Wanting to cry when being told off by someone in authority

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Not trying to hijack this thread, but as someone with authority at my job, what would be the best way to correct a serious offense, without making the person cry or stop speaking to me? There are certain things that will get an employee fired, and unfortunately they are also common mistakes made by the trainees I work with. How do I best convey the seriousness of the offense while still keeping the lines of communication open? And, how should that approach change if the offense was deliberate?

(I know, letting them get fired is tempting, and sometimes that's the only thing we can do. But my department gets a lot of pressure to keep the attrition rate down, and it's pretty high due to the nature of both the job and the workforce. Most people just are not cut out for tech support, by the time the trainees get to the stage of training that I work in, more then half of them have either quit or been let go already.)

In my opinion, the fundamental problem with this is the arbitrariness of unspoken rules. If an aspie has a clear understanding of the problem domain, then pointing out errors would make perfect sense. Not explaining the rules and then enforcing them anyway would upset anyone.

So in the case of an error committed by an aspie employee, the best thing to do would be to take the time to explain your reasoning. Be thorough and cover all the bases. Don't use the word "just" as in "you're just going to have to accept this", etc. Explicitly state every cause that could be a factor and the structural consequences of error. Reputation means little but honesty means a lot, social unity is less important than procedure, etc.

i.e. Make the case.

^this

If the person you're talking to's well-being is threatened, they're going to become emotional. And it's not going to be so much about the words you use, more about the situation and what sort-of actions you're threatening. Employment just happens to be ruthless and inhuman, especially if there's a looming threat of being fired because you're inadequate involved. The situation is worth getting emotional over whether it's your fault or not.

Environments that are welcoming to humans just clash with institutions . . . because humans need unlimited compassion and opportunities to improve, and institutions value efficiency and economics too much to provide it. That's fairly tragic.

Umm, but this thread is more about emotions anyways. So they're probably not going to be rational.

[Holds hand up]

I'm worried that I may have contributed to 'hijacking the thread', but I also just made myself sad, so I apologize for either of those things. (like, if my tone was a bit too final and tragic) I was a bad person to answer the question anyways because I remember being fired once a bit too well.

To relate it back to the topic, I guess institutions are frustrating to deal with; and though I can normally manage to, a bad encounter tends to make me doubt whether I really can. But hopefully after people recover from crying/ being shaken their confidence will be renewed and they'll keep on chugging. Obviously I have thusfar.

I still cry when someone in authority reprimands me. If I'm in the right, I get frustrated because I can't explain well enough to show them that I am; and if I'm in the wrong, I feel horrible for having disappointed them.

When I was younger people used to think that this tendency was "manipulative", that I cried to make them do what I wanted. But it wasn't like that; it never has been. I just wanted to make them proud of me, and it hurt so much when I saw they weren't.

I can totally identify with your experience of others thinking you are being manipulative. When I was 7, I stopped crying altogether for the next 13 years if you can believe it. Stifling these emotions caused lots of health problems though.

I once saw a magazine ad for a cologne call "Joop" and it really struck me. The words beneath the picture in the ad said "tears are antifreeze for the soul." I believe this to be true for many humans, Aspie, ASD, and NT.

A lot of them relish their power and actually would like to upset people.

I used to be like that, crying whenever an authority figure told me off. And it was usually when I was at work. At my first job, I did the job wrong, but the woman who yelled at me almost everyday never told me what I was doing wrong or how to do the job right, just to "do the job right!". Eventually my hours kept getting cut until I worked four a week, and that pay wasn't much of anything. At another job I had, there was this really loud machinery I couldn't handle the noise of, and when I asked the supervisor if I could do something with less noise, she said, "handle the noise or find another job". So I quit. But both times, I felt like crap. And that kind of s**t happened in school too. Whether I was being scolded for fidgeting, blurting out answers, having a hard time trying to read out loud or not sitting still, I hated getting yelled at.

I really wish I could say I disagree with you but much of my personal experience indicates that what you say in the above post is accurate. Sigh.

I'm like this. It was particularly bad at school. I rarely got told off, because I was meek and well-behaved, but if the teacher shouted at another pupil I would burst into tears.

