That no matter how kind or accommodating you are, you can’t make everyone like you or understand you, or even treat you with basic respect.
Some people are just never going to be willing to work with you or have a civil conversation once they decide they don’t like you.
I can forgive and forget so much… even after years of verbal and psychological abuse I’m willing to let it go and work with them to at least be civil. Why can’t some people move past one disagreement? I just dont understand. That is still a hard pill to swallow.
Yep. I’ve definitely been way too patient with some people in hopes that they’d be willing to try and understand me. Sometimes way more than they’ve demonstrated they’d be willing to even try.
My father, for instance, refuses to sit down and have a single conversation with me about my being trans. I came out to him a year ago at this point and we have seen each other maybe three times, for family events. He hasn’t seen me at all since I started passing to random strangers in public, and has sent me a photo of myself pretransition several times because he’d rather mourn me while I’m still alive than know who I really am.
The man could be the exhibit of a master class in emotional avoidance and redirection, and yet my instinct is to preserve the relationship. To try over and over to talk to him and set the simple boundary of “fucking talk to me” when he asks about seeing his grandchild… And keep trying to make something work instead of just being ok with non contact.
That really sucks, I’m sorry.
Your body will keep changing in ways you definitely don’t want while you fret about making the changes you might actually want.
That you can’t heal someone who is mentally ill with the power of love (even if you try so hard you almost destroy yourself).
Oh yeah, I can feel this one in my bones :-/
certified grade A hard to swallow pill…
Same with alcoholics & drug addicts 😢
i get a compounded pill with finasteride, minoxidil, and some supplements for hair growth. theyre like molded pills without any special coating. theyre so dry theyll just stick to my tongue and throat if i dont swallow them right. there was a few times i almost choked on them when i first got them. those are some hard pills to swallow.
All pills are hard to swallow for me, I have to take them with water.
Is it that common to take pills without water? I always thought that was the exception.
same sometimes the water isnt even enough and the pill gets stuck somewhere anyway
I have a drinking problem and end up often drinking the water and not the pill so I have to try again.
thats the worst it happens to me sometimes too. what helps me is literally tilting my head back when i swallow so the pill gets pushed into my throat by gravity. are you tongue tied at all? i am some and ive heard it can cause issues with swallowing.
Literal hard pill to swallow lmao amazing and also sorry
oohh we have never had those but we have been provided with some really big antibiotic pills in the past by the hospital that are basically the same kind of annoying as you describe (and not great for other reasons mainly involving forming tolerance to antibiotics). happy you’ve got the hang of it though :)
/vent
I’ve had an odd career that’s bounced back and forth between industry and academia/teaching. I did an undergrad and master’s in engineering, then worked in industry for a few years. I then went into teaching, working as a lecturer for a few years teaching undergrad engineering courses. I chased that dream for several years before it died. Thankfully I landed on my feet, got a great paying industry job - that I quit after less than a year.
I finally went and got some professional help starting earlier this year, got diagnosed AuDHD by two different clinicians. And while it explains a lot, it doesn’t make it any easier.
I have had seven engineering office jobs, and they’ve all resulted in burnout within a month to two years. I start each with the full intention of doing well. I convince myself it’s the right thing to do, a great opportunity, and something I really want. I have an initial climb in performance as I climb the learning curve. But eventually things lose their novelty. It’s hard to stay focused on work I ultimately don’t care about, and it’s impossible for me to get real motivation out of the goal of just hitting a quarterly profit goal.
The only use for my engineering background I’ve ever found that I can actually sustain is teaching. And it’s something I truly love and enjoy. The nice defined semester schedule. Working with actual human beings means real motivation from real deadlines and real consequences. When I have a class of students to teach, I have a class of students to teach!
Years ago I had sworn I would never return to industry. I didn’t have ADHD in mind yet, I just thought there was something in my personality that made office work difficult. And starting the PhD was ultimately with the goal of staying in academia and building a teaching career there. But ultimately the same issues tanked the PhD. I did great in the coursework, loved the hand-on lab work. But I just couldn’t engage with the literature at a deep enough level for long enough to really make progress on it. I banged my head against the door of academia for seven years before finally walking away. I still have a standing offer for a teaching position at the university I used to teach at. But…the wicked laws of evil men have since made it unsafe to live in that state. And really just due to demographics, most of the full time engineering teaching roles that will accept only a master’s are in red states. And hiring committees don’t look kindly on having not finished a PhD, even if a PhD isn’t required for the position. I took my latest industry job for want of anything else to do, and that’s now over too.
