how do I grow a thicker skin and change my reactions to adversity?

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Promotion in America is not often skill based. It's how popular and how much someone can "fake" it. From my experience, if your not extremely outgoing and look like you know anything and everything, promote is hard.

Why most bosses are completely useless and don't understand anything.

Yes there's some exceptions but from my experience it's often times that.

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I’m sorry about the painful coworkers and the outright rejection. It sounds painful and frustrating.

You can’t magically change your thoughts, but you can change your relationship with them. I’d argue the single easiest, low-risk thing that you can do with the most positive impact is doing the Healthy Minds program or something like it. It will teach you to relate to your thoughts in a healthy way, as well as develop better ways of relating with other people and with your everyday actions, including your work.

The broader issue could be one of management, and you could check out the management or Agile literature to learn if that is the case. It sounds like your office doesn’t have good psychological safety, which is well documented to be associated with a sense of purpose and satisfaction in workers, higher productivity, and less defects. There could also be other systemic problems that are hard to pinpoint without understanding the enterprise or team dynamic.

However, regardless of the external reality, you’ll be well served by learning to better relate to your thoughts, your work, and the people around you. Again, I believe it’s the single easiest and lowest-risk thing with the most assured positive impact that you can do right now.

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Always remember only work for how much pay and benefits you get. Never go beyond as companies will exploit you without promotion or raise.

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Wish I could help. I can commiserate though. 10 years in the same position without a promotion. Can't get the benefits I've built up elsewhere, feel trapped in a gilded cage.

You are more than your job though, and if other people are assholes, knowingly or not, that doesn't reflect on your worth in any way. It only underscores the fact you don't jive with those kind of people. I'd consider that an accolade of sorts.

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Exposure therapy can be quite powerful. Let yourself feel upset: don't be ashamed that your emotions lash out. Let yourself feel, then remind yourself how things aren't as bad as they feel. Feeling and introspecting rather than suppressing in the face of pain is emotional weight lifting.

There will be times when you lack the emotional strength to exercise, and that's ok too. Everything in life ebbs and flows, and you can slowly make meaningful progress toward deeper happiness by taking advantage of the flows while showing yourself grace for your human imperfections when things ebb.

A major pillar of self improvement it seems we share is letting go of the expectation that everyone will like you. It's just as likely to be someone else's problems that lead them to not gel with you as it is to be your own problems. You have just as much a right to be imperfect as they do, but no amount of self-improvement can change other people's problems. At any given moment, the world simply is as it is and you can only make choices to navigate the future as best as you are able.

Finding controlled ways to put yourself in a bit of emotional peril can be helpful, like creating a throwaway to try and ernestly engage in a new online community. Put that mask out there as your avatar, knowing that you can always discard it when it ceases to be useful.

At a more advanced level you might go try participating in some public in-person activity, knowing you can exit that community at any time and return to your solitude. Even if in the worst case scenario they did come to 'hate' you, that ceases to matter once you leave them behind. They'll forget you long before you forget them.

Let yourself feel the despair of failure, and then let yourself see how those feelings do nothing to stop you from living and growing. In fact, growing is ultimately impossible without failure. Focus on your successes, and let your past failures be signposts of your improvement.

Of course none of this is easy, but this is a journey that spans your whole life whether you want it to or not. Every time you gather the strength to engage thoughtfully with it (as you have here!), you plant seeds that you will someday get to enjoy the fruits of.

Support structures are key; DM me if you'd ever like to engage more directly in a dialog.

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Get enough sleep and take care of yourself.

Everything is easier after that.

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Your reading of that rejection is spot on! It was immature and unprofessional. You might ask yourself if you wish to remain in such an environment.

To your question;
Consider the duck...
Imagine the droplets of water on it's back as troubles and difficult situations it's carrying. Then watch as the droplets slip right off.

These situations are not reflections of you, they're just situations in which you happen to be immersed.

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So, to be clear this was an application to move to another part of the same company?

