I need some opinions from fellow ASD ladies...
Hi guys
My career has been under threat for a few months now. Essentially it comes down to a bunch of people not understanding me, and assuming that having a suicide attempt makes me dangerous.
I have been asked by my legal team to consider submitting all my personal journals since I finished highschool into the evidence pile for a massive court case regarding my career.
The idea is that they want to show people what I have lived through and how I have felt about things that have happened.
Of course, like most people I wasn't ever thinking my journals would be used a evidence in a court case EVER when I wrote them. While there is nothing incrimnating in them, it is still handing over some of my innermost thoughts to a bunch of people who haven't been even half decent.
My career means more to me than any invasion of my personal privacy. My career is directly related to my special interest and I have fought everything to get to where I am.
I am thinking I will allow the journals to be submitted, but would apprecaite any advice. Basically these people are going to be hearing the innermost pains of an underdiagnosed (when I wrote the journals) and misunderstood young girl with Asperger's Sydrome.
The journals record so many things that are so personal.
THoughts....
I never thought I would be asked to do this. I feel like I am laying down in front of them and saying "free hits - here's how you hurt me most".
:(
Jeez, Patch, both those options suck
. Only you can choose which is worse. Personally, I would never hand over my journals. The worst case scenario seems to me to be: you hand over your journals, and lose anyway.
Well - I dropped in the first volume for the viewing of the legal team yesterday.
OMG I was so nervous about handing over a personal journal. At least this one only covered 6 months of my life early last year.
It was so hard handing it over I don't know if I can bring myself to give them any other volumes.
Sigh - so over this legal case and reading lots of people's opinions about me when most of them hardly know me.
It's like people forget I'm a person and forget my difficulties have never ever affected my work performance. They all feel the need to act like I am so much more incompetent then I actually am. So pissed off about it all.
They are suggesting I should have to tell everyone I work with all my medical conditions. Massive human rights issue there! People don't need to know all of that about me if it doesn't affect my performance at work.
I'm so angry about it all.
I just want to tell them all to fuck off and leave me alone, because they're totally not treating me like a human being.
I don't even want to engage in medical treatment anymore because I get no privacy at all.
This is a situation that really sucks. I keep journals too, but there is no way i could ever let anyone else read them. I intend to destroy them before i die, to prevent just this. I wouldn't hand them over, but then i am not you, and can't make your decisions for you.The only thing i do know is, if i was in the situation where i was forced to hand over journals, i would clam up and just stop writing them. Or destroy everything as soon as i'd written it. It would totally screw me up.
I think they are very mean, the way they are treating you. Why should you have to tell everyone all your medical problems? Isn't there some law about privacy, or discrimination on the basis of health, or something, where you live? There are laws pretty much like that, here in NZ.
Wow... it sounds like you're going through a really, really rough time there.
I'm not familiar with your story, so I apologise if my thoughts are completely irrelevant, but it seems to me that the answer lies here:
"My career means more to me than any invasion of my personal privacy."
If this is a choice between career and privacy, and career means more (to you) than privacy, then giving up your journals is the lesser of the two evils.
Not that it isn't terrible beyond words that you should even have to make such a choice. I really feel for you. I couldn't imagine being in that position. I hope it all works out.
Best wishes.
"You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same."
Temple Grandin thinks in pictures. I think in music videos. :)