Long post
I’m a nurse working ER. I’m also introverted and like keeping to myself. I also may be on the spectrum (haven’t been diagnosed, but I find social cues and when people are being sincere, joking or lying very difficult to understand. I understand what people say literally. Why would they otherwise speak?)
I also separate my job from my personal life, as my job is not my identity. I don’t care about my coworkers’ life but ask the ones who know more than me about anything job related, to learn, to be a better nurse, to have more opportunities.
Today I had a conversation with 2 managers where I was fired. Not from the hospital due to my union but from the ER. In a nutshell, as they put it: they (whoever they might be) see that I’m motivated and want to learn but they find my way of speaking demanding.
I have absolutely no idea what they mean. They didn’t provide any example. They however provided an example where somebody claims I told a student to put a line. I never did such a thing, but I have the feeling they don’t believe me. The never put anything on writing, or gave me anything to sign. I won’t be signing anything from them.
Then one of the managers started a monologue about he’s been working 30 years there, that communication is important. True, communication here is extremely relevant, but about procedures, patients and who does what, not about why Americans are idiots or how many children you have, not to the point of ignoring alarms, not to the point where I am the only one entering patient’s data in the computer while my coworkers speak about what to cook for dinner. Oftentimes I was the only one noticing how we’re under supplied or that some ECG cables don’t work while the chatty ones did they thing and ignored I was working while they lazy around.
I didn’t get to say all of this because they interrupted. It’s like they believe the talkative ones over me. Why would I want to work for people like that?
After this both sides talked but didn’t listen to what the other side had to say. I felt they weren’t listening to me. Why should I listen to them?
Before I left I told them I’m looking for a unit where I can learn. That’s ALL I need from the workplace to be better. To them this is not good enough.
To me it looks like this: you don’t mingle with us (us being coworkers and management), therefore you are worse than us and deserve to be ignored, but I’m not at a workplace to socialize, but to learn and to earn money. Am I the only person on earth to think like this? Why can’t people keep their opinions to themselves? I leave them alone and only talk about work. If I have nothing to say, I say nothing and learn. I don’t understand why people are so needy for conversation and thin skinned. I didn’t say this out loud because in my past people have bullied me for being me.
I was also accused of not being polite.
I’ll miss working that ER because in the 8 weeks I was there I learned stuff you don’t learn on other units. To me this unit was a good one because I learned new things and people left me alone during downtime to figure out how procedures and machines work, people didn’t complain when I looked the internet for instruction manuals or asked coworkers if we give sodium bicarbonate by metabolic acidosis or alkalosis. I was an motivated coworker, even when people who were supposed to train me sat and did nothing while I was taking samples. I always asked what I didn’t know.
I’ll also miss working with most doctors, because they were always ready to teach me stuff, so I really don’t understand why managers say my way of speaking is demanding.
My managers don’t see or don’t want to see that people treat you better and forgive your mistakes if you give them attention, if you’re likable. I’m not likable. They also don’t see that they say a lot of stupid crap if a coworker prefers to keep to himself. I also find this sad. I feel they think I’m doing this on purpose.
If you’re an extrovert and have read so far: I don’t think you understand how taxing is to care about things that are simply, irrelevant. It’s like my managers expect me to make theatrics and give attention to everyone I work with. I already did this on a previous job and it was ridiculous: fake smiling to a secretary and asking her stupid stuff for 5 minutes straight, smiling like a clown because otherwise she would feel offended. Why is that my job? Sometimes I work with 8 coworkers. Am I supposed to be a sucker with all of them? I find that childish.
I feel they presented an ultimatum: either give us and coworkers attention or be fired. I didn’t bulge because they didn’t listen.
And I still don’t know if this is a good outcome, because I’m not going to change what I am to conform to some extroverted standards of what a good coworkers is supposed to be, because I can’t and I don’t understand them (extroverts).
I don’t know if this puts me on the spectrum and I find it unfair being treated so differently because I like to keep to myself and learn during downtime.
I’ve always have such issues working for other employers. It’s clear this is who I am and trying to change me it’s like expecting a gay to like women.
But if this means I’m alone in the universe, that I’m always the loner people always talk shit about and marginalize, how am I supposed to live my life and work life then?
