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Excessive need to talk things through - advice?

NAS84381

Hi I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to handle a situation. 

An autistic person I know needs to talk things through excessively when things go wrong in their life and I am the person who primarily looks out for them. 

This can be things related to work or family.

Often this can be talking for multiple hours (sometimes 6 hours +) and the topic will discussed over and over. I myself have a lifelong illness which is progressively getting worse. 

The need to talk for hours is exceptionally draining to the point where it impacts my health. 

I can't try to stop the talking as then the person will get agitated and it will most of the time lead to a violent meltdown as they feel they are not being heard.

This will be despite listening for hours at a time and trying to give input to what is troubling them. 

I want to help this person and I want to listen to their troubles however it is starting to have a big impact on me. 

Does anyone have any advice on how to make this better while still giving the listening support that's clearly needed by the autistic person in my life?

Thank you

Parents

  • TBH that's equally prevalent in people with generalised anxiety, it's just that anxiety is common in autists so you get a lot of overlap.
    My advice is for the first half or if it's gonna be a shorter one to nod along and remember you aren't actually required to input much, it's just wanting the occasional bit of acknowledgement that we're offloading, my other half does this now because he's realised I'm actually therapising myself when I do this. And if it's gonna go on for more than an hour or two say to your autist friend that this is the sort of thing best served by a journal because it's too difficult for you to keep track f every point after a while anyway. I assume this person knows of spoon theory? Maybe you can set limits based on that.

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  • TBH that's equally prevalent in people with generalised anxiety, it's just that anxiety is common in autists so you get a lot of overlap.
    My advice is for the first half or if it's gonna be a shorter one to nod along and remember you aren't actually required to input much, it's just wanting the occasional bit of acknowledgement that we're offloading, my other half does this now because he's realised I'm actually therapising myself when I do this. And if it's gonna go on for more than an hour or two say to your autist friend that this is the sort of thing best served by a journal because it's too difficult for you to keep track f every point after a while anyway. I assume this person knows of spoon theory? Maybe you can set limits based on that.

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