neurodiversitysci:

My graduate adviser gave me the best, least painful, constructive criticism I have ever received. Whenever she needed to tell me to do something differently, she would start by saying, “a lot of grad students have problems with this…” 

That calmed me and helped me fully process what she was about to say. It normalized whatever mistake I was making. It helped me realize that it wasn’t going to jeopardize my acceptance in the lab, my university, or academia. 

Most of all, I think it was her way of telling me, “I don’t want you to think of this as a disability thing that makes you different and less than everyone else. I don’t want you to spiral into feeling like you’re not good enough and you don’t belong here. I want you to learn from the mistake without feeling bad about yourself.” That was probably what helped most–knowing she cared enough, and understood me well enough, to say that.

This was the first time anyone had actually responded in a helpful way to my deep spirals of self-hatred and frustration in response to criticism. I still don’t understand how she knew. She’d known me for less than a year when she started communicating this way, and had never actually seen most of the symptoms.  Yet she intuited a way to help me get past what people now call “rejection sensitive dysphoria” or “RSD.” And I will never forget it.

I hope someday to offer similarly sensitive constructive criticism to other people. 

In the meantime, I try to say it to myself. When I drop a plate or glass and spill the contents all over the floor. When I say the wrong word in a sentence, or can’t remember the right one. When I show up late. Whenever I do some annoying disability-related thing. 

Maybe saying it to yourself will help you, too: “Remember, you’re not the only one. A lot of people are working on this.”

8/16/18