Regular reminder that being an asshole is not a symptom of any form of neurodivergence. (You can replace “neurodivergent” with depressed, anxious, bipolar, etc. and the diagram works equally well)
ETA: social faux pas, awkwardness, and genuine symptoms of neurodivergence don’t make you an asshole. I shouldn’t have to say this? An “asshole” is someone who enacts a pattern of abusive, controlling, harassing, and/or harmful behavior with no remorse or concern for how other people are affected.
I agree but would qualify my agreement with a note:
Some of our neurodivergent traits come across as assholeish or rude behavior and while most of us try and temper and mask it does slip out especially in high stress situations.
Intention matters.
I think it’s my responsibility to explain to coworkers and make super sure they understand how I am especially after a high stress event (for me that’d likely be a server outage in production).
This is true! But there’s a very easy way to tell the difference.
When you find out you hurt someone’s feelings, do you apologize, express how terrible you feel about it, and try to do better? Not an asshole.
Do you double down, make excuses, and blame them for feeling bad? Asshole.
Saying the wrong thing doesn’t make you a jerk. Not caring about other people’s feelings, does.
I often inconvenience people in a particular way. (I’m very frequently late.) I apologize a lot but then I keep doing the same thing. It’s really hard for me not to, I get why this frustrates people, and I don’t blame anyone who refuses to put up with the inconvenience. However, people often assume that I keep inconveniencing them because I don’t respect them, and I want them to understand that that’s not what’s going on.
Hey that’s valid! A good friend of mine has the exact same thing. He’s up front about it, he apologizes when it’s excessive, and he’s more than happy to explain why it’s difficult for him. It’s just a thing, and if I’m going to be his friend, that means accepting it about him.
In other words, he’s done his best to help me understand him. Now it’s my turn to not be an asshole.
There’s absolutely a point where I’m not going to mask for the sake of social niceties. I try my best to not be a jerk though, but there are so many situations where I’ve been called rude for not following the NT script. For example, stopping someone, saying I don’t want to have a conversation right now, and walking away. Not an excuse to avoid difficult talks either, just when it’s a convo about whatever random thing and I don’t have the capacity to listen.
It matters up to a point where the negatives outweigh the good intentions, same as everyone else.
The tough part is people hide when they’re offended, so you can’t even avoid doing the same faux pas in the future.
They just gossip behind your back about you being a jerk. Problem solved!