How do I fix the relationship with my adviser?

[parakeet]

Hi everyone! Thank you for reading my post.

 

I'm a first year PhD student. Loving and managing well at the academic side of things (meaning classes but also research etc.). But I am having a severe interaction problem with my adviser, which in stressing me out to the point of losing sleep over it. 

I have an established adviser who had successful PhD student for the past 20 years, and has had a good relationship with every single PhD and postdoc she supervised. I do like her both as a researcher and as a person. I have some form of autism, never diagnosed professionally but evident enough to have been pointed out to me in the past. I have A LOT of problems with the dynamics of social interactions, 'subtle' cues (more like: anything which is not stated 100% literally), understanding people's point of view, and on top of that I have really bad anxiety and easy sensory overload.  Till this point in my life this affected me making friends, but not career-related things.

I have been with my adviser for nearly a year, and our interactions have not improved. When I go to the meetings, the results I bring are good, but I am anxious to the point I either can't talk much, or I sound aggressive. Also I never know how to take turns in a conversation, how to end a meeting etc. There have been periods in which I was relaxing more, but what happened was: I can't communicate my thoughts in a way to be understood, so adviser gets frustrated (after a few meetings of this), plus I cannot understand feedback that is being given (or understand at all that some feedback is being given), because the language used by the adviser in order to not be aggressive is not explicit enough for me to understand. After months of me not following the feedback, adviser would get annoyed and ask me why am I not listening to them, and only then I'd understand they were trying to give me feedback. This happened twice, both time I only understood after Months! So after at least 5 meetings of this...

The knowledge that I may be doing something totally off and that I am not going to find out for months, and that at that point my adviser will be already very annoyed for the time wasted, is giving me even worse anxiety. It has gotten to the point that I completely shut down if she's around, while I totally fine talking to the other students. And she is trying very hard to bond with me, she comes and makes jokes and compliments me for stuff, but then she gets more annoyed as I am really unresponsive. Problem: what is going on in my mind when she comes around is trying to think of what is going on, and by the time I would be ready to have a happy response she probably left annoyed that I do not talk to her. 

It is making me very sad that I could be doing fine in my PhD as I am doing well in my research, presentations, classes etc... and yet where the problem arises in pure social interaction... What do I do? Plus, I am afraid the adviser will decide to not supervise me anymore given I am the first person she has problems with.

[fuzzylogician]

Sounds like you need to talk to your advisor explicitly about these communication issues that you are having. She sounds like she is trying to find a way to get through to you and would be open to new things, but you need to help her find ways to make the relationship work. That basically means telling her, or if it's hard to say, then writing out and emailing her (though eventually you'll have to have an in-person conversation), a version of what you said here. You could do it directly with her, or with some mediation (e.g. with the help of your DGS, or someone from the office of disabilities). It would be good if you could provide direct guidance about what works for you and what doesn't, and also some explanation of your behavior and what it means, as opposed to how you think it might be misinterpreted. It sounds like she is generally a good and dedicated advisor, so I'd stop worrying about her dropping you as an advisee, as long as you can communicate that you want the relationship to continue and to find ways of improving it, including how best to give you feedback that you can understand. Her frustration should lessen once she understands why it's been difficult, and in particular once you start actively trying to find ways of fixing it. 

At the same time, it would probably be a good idea to seek help through the office of disabilities at your university. Your anxiety is something that perhaps could be treated, and the communication issues are something that they might be able to help you manage better. It would be good to do this sooner rather than later; academia is a lot about social interactions, not just about pure research. This is also true in many other future careers you might want to have, so you should start thinking about developing strategies for getting yourself understood and dealing with people you have a harder time relating to.

[shadowclaw]

My advice is to have a heart to heart conversation with your advisor about your limitations when it comes to social interactions if you are comfortable with it. My husband has Asperger's syndrome and he comes off as angry and standoffish to others who don't know him well, and he has trouble reading the emotions of others - he usually thinks everyone is annoyed with him, even if they aren't! I think this conversation would help alleviate some of your anxiety as well as let your advisor know that you are not just ignoring his feedback, not following conversations, etc. It would also be a good idea to discuss with your advisor how it would be best to give you feedback or cue you into when it's appropriate to talk during lab meetings. 

Also, I've found that communication with my husband got way better once we had a conversation like this - there were lots of times during our relationship when we had communication issues - him because of his Asperger's and me because of my social anxiety. Working on communication really helped our relationship!

Edited June 2, 2017 by shadowclaw

[dr. t]

4 hours ago, parakeet said:

I do like her both as a researcher and as a person. I have some form of autism, never diagnosed professionally but evident enough to have been pointed out to me in the past. I have A LOT of problems with the dynamics of social interactions, 'subtle' cues (more like: anything which is not stated 100% literally), understanding people's point of view, and on top of that I have really bad anxiety and easy sensory overload.  Till this point in my life this affected me making friends, but not career-related things.

Have you said pretty much exactly this to her?