem. So my question is: would it benefit me to just tell them that I gave Asperger or just suffer in silence?

That depends on if your coworkers are decent people & don't have a very negative view of Aspergers. Some people hate on anyone who has a known disability/issue/condition but others try to be sympathetic.

You’re in Alaska, not a very liberal state.

I wouldn’t mention Asperger’s.

You have a husband and kids to look forward to once you get off work.

Is your husband NT? If so, it may be worth discussing your work interactions to figure out what is going on. As well as discussing what you should do to better interact in the future.

I think most Aspies should look for business relationships with co-workers. They should have a neutral opinion of you and just interact on a work basis. Most Aspies don't have the skills and energy to have more than that and still have enough energy for the family.

There could be reasons other than Aspergers as to why your coworkers dislike you Nadia. You mentioned having a husband & your gender listed in your profile on this forum is male. If you do live in Alaska like kraftie mentioned, Alaska is very conservative so perhaps your coworkers dislike you cuz of your sexual orientation. Some people hate on anyone who's different & unfortunately there isn't much you can do to make those people like you. You just try to be civil with them. It sux that people aren't open minded

I'm going to say no - try to avoid saying anything that refers to what they're, in so many ways, castigating you for.

The job I have now was a place where if you didn't conform in every social checkbox you were going to be treated this way. Many NT's have only one measurement for whether someone's normal, even acceptable, or a screw-up and it's all of the checkboxes of social conformity at every level of behavior from quality of work down to just about how you pick up a pen or fork. Because of that they throw anyone who doesn't conform at literally every level into the f'up pile and hope that if they treat that person badly enough they'll leave on their own - because they don't fit in ergo they don't belong.

I had to just power through it, realize they were going to be hostile, put up a wall right back at them, and keep my professional courtesies toward them rather cold - it's the only way they'll catch on that you see what they're doing, if they don't see that they tend to assume your too stupid to see it. In their own minds they wouldn't put up with how they're treating you and if you do it means - in their minds at least - that you're every bit as far below them as they seem to think. A good way to phrase where this lands - they hate kindness when it seems to be result of weakness but they respect power almost without condition and it's power in that case that you have to show them.

Best advice - do everything you can to focus on your work, get it as spotless as you can, and simultaneously do as much as you can to both be as useful as you can and create as much of a distance from these people as you can at the same time. Obviously if they can motivate themselves to believe that you're going to backstab someone in the group they'll move so you have to keep it below that threshold.

Any which way they're challenging you and it won't go away unless you find a way to win the challenge. If it's gotten to this point it won't be won with forthrightness and sharing - especially if they see that as the modality of what they perceive as your naivety or lack of adulthood.


On a side note with ASD disclosure - I've done it at a lot of jobs and particularly if you're high functioning and don't need direct assistance there's one way I've noticed which is safe to bring it up, it has to be in some social context where your bringing it up is a relevant fact to something normal that happened and where the context doesn't change your relationship with your coworkers or demand any different treatment or acceptance. Even there though you have to read the crowd. With normal people or a normal environment that will work. In an environment where everyone's playing cutthroat and looking for the slightest bit of weakness in any of their coworkers - that's an environment where you just can't say anything.

If you need assistance I think it is best to just ask what you need. In most cases telling your boss you have autism is counterproductive. A boss doesn't want or need to know your full diagnosis. Unless your autism is just like that of the boss's kid or someone else you know. Then you can say you are just like that person.

Hello, thank you for replying. I now realize that I accidentally put down male as my gender but I’m actually female. I don’t know how to change that setting. Can anyone help with that?

It is likely you can't. But you may be able to create a new account and start over.

Yeah it's impossible to change the gender listed after the account has been created. There's a mod on this forum who has the wrong gender displayed cuz he cant change it. Since you've only made two posts on this forum Nadia, I would recommend creating a new account if you plan on becoming an active member here. It would also be good to let a mod know 1ce you create your new account so your current one can be banned; having multiple accounts is against the rules.

No, I wouldn't tell them. They'll see you through a different lense once they know and while it might make them put in more effort to pretend they're interested in you, it's not guaranteed.

Do you think it's important for your coworkers to be interested in your personal life? Do you think you could make friends somewhere else outside work?

Don't tell about Aspergers - they don't know it or have strange imaginations about it (e.g. mentally ret*d).
Instead of this do try to keep a good mood especially if looking at your coworkers. This helps you to get rid of a possibly unintended RBF. People with Asperger's often don't care empathy and NTs may think you being angry on them once they don't sense you having some positive emotions if looking at them. You don't have to smile always. Just keeping kind of a good mood that expresses a bit in your face is enough.

Just to give an example of people not being able to get a lot out of the information that you're autistic, this is what my ex once said when he talked about Greta Thunberg (he liked her, so he didn't mean it in a mean way!) "She has something... mongoloid or something" - "You mean she's autistic?" - "Yes, right, autistic!"

It would benefit you to assert yourself or find another employment. I have mostly been in supportive work environments, but have also been in oppressive ones. The latter is unbearable for me. My work environment needs to be respectful. If I had to work in a disrespectful --- wait, forget it, I couldn't.

I had a new manager that was fomenting disrespect and it took two years and most respect is back. Not enough for me (company culture), but it's been good practice for me to assert myself thus far.

The other day a new co-worker quipped about me to another ("she needs a vacation"). It was an aside, across a large room, but of course with my super sensitivity it was not lost on me. On the way out I held my head high and said loudly "funny that, I just had a vacation". Implying: What are you saying, you buffoon?! ! I'm approaching 50 and looking forward to owning who I am. I've been sweet on the outside, but I am fierce on the inside -- and I definitely want that out there, and not internalized (as I did in the past).

I have shared my diagnosis with my closest allies. With others, I share traits (I know it appears...) and am not sharing my diagnosis, especially with detractors. Sorry you have cliquish immature co-workers.

I totally agree with this. It's how I've coped.

I find woking with men to be easier. They don't want the level of subtle communication that NT women expect.

I totally agree with do *NOT* tell you have autism/aspergers. Several years ago I was having a huge hard time with my social work coworkers hating on me all the time (they were social workers - I was just a grunt worker who drove clients around), and when our boss called me in I told her I have autism. I took a chance and trusted that info to her because I thought it would help her not pick at me too - and it did. But she pushed me to tell my coworkers, assuring me that once they knew they would stop picking on me and trying to get me in trouble for everything.

So I finally did tell them - and that was the worst mistake I ever made. Originally they just bullied me for things like forgetting to say "good morning" back to them when we met first thing in the work day. After I told, every single thing I did or didn't do was because of my autism supposedly, and it just got uglier and uglier. They also started treating me like I was a "ret*d", as if I had some severe mental illness, and so on. It was horrible and never stopped.

The next place I worked at I risked telling, and while I didn't get bullied there, they did start treating me like I had a very low IQ. Others there treated me according to their stereotypes of what a person with autism/aspergers is like.

Since then, I've never told and I never will again. If I get written up or fired - whatever. It's better than the other I've experienced.