ETA: I inquired the union about protections for people on the spectrum and I’m waiting for an answer but even if I get a diagnosis I don’t want to expose myself to more bullying by disclosing it to my employer: the hospital I work at is full of gossips.
So what do I do?
They’re doing you a favor finding you a different position in the hospital. The ER is no place for an autistic introvert. I’ve had something similar happen to me and I was much happier with where I ended up.
The problem here isn’t just your introversion. You see smiling at the receptionist for five minutes a day as an unacceptable working condition; but you need to understand that part of keeping a job you like includes managing your coworkers. Maybe for you that really is unacceptable, but other introverts, myself included, have accepted it as the cost of doing business.
I have myself occasionally had coworkers or other call me rude or condescending, and I’ve never really found a way out from under that when it’s happened. What works better is setting a good first impression, working extra hard the first few weeks to give off an impression of humility, helpfulness, cheerfulness, and kindness. Then later if you do have a bad day, or need to communicate something urgently, or need to correct someone’s mistake, they’ll see that as the exception rather than just “oh that’s how she is”.
The best advice I learned from my manager was 2 parts.
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Try and understand their point of view, you may need to adjust your actions if their point of view is seeing you as not helpful/annoying (looking back i was being very obnoxious, sending too many emails)
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Have a work self and a non work self. I was very shy and that was not looked highly on at my job so I tried my best little by little to open up more
These really helped me in my career.
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From another nurse? Go work night shift rads. Everywhere I’ve worked that nurse works alone or with maybe a transport tech or two. What was your specialty before this? You could always come do Psych with the rest of us freaks but that might not solve the communication issue.
Tbh the bigger issue sounds like you’ve just got a massive stick up your ass. You condescension towards everyday human beings and their interests is palpable in your written communication; I can’t imagine how blatantly it must come across in person. If you can’t learn to see the beauty in everyday human beings that’s fine but ffs why did you pick a human services field then???
I’ve got a pretty strong feeling you’re on the spectrum just based on how you present your story.
The main vibe I’m getting is you aren’t reading the culture of the team correctly and almost no matter what you do, when it comes to any healthcare field you’re going to have to work with a team. If the team doesn’t want to work with you or you’re souring the working culture there, you’re hurting the team’s morale as a whole and that matters more than how awesome your personal performance might be.
It seems you’re pretty intractable on how you want to work and interact with your coworkers. I mean, you’re new to workplace and you’re already looking down on the people who have been working there likely much longer than you have. You would have been better served by starting out with a more humble mindset by finding ways to help and learn from your coworkers to endear them to you rather than assuming they’re just lazy and not worth your time to get along with.
Now, you aren’t obligated to chat with people endlessly but you do have to be polite and nice. If you tire of a conversation, find a good excuse to end a conversation early (bathroom, forgot to do something important, etc). If your coworkers get the impression you are unpleasant, they are much less likely to help you or stand up for you if another coworker makes a complaint about working with you.
Also, how often do you say please and thank you? If it’s less than after almost every interaction with your coworkers, you need to adjust yourself. People that work in the ER get a lot of shit flung at them from patients and the last thing they want is to catch incivility from their coworkers.
Your effectiveness at your job in a team environment isn’t just your skills and competency. A good half of it is how well you interact with your coworkers and how willing they are to work with you.
I’ve got a strong hunch that what happened in your situation is several of your more senior coworkers probably got to talking with each other and realized they all really hate working with you. In fact, they’d rather quit than have to put up with you and they conveyed that thought to management. When management hears they might lose several veterans in a functioning department over a newbie that isn’t quite fitting in, the decision to transfer you out isn’t a particularly hard one to make.
Honestly, you kind of sound like a nightmare to work with right now. If you don’t adjust your way of thinking, you’re likely going to run into the same exact problems no matter what area of the hospital you end up in next.
Trying to get back into the ER now is pretty much a lost cause for you. You’ve likely been branded as toxic to work with by almost everyone there. Just move on to a new environment and do better next time.
Exposure therapy. I worked as a server for years specifically to build the social skills I lacked. People want to chit-chat about mundane nonsense, that’s the norm. We’re the unusual ones for not being interested. It’s trite, pointless, and boring. But most people like it, and don’t like people who can’t at least fake it.
Being able to make small talk is socially as important as basic hygiene. No one wants to associate with someone who looks and smells like they crawled out of a storm drain, and no one wants to associate with someone who ignores or belittles their attempts at small talk.
