Just because someone talks about their chronic illness or neurodivergent condition doesn't mean they're ""using it as an excuse"" or ""making it their identity"". Not all narratives that include a diagnosis or discovery of a condition are victim narratives. Look closer. By "victim narrative", I mean an unhealthy self view that says other people are responsible for everything, things just happen to them with no agency on their part, they're surrounded by assholes.

FYI I'm reading up on workplace burnout research and your recovery strategy needs 4 elements:
- Detachment, aka "switching off" after work
- Relaxation. NOT just stationary rest or doomscrolling. Purposeful relaxation activities, whatever that means to you. - Mastery experiences: These are things you find challenging & that you learn from, outside of work.
- Agency experiences: This is when you do stuff just because you feel like it - not to please anyone else.

Recovery also involves working BELOW baseline for awhile.

Letters home from an autistic office employee

Dear comrades,

I sent you a thoughtful assortment of links: the usual mix of pet videos, pandemic studies, cryptic Tumblr screenshots, Reddit forums and listicles of products I think you'll like. I hope everything resonates. I feel like I'm a magnet for inconsistencies. My colleagues tell me: "We always do this way." I do it that way; they say, "Oh, this instance is different, for these we do it this way." These exchanges are so quick and calm. They see no conflict between these statements.

Shame should be diagnostic for ADHD women. Paralyzing shame that steals years & wrecks relationships. Absolutely refusing to be outed as a person with a messy house or who doesn't cook or who forgot that key deadline, as if, if you want it badly enough, you can be someone else 💔 It's me, your autistic friend, listening to you describe shame as deep as the ocean over things you clearly can't help & are working very hard on. I don't notice your mess or forgetfulness or distraction. I notice your broken heart over not being whoever you think you should.

Letters home from an autistic office worker:

Dear comrades,

My endeavours at employment continue. Today someone told me the tone of my email was "not helpful". Alarmed, I combed through the posting for this role, the job description from when I was hired, and my training notes. ...But could find no requirement that my emails must be helpful, no metrics for what that looks like, and no instructions for how to achieve that. I asked for an example email and they just looked at me funny, so I did a cursory data sampling and noticed some trends to apply.

36 here. I used to think this about my coworkers & then I noticed some of the more laidback & non confrontational employees were also older & more successful in life. They weren't cowards. They knew some things I didn't about the environment and their own circumstances.

https://twitter.com/ninagrewal97/status/1857942828694794374

Some of the quiet employees were just more advanced in their careers & genuinely happy where they were. They had all their needs met. They weren't campaigning for a promotion like I constantly was. I thought I understood this but as I get closer to this state: It's different.

The thing about having a neurodivergent partner is you can break their spirit and you might even be able to get them to act "normal" but it will be the saddest most unnerving take on "normal" you've EVER seen.

https://twitter.com/thechosenberg/status/1857501972607140024

It's not unusual as an ND to experience people snapping at you and demanding you stop your hijinx and act how they think you should. People just don't understand there isn't a tiny average person inside me, hidden under layers of quirks and knowing choices.

My husband doesn't work. He has PTSD, a TBI, and a pile of education trauma from undiagnosed dyslexia. Also ADHD but that's not as big an issue. He worked for years earlier in our relationship and when I was in school, but he's not able to anymore.

He provides, though.

https://twitter.com/Iamivy05/status/1854890357093208437

The first thing he helped me with was confidence. He had long accepted who he was, he accepted me too, and he helped me accept myself. I was on my own journey with this, and I'm not saying I wouldn't have done it without him, but he really helped.

The #1 thing autistic people experience in the workplace that completely screws us over is that we ask questions just because we want information, no other reason or motive, and we don't say that because why would you need to say that. So other people read into our questions.

https://twitter.com/SNeurotypicals/status/1853519044844113942

In neuronormative culture, questions can be layered with subtext just like anything else. You can rip someone apart with a short simple question. You can imply all sorts of things. You can challenge people's status, which is a big deal. You can assign blame.

I once lost a job for not successfully learning their processes and I'm currently in the thick of new-job learnings so here are some tips from when I was worried I wasn't learning fast enough & was too terrified to think straight or act normal 1. ACKNOWLEDGE THE ISSUE.
I tried going radio silent, avoiding the issue with my colleagues & putting a brave face on. Do NOT do this. It wasted valuable time and didn't fool anyone, so also cost me important trust and goodwill. If it comes up, acknowledge it and...

