I apologize compulsively at work and this thread is making me feel some type of way. Seems like everyone must hate me for it based on this thread I guess. It’s like I’m in an unwinnable scenario of bothering people if I fuck up and bothering people if I apologize about it. So then what?

Anecdotally, I have seen a case of “stem cells tourism” where the patient traveled to a foreign country to get stem cells injected into their spine. Can’t remember why they paid for this treatment. When they came back to their home country they started developing multiple spinal tumors due to the injections…causing significant morbidity. It honestly sounded like a horrifying case. Apparently this is not unheard of. I work in healthcare, but do not have a direct patient care facing role, so unfortunately I do not know what ended up happening to the patient.

Yes, they accuse me of “overthinking” things a lot in general. But they don’t realize that I have to do this in order to try to do things more correctly. Lack of enough thought is what gets me into these kinds of situations, you know?

I’m definitely not imagining most of these. If everyone is happily smiling and chatting away, and then I make a mistake which causes a sudden change in facial expression, curt response, and the sudden end of a flowing conversation, then it’s not my imagination.

Coworker 3 is the most lenient/forgiving of them, but issues still arise with them too.

No, I don’t currently pause between each sentence. Usually conversation flows quite smoothly. But it flows until I make a grave error and then it shuts down catastrophically. My question was saying “how can I think before I speak” because pausing after each sentence would be incredibly jarring and not work with conversational flow if that makes sense.

Coworker 3 has occasionally asked that out of genuine concern when I have been having a bad time. But it’s a trick question because I’m not supposed to respond that I am having a bad time. It is the incorrect response and will make them upset, even if they tell me that I can be honest. It’s very confusing because coworker 3 will occasionally tell me that it’s ok to come to them with things, but the reality is that isn’t true. If I do that, it makes them upset. So one of the biggest things is that I have worked to not tell coworker 3 when something is bothering me and not share feelings like this with them. But it is confusing when they do things that indicate that it’s ok and welcomed for me to do so when it isn’t. They say one thing but I am supposed to act in a way that is discordant with what they indicate, which is confusing.

And sometimes coworker 3 likes to discuss serious topics. So I sometimes accidentally say something about the topic with too much emotion in my voice or something or the wrong statement in general and then I fuck up the whole thing.

I get that I am truly a horrible person, truly. I struggle with that every day. I did try to apologize to my coworker in that instance, but they were not at all receptive to it. Usually the things that I say that get reactions like that are much more innocuous…like letting coworker 2 know that they can leave early (we are salaried and still get a full days pay if we leave early). Or apologizing to coworker 2 that I was freaking out about a work related task simply because I was anxious about it.

But no, coworker 1 is on a level that is difficult for me to describe. Coworker 1 causes issues with almost everyone they come in contact with including the leaders of many different departments. It has been so bad with coworker 1 that they have made me think that I was going to get fired and/or made me want to quit my job. Coworker 1 has had multiple complaints filed against them to HR by multiple different people. To my knowledge, that has not occurred on my end at all.

So coworker 1 is a bit dangerous to interact with, hence many of us do so minimally.

I can’t tell if this is sarcastic or genuine.

I apologize if anything came off as sarcastic! I am being very serious in my questions. I don’t really understand how any of this works. I have been reading the replies but it’s tricky to respond to them all.

With the friend thing, there are a lot of philosophies people have about work. Some people believe I shouldn’t speak and should only work all day, while others seem to prefer to chat once in a while. For me, it’s difficult for me to know the most correct way to act in terms of these two philosophies. It seems like a lot of society would like the former…that I should speak minimally and just do my work. I struggle with the former philosophy because you spend most of your waking hours working, so I would like to get some enjoyment out of it. But that is wrong, no? I am supposed to hate my job and just be a good worker bee, no? It’s tricky because humans are social creatures but I know I’m not supposed to feed my needs like that.

And like the person who I had considered to be a friend. They have a busy life outside of work so it’s wrong to bother them, correct?