Purely socially, I say let the boring people filter themselves out of your life. Professionally, you need to have rapport with your coworkers, you are part of a team. If you’re going to work in a field with an implicit social element, you are going to have to learn to navigate that social element. Otherwise you’re going to continue to have these conflicts.
That means finding at least a subset of typical conversational topics to engage with in a friendly way. That means masking with some degree of warmth and compassion. That means reframing the issue from everyone else being banal, to you being unable to integrate with banal people. That’s most people.
It’ll be weird, and you’ll feel fake or inefficient, but unless you want to shift careers to one with minimal interaction with other people, it’s a skill you are going to need to cultivate if you want any kind of success or progression. That’s just the way it is. Adapt or perish.
Reading through the responses, it is blatantly clear that you are autistic, so I’ll ask a question that might not have occurred to you. When someone else is speaking, do you wait for them to finish speaking before you do? Are you aware of the tone of your own voice? Both of these things matter far more for how people will react to the things you say than I think you are aware.
Reading through the responses, it is blatantly clear that you are autistic
would you elaborate?
When someone else is speaking, do you wait for them to finish speaking before you do?
yes. otherwise I’m being rude. Person A speaks, then Person B speaks. I don’t interrupt the person talking to me and don’t allow anyone to interrupt me. If they interrupt me or yell I disengage and walk away. Why yelling?
Are you aware of the tone of your own voice?
I don’t get what you mean. I talk in a clear, loud, neutral voice looking the person I talk to in the eyes, except when I’m busy. I can express questions and exclamations if you mean that. If I’m in dire need of something I yell to the room.
neutral voice
Autism dead ringer. There’s no such thing as a neutral tone, because neurotypical people will experience an involuntary emotional reaction to any piece of speech.
Most likely you’re just speaking in an unusual way and it’s priming your coworkers to dislike you. Unfortunate situation but you gotta lock in if you want people to like you.
What you describe as a neutral tone, most would interpret as a strange but deliberate inflection that they don’t understand the intent of (confusing, scary, hostile).
As to why I think you are autistic; misunderstanding common aphorism, rigid focus on “how things should be”, hard statements attempting to assign intent to actions without mentioning tone. Especially that last bit equating inflection to indicate a question as understanding tone.
I’ll try to clarify. In conversations between non-autistic people, there is an additional layer to the conversation beyond the information in the words themselves and beyond the implications of basic punctuation. Body posture, eye contact, facial expression, volume, and cadence at which you speak all convey both emotions and intent. These things can be observed and interpreted instinctively.
People with autism cannot do this to one degree or another. They absolutely still broadcast these things when they speak, but are largely unaware of it.
Think of it in terms of sound. How could you know if you are whispering or yelling if you are deaf?
Are you doing the emotional equivalent of whispering when you speak? Answering questions with a one word sentence with flat affect. People will change the subject or switch to talking to someone else because they interpret that as you expressing disinterest.
Are you doing the emotional equivalent of yelling your inner feelings with everything word. People will become visibly uncomfortable when you speak and try to get away from you as soon as they can.
When you claim you speak in a “clear, loud, neutral voice” while staring them in the eyes; I believe that you are both clear and loud. I’m not so convinced that you are as neutral as you think.
The reason your co-workers in the Emergency Department babble inane stuff to each other is it is a coping mechanism for all the brutal self destructive shit they see people do to themselves and to each other.
I’ve always have such issues working for other employers.
OP this is a key statement…
It’s like they believe the talkative ones over me. Why would I want to work for people like that?
OP you have had this same problem at other workplaces. You don’t feel a need to change your behavior.
Not wanting to chit chat at work is completely reasonable in some professions, IT, research, laboratory work and so on. ED Nursing is not one of those professions. Nursing is all about executing a care plan as part of a team. Your managers are not believing your co-workers over you, your managers are confirming what you already know about yourself.
If you do have a disability/special needs you need to get that documented and inform your organization so the organization can create a reasonable accommodation.
I think you need to some self evaluation and see if there is a speciality of nursing that has limited contact with people.
I know that there are doctors who spend their days doing nothing but chart reviews. Is that something a nurse can do.
How does a socially inept, introverted person survive at work?
They find a profession that a socially inept introverted person can do.