So what’s the hard pill to swallow? That I am fundamentally, neurologically incompatible with the vast majority of the positions in a field I have spent 20 years in. My childhood dream of being some great engineer building incredible things I could be proud of is dead. And the one application of my skills that I was truly good at? That door was shut by some bastard politicians.
At this point, I’m just exhausted. My heart’s broken too many times. I’m just done with office work at this point. I’m just done. I’ve burned out in seven different positions. Everything you can think of to try, I’ve tried. I’m not looking for another engineering job right now. I’m getting ready to just wash my hands of the entire discipline. I’m working on getting my substitute teaching license. I plan on working as a substitute teacher and itinerant tutor in the coming school year. And if I vibe well with K12, I’ll likely pursue a career shift to high school math or science teaching.
oof this feels like a vision from my future. im only 6 years into my engineering career and my last job i managed to stay at for almost 4 years before i got so burned out i literally couldnt stand to be there for one more minute and just got up and left one day, never to return. ive been interviewing but i get this vibe from every company that gives me ptsd flashbacks and i dont know if i can convince myself to work at one of them. i suspect theyre catching on to my lack of enthusiasm to some extent so i havent gotten an offer, which is its own kind of stress.
the worst part is that i love the actual day to day work of being an engineer figuring stuff out and solving problems, and im good at it, but i struggle to deal with the social stuff. management in particular seems to just create problems and stress that get in the way of the work and make everything harder. and the stupid pointless meetings that waste time and force context switching that makes keeping up with the work even more stressful. im holding out hope ill find something thats sustainable at least, but its a distant hope.
For me it was the work itself that also was the problem. I love engineering. That’s what’s so tragic about it. I love engineering as a discipline or academic subject. But put me in front of a computer and ask me to do the same type of work for 40+ hours a week? I break.
Don’t be afraid to seek outside help or to consider wildly different career options. If you can do the work just fine, maybe you should look into finding a way to exercise your skills as an independent consultant. Don’t work for anyone. Just take on work and do it.
But yeah, I totally get just wandering off. At this last job, I initially quit after three days. My partner and our real need for the money at the time was enough motivation for me to give it another go, and the company was willing to work with me. But in my heart, I knew where this was headed from day one.
After about 8 months, I reached a breaking point and requested to go on unpaid leave. I took two months, worked with a therapist in the meantime, and got on some medication. I spent my time pouring myself into my hobbies, hoping to reset the burnout.
Last week I went back, and I quit after three days. When I finally got back into the work for real, nothing had changed. It emotionally felt exactly the same. (And that was enough to have me curled up into a ball, rocking myself though a panic attack at my desk.)
There might still be a way to make it work for me. Maybe on the right medication and therapy I could find a way to make it work.
But frankly, I just don’t want to anymore. I’m tired of the pain. I’ve built up so much emotional scar tissue relating to office work. I’m just done.
I’m just going to do teaching now in whatever form I can. Maybe someday I find a way back to an engineering classroom. Maybe I just be a career tutor. Maybe I become a high school math teacher. I don’t know. All I know is if I keep doing this to myself, I’m going to end up on a bridge somewhere. It’s gotten that bad.
yeah… i had recurring thoughts about the roof of my apartment building for a long time before i quit and a while after. im doing much better now since ive been focusing on spending time with friends, building community, and transitioning more. im hoping i can continue that after i get a new job and that it will make it bearable.
Yeah. It really builds on you. I go through this downward spiral where it’s like:
Poor ability to focus -> depression and frustration -> emotional pain leads to more inability to focus.
I basically end up Pavloving myself into avoiding the work. I get to a point where even looking at it just creates intense emotional pain. When I get to that point, I can’t even engage with it. When I’m at that point? You could take away every single distraction from me. Take my phone away. Give me a locked-down computer with no access to the net. Lock me alone in a room with absolutely nothing other than what is required to do the job. Even that would not be enough. When I’m that broken on a job, when it’s reached that level of pain? Put me in the perfect distraction-free environment, and I would just end up staring at the wall for hours disassociating.
