350 karma · joined October 7, 2016
It actually does help to talk through things and therapists are trained to be non-judgmental and supportive. I urge you to try it if things get too tough for you.
What I would suggest is:
-Learn mannerisms to indicate that you're friendly to people you don't know well without having to interact much. For example, wave or smile (and I mean a sincere smile) at people as you pass them in the hallway that you know.
-The people you work closely with are the people that you will get comfortable with and be able to interact with more easily. These few people will have to form the basis of your professional network to help you find career opportunities in the future. While you are, of course, naturally helpful and hardworking, you're also going to need to be helpful, hardworking, etc. in a way that they can see and will vouch for to others.
-Maintain your network. Take the effort to meet with former colleagues every once in a while or contact them on social media to see how they are doing.
-Force yourself to attend corporate parties and other events, as much as you can tolerate. You don't have to stay the whole time but at least be seen and remembered by your immediate co-workers.
-Get an understanding of how performance reviews are done at whichever employer you eventually work for and make sure that you are known in a positive light to the people making the decision. The extroverts do it naturally, you may have to do it artificially (cynical as that may sound). Failing to do so will hamper your career growth significantly.
-Having difficulty talking to others doesn't absolve you of the need to communicate. You're going to need to be able to need to write email, documentation, code comments, and so forth quickly, clearly, and concisely.
-If public speaking is a problem for you, work on that until you're able to give at least a passable engineering presentation. Engineering is a team sport and the more senior you are, the more you're expected to speak up and guide others. Organizations like Toastmasters and course like the Dale Carnegie program can help with this. The earlier in your career you confront this, the better.
-Seeing a medical professional may be helpful in ameliorating your introversion. However, be very wary of medications; they may come with nasty side effects including reducing mental acuity (a massive problem, if you're a technology professional), rebound effects, tolerance effects, and withdrawal effects. Therapy and modifying your behaviors are the most likely to succeed in the long run but require a lot of hard work on your part.
-Be prepared for pain and frustration. Bad ideas communicated well by someone else will win out over good ideas that someone is unable to communicate. Less talented people who have good relationships with the organization will succeed more than a better person with no relationships with anyone.
Good luck.
Some suggestions:
- Re-evaluate your perspective. "Work to live; don't live to work" may sound corny but it's true. You need to reflect on what's important in life for you and, for most people, that seldom involves work.
- Meditation and other stress reduction techniques. They can be quite useful in clearing your head, so to speak, though they don't work for everybody.
- Seeking therapy and/or medication. Stress and anxiety related disorders are sufficiently common now, unfortunately, that there's much less stigma about seeing a therapist than there used to be.
[1] One of the known potential symptoms being "I'm not getting enough done; I must try to work harder", causing the subject to get even less done
They could, but they don't. To be blunt, you seem to be romanticizing the hikikomori phenomenon and know nothing about the reality of it.
Having spent some time in online communities where they hang out and flirted with the edges of the syndrome myself, these people are not doing anything resembling what you describe. They are, as the article says, "...spend[ing] the day daydreaming, reading, roaming the internet, flipping TV channels, floating in [their] room". They are most certainly not doing anything meaningful or constructive and they, themselves, are unhappily aware of it. It is an _illness_, for pity's sake.
Well, there is dream interpretation as part of psychoanalysis; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_dream_interpret... . However, you'd need to find a therapist/psychiatrist who subscribed to that theory and, even then, well, it's unclear what, if anything, you'd get out of your undoubtedly quite expensive sessions.
If the dreams are strong enough to trouble you or disrupt you sleep, you might want to seek medical attention directly. They can suggest stress reduction techniques, lifestyle changes, and, as a last resort, provide medication that suppresses dreams such as prazosin.
>So I'm on the austism spectrum... I also suffer from depression... I still have noticeable anxiety in social situations, and I tend to avoid them whenever I can...
Is this self-diagnosed or do you have a formal diagnosis from a clinician? I would recommend getting a formal diagnosis if you don't have one, as it offers you certain legal protections and opens some options for help. All of the things that you describe are well known syndromes and are, to varying degrees, treatable. I recommend seeking a psychiatrist / therapist at a teaching hospital, if you can, as you have a better chance of getting higher quality care.
>I've spent my whole life trying and failing to start my own thing so I can get away from people...
Aside from a few extraordinary talented individuals, the day of the solitary hacker is over; software engineering is a team sport.
What worked for me is to:
1) Accept that you're not going to fit socially in the way that normal people do. Aloofness, as long as it's not taken to extremes, is actually OK.
2) Find professional aspects that you are willing to work extra hard in in that others will value, e.g. hard working, willing to take on dirty jobs, or developing a technical specialty. People are willing to forgive your social limitations if you are of value and not otherwise unpleasant to be around.
3) (The following is going to sound extremely weird to people not suffering from autism.) Develop an synthetic set of social behaviors that cater to your limitations. For example, I memorize certain canned responses to use during short social interactions and use other other techniques to cut the interaction short if needed to in order to prevent awkwardness from arising.