How do you all cope with the rejection that you go through in the workplace? I’ve largely only ever been socially successful among groups where I share an interest, and even then, I still struggle socially quite a bit and tend to be somewhat disliked in any sort of group setting. Among the general public (so classes, and now work for many years) I’ve never really been able to make friends, and people range from being neutral to me but not liking me, to disliking me, to hating me in a way that feels like it should really only be reserved for people who actually brought you significant harm, to trying to be ‘friendly’ and then making fun of me when I’m still in earshot, and such. But I still have to work, which means that I have to just go to work and deal with hearing my coworkers talk about me negatively when I’m within earshot, noticing the difference in the demeanor when they interact with anyone else versus interact with me, notice when they actively try to do things to make my job harder (thankfully this is somewhat rare but it happens unfortunately).
If I try to bring it up to anyone who’s allistic then they don’t even believe me and will only take the most overt examples of extreme bullying as a sign that my coworkers don’t like / dislike me, but it’s hard when I have to deal with what can possibly be over a hundred micro-rejections just in a given day, and then I just have to wake up and do the same thing tomorrow, and every job’s been like this so even if I felt like I deserved better and went somewhere else, then I’d just get treated the same way anyways (and this has been true for all of my work experiences and was the case in all of my grade-collegiate schooling as well, so I think that it’s just something I’m always going to have to deal with). So how do you all deal with it? I can’t just simply ignore it forever, since it still affects me even if I pretend that it doesn’t. Rejection still hurts even if it’s from people who I don’t even really like anyways, and no matter how I act, whether I try to act friendly or whether I just try to keep my distance, it doesn’t seem to change things. I don’t think that there’s any way to not be rejected, so what can I do to ease the pain from it?
I’m sorry you’ve gotta deal with this. It sucks. I feel like with a lot of technical jobs the hardest part really is the social aspect of it.
A thing that helps me is to consider it part of my job duties, because like you said this will likely happen wherever you go. This shifts these negative interactions from something that just happens to you that you’re powerless to stop to an obstacle that you deal with.
Instead of “I solved big problem that most people don’t understand. Nobody cares. People still antagonize me.”
It becomes “I solved big problem even in less than ideal conditions. I’m proud of myself for overcoming the technical and environmental challenges here. If I can thrive here then I can thrive elsewhere too.”
I do my best to try and think of being rejected / disliked as part of the work experience as an autistic person. But it’s hard to think that way long-term because it doesn’t improve with time. I know that there’s not much I can do about it, but I just wish there was a better way to cope with the large amount of negative energy that I absorb on a daily basis.
Honestly, therapy is the thing that helped me put things into perspective. Of course it never goes away that you are always treated as an ‘outsider’ to some extent but as you say that’s life as an autistic person to some degree. You just need help on how to reframe things so they genuinely don’t matter as much to you. Depending on where you are and what accommodations you can get, it’s also worth asking for stuff like home working if possible.
Unfortunately, my experiences with therapy have been middling to bad. I’ve been contemplating giving it another shot at some point, though. Maybe if I try someone who specializes in a different modality, it’ll be different this time. Work from home is not possible for my job unfortunately. I have thought about looking for a WFH job but this job is fairly stable…but maybe that’s also something I should maybe consider in the longer run.