While the ADHD distractability is always the immediate problem at a job, the emotional pain and avoidance is the real long-term killer. If it were just distractability, maybe I could reach some stable but modest level of performance. Maybe I could just accept that I would always be a fairly modest engineer, just be content with being fairly low on the totem pole. And if it were just distractability, I could do that. But the emotional side causes things to build. To the point where engaging with the work feels like PTSD.
It also doesn’t help that the emotional toll from one job carries over into the next. At the start of my career I could at least start a job fresh, with complete optimism that it’s going to work out. After burning out at seven industry jobs, that’s just not possible anymore. From day one I immediately start recognizing the patterns. From day one I can see things that will likely grow to kill the job. If I could reliably get 2-4 years out of a job before burnout, that would be manageable. I could make a viable but modest career that way.
But because of the carry-over of the emotional pain from job to job, the time to burnout has been declining over they years. Right out of college I could manage two years at a job. Now I can’t even make six months of reliably solid perfomance. And what’s worse, this has prevented me from ever moving beyond the introductory career level. I’ve had an active EIT status for 17 years at this point. I’ve cumulatively had more than enough years to qualify for a PE, and I’m sure I could study for and do well on the test. But that would be pointless. In order to apply for a PE, you have to provide positive recommendations documenting a certain number of years of successful work history in industry. And I essentially have zero positive industry references. I have glowing teaching references, but zero industry ones. At this point I can only really get hired at places that don’t ask for references or don’t check the ones you do provide. And in my field (civil/structural), the PE is a really big deal.
And yeah, I get the mention of the roof. When I start consistently having thoughts like that in relation to a job, that’s usually the point where I quit. (If I haven’t been fired already.) I reach a point where I start legitimately fearing for my personal safety. And that’s usually enough for me to get over my hopeless optimism and finally admit to myself that a job isn’t viable.
I feel this hard. I do a spectacular job for about two years, then I just… stop. Teaching is also great, and academia is too much freedom/self direction for me.
if you’re interested in suggestions
It sounds like you’re open to relocating generally, what about abroad? A masters degree in engineering and a willingness to teach would qualify you for teaching certification courses and then teaching high school math or physics in a lot of places.
Even if you don’t speak another language, you could teach at a bilingual or international school in many places in Europe (after getting certified, but that often doesn’t take longer than a year, and it’s a bunch of brand new information, so it’s good for my ADHD brain).
If you’re worried about distance from family and loved ones, maybe look at Canada, though I can’t speak to the teaching qualification process.
Teaching abroad is tempting, and if I could give advice to my younger self, I might encourage her to take that path. But for a variety of reasons, it’s not viable. First, don’t imagine my life as a total basket case. I’m not on the edge of homelessness or something. We’re very far from that. I’ve been fortunate enough that while I do burn out from positions, I’ve been able to bring in enough money to keep a roof over my head. It’s taken a lot of work, but I’ve been able to plan around career instability:
Long description of a life planning around AuDHD career instability:
spoiler
Even before I got the AuDHD diagnosis, I was already anticipating career instability due to me being trans. And entirely self-financing a transition in the years right out of college also did wonders to instill frugality in me.
One thing I got under control early was housing costs. I got on the property ladder early, as soon as I possibly could. Just to get out of renting, in 2012, I bought a three-bedroom townhouse in a rough neighborhood of a big city, in a weird development that was half built due to its builder going bankrupt in the housing collapse. But I bought a three bedroom townhouse for $92k. For just $3k down, I got out of renting. And that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. It gave me stability. I lived in one bedroom and rented out the other two. That brought in enough to cover the modest mortgage. Eventually I moved in my boyfriend (now husband), and while I didn’t ask enough from him to cover the whole mortgage, it still brought a lot of stability.
Beyond that, I’ve always tried to work multiple jobs, to have multiple independent income streams. My usual side hustle is private tutoring. Back when I transitioned (2011-2014), insurance didn’t pay for anything. I had to fund about $60k in early 2010s dollars worth of medical care out of pocket. And tutoring paid for a lot of that. At my peak, I was essentially working two full time jobs, doing engineering work by day, and tutoring work at night.