ADHD spouse and I have been on a decades+ journey to find the best cooking appliance for an ADHDer to use. THREAD.

https://twitter.com/jacobdrj/status/1852250152532082936

A typical recipe, I learned, relies on an extremely adept control of attention. You're often doing multiple things at once and absolutely counting on yourself to turn back at the right moment, not wander off, stay focused during the downtimes. I never thought of it this way.

The question "is this because you're autistic" is so interesting because it assumes I have a tiny non-autistic version of myself I can consult to find out why I did not behave as expected. Like if I dig deep enough I'll hit the non-autistic part of my interiority. There is no part of me that is not autistic. There is no part of my brain dedicated to running hypotheticals & comparisons about how I'd behave differently if I were not autistic. Autism is a completely different way of experiencing the world & I've never known anything else.

Spotting autistic colleagues in the wild:
- They make job aids at the drop of a hat. No one reads them, they are well aware of this, but they keep cheerfully making more job aids
- They react more intensely. Interesting things are all-absorbing. Annoying things are intolerable. - Everyone else hates repetitive low-demand tasks but they seem to savor them. It's not even because they're using the time to goof off. They actually get the repetitive tasks done, quickly, unsupervised. You can go months without checking in and it's all still ticking along.

An underestimated challenge of being neurodivergent at work is the fact that you will always surprise people & therefore you can generally expect to encounter backlash and resistance. This really is a broad ND thing and not unique to autism and ADHD. It goes for other identities and marginalizations too. Anything that sets your experience apart significantly from your coworkers and means they don't instantly understand you creates this challenge.

Being forced to act neurotypical was terrible but in the last few years I found enough space and security to slowly learn their ways and don't yell at me but it was very healing. Yes there can be a lot of fakery and obligatory rituals but a lot of it boils down to the fact that folks are SENSITIVE. They feel their feelings right away & they know what to call them. Social status is centrally important to them & they feel (and fear) its loss keenly.

At work, I co-chair an employee resource group for employees with disabilities, chronic illnesses and/or neurodivergent conditions.

October is Disability Employment Awareness Month and we're starting to plan our approach. There's a lot of think through. 🧵 First of all, an ERG has a different take on DEI than other groups in an org.

A classic HR function thinks about DEI from a compliance perspective, thinking about laws and regulations the org is required to meet. They primarily show up when there's a liability issue.

I'm doing my annual jobhunt to see if I can beat my current job and I learned a couple things:
- If recruiters ping you on LinkedIn, reply. Even if it's to say thanks but no thanks. The algorithm likes it when you engage and it will show you to more recruiters. - This is my first time talking to recruiters about jobs and I actually really like it. Nothing phases them. They have no reaction to my salary ask or the fact that I want hybrid/remote work. It's all the same to them.

I stayed underemployed for years because I was afraid of more senior roles. I was already having such a hard time in entry level roles, I assumed it would get harder and I would lose those jobs. I had no way of knowing that so much of what I struggled with was BECAUSE it was an entry level role. Not being listened to, held to arbitrary and changing rules, experiencing anxiety over how helpless I was to manage my own work. All those things improved as I grew my career.

I met a fellow autistic person before I or they knew we were autistic.

I didn't know what to call it, but I could talk to them forever, and I never felt that before.

At the time, I thought I was falling in love. That was the only framework I had for an understanding so instant. Later I learned we actually had very little in common in the way romantic relationships need. Even when we wanted the same things, we had completely different ideas of what we would sacrifice to get it, what we would keep, what a good life looked like.

Autistic masking isn't only unhealthy because it's being inauthentic. It's also unhealthy because it ramps up our human need to control. It trains us to try to perfectly control ourselves & everyone else. That's an anxiety disorder right there. When we do experience a moment of helplessness, we're completely unprepared. It's been too long. We've perfected the art of scripting, acting, monitoring, managing, coping. We have no idea how to just be. No idea how to let go. No practice of emotional regulation.

15 years ago, I moved into my first apartment. I had a roommate but she didn't join me right away, so for the first time in my life, I had a place all to myself. I furnished my room with used items I found online and settled in. It was an odd, dreamy time. I wandered the neighbourhood, going into all the stores, sitting in all the parks, looking at everything. At night I put on music and puttered around, cleaning, fixing things up. I had never been so alone or so happy or so untethered from "normal".