Are people in your life extremely unsupportive during your hard times?

Great article TishaBuv! I also see that cycle playing out here.

My interpretations are similar. I also think that assuming the op is a troll is a paranoid, and ungrounded assumption. Of course, I could be wrong about all of my interpretations (I don't really have much to add to your post which I mostly agree with)

“Ruby targets authority figures. Maybe it’s a parental kind of affection for you, Ruby. Or maybe it’s a hopeful romantic affection.”

^I had another thought about this. I hope this gives you some insight and helps you, Ruby.
Could it be that the GMs represent someone you respect, as they are more important than the regular coworkers, and you ‘look up to them’? So, their liking you and giving you affectionate treatment makes you feel more special and important? Not necessarily parental or romantic…rather a sense of importance.

History would suggest it's more than that. She has a whole thread about thinking her boss is sexy.

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I haven't read the other thread at all. Good post anyway.

@ruby2011

Are you going to respond to the question of mine? Just clarify for me please if you are going to. You don't have to, I'm just curious.


Also someone referred to some earlier thread of yours, I checked it out.

I find reading that stuff that you just seem like, with the ASD you are "emotionally deaf" to tone of how people speak in situations with each other, whenever you refer to how others got away with stuff you get into trouble with.


I don't know how to explain that better. I don't know why people on here don't understand that, either. It was immediately obvious to me reading those posts. I don't know a lot about ASD but it makes sense to me that you would have that problem with it. Being so deaf to the emotional tone and trying to get by based on rigid verbal definitions is going to of course cause a lot of issues and make it seem like you have random holes in your understanding (because you do do have many holes in it unfortunately). And then some people on here seem to assume you are having those holes on purpose. No, no,.... definitely can see how it's not on purpose or intentional. So it's impossible for you to try and take full responsibility for that even if you wanted to.

The only thing you can take full responsibility for is accept consequences of your decision to keep working while you know it's going to be VERY stressful for you. But you seem to have chosen that over wanting to get along with people better. And that may be a wise decision for you to want to focus on work instead of people, as long as you can handle the stress of working *and* working without having a manager as your special friend, which is where I think it's not wise right now. Maybe later, when you are no longer in a crisis. This is why I asked why you want to keep working now.


Anyway. Those earlier posts I read... I have no idea how ASD people are taught to learn social skills more or about boundaries/personal distances between people. So I will attempt to explain stuff, because I felt like I'd like to try. It could be totally unsuccessful


But for example:

You asked,


"How come colleagues can say to each other, "I missed you at work" and it's ok?"

Because "missed you" refers to a different object, so to speak. The object is not a deep, very close, very personal relationship that doesn't belong between work friends. But rather more like, refers to their experiences at work, that is the "material" for their friendship. It is just more casual and "shallow". Depth beyond that belongs only in truly deep personal settings. And the emotional tone you are deaf to conveys all that, along with their overall situation, along with other things they have said to each other and done around each other before. It all just fits and is appropriate that way.

"How come at Arby's when a coworker was quitting, she told the supervisor, "I'll really miss you" and got only positive response? It's the same supervisor who hates me. And that very same coworker who just graduated high school at that time told her favorite teacher, "I miss you and I love you.""

With a teacher, it's closer to the parent-kid relationship, so it can fit better there. Plus like others said, it's said as goodbye when leaving permanently.

"I'll never forget a social media post when another girl my former supervisor used to work with listed all her (the supervisor's) good points and said how privileged she was to have worked with her. She ended the post saying, "Love and miss you." She also got a positive response from that supervisor, the same one who reacted negatively to me,

How come all that was ok but when I told my current supervisor it'll be hard not to see him for 2 weeks, it's not ok?"

It was ok, because she used wording that refers to not very deeply personal feelings either. Just simply a kind of polite positivity, and again emotional tone conveys all the details of that. It is hard to verbalise all that beyond the tone and nonverbal expression. Also it was ok because she focused with the positivity on the other person, without being clingy or without showing too many deep personal feelings of their own.

Sorry, again this is hard to verbalise. I've tried my best. But I imagine you as being very clingy with showing all your feelings without a filter, and that is a very different presentation from what this other girl did, with very different objects as the focus, and with relatively less focus on her own feelings or overall depth of feelings of closeness. If you want to talk about how you like the manager, you can say something way more noncommittal than "I'll miss you so much for two weeks, it will be so hard to not see you". You can just say you hope that they'll enjoy their vacation and that you look forward to working together again - nothing about your feelings of subjective experience - but with your background even that could be problematic because you could still say that with the wrong timing and wrong tone/expression/presentation, especially if you still have feelings of too much closeness behind the words, or even if not, it could still be misread by others with the previous history they have of you. (I don't know if you are going to stay at this workplace so I'm saying that in general)



So, it's all about presentation, about what the focus is, and keeping a distance with keeping some of your feelings to yourself, especially the most sensitive ones. Especially the ones where if you feel if you were rejected over them, you'd get very angry or have outbursts. Those are not to be shared with others when you feel you would respond that way. That is when rejection would just humiliate you and naturally you want to avoid that.