And beyond that, I’ve tried to live as frugally as I can. When I was working on the PhD, we went down to a single-car household. I sold my car to fund the move across the country. My husband worked remote from home, and I just took a bike or bus to campus. Even today I get most of my furniture from Craigslist. And I’ve done many other things that most folks would consider unusual for someone of my education and background to do, in order to save money.
Stability and concurrent obligations that come with a long-term partner:
spoiler
And beyond even what I’ve personally done to try and maintain stability, I’m fortunate enough to have a strong backstop in my spouse. He’s fortunate enough to have a stable and well-paying career. And while he may also have some ADHD or AuDHD type tendencies, at least with him it’s never been bad enough to actually affect his career. He has a great job as a software engineer. Hell, we could survive just fine on his income. My desire to work is ultimately about a combination of a sense of personal worth and accomplishment, and a desire to be fair to him. (Plus as a backstop in case his industry is disrupted.) He didn’t sign up to be a caregiver. Sure, we swore “in sickness and in health.” If I ended up bedridden from some affliction, it would be perfectly fair for me to not work. But as long as I am still capable of performing some useful work, our partnership at the very least requires me to do whatever I can to contribute however I can to the household. He didn’t marry a dependent. We actually entered the marriage with equal net worth and fully merged our finances. We are a unit; what’s mine is yours, yours is mine. That gives me incredible safety and security, but it also means I have obligations to my partner. I’ll never earn as much as he does, and we’re both fine with that. It’s just not fair to him for me to be sitting around doing nothing all day when there are still rewarding types of work I can do.
Other factors making relocation difficult:
spoiler
So, my point being, I’m actually doing a lot better than you’re probably imagining. We’re not DINKS, but maybe 1.5INCS. No kids and 1.5 reliable incomes. Combine that with frugality on both our parts and good financial sense, and we’ve done quite well. We’re closer to early retirement than ending up on the street. For this last engineering job, we relocated cities. And that represented a huge investment. Finding a new home, moving an entire house’s full of stuff, getting the old place ready for sale, and outfitting the new home? It’s been an immense investment of time and money. My partner is the green thumb and we set up a great garden for him. I’m really into woodworking and built a dream workshop. We’ve put down roots here, and I’ve gotten heavily involved in trans activism in the area.
In short, we are really not looking to move again any time soon. I need to find a way to make a living where I am. (Or, how I’m really describing it to people, “earn a non-trivial portion of the household income.” That will bring fairness for my partner, provide a backstop in case his coding specialty is made obsolete, and provide me protection in case something god forbid where to happen to him.
That’s why I’m looking into K12 teaching. I can jump into substitute teaching right where I am, right as I am, right now. The only requirement to be a substitute teacher in my state is to have a bachelors degree and a clean criminal record. (Thankfully I’ve avoided any trouble with the law.) I’ve never worked in a K12 classroom. But I have taught extensively at the undergraduate level, and I have 20 years of experience tutoring K12 students. In the past, I had always focused on university teaching. I like that you get more academic freedom at the collegiate level, and dealing with things like parent-teacher conferences does sound like a PITA. And being trans in teaching is a bit riskier at the K12 than the university level. But at this point, I’m just tired of describing my teaching in the past tense. I want to get back into a classroom however I can.
Thankfully there is a pretty easy ramp. My local district always has needs for substitutes. You sign up for short 1-10 day jobs one at a time, but you could easily make a full-time job out of it. Doing that every day of the school year would only pay $50k without benefits, less than half of what I was making in industry, but that still is a non-trivial portion of our household income. And if I like that, they frequently hire people on for full-time but temporary positions (like covering for maternity leave.) And those positions pay actual proper teacher’s salaries with benefits. I think if I was a regular teacher in the district I would make $65k-75k starting (depending on how they count my prior work experience), plus great benefits. That’s not as good as the $125k I made at my last engineering job, but good enough. I’m not trying to get rich. I’m actually pretty modest in my wants and desires. I just want enough to provide peace and stability.
Hell, even while teaching undergrad, that’s all I really wanted. I was perfectly happy with the modest salary from being a full-time lecturer. I also totally get the idea that academia has too few constraints. Teaching is great - you have a clear body of work you must teach students, and then you can practice creativity within those constraints. But research? Trying to justify one particular research path over the infinite number of possibilities just breaks me.