If you do have a disability/special needs you need to get that documented
I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry with that if you live in the US.
good post.
You say small talk is “irrelevant” to your job, but since you lost that job for not doing it, and it sounds like not for the first time, it is, by definition, extremely relevant.
“I felt they weren’t listening to me.” That is how, by your own admission, you made them feel for 8 weeks. To turn your question around, why should they listen to you?
I understand how you feel. I never understood natural small talk in school, and like you I was ostracized for it.
But the difference is I recognized how important it was to have allies in any environment, and the only way you get them is via socializing.
So I tried, I suffered, I learned and I got better. And that I did that again, and again, and again.
Have you made that effort? You already said you haven’t.
But this episode clearly hurt you, and it’s happened in the past, so don’t you think it’s time to learn?
Einstein once said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
Have you accepted that if you don’t change, these things will happen, again and again, for the rest of your life? If not, you are insane.
You say they are thin skinned, but to a few external observers, this long post also feels that way. Either don’t change and accept the known consequences of your actions without complaint, or adapt.
Of course it’s difficult. But people do difficult things every day. Think of it as a challenge. In addition to asking “do we give sodium bicarbonate by metabolic acidosis or alkalosis?”, also ask “so, have any plans for the weekend?”. And remember both answers, and ask them how whatever they talked about on Monday.
These conversations don’t have to take long, but just engaging for a minute or two will drastically change people’s perceptions of you. Which, considering those people can fire you, is extremely relevant.
Ultimately, your complaint is they don’t care about you. But you admit to not caring about them or their problems either, so I don’t understand why you’d expect a different outcome.
why should they listen to you?
because they’re supposed to be adults and that behavior is something 14 year olds do and I’m too old for that. I really expected adults to separate personal life from work life and not engage in gossip like that. You don’t need to point out how misguided I was and how unrealistic my expectations are.
Sad, but I’ll have to find a job with no politics. I don’t go to work because my life is so empty I need drama or chaos. I want a quiet life.
You state you made an effort to practice this kind of theatrics and somehow mastered it. Don’t you go home back with a headache after playing so much? don’t you have the feeling of wasting your life while you could be learning and becoming a better worker? I mean I simply don’t understand how you have the mental fortitude to listen to that kind of baloney.
Allies at the workplace? hell yeah, give me the mature ones, the adult ones, the ones I can learn from. These are the ones I want to work with.
I don’t find it has to be this black and white either change or accept be forever ostracized. I have to accept what I am and find a job that fits my introverted / autistic personality without too much of a financial penalty.
But you need to understand, they feel the same way about you.
When you ignore them instead of engaging on every topic, they think you are giving them the silent treatment, which is also associated with children
Give you the mature ones you can learn from, you say. Have you engaged those people? People will be more likely to teach you if they like you, and they’ll be more likely to like you if you talk to them.
I’m not saying you’re wrong that it shouldn’t be this way, and I am agreeing with you that a position of like lab/rad tech with less colleagues might be more fitting to your personality.
But I am saying expecting people to care about you, understand you and treat you well, while you make no effort to do the same, is completely naive and hypocritical.
this is an insightful comment:
When you ignore them instead of engaging on every topic, they think you are giving them the silent treatment, which is also associated with children
but they bore me. And engaging EVERY topic?
Give you the mature ones you can learn from, you say. Have you engaged those people?
hell yeah. Up until I was fired I was learning from them.
But I am saying expecting people to care about you, understand you and treat you well, while you make no effort to do the same, is completely naive and hypocritical.
I disagree: to extroverts this comes naturally, effortless whereas I have to consciously engage and listen to a boring story. To me this is like a second job of top of my duties. Not worth it. I don’t want them to treat me well, I want them to treat me professionally.
What also bothers me is the expectation of having to be best buddies with everyone there. I like choosing my friends. I cannot fake.
I appreciate your comments because you seem genuine but this answer is going to be downvoted into oblivion.
As a matter of fact I don’t believe a learning focused person like me, relatively new to the ER, can fake being extroverted. These behaviors slow me down.
but they bore me. And engaging EVERY topic? I disagree: to extroverts this comes naturally, effortless whereas I have to consciously engage and listen to a boring story. To me this is like a second job of top of my duties.
Yes, you will occasionally be bored at work. Yes, socializing is a form of work for us introverts. But what you don’t seem to get is that this isn’t a second job; it’s part of the main job.