The person who I had considered to be a friend sometimes likes to talk about serious topics. But I am not really sure what to do when that comes up because I at times give the wrong answers. I know a lot about their beliefs. We have different ones and usually that’s perfectly ok and I we don’t really argue or anything. But sometimes I still do it wrong or say something with too much emotion in my voice or something.

If someone is full of shit at work, I’d just nod and smile. Unless there’s something to be gained by calling them out, I’d just note that they are uninformed on that topic and move on.

They weren’t actually full of shit…they are just super fit and don’t realize that they are a bit outside the norm.

So one of the things I’ve noticed is that I slipped up like this because it was in the middle of a flowing conversation. I didn’t stop to realize that I was about to say the wrong thing because we were having a lot of back and forth lighthearted chatting. That’s why I’ve brought up this topic to begin with tbh. If I am not in a flowing conversation, it’s easier for me to pause and think before a response. When I am in a conversation I fuck up. I don’t know anyone who pauses between each sentence even utilizing this “think before you speak” attitude, so I’d like to find out how to implement it in a better way. Idk.

I do appreciate your time.

Oh God…how can I possibly hope to think of every single permutation of conversation??? It sounds like I would be thinking about conversations indefinitely if I did that. Any tips???

No, I am not in the Midwest. I did have a therapist ask me once if I was neurodivergent and I said no. I don’t think I fall in line with anything like autism or anything like that. I do struggle with human interaction but everything else about me seems pretty “neurotypical”. Even in conversation, I actually am able to carry on normally and understand a lot of social cues, I think, as well as I have the ability for eye contact when I am not anxious. I struggle a bit with anxiety and told someone that I struggle sometimes to order food at places because of that. That person told me “that’s weird because you seem totally normal” in a non sarcastic way. It made me feel good actually lol and like I’m very normal passing haha.

They just get upset with me if I do that unfortunately. I’m never supposed to talk to them about things when I make them upset.

Well yeah so I kind of wrote the post in a detached manner because I am trying to mechanically optimize conversation. Doing things organically doesn’t work out for me even though my heart is in the right place and I just want to get along with people and for us to be happy.

I’m 30. People telling me that things will work out once you get to know people better do not at all understand that I have spent many many years doing this and yet I still fail horribly multiple times per week. I’m not some teen with a still developing brain. This is the way I am and I want to figure out how to improve and be more correct in my interactions. If it hasn’t organically happened in 30 years, it’s not going to organically happen now. So I need a different approach. Getting to know people and your heart being in the right place aren’t the magic solution for me.

I have just never been skilled in that manner. So I would like to try to break it down into a more logical way where I could actually work on it. All too often I get frustrated that no one has written a guidebook on every facet of human interaction.

Yeah with coworker 1 I try to interact minimally with. It works out ok. So I mostly talk to coworkers 2 and 3 but I still tuck up with them all the time.

Nah, coworker 4 isn’t anxious. She just wants us to work as quickly as possible so she can leave as quickly as possible. I don’t talk to her much either tbh. It can be a bit frustrating when she sometimes gets upset when I am chatting with a different coworker (because she wants me to shut up and not talk to anyone at all).

I mean, forgive me for not explaining every detail of all of my coworkers lives in this thread. The post is already stupidly long and I was trying to get to the meat and potatoes of it for those that might be able to help.

I know some of them quite well and I am constantly learning new things about them. I can speak organically with most of them (except coworker 4), and often do so at length with coworkers 2 and 3. But my mistakes are still frequent enough and significant enough that it causes major problems. I am constantly learning what not do to, but there are seemingly infinite permutations of conversation and infinite ways things can and do go wrong, even when I find some of the patterns.

I had my bouts where I tried a lot of therapy. Therapists weren’t overly helpful to me but were good at quickly draining my bank account. Many of them would say “oh there’s nothing wrong if you do XYZ in a social context” and I would try to explain why it is wrong, similar to how I’ve demonstrated to you guys.

No, I fuck up even in small talk. For example, we were talking about supplements and exercising one day.

