This is an English-only article because I don't want my parents to read this. I think I know what's wrong with me. At the ESAT there is a 30-minutes time period before work for coffeee and chatting. It is not mandatory, as long as you're in your workroom at 8.30am, but I still come at 8am because I'm paranoid I could be late.So I secure myself an armchair in the back of the hall, where I can keep an eye on the whole hall, as not only am I paranoid I'm going to be late, I chronically don't trust my senses' input, so if I see it's, say, 8.20am on my watch, I will look at it several times and still doubt it. So I need to see if my coworkers still are in the hall because it means work hasn't begun yet.
The problem is, everybody comes to shake hands and I find it overwhelming. They know I'm the new worker and I still don't know most of them, they are just figures in the vicinity so to me this shaking hands business seems both pointless and intrusive, as at that time of the day I'm very anxious because my work day hasn't yet begun. I think the awful truth dawned on me : I may consider humans like interchangeable objects. Even when I know them. I thought about it and I realised I have never added names when I speak to someone, à la "thank you, so-and-so". It might be a way to keep things unpersonal. The exception being a coworker who is not likely to answer if I don't add her name, but then that's purely utilitarian, not really me recognizing somebody else as a person. Even someone like my flute teacher, who was my teacher for 30 years, since I was a wee child, I was avoiding to having to name him because I didn't dare to go personal and call him Jean-Louis, like the other old-timers students, or Monsieur T, as I was inclined to do because even then I was feeling it was not normal behaviour. Always impersonal. And don't mention tu or vous. I have as much problems with the nuances as if French wasn't my first language.
The awful truth is, to me people might be like chess pawns, whose movements are totally arcane to me.
It's really hard, realising you're actually a cold-hearted bitch and you're not ready to change it anytime soon.
samedi 6 juin 2015
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Hi. I'll read and post your comment as soon as I can get to it. I'm unfortunately under the obligation to moderate comments, that's why your comment won't appear right away on the page. I apologize for this.
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you are not a cold hearted bitch. I think you, like me, find social situations anxiety producing and you have a coping mechanism that works for you. I am glad to hear you are at a new job situation. That is progress, right?
RépondreSupprimerYou don't sound like a 'cold hearted bitch'. You sound like you might be struggling with social anxiety, or be somewhere 'on the spectrum' (aspergers related). If it really worries you, perhaps you can see a therapist and try to work it out.
RépondreSupprimerAlthough my psych isn't willing to discuss diagnoses, as he doesn't want me to look it up on the Net and stick to myself a preconceived label (apparently, it's a very frequent attitude among french psychiatrists, this unwillingness to discuss anything but the occurring symptoms. I have a diagnosis in my file at the disability office, though; don't know if I should type it here but you can read about it in Kathryn Vercillo's Crochet Saved My Life), he conceded I tend to psychosis, and I think psychosis and asperger are mutually exclusive. Anxiety, definitely, too.
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