Published on 12, July, 2020
my daughter is in her early 30's and I am sure that she has ASD. As a child she seemed so normal and sociable but gradually as an adult she has developed more and more traits of the autism that her brother has been diagnosed with. Recently she seems to have lost all the joy in her life -she goes to work during the week and the rest of the time she lives in her room and does not interact with anyone. Over the years I have tried to help her and have persuaded her to go to the GP but all they do is prescribe anti depressants and tell her to contact I talk. I think she needs more specialised help but don't know where to go or how to persuade her to seek that help. Sometimes I feel at the end of my tether as she shows no signs of ever moving out or being independent and she seems to have become increasingly hostile towards me despite my efforts to help her.
In your post you say that you are worried your daughter will never move out and become independent. As an autistic women work has been absolute torture for me and when working even 4 days a week left me no time to socialise as I've been worn out and needed my evenings and weekends to recover. If you are clear on your feelings about this to your daughter as you are on here, when its clear she's struggling so much with work and what this takes away from her, maybe this is where your daughters hostilities are coming from. As you say you want to help her but then you also want her to focus on something that is damaging to her, you behaviour could come across as very conflicting for your daughter making it difficult for her to trust you.
Like qwerty has said rather than focusing on the label it may be best to focus on the. issues and strategies for overcoming this, For example, if work is the issue as someone with a long term MH condition your daughter could apply for PIP and use this money to reduce her hours. She could also apply for an A2W assessment to explore if any RA at work may help.