And so overall, I think, it's understandable that you are so stressed and in crisis over how you can't keep these relationships working. I think what would work for you is find another ASD person to be so close with or someone who knows a lot about ASD and is used to it. If it must be a supervisor at a workplace, then a supervisor who is like that. Preferably the whole workplace would be like that, i.e. understanding ASD and knowing how to deal with it. I really see the ASD as the primary problem, not the BPD, judging from the posts I've read. I think the clinginess and stuff you have about people is also more ASD than BPD. Your emotional dysregulation as well. But if you keep focusing on relationships that are doomed to not work out from the start then that will exacerbate your BPD too, yeah. So I don't recommend you repeat that without being selective with whom you try to build the relationship with (someone who understands your ASD).



I don't think I can contribute more here. If you can answer my earlier question, maybe I can comment on that, if not then I don't think I have more thoughts.

Thanks for this post Alive99. It's helpful to me personally re a person elsewhere who I have been having some issues with and I wasn't understanding them fully I was also wondering if ruby2011 is going to respond to some questions people have asked..

Also, I think my SO may be very high functioning ASD... he does seem somewhat ''emotionally deaf'' to other peoples tone of voice etc... but not to mine. idk. He has not been perceived as ''socially unskilled'' at work etc though. In social situations he tunes out... so maybe its that rather than ASD (he does not find most people interesting)

I want to keep working because it’s a normal adult thing to do. It’s who I am. Lots of us tie our identities to work.

I want to work retail this time, not fast food.

But I no longer believe that people are any good. I had a long string of people who cared about me for a while (like 3-4 years) and then suddenly push me away. Ignore me. Abandon me. Such is life.

And right when I think understand something, another thing happens to contradict it

Sorry I was passed out a bit wasted in bed all day yesterday

I intuitively know what people are thinking or feeling. My BPD causes me to disregard it most of the time. Cuz I can’t accept, for instance, when my GM dropped cues to back off.

I said in passing that I may be on the spectrum. Most of my coworkers replied, “you are not!” Lol

I doubt it was romantic although I been accused of being infatuated with these people. All I really did was show appreciation for how nice and kind they were to me.

At McDonald’s, multiple people said how nice and good the GM is. And I felt exactly the same way. During one of his visits to our store, a coworker said, “take me with you!” He was like, “ok.” Both were aware it’s obviously not gonna happen for real. It’s their way of joking around and expressing that they miss each other.

On his next visit after that, my shift manager M started chatting up that GM about his blood sugar. As GM was leaving! Nevertheless, GM engaged in that conversation for a good few minutes. Right after they finished, I went, “take me with you to (his new store).”

He immediately went, “bye (my name)” without ever acknowledging anything I said. I don’t think I even finished my sentence.

This is the same person, back when he used to like me, who might’ve literally saved my life. Not long after I started working here, I was still traumatized by Arby’s supervisor. Drinking helped me cope. Except he told me it doesn’t it makes things worse. I was able to talk about that old bag with him, the old bag who cost me my voice for a year and a half. And I dropped the booze so I don’t drink myself to death.

People change. I must accept it

Quote:

I said in passing that I may be on the spectrum. Most of my coworkers replied, “you are not!” Lol

You said you were diagnosed with it in early childhood. ASD doesn't go away like a cold. Your coworkers are not mental health professionals. They don't have a clue whether you have it or not...they just know your behaviors bother them enough to want to stay away from

Quote:

want to keep working because it’s a normal adult thing to do. It’s who I am. Lots of us tie our identities to work.

"NORMAL" adult thing to do. What about you makes you see yourself as normal adult? People tie their identities to CAREERS, not just jobs.

That is the similar illogic thinking my EX-husband thought after graduating from college.....the "normal" thing to do is get married to the person you are dating at the time. He is definitely ASD & his broken thinking got him let go from his career jobs many times. His broken thinking was one of arrogance that he knew more than anyone especially his bosses. Spectrum conditions have different symptoms, same results from whatever inappropriate behavior that occurs. He never had friends because people could only tolerate his personality on a very limited basis. He was a computer engineer so he didn't have to work closely with anyone else but his attitudes were his downfall even now at his older age. Just glad I don't have to be anywhere around him

It is a cognitive distortion to believe you know what others are thinking or feeling. You are not a mind reader. This is part of the delusional thinking and part of the problem. You base your behaviors off of what you believe someone is thinking, but you don't know what they are thinking, and you are often wrong.

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Yeah that's what I had in mind when I talked about autonomy and the like.

