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Autistic husband won't eat or speak

kassandra

Hi!

I'm together with a man with Asperger's syndrome for 3 years, and he's only self-diagnosed about 6 months ago. Usually he's really good in caring for himself, only needs reminders to drink or eat occasionally.

We moved overseas 3 months ago which he coped with relatively well, but now we're about to move again in two weeks. He hasn't eaten anything in about 48 hours, I could only made him drink a cup of tea. He is not talking to anyone and won't leave the room. When I try to talk to him, he's only nodding. Yesterday I tried to leave him be, in hoping he will feel better soon (he has his nonverbal periods but usually last for a few hours only). Today I tried to force him to eat something, since I'm getting worried, but to no avail.

We're new in the country so I don't know where to turn to.

What should I do?

Thank you in advance!

  • in reply to kassandra

    You're welcome - but talking to him won't really work - the stress of feeling the need to reply to you instantly will mean he will either hide some more or he'll get angry and seem unreasonable/argumentative.

    Send him pictures and maps and all the information as you would to a child - and just put simple food/snacks right in front of him - no-thinking, favourite bite-size treats that he might eat with a beer - don't say anything - the effort of a meal will be too many variable.

    Send him details of the local shops, where the car parks are - basically do all the local knowledge things for him so he can build a workable model of the new place.

    The stress of the possibility of it all going wrong is crippling.    Like triggering 1000% fight or flight!

  • in reply to Plastic

    Thank you so much for your reply!

    He's watching videos on his phone all day. Today I went away to see other family members, and when I texted him, he replied, so what you're saying, communicating via e-mail/text is the solution.

    Well, moving is not going as smoothly as I wanted it to be, and I'm stressed out too, so probably that doesn't help as well. But I'll try talking through it like you said. Maybe it would help if I would show him photos of the apartment, and tell him exactly how will the moving go.

    Thank you again, you helped a lot!

  • Sounds like he's totally overloaded and locked up with stress - what is he doing all day?   Is he on a computer or watching tv?     You could try e-mailing him - if he's locked up so he can't speak, he might be able to process his words into a written reply because he's not under the immediate stress of speaking back to you.

    The stress is usually caused by too many unknowns causing too much over-processing worrying about things going wrong.    How many of the unknowns can you solve with alternate strategies?      Things like "if x, y or z goes wrong, then we just do this instead......".

    Moving house is meant to be as stressful as losing a loved one - how is the move progressing?