this may be the most potential autism called out I've felt in my life and this is coming from the guy who watched that list of autism stim examples video and listed out like 50 stims I do

it is definitely not that I don't believe other people are capable OR that I did not have a reliable source of help if I had asked for it. my parents tried so hard to offer me help with doing things, constantly, to the point they were practically begging me to let them help me,

....I have also been so fucking called out

and also were both very smart and capable and I definitely felt they were both very smart and capable because one time my mom made the one-off comment "what am I supposed to do when my children are smarter than me" when I was a teenager and that comment has stuck with me forever because I had NOT ever considered that my intellect could even be equal to hers

let alone that she might ever struggle to deal with me bc I was thinking of things she couldn't think of

ahahahaha

i feel like a lot of the time i feel ashamed/stupid for needing to ask for help

even if objectively i shouldnt

i dont remember if i was like this as a child .... except that i definitely didnt finish my homework and definitely didnt ask for help on it

and when my parents tried to help it was just a frustrating experience that i hated anyways

I don't have the shame either I am actually ok at asking for help if I don't have the invisible barrier of "I am just going to do it myself (SO I DO NOT HAVE TO ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE)"

asking for help feels like a solid physical barrier and i have had people scold me for just not ASKING and me having no language to explain why i COULDN'T

the communication part of asking for anything is the hardest fucking part

actually scrounging up the energy to do that is like.... torture

I'll just do it myself lol

oh this is

too real

definitely for me it's not "it didnt occur to me that i could" it's like.... a million hurdles to actually doing it

but also i have anxiety so

for me it's closer to "it didn't occur to me that I could" but I guess more like "this felt like the path of less resistance (*factually this is untrue)"

oh fuck I have been Seen

i 100% vibe with "this was the path of less resistance"

this was made worse by actively HAVING trauma over asking for help so it's just

"taking out all of the trash in several trips by myself is easier than asking for help"

I will literally break out in hives rather than ask someone to explain a task to me

... I am terrified of clicking that link just from the comments in here

obliterated

thinks about me lecturing my wife a few years ago about how they couldn't just use nonsense words to ask people for help bc they don't speak our nonsense marriage language and to remember to adjust their speech accordingly so they could successfully communicate

looks out the window

(we are both on the spectrum but i'm the hyper-masking one)

there's a million hurdles in communication and it's even stronger when guardians or authority figures have lashed out at you over asking for things that "everyone knows"

which i suspect many of us have done.

yeah...

ive gotten better at asking for help or admitting i dont know things but with kaz only.

and even then it's like [spends 50 hours minimum working myself into being able to ask for things]

there's always a point where I'm like "for me this could be a neurodivergence, but what if it's bc of my childhood and the resulting cptsd"

entrepreromance: why not both

rainpuddles: id rather die than not know things is so fuckin real

handshake

I'd rather die than not know things

pretty sure neurodivergence really sets you up for cptsd

worsened by not processing information well in the format of "got shown a complicated thing exactly once" and being judged for asking for help again

asking for help is something i struggle with on the daily and it is something i consider one of my strong suits

like my willingness to ask for help has kept me alive until now and i legitimately consider it one of my stronger traits

but it is still. fucking hard.

and 9 times out of 10 does not occur to me

SO many convos I'm like [starts a mild complaint about something i cannot do] [brad stares meaningfully and silently until i work out I Can Ask Him To Assist]

truly i've been slapped so many times (WEIRDLY ONLY PROFESSIONALLY??) for both asking for help and not asking for help

rn i'm in an "ask for help PLEASE GOD ask for help" job so that's my default but i've been in places before where it's like. i will ask for clarification or go "hey, before I submit this, my understanding of this task and what I was meant to do is xyz, is that correct? can you look at it and confirm?" and been answered with "do YOU think it's correct?"

the reason i am focusing on professional life here is i would more likely die than ask for help about anything in my private life because i use all that reaching out ability for work

understandable as hell

god yeah my most recent job had AN ENTIRE CHANNEL FOR ASKING FOR HELP, AND PEOPLE WHOSE JOB IT WAS TO HELP, and yet i had the absolutely winning combination of

coworkers asking me for help. and me getting smacked down loudly and publicly half the time i asked for help, as though i was not doing my due diligence, when,,

mutters i had coworkers asking me where to find things in files via discord when i was on "break" (fired so they didn't have to give benefits)

workplaces are fucking weird

"you're supposed to know where to find things" no one does, the files change constantly, and it's part of your job to actually read my question, motherfucker,

the question where i detailed where i looked for info, every time,

ok that was an unexpected salt bomb i tripped over

PLEASE GOD ASK FOR HELP jobs are great but only if they mean it. essentially.

i only worked at that one office for six months and spent the whole time being slapped for 1) asking for help instead of just knowing 2) "needing to be told" instead of just intuiting 3) "just going ahead" without double-checking and 4) creating a tool that my boss used for the wrong purpose and caused a minor inaccuracy with

oh my godddd

your old job and my old job should meet in the pit

rn i work at a bank so they absolutely mean 'please ask for help' everyone involved is 10000000% sincere in "we would rather quadruple check than have to retroactively fix an error in SOMEONE'S BANK ACCOUNT"

i worked in fraud prevention. which is less directly UNFUCK THEIR BANK ACCOUNT but very much similar levels of If You Fuck This Up You're In Deep Shit

but very little patience for the nuance involved meaning questions would need to be asked.... and higher ups not READING MY FUCKING QUESTIONS BEFORE ANSWERING,

yeah no that's no good. that's only bad

I'm about to start working for a credit union so fingers deeply crossed they have the sense your current job does about stuff

i was also afaik the only one getting in trouble for constantly having to ask DO YOU WANT ME TO CLOSE THIS TICKET WITHIN THE ARBITRARY TIME LIMIT OR DO YOU WANT ME TO SOLVE THE FUCKING PROBLEM

tho i suspect that's because my coworkers would look at complicated situations and just go get a different ticket

i loved that job bc i love helping people and it's pretty unambiguously helping people to Unfuck Stolen Shit and Prevent More Stealing (from customers i did not gaf about stealing from the company but obvs that was also part of it) but lawd it was also a nightmare

screaming

screaming so much about workplace horseshit

every day i learn new reasons why I'm a freelancer