When I had cPTSD, it helped me survive too. (I don't know about the ASD and BPD stuff, so I'm just saying this in general)

But it does have a cost too to try and do it that way, are you fully aware of that cost?



Looking back I feel like it was also kinda irrational that I felt like I needed it to survive, but it did help also - but only as long as I was able to handle the workload. That's important to consider.



I know that if I had been like, it really is impossible, then I'd have stopped anyway, it doesn't mean the end of the world if not working for a year or something like that. Rest and recovery can be nice lol



I remember someone mentioned IT...you aren't interested in that kind of thing?



I read a bit of the earlier threads like I said, and I remember you mentioned in here or somewhere else that it seems like all your relationships end suddenly with these people. But reading the threads (even just a bit) it was obvious from this outsider pov that things were already not going very well and that it had been that way for a while. Maybe if you analyse all that and tune into things that you did not focus on before, you'll understand more eventually.





No worries at all!






Well I had that too in mind that besides the ASD thing of not reading emotions much, your emotions from the BPD or trauma or something, they can obscure other people's feelings in an extreme way and then you can miss them and that just adds to the default ASD problems. Creating the mess you mention about contradictions.





Just out of curiosity - since analysing just this one interaction is not going to answer all the contradictions - were you joking too?

I mean I prolly start off behaving normally when I first start at a company. I guess it’s normal to feel appreciative when someone treats me kindly. That’s why I wasn’t the only one who said GM is nice and good. So many people did. And the people who said nice things to him…well you know. I meant to behave exactly like these people. I didn’t get the same good results though, as evident from after he transferred.

Even while he was here, there were 2 different week-long instances that he ignored me. One was early fall of 2019. The other one happened 11 months later. Idk it spontaneously happened. Good thing both instances lasted only a week. Any longer and I woulda gone crazy.

Besides those 2 instances, you may recall he said he’s going on vacation and won’t think about me once. That’s in response to me saying how hard it would be that he isn’t here. That’s rude of him to respond to someone who just expressed deeply missing him while he’s gone. But he might be just terribly looking forward to his vacation I think.

I never told of this anecdote before. Three weeks before he transferred, he got the news from his superiors that they’re transferring him to another store. The GM girl who’s replacing him was present at the store to check things out. She’s 25 and I worked with her at this store before she became GM. When I started, she was 22 year old hourly manager (right below GM) and when she first got promoted, she briefly left for a store in OK.

So I got curious about her presence back at this store and asked why she’s here. He said she’s gonna replace him after he transfers to (another store). I said I don’t want him to go and I’ll really miss him.

Him: get over it

I figured he prolly didn’t know how to deal with negative feelings about leaving so he didn’t know how to respond. I reasoned like that even after my coworkers also told him (the same day) they’ll miss him and he responded he’ll also miss them. However, for the rest of his time here, he continued to be nice and kind to me again so I was emotionally intact.

Was that a red flag when he told me to get over it?

Yes, it should have alerted you that whatever you were saying to the GM, he did not appreciate it or want it.

Ruby, wasn't everyone aware of your crush on this GM, including HIM? Being overtly obvious about your crush on a professional superior is going to get you into trouble. Perhaps the GM was more receptive to other people expressing that they will miss him, but not to you because you had an obvious crush and it probably made him feel very uncomfortable around you.

Normal people have Theory of Mind (clinical term) that aspergers don’t have. That doesn’t make them 100% mins readers. NOBODY is 100% mind reader.

Like was I joking for him to take me with him? Yes, just as much as my coworker was! Like that coworker, I was expressing how much I miss him.

IT is repetitive and boring, like the programming class in high school. Retail, fast food, call centers, hospitality, those are good.

You are quite educated about your disability, knowing terms like Theory of Mind. Thanks, I just read about it and learned more. To teach someone to effectively read complex social cues must be a skill that a professional can recommend a book or course to learn. Have you worked on this with a professional? You have been aware of your disorder for a very long time. I’d imagine you’d reach out to learn these skills.

You mention you have been abusing alcohol. You even shared that with the GM. This does not help you at all. The alcohol is probably exacerbating the problem.

Just an interesting observation, and not to be critical, I noticed you write “prolly” when the word is probably. In other writing, you write perfectly and use very sophisticated words. Then sometimes you write in a simplistic, trashy tone.

I see the meanings of what you described differently. For example; you said the girl told the GM “Take me with you!”. You thought she meant she wanted to be with him because she liked him so much. I see it as she wanted to get out of being there at work. My interpretation of that expression the way she did it meant what i think, but you interpreted it differently.

Anyway, I don’t have much more to say to try to be helpful. We can’t possibly convey to you here all the infinite communication interpretations in every situation. But, I bet there are books and professionals who can.

You bet that it came across to him just fine through the interactions, sooner or later, that you were already so strongly invested in him. Even if you tried to hide it some

Which made the relationship DOOMED right from the start, as soon as you got that attached to be crazy about him. That's why it ended bad eventually. It just was not going to be reciprocated deep enough and long term enough.