Lmfao at your entire personality and all your responses in this thread and you accuse others of being boring. Lady, you are like watching paint dry in human form
but they bore me.
First, it is ok to be bored. Yes, people will blather about stuff you don’t care about. At least you are getting paid to listen in a workplace?
And engaging EVERY topic?
Based on context they were referring to the refusal to engage when they said every. Aka not engaging with any topic.
You should engage with some topics instead of zero topics if you want to get along with people. Yes, it can be a lot of work, but less work as you get more practice.
Also this comment is a big warning that your behavior really is the problem. The managers were not saying you need to be best buds with anyone, just that you need to play along with social dynamics sometimes instead of never.
The managers were not saying you need to be best buds with anyone, just that you need to play along with social dynamics sometimes instead of never.
then we have very different ideas of what is tolerable: to me faking interest is already too much.
I don’t mean that all coworkers/extroverted everywhere are like this, because up until I was fired I was unofficially showing the ropes to a younger coworker who, for whatever reason, chose to trust me. I actually enjoyed talking to her because she was also, work oriented and not gossip oriented. She understood that she was there to work and learn.
I’m going to write what goes through my mind when they waste their breath: first I listen to guess if they talk about something I could relate to but most times it doesn’t so if there’s nothing to do (downtime) I disengage and learn, because I want to be better. When they speak about their stuff, they ignore alarms, patients asking for help and other office jobs and why on earth should I cater to patients when they are like that?
They’re better than me and there’s so much stuff I could learn from them, because up until my firing I was being trained, but they prefer to talk about… unrelated stuff. It’s always me the one who has to inquire about procedures or ECG so they explain something. Most of them are passive.
But this is something management won’t see…
I appreciate your post
If you cannot bring yourself to listen to small talk and engage with people regularly, I don’t think healthcare is the right field for you. I’m fairly introverted myself, but I turn that around to listening more than speaking and responding thoughtfully to the things I hear. I believe that I can speak with some authority on this as I have worked in healthcare (mostly ERs) for years, and I am going to be graduating medical school soon.
I will say this bluntly: as a physician, I would be hesitant to trust a nurse that cannot engage with others. Not only is healthcare a team sport, patient care is 90% social interaction. If I can’t trust you to engage with my patients in a way that is reassuring and comforting to them, I don’t want you involved any more than strictly necessary. The fact that you can’t get along with your coworkers is the canary in the coal mine for how you are likely interacting with patients.
Everything you’re saying should be true, but that’s not how the real world is, unfortunately
I’m discovering this the hard way.
I might come across as abrasive myself in this comment, you are free to completely discard anything I write.
You were fired after only 8 weeks from a position as ER nurse. Aren’t ER nurses quite difficult to find? 8 weeks is a pretty short time. So the managers considered, after such a short time, that it was better to loose you than to keep you. That having you in their team was a negative. And they didn’t warn you, so they thought that either you would not heed the warning or that your behavior was too serious a liability for them that they would skip the warning all together.
Considering this, I would encourage you to find their point of view on the matter. Even if it seems to you that everything was good, did you overlook communication? Did you act as a lone wolf in a team? Did you overlook to show off your own contributions? Each one could have significant ramifications.
The examples you give are quite extreme, did you communicate about them correctly or could you communication look like pointing fingers? Did you follow up on them in the way that is usually used in the team? Did you make an enemy of a key player?
I know work politics can be exhausting. In this direction, I don’t have advice other than learning from every experience.
I didn’t find you abrasive. Abrasive would be to start insulting, writing all caps, insinuating with no facts, ranting… like trump
did you overlook communication? Did you act as a lone wolf in a team? Did you overlook to show off your own contributions?
so it’s not enough doing my job but I actually have to show off like a… show off what I actually do? this is childish (don’t want to start an argument with you, just pointing out this is childish…)
acting as a lone wolf: no more than my coworkers: some coworkers like working all alone, other are more collaborative. The ones that work alone, I leave them alone.
The examples you give are quite extreme, did you communicate about them correctly or could you communication look like pointing fingers? Did you follow up on them in the way that is usually used in the team? Did you make an enemy of a key player?
that I don’t know. I just want a quiet life.
I spent a long time typing up something similar to this, but you’ve done a much better job that I would have.
