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Help with Autistic Husband

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I really need some help. My husband has just been diagnosed with Autism and his symptoms have skyrocketed. He's always found socialising and being in busy environments difficult but since his diagnosis he can't cope with them at all. I've done some research and it sounds like a lot of people experience this. I just don't know how to help him, I'm so overwhelmed. I absolutely understand that it isn't his fault, it's just very hard for me to cope with too. It's awful seeing him struggle with being out the house and seeing people including his family. 

Does anyone have any advice at all? He's starting to know when he's doing too much and he's been more vocal when he doesn't want to go out and that's working much better. I just don't know how else to help him. I've realised that I overwhelm him sometimes by making too many suggestions so I've really tried to dial that down and that seems to be working better too. What else can I do? Any advice would be so appreciated, or just people saying they're going through it too would be such a relief. Thank you x

Parents

  • Oh how distressing for you both Cry. Im a late diagnosed woman now aged 68, fortunately I was just starting out on the relationship with the woman who subsequently became my wife when I had the assessment so she had no comparison between pre dx me and post. The same happened to me as your husband, Id functioned (if you discount the suicide attempts!) reasonably well in society, had had a fulfilling and successful working life, had some friends, a house I owned and some family. But something I still don’t truly understand happened after, well at actually, the results session - I suddenly felt a curtain raise, the darkness lift and understood why so many of the things which had happened to me had. 


    I felt empowered and with an agency Id rarely experienced, but it made me very unpredictable, I had these adult meltdowns in supermarkets which no one understood or probably hardly ever saw, I stood up to authority with a force which has led to great personal distress, I let everyone know rather loudly what I think about everything and that too had all sorts of consequences both bad and good.

    Now four years on with my wife’s help Im much calmer, less unpredictable, more able to not immediately blurt out opinions. The relevance for you will be how my wife helped me -

    So she researched in depth everything about autism and trauma (we knew I had ptsd too), bought books for our home on these subjects, crucially though she really listened, didn’t tell me what to do or what would help, rather fed crumbs of useful information for me to reason out the why and how to come to a healthier mental health. I had been trained as a scientist so she understood that for me to take onboard new data and come to a new result I had to have autonomy to research and experiment (all this in hindsight but its what I think happened). Where she did always intervene was when I put myself and/or ourselves in danger, mainly in public but at home too. An example of the public being when after the dx I became publicly very angry at the beggars at the supermarket doorways in our town and let everyone know LOUDLY, and an in home example being that I don’t know where our stash 30/500 of co-codamol painkillers are now  yet they can be strangely accessible when needed.

    She is incredible but its not been without cost to herself, she is having therapy, not specifically about my impact on her but about struggling to cope herself with the pressures she is under on numerous fronts, and although its not said one of those is me  

    I hope some of this helps a little, 

    best wishes 

    Alice 

Reply

  • Oh how distressing for you both Cry. Im a late diagnosed woman now aged 68, fortunately I was just starting out on the relationship with the woman who subsequently became my wife when I had the assessment so she had no comparison between pre dx me and post. The same happened to me as your husband, Id functioned (if you discount the suicide attempts!) reasonably well in society, had had a fulfilling and successful working life, had some friends, a house I owned and some family. But something I still don’t truly understand happened after, well at actually, the results session - I suddenly felt a curtain raise, the darkness lift and understood why so many of the things which had happened to me had. 


    I felt empowered and with an agency Id rarely experienced, but it made me very unpredictable, I had these adult meltdowns in supermarkets which no one understood or probably hardly ever saw, I stood up to authority with a force which has led to great personal distress, I let everyone know rather loudly what I think about everything and that too had all sorts of consequences both bad and good.

    Now four years on with my wife’s help Im much calmer, less unpredictable, more able to not immediately blurt out opinions. The relevance for you will be how my wife helped me -

    So she researched in depth everything about autism and trauma (we knew I had ptsd too), bought books for our home on these subjects, crucially though she really listened, didn’t tell me what to do or what would help, rather fed crumbs of useful information for me to reason out the why and how to come to a healthier mental health. I had been trained as a scientist so she understood that for me to take onboard new data and come to a new result I had to have autonomy to research and experiment (all this in hindsight but its what I think happened). Where she did always intervene was when I put myself and/or ourselves in danger, mainly in public but at home too. An example of the public being when after the dx I became publicly very angry at the beggars at the supermarket doorways in our town and let everyone know LOUDLY, and an in home example being that I don’t know where our stash 30/500 of co-codamol painkillers are now  yet they can be strangely accessible when needed.

    She is incredible but its not been without cost to herself, she is having therapy, not specifically about my impact on her but about struggling to cope herself with the pressures she is under on numerous fronts, and although its not said one of those is me  

    I hope some of this helps a little, 

    best wishes 

    Alice 

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