I assume you understand how that goes beyond being simply appreciative?

What is your reasoning behind you thinking that you strongly need this investment and connection? You may really do feel you need that, but I am interested in how you'd verbalise that, writing it out using actual words.

Like if you can go this far with it, how does it fit into your worldview and view of yourself and your needs? And things like that.



Yeah, I wasn't there but yes it sounds like he did try to be rude to help add to distance between you two. But not like trying to totally push you away, just doing that. I'm not saying I endorse that rudeness. It's simply really hard for people to know how to keep boundaries around that stuff, it requires advanced EQ (emotional intelligence) & time & energy & specific knowledge of ASD and whatever else would be relevant to understanding your behaviours. So it requires all that. So even if someone has advanced EQ, and I think your manager probably had better than average EQ, the rest of the requirements are going to be too much 99% of the time. It's simply not realistic.

And when I say he was being rude, of course he likely didn't want to tune in to how much it was going to hurt for you, but it was going to, so it definitely is very rude viewing it from your perspective and I frankly think it's objectively very rude and insensitive too, but most people really are not going to focus and tune in that much to realise the extent of that insensitivity. Because they are trying to save their own skin in that moment from something that they think they need to escape (e.g. clinginess). If you ever get to realising how that makes sense that they were trying to save their own skin from a closer relationship, that will help you with lessening the pain maybe. I don't know, it's a big maybe whether that would help.

It would be a really really hard pill to swallow in one go, anyway. And, I will say I don't understand at all in the first place about how you got attached to him so much, you've pretty much lost me there, I'm sorry about your experience of that rudeness though.



And again I would like to ask...are you able to put into words your reasoning about why you think you need all these people to pay attention to your deep feelings?


I noticed you were saying this: "That’s rude of him to respond to someone who just expressed deeply missing him while he’s gone. But he might be just terribly looking forward to his vacation I think."

You used the word "just". Why? Could you put this into words? Why do you think it's a small thing, such as, to refer to it with a word like "just"? That is how it sounds like from that wording, to me. That you see it as a small enough thing. Do you see everyone else as having those deep feelings at work? Or is this something else?

Am I making sense to you with this?

And the last sentence, was some attempt at explaining it away but it didn't make much sense to me. I'm only mentioning this because you may want to review a lot of your assumptions about people's emotions. Sometime when you feel ready for it, maybe. I don't think I can say more about this part



I don't know how he said that, I wasn't there. If you mean whether it was a red flag in terms of how he was not going to stay in contact too much with you, well yeah he was telling you pretty openly that he was not going to. Beyond that I don't know if it was a red flag for anything else as I wasn't there.

I also didn't see/witness how you said that about how you were going to miss him, btw

I again saw something in your lines here. "However, for the rest of his time here, he continued to be nice and kind to me again so I was emotionally intact."

Do you really just need superficial niceness and kindness repeatedly to get so strongly attached and remain calm enough about the whole thing as long as that continues regularly enough? Would you get calmed down now from all the trauma emotions if he was nice again in a *superficial* way?

I am not saying your trauma emotions are meaningless, I'm just asking. I could've misread all that though lol, it was just interesting the way you worded it.

What do you mean you “may be on a spectrum”. You were diagnosed with ASD. So you are on a spectrum. If you believe you were misdiagnosed, (it happens) see a doctor to discuss referral to a psychiatrist and let them do evaluation

When I go to work, I'm being paid to work, not deal with someone's maladaptive behavior because they are having a delusion about a manager abandoning them or any other baggage.

OP has turned into a pain for coworkers. Who wants to listen to someone obsessively talk about one person all day, cry and speak about having a breakdown? Yelling at customers. Yelling at coworkers. Enough, already.

Not to mention OP is picking which station they want to work because if they put OP at the station she hates, well then here comes another round of complaining, crying, and breakdown.

OP shouldn't be working at all. Your "right" to work ends where you start burdening me with your problems.

Yeah, that's a good point, OP really needs to learn to open her mind to how there can be 1000 ways to interpret these situations without enough information, especially without enough focus on the emotional information from people (and of her own). It just requires a whole different kind of thinking than the logic she's been trying to use to try and figure out all of it.

And I like your example, we could be giving her more of these examples of light stuff maybe for her to see that this is a LOT different from her own thoughts and her own overwhelming emotions (whatever those emotions may be labelled as, which I think would help a lot lol if she could label them correctly).

She could also read up on the concept of projection. Projecting her own - intense - emotions onto others constantly. Contributes a lot to the whole mess and contradictions she's experiencing strongly.

Have you ever tried to program on your own? It doesn't have to be like in high school at all. What do you like in retail and fast food and hospitality?






She didn't use the word "job". She used the word "work".