“Fitting in” is not nothing, even if it seems like bullshit, you can train anybody to do a job but not to be part of a particular team. My old boss used to say he had trouble hiring accountants because so many were quiet and he needed someone who would stand up to him, he was sort of intense and could be intimidating. You do have to “fit” in some way to be a cohesive unit, and I imagine that’s a lot more important in an ER than a back office.
Your post sounds like you are not aware of your own behavior as much as you are aware of everyone else’s. It’s entirely possible this is just a bad fit and you can find a job that suits better (I have always done better in the wild west environment of startup companies than anyplace with politics and bureaucracy) but if the same thing keeps happening, it’s you.
40/60 rule here.
HOW you communicate an issue is more important than what you say. You can be 100% right and if you are abrasive and difficult to deal with, then you won’t get your point across. It’s not about extroversion versus introversion. It’s about how you communicate.
We are dumb primates after all.
40/60 rule here.
I’m sorry but I’m gonna have to ask what you mean: 40% taking 60% giving?, 40% concentrating on my job 60% talking about inane stuff to placate them?
You’ve never heard of 40/60?
40% is the words that are said. 60% is body language and tone.
I am really this disconnected. thanks
The people OP are talking about see direct communication and clarity as abrasive. It is absolutely extroversion vs introversion.
I have worked with plenty of people who all react differently to the same interactions and have the opposite takeaways on whether someone was polite or abrasive. Like one guy I worked with always gave clear answers to things that were asked clearly, but when someone was indirect and wanted the person to infer something any follow up questions (asked directly and without any real emotion) was seen as them refusing to ‘just get it’. That is what these managers sound like. Extroverts who don’t understand that introverts aren’t asshokes for not playing the small talk routine and pretending to be happy about everything.
true, I like getting to the point so nobody wastes energy, but people believe what they want to believe and are really fast making assumptions.
One person’s “getting to the point” is another person’s “stripping away context”, unfortunately. Sometimes we just have to suffer through a long anecdote because the speaker can’t separate the relevant and irrelevant parts themself. They’re not trying to waste our time, they just organize information differently.
I think you are reading the situation accurately and are probably on the spectrum. I also find small talk to be pointless the vast, vast majority of the time and that a lot of people need it to actually see others as people.
Being a blank slate results in people putting their assumptions on you. If you don’t do small talk, or put on a face of enjoyment occasionally, a significant number of people will assume you hate them or are upset about something. Many people find not sharing something to be hiding something, because they were taught by society to not trust people who aren’t open, which isn’t really reliable but that is what it is.
So while I think you are absolutely right, you can either stick to your current approach or fake it like I do. It took a good solid decade of practice to get reasonably good at smalltalk, and I have to fake it most of the time, but occasionally and interesting tidbit comes out and I use those to keep myself going. It also helped with being more expressive with the people I was happy to see, and whike there is a chance that someone will assume that means playing favorites it is still better than when I was extremely formal and kept entirely to myself.
Managers tend to be extroverts because extroverts like working with multiple people. So figuring out how to navigate social settings like work in a way that kind of fits in will absolutely improve your experience in the social setting, like any other work related skill. Some of us just have to work at it harder than others if we want to be socially successful.
Side note: A lot of people are extremely indirect in their communication for a variety of reasons, from trauma to just really wanting to see if the other person can infer what they are implying. This is extremely frustrating when one needs a clear answer, and people that can’t be clear and direct when the situation requires it are the absolute worst.
Extroverts rule the world, we just live in it. If we don’t learn how to act at least a little bit like them they’ll always think we’re strange and unlikeable. The good news is that the more you practice the more natural and less taxing it gets.
It’s okay to take up space.
I have felt similar ways at times earlier in my career, finding gossip and ‘social grooming’ taxing.
The only way I found that I could move past it was to stop resenting the effort they were demanding. It was just acceptance of the reality of getting by in a world full of people with different needs.
I just want to learn, too. I found a way to expand my universe of learning interests to include figuring out what makes different people happy at work and in life.
It’s just practical to accept social reality. Other people have resources you need and they can block your progress in this world. Or they can support it.
It turns out that I like people and learning to understand them. Hell yes they are a lot of work. I have learned a lot about myself in the process and the world seems much less alien and frightening than it did when I was withdrawing.
