Does anyone else feel that they will never succeed

It’s fear, not reality 

I think Autism causes the conviction  that what one is frightened of must be true.  

Irrationality which seems anti-literal: 

no sensory evidence required

fear = sufficient proof 

this is part of the ‘disordered’ aspect of Autism, treating fear as if it is all-knowing 

This is a beautiful reply and very true. I think it is helpful to redefine 'success'. I'm not really there yet as I tend to feel like a failure a lot of the time. I think getting very focused on the negative makes it hard to see the success. 

Maybe just need a change of scenery mate. I was the same, stuck in a rut and felt like I was failing at everything. Was miserable, unhappy and felt I would never succeed. Had a few too many drinks one night, booked a flight out of my town to another Australian city. Decided (once I'd sobered up) to just go for it. Things certainly aren't perfect for me yet, but my mental state is now positive and things are improving (lost 6kg just from the reduced stress).

You'll get there, just keep your chin up and you'll find some positives!

I am 52 and have only felt like this is in the last 2 years. I only found out about ASD 2 years ago, before that I just struggled through, my parents never let me be anything but 'normal'. I have a wife, mortgage, and only been unemployed for two short periods in the 1990's. I am now lucky that in a few years I can semi retire and just get a min wage job somewhere which will help my mental health massivley.

It could be that you are trying too hard and being too tough on yourself? I think we all have to learn to be ok with who we are, accept that and work around it. How old are you?

It is what it is

After all what matters is the journey itself

bravely facing unknown

staring into the infinity

forget about the start

it's to crowdy to attract

My son says this a lot - even though he’s still very young and I feel it’s such a shame to feel like that when you’ve barely got started on life. I’ve felt this way too - as has my husband (who is more ‘mildly’ autistic but has many autistic traits. Being autistic can make it hard to be successful in the conventional sense of the word - the career and materialistic sense of the word. But there are myriad different ways to make a contribution to society and to the world. For example a care worker isn’t paid much, and not as highly valued by society as they should be - but a care worker can transform people’s life by being kind, thoughtful and caring. There’s so many ways that we can make an important contribution - even just by being kind to others rather than exploiting and being mean to people. The Dalai Lama says it’s valuable to do good deeds if you can do that - but that if you’re not in a position to do that you can make an important contribution to the world by just not doing any harm. So even that way we can do good - just by what we are NOT doing. 
we shouldn’t be so harsh on ourselves and think of ourselves as failures. Being autistic does often make life more difficult in many ways - we shouldn’t blame ourselves for finding life difficult. It is difficult - and it takes courage to face difficulty. We might not all be massively thriving but we are trying our best  most of the time - we should give ourselves credit for that. It’s hard but we don’t give up - we keep trying to make our lives better in every way we can. 

I feel like this a lot, even when things are going somewhat better, like at the moment.  But we can't know what the future will bring.

Yes I feel this all the time. I'm not successful at anything really. No friends, no job, no skills as such. Just a long list of failures trailing behind me the last 25 years. It's so depressing.

10 more years without and I might feel the same

To be honest, I no longer care about success. 

All I can do is the next right thing. 

Abbie said:

many of them underestimate how difficult it really is

indeed

it's infuriating, when they tell you ''take it easy'', 

but I know how success tastes, and I long for it, to feel it again

so

don't give up

make a new plan

and counterplan

and longerterm backup plan

All the time

I do, I'm terrified that I'm never going to be able to hold down a job, if I can even get so far as a successful interview again. I'm trying to just accept it and get on with my life in my own way, but there's a lot of pressure coming from other people about it. I think many of them underestimate how difficult it really is.