Hi everybody,
I need an advice to cope with a particular situation at work, because it affects the way I work / focus and I am getting seriously depressed. It would be great to get concrete advice from people who suffer from selective mustism, but also from people who don't but have some understanding about the condition. In my current surrounding, nobody understands the condition and it is difficult for me to talk about it.
I am currently working in a team in which people are friendly and quite supportive. My boss also knows about it, however he sometimes behaves in a way that shows that he doesn't understand what it is (although he is generally supportive).
I am not able to communicate with my boss at all because the only times I meet him in is in settings that make me uncomfortable. This has affected my performance at work very negatively, though I never got blamed for it. So for the first time in my life, I felt that I was accepted and that I would be able to improve.
The problem is that it's been like this for a few months already (almost half a year). During the first months, my boss and some other people were wupportive and encouraging, but at that time, I didn't manage to respond positively. I noted their efforts ad it helped, but I was never able to communicate this. So I think that people got tired of it, and accepted that I will never talk to them.
The problem is now that that's how they act: they behave as if I will never talk. This means that the door that was once open for me to participate is now closed. I am accepted, but I won't be offered any opportunity to interact, because I have declined all those possibilities in the past. And now that I am a bit more ready to be a part of something, it feels like nobody will let me in any longer, and I will remain excluded anyway.
I have improved to the extent that I will interact if someone gives me the possibility, but not to the extent that I can create the possibility myself. I am not there yet. I have noticed this recently, and this has made me very depressed so that I have almost stopped working, because I am actually too depressed. An example of this is that the whole team went for a drink the other day. I was sitting between my boss and the only person in the team I manage to talk to (that I consider as a friend).
So I talked only to my friend first because it felt safe, waiting until I would be a bit more drunk to talk to other people. At some point, my friend talked to another guy and I couldn't hear their conversation, and then I realised that my boss had turned his back to me to talk to the other guys. So I couldn't join any conversation. So I was sitting alone with my beer, and no one even talked to me for at least 20 minutes. I knew that nobody would try, because now I just became the one who doesn't talk and that's what is expected from me. That made me so sad and I felt so excluded. Everybody was laughing and having fun, and nobody even thought I would want to be a part of it. The worst was that they were talking about my part of the world at some point, and at another time, they were talking about something I had been doing with another guy. But nobody turned towards me to include me, even though they were talking about stuff clearly relating to me. I didn't know what to do, though I really wanted to join. But I left and went back home, because it was so painful.
Also, recently I proposed some ideas to my boss by talking to him. This was awkward, but I did it. He said he'd send me some stuff to read and I would also send him some more stuff related to that. So I was pretty happy about that, but when I sent the stuff, he never got back to me and never sent what he said he would. This shouldn't matter, but it's jsut that I made this effort to talk and propose someting, and it took me so much energy and courage, and I got no response at all.
This kind of things has started to happen recently. Still a month ago, I would have been given the opportunity to talk, even though I wouldn't necessarily take it. But it felt safe to know that the possibility was there. And now that I feel a bit safer, all of this is gone and it feels like I'm condemned to stay outside forever. They still invite me to events and stuff, but that doesn't mean that they will talk to me I guess. I will go because I also want to be a part of the team, but now it became harder, and this is due to my own behaviour, I am the one that caused it. So there is nobody else to blame but myself and I don't know how to change this.
Anyway, I was wondering how to get out of this. There are 2 ways: either my situation improves and I can get a lot better, both for my performance at work and my mood. Or I remain stuck in myself, in which case I am not sure that I will be able to continue working at all. I have no idea about how to handle this. And I was wondering if any of this would make sense if I would explain it to them or to my boss, if that would be a good idea or if that would be seen as a spoiled kid complaining to get attention. Basically I would like to explain my behaviour and say that I didn't mean to reject people when they attempted to talk to me in the past, and that I still need to be offered the opportunity to interact even though I might not take it, or even though it might be awkward at the beginning. and I might also want to explain why it is important for me to get replies when I propose an idea (even though I didn't always replied in the past, but now I got better at it). Basically it feels like they have made efforts to help me, but now that the efforts could start paying, they are letting me down and I don't want this to happen, although I understand perfectly that they got bored/tired of it. But I am not sure that they can understand my perspecive.
So if there are people who don't suffer from selective mutism here, does this story make sense to you and could you understand it? What can I say to make it understandable to others and is it a good idea to talk about it?
And is there anybody suffering from selective mutism who has been through something similar, and how did you deal with it?
Sorry for the long explanations!