Networking — it makes me want to die (literally)
A few months ago, I wanted to leave my job.
One of the managers at my workplace — a woman known for having a volatile temper and a way of derailing everyone while they were trying to do their work — had just been on a phone call with me. During the call, she talked over me, constantly had to stop herself from saying the work I was trying to do was “stupid,” and repeatedly insisted that the fact that one of our team members had shared feedback RE: communication improvements meant that he was betraying the agreement they had that he talk with her directly about any issues he had.
I had recorded the entire conversation while on speakerphone, which meant that as it was happening, my partner heard everything. As soon as I hung up, he said what he had just heard was ridiculous and that a manager should never act that way or be so unprofessional. I broke down crying.
While that conversation was happening, I hadn't realized it, but I my nervous system had gone into overdrive. I became hyper-rational and calmly addressed every one of her tirades with the measured tone and strategic word choice of some kind of robotic litigator. I said things like,
“I understand how a betrayal like what you're describing would be really heartbreaking. That would feel awful. Do you not feel that his desire to bring up ways that we could improve is evidence that he believes in the company and wants us to be the best we can be?” To which, of course, she declared that no, of course not. He didn't want the company to be better, he just wanted to cause drama.
My partner said he heard me specifically asking her throughout the conversation to clarify what she was saying. He said I was doing an excellent job of forcing her to double-down on her assertions.
And I realized I was good at this because it's what I had been raised to do. If my dad was in a tirade, the only way through it would be to calmly address the feelings of betrayal that were overwhelming him. The only way to feel safe was to try and de-escalate his anger while validating his emotions. I had years of practice at this.
But I digress.
The point I was getting to was that I wanted to leave my job. If my position was now going to require that I find myself in fight / flight / fawn / freeze, I knew I would have to leave. I knew what years and years of a dysregulated nervous system looked like.
But the problem was that job searching felt hopeless.
Not because I don't have demonstrated skills or experience or because there weren't opportunities out there. But because my non-traditional career path meant that my best hope at finding a good job was through networking.
And networking, for me, feels impossible.
A few years back, when I was running my small business, I took a course on scalable business foundations. It was a good course, and a lot of people I knew had success with it; however, when it came to the part of the course where you have to market your business, I tanked.
The prescribed template advocated by the program was to spend an hour or so reverse engineering social connections and then put time in each day to nurturing those connections. Having conversations. Empathizing. Making friends.
The other people in the course seemed to be unfazed by this. They connected easily with people who would help to promote their business.
But I found myself exhausted, burnt out and buried under a pile of conversations that had dead-ended because I didn't know how to “make friends.” I didn't know how to chit-chat or carry on a “normal” conversation.
The closest I would get would be to comment on something about them that I was genuinely interested in. We would talk eagerly about that thing for a while, and them the conversation seemed to suddenly run dry. I didn't know what to do. We had already talked about the one interesting thing, but now what was I supposed to do — ask about the weather??
I was at a loss.
This, to me, was what all networking felt like. A never-ending series of people ghosting me because I wasn't able to participate in “normal” conversation patterns. Leaving me always exhausted with nothing to show for my efforts.
After realizing I needed to leave my job, I found myself sobbing into my partner's shoulder, telling him I didn't know how I would make it through the networking process. Telling him I'd do anything not to have to go through that again.
I felt desperate, alone, and utterly hopeless.
Everyone around me would say things like, “It's easy, you just go out there and make friends, and then people will think of you when they hear of opportunities that would be good for you.”
But the thing is, no matter what they said, I knew it wasn't easy. Not for me.
Turns out, it was autism.