In my head, the way I think of it is, I’m a performer that needs a stage to dance upon. I paradoxically need both freedom and structure. I need to be able to practice creative freedom, but I also need a structure to scaffold that. Restraints breed creativity.
Anyway, sorry this turned into such a brain dump. There’s obviously a lot going through my head right now. In short, while teaching abroad is very tempting (especially with how the US is with trans rights,) we really can’t relocate at this time. We just moved cities. And any international relocation would involve moving myself, a husband, two cats, and a big house full of stuff. And we already relocated across the country once for reasons of my career. Where we are is where we are. For good or for ill, this is where we make our stand.
The hardest pill I’ve had to swallow is that I’ll never have a normal and healthy relationship with my family.
My mom is late in life self diagnosed autistic (I 100% agree with this assessment) and she has a lot of difficulty regulating her emotions. When she’s very upset, she says some really terrible things to me like saying I’m not her daughter over small things. But she cannot bring herself to admit wrongdoing. I’ve asked countless times for her to just say she’s sorry, only to be met with a laundry list of minor offenses that I need to apologize for, which I have over and over and over again. Nothing I’ve done is on the level of like saying I’m not her daughter though.
I’ve tried to get in contact with my younger sibling only to be ignored for over 12 years. I was in a near fatal crash and I tried to reconnect, I sent weekly messages on multiple platforms for 6 months only to be met with silence. Until sibling asked me to move them across the country to live with me when they hadn’t had a job in 5+ years. When they asked, I was still going through a lot of medical stuff and going to a church for free food because my disability check was barely enough to pay bills and not enough to feed me. But when I asked why they never replied to my multiple attempts, sibling just said “I don’t do small talk”. Sibling does not understand why that upset me so much but, ya know, it’s not like their older sister almost died or was in a coma or anything. I’m just supposed to bend over backwards for everyone.
My dad is dead. No call. No notice he was sick. Nothing for 25+ years. Just a cousin who saw post by his second wife on Facebook and I was informed by other family. But at least he remembered to assign 10% of his life insurance policy to me. Because that makes up for abandoning your children, replacing them with your affair partners kids, and not reaching out to your own children for decades.
I’m still in contact with a few cousins, aunts, and my uncle. Not much, but some texts and calls here and there. I’ll be seeing them next week when I go back for a visit.
Family can fucking suck sometimes.
I’m still in contact with a few cousins, aunts, and my uncle. Not much, but some texts and calls here and there. I’ll be seeing them next week when I go back for a visit.
Family can fucking suck sometimes.
My relationship with my entire family is very similar, if for different reasons. It is a hard pill to swallow.
Family can be the absolute worst sometimes and I’m sorry you have to shoulder that.
I found my people after I moved across the country and I hope you have too. It’s still super frustrating 🫂
That I will always be faced with some degree gender related prejudice or problems while working and it will sometimes come from unexpected places. I work in a male dominated field and most guys are fine. Others are not. Sometimes the fine guys aren’t even noticing their behaviour. Sometimes (somehow oftentimes) the other women are the shittiest. Had a hard time accepting how adults can and will treat other adults.
I’m endlessly frustrated that so many historical societies had a better understanding of sex, gender, and social gender roles than the majority of the current world.
All pills, my body refuses to swallow any pills. You name the method to try and swallow them and I have tried it, and it doesn’t work for me. So i have to either get the liquid version (if it exists) or chew it. Either way it’s absolutely disgusting for most medicine. Estradiol just tastes sweet though so it was a nice surprise.
What sorta E tablets you taking?
If they look like this:
Then you should look into sublingual, you might be better off dissolving it under your tounge instead of chewing and swallowing.
More potent, and easier on your liver too.
This is what I take and I do take it sublingually, but I have tasted it before cause I was curious.
I’ve only taken them sublingually and I do get a little of the taste. I like it its a bit sweet and chalky. Got some strange looks when I described a wine as having notes of estradiol.
we have genetic chronic back pain and the only way to approach it really is to stay healthy. and it will still almost certainly be a problem later on. hoping medicine and stuff has advanced a bit more by the time we are older :)
