4 minute read
Madhu has worked at NPL for three years as a scientist, they are in the middle of their career and have been focused on building their skills and experience. Just before coming to NPL, Madhu was diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder. They found receiving the diagnosis a huge relief in helping them to understand themselves and continue to evolve their strategies to help them at work. Like many other neurodiverse people, Madhu carries a hidden load that others around them do not see and understand. At work there are two areas that Madhu finds particularly difficult, sensory processing and communication.
A few weeks ago, one of Madhu’s colleagues had some new equipment installed in the lab, while Madhu has become accustomed to the humming they can hear in the lab (that others can’t), this new equipment beeps inconsistently at a pitch which is painful to Madhu. After trying to ignore for a while Madhu asked if the beeping can be turned off and their request is dismissed by their colleague, who say it isn’t that bad. After a while they have to leave the lab to find somewhere to decompress when they are stopped by a colleague in the corridor. Madhu asks if they can talk later but the colleague persists, and they end up having to walk away mid-conversation. Their colleague finds Madhu’s behaviour rude and complains to their line manager. When their line manager asks to talk about this, Madhu is nervous as they have been formally warned about behaviour like this in the past. This time their line manager is understanding, they go assess the new equipment together and discuss with the lab manager potential options. They agree to move to equipment to a different area of the lab which muffles the sound enough for it not to be painful and the line manager helps Madhu explain their communication preferences to the colleague.
"Early in my career I wasn’t sure what a career in science would look like, I didn’t know that I was autistic and I just thought I was bad at communication. I appeared to just miss things and didn’t understand why this wasn’t a problem for others. There was so much I didn’t understand and I would get lost in not understanding. I blamed myself assuming that I just wasn’t clever enough. I struggled like that for a long time, receiving bad feedback and feeling like I was failing with no idea how to fix it. I knew that I was different, even with my family who would laugh off me ‘being a bit weird’, it was just an accepted part of who I am. I think once someone even said, ‘you are so autistic’, I probably laughed along with others at the time, but after I was diagnosed it was hard to tell people knowing we had joked about it before.
NPL is the first workplace I have joined knowing that I am autistic and having got through the interview, the uncertainty of what things would be like was very challenging. Having disclosed on my form, my new line manager reached out and invited me to come in ahead of my first day. They walked me round the lab on a quiet day, our offices and some of the places like the canteen. I asked for my new responsibilities, asking for more detail and specifics than just a job description. Although the transition was hard, I managed despite being paranoid about taking on new responsibilities and being in a role that involved new relationships and more communication. I worried that it might not be the orderly, planned way that I like to carry out my work and how much I could do things my way. With time I found a way through, but it does make me worry for what is next and if there is a limit to what I can handle, if there is I hope it’s not too soon in my career.
In terms of barriers, I think the biggest one is constantly trying to hide my autism and appear “normal”, I am very black and white in my thinking and take things colleagues say very literally. I struggle with some of the nuances of conversation, particularly when people are frustrated and I often have to hold back my blunt appraisal of the situation, so as not to be rude. A situation I find particularly difficult is when people complain about things that they could change; I now know that they aren’t looking for me to provide a solution, but the expectation is to listen. I also struggle when I don’t get listened to and it emerges that I was right, I have in the past drawn attention to this and it has caused friction with colleagues.
In my communication, I am to the point and often very blunt and I can find ‘normal’ conversations tricky and often don’t understand what people are asking me. I don’t think anyone realises quite how hard this is, I’m not intending to challenge by asking lots of follow up, but I need clear instructions and I don’t think neurotypicals realise how lazy they are sometimes with their communication. I’m not trying to be annoying; I’m trying to understand what you want. If what you want was obvious, I wouldn’t ask. I often find it ironic that I probably spend more time than anyone thinking about how I communicate and I spend most of my time teaching others how to better communicate, even though it’s something I struggle with.
Awareness of how to communicate and interact with autistic people is pretty poor and people make assumptions that because I am high functioning its easier. It’s not, it’s just not as obvious to you the struggle that I’m going through. People often make things worse. I don’t make eye contact during a conversation, usually with new people or more senior people. I can often feel people trying to force me to look at them and its times like that where I think that people don’t understand how differently we feel things. For me eye contact with someone I’m not comfortable with is physically painful, I’m not shy or nervous, it makes my whole body uncomfortable and tense. The more experiences like that that build, the more likely I am to have autistic burnout.
Autistic burnout is hard to describe but is exhausting, caused by things that happen at work and home. I’m most likely to suffer from it when I am too busy and don’t have enough time to rest. Small things not going to plan can mean I’m wired for stress for the rest of the day. Once I’m in burnout my brain is doing overtime and I can’t think or focus well. I get decision fatigue as I become too tired to compute things. At that point seemingly simple things become hard, choosing a meal, an outfit or getting admin tasks done can feel like a mountain. I then start to feel guilty for being stressed, mistakes creep in and I become irritable. Then I’m less able to control my bluntness and this is usually when people start to complain about me. To get out of burnout I need time to decompress and a healthy work/life balance to get the rest I need which can be hard in science as many are quite happy to work long days. For me autistic burnout has lasted as long as three weeks, but it has become less frequent over time as I have learnt to manage things better. I know now to cancel plans or schedule a day working from home to prevent a meltdown, but it can be harder to manage when things change like on work trips when you have less control over your schedule.
What’s it like being neurodivergent at NPL? Well one thing that I find quite hard is communicating with other people that are (or I suspect may be) neurodivergent, I find that sometimes I have to compromise on what I need to allow other to get what they need. I’m part of the neurodiversity network and listening to other experiences has helped me to better understand both myself and some of the coping strategies I can deploy at NPL. Since I have been at NPL, awareness of neurodiversity has increased a lot, with various activities as part of the diversity and inclusion strategy but I would say that the new resources and training have not been embedded across the business yet. Despite that, more allies have stepped up across the business and there are more practical things available.
In terms of advice, I think the thing that has helped me most was the research I did, learning about my brain and how it works has allowed me to recognise and adjust the way I do things. Weirdly I learnt the most through social media and following people who had similar experiences to me. The research makes a difference, more than I thought it would. Once you understand yourself, I think the most important thing is to learn what works for you. We are all different and not always like the characters that portray us on TV. People assume as an autistic scientist, I must be super smart and will revolutionise the field. I’m not as smart as people assume and sometimes that sets me up for failure unfairly.
For those that are neurotypical, my advice to you is that empathy is two ways. Often you struggle to help us and get frustrated because you don’t understand us or our reactions, but then expect us to be able to do the same and conform to ways of working that work for you without help or adjustments. Working with us to find common understanding can help unlock our talents and help us reach our potential."
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