I don't know you, but being thin skinned isn't a trait I associate with any form of autism, so I wouldn't worry about that specifically. Misinterpreting things is a bigger possibility - it could just be that the new boss doesn't want big personnel changes right as he's getting his footing. (Would you?)

Except that I don’t know how to deal with it. And I don’t want to deal with it, because it is unfair that what others think and talk about you makes your career more difficult.

Speaking for myself, once I've understood the situation, gamed out every option and picked the one that's best, I find a kind of peace - even if that option is really, really demeaning and hard. I hope you can find something like that too.

A reminder that "dealing with it" doesn't just mean stoicism. Now, I don't have all the details here, and I only have your side of the story, but you can still set boundaries with neurotypical people. If you're successful, you almost by definition are going to have options. Do you want to quit? Maybe even pursue a different career path? Or, is continuing as normal the best option?

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most people understand and accept others' social orientation

You probably aren't an introvert, because that's honestly far from a "most people" thing

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My personal target is 105% of the performing mark, when I'm in a churn and earn job somewhere that I don't want to promote.

That wiggle room is enough to keep me above the performing mark if there are any productivity impactors outside of my control that my company refuses to adjust for (that has happened to me in jobs before), and it also keeps me off of bottom-performer lists when layoffs roll through. And it's barely more than the bare minimum. Win / win / win.

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You want ceramic plates, not steel. Steel plates are cheap, but they can throw slag when hit. Not good for you or nearby friendlies.

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Stoicism in the Marcus Aurelius sense has some value here. There are things you can change and things that you can't. Recognize the difference. It might mean recognizing you get upset about the things you can't change, but as a framework it puts a lot into perspective

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With an attitude like that you are overperforming by 105%

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You seem to be ready for either mindfulness meditation or Stoic philosophy. Neither one provides a quick fix, but the benefits accumulate over time.

I'm sorry that you're going through this. I wish you peace.

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Very eloquently put. Thanks for sharing your insights.

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i'm on the spectrum too and one of the things that life has taught me the hard way is not to take life advice from neurotypicals; it's not that they're wrong or malicious, it's only that they don't have a life that's anything like yours so their advice usually doesn't work or it's not applicable.

neurodivergence requires you to build your own mechanisms for handling the shit life throws at you and it also guarantees that you'll fail more often than not if you don't get professionally trained help; what you're feeling will keep happening until you do get that help.

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He's a new manager working through a merger. He may be friendly and approachable, but he's got a lot on his plate.

He asked everyone to stay in their position. you applied for a new position. In his eyes, what kind of impression might you have made? Now he may still be friendly and approachable. More than likely, he saw it and said, "I don't have time for this."

If you want a change and need to do it through your manager, figure out what his problems are and if you can be helpful. If not, just do your job well. Then when the difficulties of the merger have balanced out, you may have space to ask again.

During a merger, things are complicated and messy. He has pressures that you may not be aware of. Advancing in your workplace often requires soft skills. They may seem mercurial and difficult, but it's just a set of skills.

As for thicker skin, first feel what is happening. Don't try to change it or wish it different. Gather data about how your emotional mind works and work with what it is and not what everyone says it should be.

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Walk barefoot in the woods and take up guitar.

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it also guarantees that you’ll fail more often than not if you don’t get professionally trained help

would you DM me to explain what kind of help you got and how it helped?

If you're talking about masking, isn't it hard? like constantly being on edge pretending to be something you're not, faking being what extroverted neurotypicals want you to be.

At the workplace it would mean working 200%: doing my job and then constantly placating them. Who does that?

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masking is an extremely common coping technique that neurodivergents teach themselves and, yes, also exhausting. (and i would dm' but i don't mind sharing it here).

i've gotten several forms of help; but the most useful was talk therapy. i had to try with multiple different psychologists until i learned that they're not all the same and all of them are human beings with their own human foibles; so you'll have to actively listen and analyze your therapist as much as they're training to analyze you. the worst help i got were from psychiatrists who focused on pushed medications that were mere bandages for the problems i had.

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how do I grow a thicker skin and change my reactions to adversity?