Coworker 2: Yeah, running a 10 minute mile is easy. Anyone can do it.

Me (a slow runner): What??? Idk dude that is kind of hard for me.

Coworker 2: Well for some people walking is healthier than running!

Me: What??? Ok sure, Coworker 2

Coworker 2: (angrily shuts down and refuses to say anything else to me for several hours even after I apologize)

Coworker 2 being angry with me was one thing. But I felt bad because coworker 3 was also chatting and it meant that they no longer got to speak either because coworker 2 was so mad.

Small talk with coworker 1 doesn’t work at all because they will randomly randomly act condescending to you when you make a joke or say something that doesn’t land exactly with them. It’s a bit demoralizing so I try to interact with coworker 1 the least.

I don’t outright tell coworkers 1 and 2 that I am anxious. But I will sometimes obsess over certain work things that I am anxious about and they get wise to it and get upset with me…even if what I am specifically doing to them is apologizing for acting weird because I was simply anxious.

I had considered coworker 3 to be my friend a bit tbh. But that is not supposed to be the case, right? We are not supposed to be friends or anything. I am supposed to find friends elsewhere and not think of them that way, right?

If people want to discuss serious topics with me then I’m just not supposed to contribute, right??

Wut

I get to cut up human organs for a living. Whenever something is removed during surgery, it comes to me. It can be mundane but there are fun and interesting things too. The job is very hands on.

No, I’m not a surgeon. You wouldn’t want me to attempt to perform surgery on you. I’m not a physician of any kind.

Why don’t you talk to him about it? You guys are both obviously close already.

I will say…it’s ok if you don’t want to identify as gay or bisexual. But you clearly like doing these things with him already. I’m not saying that this means you should start identifying a different way than you want to. But what I am saying is that maybe you might like doing that with him as well. And it would be ok if you ended up liking it. It would also be ok if you didn’t end up liking it. Everyone is different.

But yeah I think you should have a conversation about it.

I just end up with water droplet “stains” on my lenses like that, obscruing my lenses until I physically wipe them with something.

There is a nerve that runs along that part of your elbow called the ulnar nerve. It gives sensation to your pinkie finger and a part of your ring finger. It runs along the “backside” of your elbow. So bashing your elbow in that area sometimes compresses your nerve there and causes pain/weird sensations in that area. You’re directly smashing/compressing the nerve when that happens.

The sensations to the rest of your fingers are from different nerves. One of the other main ones is called the median nerve. It does run along your arm as well, but in a pathway that is not as exposed at the elbow like your ulnar nerve is. It runs along your “elbow pit” area, so bashing your elbow doesn’t affect it at all.

But the median nerve is commonly compressed at the wrist. This happens in carpal tunnel syndrome, where you can get pain/tingling/weird sensations in your remaining fingers.

Other nerves can be compressed in other ways, but the above two are probably among the most common.

Check out this image of what nerve supplies sensations in any given area of the arm/hand:

https://m.instantanatomy.net/diagrams/arm061.png

Here is an image that shows where the main nerves run along the elbow. This view is looking at the “elbow pit” head on. The backside of the elbow is essentially behind this image if that makes sense.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/93de5fe2-a798-435e-beff-fbc42897d839.png

Anatomy stuff is pretty cool, imo. I guess I’m a bit of a dork for stuff like that.

I think it’s both an anxiety thing and a privacy thing. I also am afraid of something sounding “weird” or not socially acceptable or for someone to judge me for something. And other things just seem to be personal, like things that I like and enjoy. An example is that any one person won’t feel the same type of deep feelings I do for a song I like, and vice versa that I won’t for theirs.

Why do you think this is an ADHD thing?

I am embarrassed by nearly everything for sort of unknown reasons.

Sometimes people ask me what I had for lunch in order to make casual conversation and I have a hard time responding.

Even today, my coworker told me some theory she has on a show we were watching and I wasn’t able to really respond much, despite being able to endlessly talk about shows via text with strangers online.