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?
Hey, story of my life and why I’ve left so many workplaces.
So, what does help? Self-esteem, which is really hard to tackle if you’re in a low or negative self-esteem space. If you have a decent self-esteem you can start making more active decisions on how to value the opinions others have about you, which you should apply very selectively. It’s actually harder to maintain an “I don’t care what anyone thinks” attitude, and causes more harm, than it is to make the individual determination for each person at your work. Steve and Jeff and Greg each deserve their own individual value assessment.
The other thing is framing the issue. People largely do not like you because you have a social connection disability that affects how you present yourself to the group. In a lot of ways, I kind of liken the neurotypical judgements to a physical disability analogue to help me see it better. For example, someone has to slowly follow a cane-user up the stairs and is irritated that they can’t go as fast as they would like but they’re also unwilling to let the disabled person take the elevator instead because of a misperception on what would be fair for everyone. That’s ridiculous… and so you can regard the situation appropriately and understand you have no responsibility to correct their perceptions. Let them be.
Long story short? It really is about skilling up in how to not care about what doesn’t matter. You are already on the right track that this is needed, but just need to figure out how to get to the next level. Maybe its easier to decide what you DO care about and leave everything else as whatever… There’s different roads to success here.
You’ll be okay. https://www.amazon.ca/Courage-Be-Disliked-Phenomenon-Happiness/dp/1668069539 - Maybe try this too if you need to expand your thinking on this. There are other books that support these ideas as well, but this one is quite accessible to most readers, even if it is kind of silly at times.
I know that at least some of the people who dislike me, completely independent of their dislike of me, are people who I wouldn’t like anyways because of some of their personal beliefs that they’ve also brought up at work. I know logically that I am not compatible with them and should not care what they think. But my lizard brain still makes the social ouchie when I hear them talking badly about me when I’m in earshot…and I’m aware that the reason I’m so disliked is largely because of my autistic communication style and that’s part of why autism is a disability in the first place. I know my self-esteem isn’t great but I don’t really know what I can realistically do for better self-esteem that doesn’t just feel fake.
I’ve tried to read that book, and I forget what, but some section or another of it bothered me and I never ended up finishing it. I think the ideas behind it were good though.
Yeah, so I would say you are actively moving forward through figuring out what you need to manage this for yourself. Self-esteem is fundamental to being effective in driving this, so if that’s a weak area for you then you can prioritize your efforts there.
Self-esteem has two key parts: boundaries and values. Maybe there is more to it than that, but I overhauled my own deeply entrenched negative self-esteem and found it was fundamentally these two things. You have to say ‘no’ to things and establish what you won’t put up with for yourself… which is not necessarily easy to figure out but its the first one. And then you need to decide who you are and live according to those values. You have to act in line with your own specific values… if you are kind, show kindness for its own sake because that’s who you are… or be honest because thats who you are, even in the face of rejection, to choose yourself.
By doing so, you can build self-esteem despite social rejection. You might even find that you can occasionally enjoy that rejection as an affirming sign that you are doing right by your own self.
None of this is easy to learn or maintain. It is possible though, I started in as bad a place as anyone. I think you’re gonna figure this out, have hope.