It's possible to prevent oneself from crying by concentrating on something irrelevant, but unfortunately that requires that one doesn't pay attention to what is being said. I can of course retrieve the last sentence from auditory memory if necessary, but... still, it's not listening. You don't just zone out when someone's talking to you, especially someone in authority. But if the alternative is blubbering like a child, well...!

I ought to make it clear, though, that this doesn't happen when someone is trying to give me constructive criticism. If they are showing me what I've done wrong, with the aim to help me do it better, I am usually interested and grateful and only a little ashamed of making the mistake. The only reprimands that really make me feel horrible about myself are the ones that imply that I haven't been trying, that I deliberately messed up to annoy them, or that I'm just incapable overall of doing things right and there's no hope of fixing my mistakes.

I have even had to have my school's disability services office explain to a professor that I needed feedback on what I had been doing wrong, because I had been getting less than 100% but had no idea why I was losing the points.

The fundamental difference seems to be whether the person is trying to help me learn, versus whether they are just trying to tell me off for something they didn't like about what I did. I appreciate the first sort, but am crushed by the second.

Sometimes I wish I weren't so obvious about showing emotion. It's always either on or off for me, no in-betweens, no subtleties. People misread that easily.

Turn your brain off on mute when these idiots talk. and try not to laugh when you see flapping mouths. If it's someone cool like mom, girl friend, kids, or the pets or boss or cops, then listen up, and pick out only key words. They do love sounding self important.My 6 year old sister loves doing that. (She's going to make a lovely bully one day gag)

Or just pretend they're Kesha, and saying blah blah blah blah zip mouth like a pad lock.

See the problem with NTS is we have such a unconventional way of going about with their so called important lists, That once we aquire all the nitty gritty data we need, we so ahead and do it. then they're like wtf. But the thing is you already done what they ask. Unless you completely forget then you're SOL.

um, yeah

me too

i am a lot better at dealing with "normal" interactions and people telling me off than i used to be, but people in authority or people that i deem authorities or experts telling me off make me want to cry and/or vomit

i have gotten around day to day issues with people being jerks by creating a set of scripts and role plays that i can launch into when it happens.

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i urge everyone who has this problem to create scripts to use in these situations. get a friend whose emotional responses you trust to help you role play - or counsellors can help too, though that can be expensive. sometimes dram clubs or theatre people or improv groups can help provide people who will roleplay a setting (i've actually done this - theatre people are often a little odd themselves, so they are usually cool when the aspie experience is described to them - they often get a kick out of improvisiational acting). but still - take your trusted emotional anchor/navigation point person because you don't know how wacky any advice you might get from the actor will be

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i have created a personal analytic matrix that allows me to determine whether they are being fair or not.

short version:

if they are, then i try to deal with it on a wholly rational level. totally shut down emotion and only deal with the facts.

if they are correct in their criticism, but are being emotional or mean in their tone, i shut say "your tone is kind of mean - could you please change it to something less hurtful". if they continue, i put them into pinhead status and deal with them accordingly (more on that in a minute)

if they are wrong or are just dolts, i put them in pinhead status as well

if they are pinheads i advise them that they are wrong and that they should keep their opinions to themselves. i practice raising my own voice and refusing to let them bully me.

if they are my boss, i use the shut down and deal with facts method

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i practice a small set of responses to a wide range of inputs - i find that many situations seem new to me and i don't categorise them correctly and then i freeze. by doing the drama practice thing outlined above, i am able to de-sensitise myself to different emotional inputs and am able to get less emotional myself

participating in formal debating in clubs helped me too. i could practice arguing when there were rules to stop it from getting too emotional

again - write down your responses and practice - even to a mirror. then you can launch into a character and that "character" will take the abuse, not you

I just got told off by my personal employment advisor yesterday, and for the rest of the day I was on the verge of tears, and then my auntie came round and said hello, then I burst into tears.

I know everybody's got to be told off at times and that nobody's perfect or does everything perfectly, and I'm not expecting everyone to let me off every time, but that still doesn't change the way I react to it. It's a bit like, loud noises occur and you can't stop some of them but I still can't change the way I react to that either. So it's the same sort of thing as not liking to be told off by someone in authority.


I cry easily anyway, and my mum said it's because I have anxiety and depression issues which has made me very fragile. She also said it's quite normal for people in a very anxious state, Aspie or not. She went through the same thing when she got major depression a few years ago.