Most of the time I'm fairly verbal. I can't say I find it super easy to talk to people and I'm pretty shy, but I can speak without problems once someone talks to me usually. When I get stressed or excited I sometimes will lose words - they'll just go poof out of my sentence and I can't figure out what word I'm supposed to use. When I get really stressed though, I sometimes stop being able to speak. Prior to a week ago, this never was a problem at work. I would become nonverbal only in personal situation when I was upset with someone. Now something has happened at work where I'm suddenly unable to talk around someone.
I got in a fight with a supervisor over a rather petty issue. I wasn't really upset about it, but she totally blew up and started talking about me behind my back. I heard her and got angry at her, and now she's lying to upper management, blemishing my perfect work record to exact her petty revenge. I was called into the office to talk to her with another manager and I lost all my words. I couldn't talk, I just sat there and stimmed and couldn't look at anyone because I was so overloaded by everything. Luckily I had my emergency card taped to the back of my ID badge and showed it to the other manager there, who entirely understood and accommodated me correctly. However, because I've decided to elevate the situation to the next level of management, I know I'm probably going to be put in this situation again. There's no way to not elevate it - I have to, she's lying and hurting my record and it's wrong. I just don't know how to deal with the situation or even find a way to receive reasonable accommodation.
Any recommendations or ideas on what I can or should do here? I hate talking about my AS because people assume you're ret*d and don't understand ASDs, but this needs to be handled properly.
27 Jul 2011, 11:41 pm
