So, I want to salvage this, in case any lurking would-be paramedics are out there.
Anxiety to the point of being declared a disability isn't something I am intimately familiar with, but disabilities can be overcome. Every one of us has worries and anxieties. Did I make the right decision on a call? Did I make things worse for my patient? Is my job at risk if I make a decision that pushes the limits of the company, the culture or the protocols? Did I work enough hours this month to pay all of my bills? (and that's just the tip of the Concerns Iceberg).
The world will not adapt to accommodate your whims and wishes, so if you want to function in emergency services in any capacity, you need to realize this and adapt to the world. No one cares if you are anxious, a social outcast, race/religion/orientation/creed/gender/origin/age/veteran/whatever, depressed or whatever when it is time to work. Not your patients, not their families, not your coworkers or employers or anyone else. This is reality, and your emotions and personality need to be adapted to function in reality. If you can't do that, emergency medical services is not right for you. That is not to say that you cannot be successful, welcome or anything else in EMS- plenty of us do work with these conditions, and we adapt to function with them. But
@LifeOfAMedicStudent's approach and perception as he has crafted it is not something that you want to emulate and be successful in
anything. So don't do that.
Perception is reality, and you craft how you are perceived.
Now, Asperger's, that I am familiar with. I have Asperger's, a moderate case. In my case, it causes moderate social anxiety and causes difficulty in picking up social cues. It has gotten better as I have aged, but it is still a challenge at times. Things like dating, making friends, etc were harder for me than many others, and I still have a very small network of real friends and a wider network I keep at arm's length as acquaintances.
Some people claim that Asperger's is a disability.
It is not. Asperger's is something that you can make up your mind to function around professionally. There is nothing saying that you need to be friends, that you need to hook up or goof off with or do anything other than
work professionally with your coworkers. Some might call this boring, authoritarian and conformist, but having anxiety or Asperger's in the workplace is as easy as saying "I am going to show up, be a professional, and do what is expected of me to the best of my ability, without unnecessary distractions and without creating trouble or drama for anyone else." That dry, calm senior paramedic everyone looks at as the Rock of the Marne? They might be the most anxious person in the room, but they have
decided that they are going to be perceived as a cool head. That young, smart hotshot who always has a smile on and is friendly, sociable and polite to everyone might be the definition of Asperger's. Once again, it is how we have constructed our personas, not who we actually are underneath.
One last thought- as an industry, we interact a
lot with populations who have real or imagined disabilities and receive money and benefits for those disabilities from local, state and federal sources. Without casting judgement on anyone, stepping into a field dominated by hard-working, independent-minded, earned-this-by-the-sweat-of-my-brow-and-long-nights-of-studying assertive personalities who literally make their livings placing themselves in risky, adrenaline-soaked hard circumstances with lives sometimes on the line and declaring that
they and the world they work in needs to change to accommodate vaguely-defined "anxieties", excuse inappropriate behavior and bad choices, and justify special treatment is not going to be terribly successful. If one chooses to allow their 'disability' to define them as disabled, then they need to realize that the real world is not a college campus, a social-justice what-if or even fair and that one of the consequences of allowing an invisible disability to define you is being affected by that definition.
Rocket out.
