Learning from Experience

As readers of my book Managing with Asperger Syndrome will know, I had a very bad career experience a few years back.

It was a job I loved and in an industry that I loved working in. What was particularly upsetting was the way it ended for me: basically I was amde the scapegoat and treated very badly personally.

In a way what was worse - and has had a more residual effect - was the fact that my reputation was ruined which realistically finished any chance I had of working in the industry again.

When I left the BBC a few years back it was the result of a genuine redundancy. The department was commercially unviable so had to close. We all shook hands and moved on........... and are meeting shorting for an annual reunion.

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with my boss from the former industry and a man whom I hadn't seen for about 15 years since I left. It was great to see the latter again as he is now quite old.

We got chatting about my experience and he told me something that I resonated.

I mentioned that it all ended badly for me and that I thought it would be impossible for me to get back into the industry in question given the hit to my reputation that I took.

He disagreed. He stated that because it was a long time ago people (unlike someone with Asperger in such situations) forget.

I am reading a great book at the moment - and which I be reviewing for my next newsletter - called Can the World Afford Autistic Disorder by a UK Professor, Digby Tantum.

Its about non-verbal communication and I am learning anawfullot from it. In it he talks about "emotional processing", or things are all in the past and how neurotypicals don't intellectually process things in the way ASD's do. In other words: they forget!

I'm going to do so too.