Working while autistic. My working life from corporate to company (of one) owner.
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- The employment statistics for us autistic folks are pretty glum with many of us struggling to find our place in the world of 9-5 'doing'.
Whatever your views on the current economic and social structures that you're working with, many of us actually like working and want to do it. We'd just rather not risk what remains of our sanity to achieve that.
For me, work is one of my core values and I define it as activities taken towards a productive tradable outcome be that the sharing of knowledge, art, text, goods or other services. I've spent my working life as an industrial chemist in the cosmetic industry and for the last 16 years I've run my own consultancy. While this has been very rewarding, it's not come without challenges, many of which I've struggled with for years. Receiving my autism, ADHD, CPTSD and GAD diagnoses helped me to finally get to know my working self. This has helped me set boundaries and create routines that better serve my skills and shifts in capacity.
I want to share some of that journey with you here in the hope that it may create a little space for you to explore and grow your autistic working life.
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The study I talk about in the beginning of this video can be found here:
www.aph.gov.au...
In case that link moves, the title and details are below:
Australia’s Attitudes & Behaviours towards Autism and Experiences of Autistic People and their Families
Autism and Employment
Research Report for Amaze
Sandra Jones, Muhammad Akram, Nicole Murphy, Paul Myers
and Natasha Vickers
Released 28 March 2019
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As someone 30 years older then our host, the most difficult part of being autistic is employment. It is not anything to do with ability, but rather the capacity to be among others to fulfill the work.
By age 32 after careers as photojournalist, horse trainer, and other skilled labor jobs, I became a Union Journeymen Line Mechanic for both Merceds Benz and Toyota.
I coped by using thespian skills for two 10 minute brakes and I would read at lunch in my truck. My ability to ‘problem solve’ kept my work in high regard.
We live in a culture were ‘team-player’ is paramount and it is a skill many with autism find alien to their well being.
The work I did best was training horses with ground work, but the income was low and the horses had little say about what they thought.
Sadly many autistic people have skills and ability, but because many lack a veneer to be a group member we have a disadvantage that is not appreciated nor understood.
At my age of 79 my life’s experience is what I now harvest and I praise my success at it.
Sounds like you've had a few adventures in life. I appreciate you sharing that and yes, team playing can be impossible for us, especially when the team is playing to an agenda that one feels is fake.
Yeah this was helpful. I'm recently diagnosed in my early 40s and am trying to get an idea of how to earn an income independently after a traumatic and expensive career in corporations. Thanks for raising so many interesting aspects to think about.
I'm so glad you found it helpful and wish you well on your journey.
I've not been diagnosed, not sure if I'm divergent or something else but some of what you list about self-employment may ring true for most people? The thing about having some days where you work long hours, putting limits or pacing on certain types of activities, and making yourself take breaks that are real brakes and help you gear switch from one type of activity to another, all sound familiar. I didn't have kids so I think you did amazingly.
Hi there and thanks for commenting with your experience. I agree that many people benefit from more flexibility in their work just as many other people benefit from a more strict routine. I look forward to the time when work places and our economy in general can accommodate a more tailored approach to work. I'm not sure I'll ever live to see the day but it's a nice idea. I did the best I could with the tools I had. I also paid dearly for it and that has been hard to cope with. I'm glad I'm still here to tell the tale
Thank you for producing easy-to-follow content on this topic. Someone in my extended family was diagnosed and it got me thinking about more in our family dynamics.
The idea of a corporation initiating “training” on autism just seems incredibly tone deaf and yet entirely unsurprising. Reminds me of something like HIPAA training in the ‘00s, or the shift from MSDS to just “Safety Data Sheets.” Like they’re training their workforce-a separate entity from their autistic employees-on how to “deal” with autistic people, like we’re just another obstacle to overcome, another policy to adhere to. Instead of, you know, how to treat people with the respect and patience and empathy we all deserve. Not to mention just further complicating the already warped public perception of what autism actually is and isn’t.
You’ve put it far more more eloquently, of course, but that’s how I’m processing it for the moment.
Thanks for the input, and I love your RUclips name. Let's hope they drop the idea and invest in practices that promote grace, dignity and respect.
I am near 80, I did not talk until age three, and it took three years to reach middle school’s Second Grade. I learned to duck and cover from where they might have put me.
I do not think the DSM 4 and 5, 1997 and 2013, have made such an improvement for autism. I would not even want a diagnosis, and the idea that it is costly and a long waiting time to be tested convinces me even more to be like ‘birds in the sky that leave no tracks’.
Modernity has yet to have made autism a viable public name to be.
The puzzling answers to the survey questions just illustrates how wrong people’s ideas about autism are. Work in a supermarket? I’d never last an entire shift even though I’d be a quick wizard at facing shelves. I also don’t think it’s helpful to group all autistic people in this kind of analysis, either. There is so much difference between individuals that it makes a generic question unhelpful.
Modernity is why Ned Ludd and the Luddites fought against the factory to replace the cottage work place. Was Ned Ludd autistic? 😉
"Learn How to Not Be a Judgemental Dick". Now that's a useful training course. All the other specialized courses just seem like virtue signalling and a waste of everyone's time. In my opinion.