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.
As a person with a grab-bag of disorders, I do get it.
I have been on my own journey of going from a great technical communicator, to a great human communicator. There’s a big difference that I wasn’t able to see before.
One of the things I’ve discovered is that in irl interactions there is an undesired aspect of “heavy lifting” that has to be done on “your” side. That involves a lot of “listening” to how what you are saying is being received, and then on-the-fly recognizing and adjusting to that.
I used to resent that and feel I shouldn’t have to and that other people should be able to “hear” me “plainly” without transforming it through their own emotional framework first. I’ve since learned that was naive and self-centered of me - A denial-based assumption on how communication works, that honestly for me looking back, was me being lazy.