My life is similar to @GuySrinivasan’s description of his. I’m on the autism spectrum, and I found that faking it (masking) negatively impacted my relationships.
Interestingly I found that taking steps to prevent overimitation (by which I mean, presenting myself not as an expert, but as someone who is always looking for corrections whenever I make a mistake) makes me people much more willing to truly learn from me, and simultaneously, much more willing to challenge me for understanding when what I say doesn’t make a lot of sense to them… this serves the duel role of giving them an opportunity correct my mistakes (a benefit to me) and giving them an opportunity to call out when my presentation style does not work for them (another benefit to me.)
My approach has the added benefit of giving people permission to correct me socially, not just professionally, which makes my eccentricities seemingly more tolerable to the average coworker. (i.e., People seem to be more willing to tolerate my odd behaviors when they know that they can talk to me about it, if it really bothers them.)
My relationships with people outside of work depends entirely on what’s going on with that relationship. I tend to avoid complaining about social issues at work to anyone except my wife, and few people can really appreciate the nuance of the job that I do unless they’re in the same job, so I don’t feel much compulsion to talk about my work. (If someone asks what I do, I generalize that I help people figure out how to do their jobs better. Although my work space is not in self-help or coaching, but actually in a technical space… but that’s largely irrelevant beyond it being a label for my industry.)
I also tend to have narrow range of interests, which influences the range of topics for non-work relationships.
My life is similar to @GuySrinivasan’s description of his. I’m on the autism spectrum, and I found that faking it (masking) negatively impacted my relationships.
Interestingly I found that taking steps to prevent overimitation (by which I mean, presenting myself not as an expert, but as someone who is always looking for corrections whenever I make a mistake) makes me people much more willing to truly learn from me, and simultaneously, much more willing to challenge me for understanding when what I say doesn’t make a lot of sense to them… this serves the duel role of giving them an opportunity correct my mistakes (a benefit to me) and giving them an opportunity to call out when my presentation style does not work for them (another benefit to me.)
My approach has the added benefit of giving people permission to correct me socially, not just professionally, which makes my eccentricities seemingly more tolerable to the average coworker. (i.e., People seem to be more willing to tolerate my odd behaviors when they know that they can talk to me about it, if it really bothers them.)
My relationships with people outside of work depends entirely on what’s going on with that relationship. I tend to avoid complaining about social issues at work to anyone except my wife, and few people can really appreciate the nuance of the job that I do unless they’re in the same job, so I don’t feel much compulsion to talk about my work. (If someone asks what I do, I generalize that I help people figure out how to do their jobs better. Although my work space is not in self-help or coaching, but actually in a technical space… but that’s largely irrelevant beyond it being a label for my industry.)
I also tend to have narrow range of interests, which influences the range of topics for non-work relationships.