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.
You’re still making it a bit too easy for you. “Not caring about other people’s feelings” is very close to “Not able to understand why somebody reacts and feels a certain way” but is definitely not the same thing.
I’m a parent to (at least one diagnosed so far) autistic child and there are plenty of situations in which this very kind, friendly and empathic person is simply unable to understand why one of the other siblings reacted as they did. Has nothing to do with whether they care or not.
“Not understanding other people’s feelings” is called lacking empathy, which is a common autism symptom. I’m saying this because it seems like you might be confusing “empathy” with caring about people, a misconception which harms people who lack empathy.
That’s an old misconception. Autistic people don’t lack empathy any more than neurotypical people. Autistic people may not react the way a neurotypical person expects somebody with empathy to react, but that doesn’t mean there’s no feeling of empathy. Sometimes we can easily understand someone’s feelings, but still not know what we’re expected to do in response to that information.