Help with adult AS boy

Although I'm thinking back more than forty years I can still remember my feelings at the time, pretty demoralised. And I was being told all the time I was lazy, everything was down to me and I wasn't trying. Of course I didn't have a diagnosis.

On the spectrum you process issues over and over that NTs would quickly set aside and forget. It leads to huge "armories" of complicatedly reinforced negativity that can no longer be unravelled. You end up as an excuse rather than someone with excuses. You can have no idea of the long term damage being done at this moment in time - a young adult with severe negativity and poor self esteem, even if things get better, will take years to sort out and forget.

I know my difficulties in my teens and early twenties were still ruling my life in my forties, because I couldn't resolve them and felt so low about them, and really it was only the diagnosis that enabled me to offload a huge amount of unproductive personal "baggage". 

So if I could implore you on your son's behalf try not to reinforce the negativity. You can get addicted to people telling you you're not trying. That's one reason why the bullies have so much fun with people on the spectrum, they agree with the insults. You're going to have to work hard at giving him positive messages.

The other thing I remember is that, while I resented being told things were down to me and it was my fault things had worked out the way they had, in the end it came down to my making a decision to sort things out. It has to come from your son.

So his confidence and self esteem need all the boosting he can get.

The problem is that negative reinforcement, and his depressed state, is taking up all the productive space in his head. So there isn't room in there to step back and rationalise, weigh up priorities, think outside the box, see new ways forward.

So you may have to do some job market research yourself, and feed the information to him discretely, so it doesn't come over as his failure.

A lot of the problem during a recession is too many people after the same jobs. There are often new avenues out there that just need pioneers. People on the spectrum are sometimes surprisingly good at that, partly because they aren't dependent on social acceptance and following the pack.

I've never been able to do what I wanted work wise (yeah I know aint we all in that boat!), but in the end I had to make compromises. Sometimes the compromises are quite weird.

Granted when I did find secure employment it was after getting a PhD but for the first 12 years I was working as a systems engineer in Research and Development. Now I've no engineering qualifications, and engineering is really fussy about that. Nor was I any good on computers, being a visual thinker not a numbers person. But I spent those twelve years helping aeronautics engineers and others design fighter aircraft cockpit displays, battlefield management displays, communications networks displays etc. I had certain attributes, clearly down to my Aspergers, that enabled me to do that and have a value.

It is worth reading John Elder Robison's "Look me in the Eye". Its a very positive perspective about someone on the spectrum who finds his narrow interests highly productive as a sound engineer for rock bands and as a motor mechanic on antique cars. I think it shows it can be done.

Although I'm thinking back more than forty years I can still remember my feelings at the time, pretty demoralised. And I was being told all the time I was lazy, everything was down to me and I wasn't trying. Of course I didn't have a diagnosis.

On the spectrum you process issues over and over that NTs would quickly set aside and forget. It leads to huge "armories" of complicatedly reinforced negativity that can no longer be unravelled. You end up as an excuse rather than someone with excuses. You can have no idea of the long term damage being done at this moment in time - a young adult with severe negativity and poor self esteem, even if things get better, will take years to sort out and forget.

I know my difficulties in my teens and early twenties were still ruling my life in my forties, because I couldn't resolve them and felt so low about them, and really it was only the diagnosis that enabled me to offload a huge amount of unproductive personal "baggage". 

So if I could implore you on your son's behalf try not to reinforce the negativity. You can get addicted to people telling you you're not trying. That's one reason why the bullies have so much fun with people on the spectrum, they agree with the insults. You're going to have to work hard at giving him positive messages.

The other thing I remember is that, while I resented being told things were down to me and it was my fault things had worked out the way they had, in the end it came down to my making a decision to sort things out. It has to come from your son.

So his confidence and self esteem need all the boosting he can get.

The problem is that negative reinforcement, and his depressed state, is taking up all the productive space in his head. So there isn't room in there to step back and rationalise, weigh up priorities, think outside the box, see new ways forward.

So you may have to do some job market research yourself, and feed the information to him discretely, so it doesn't come over as his failure.

A lot of the problem during a recession is too many people after the same jobs. There are often new avenues out there that just need pioneers. People on the spectrum are sometimes surprisingly good at that, partly because they aren't dependent on social acceptance and following the pack.

I've never been able to do what I wanted work wise (yeah I know aint we all in that boat!), but in the end I had to make compromises. Sometimes the compromises are quite weird.

Granted when I did find secure employment it was after getting a PhD but for the first 12 years I was working as a systems engineer in Research and Development. Now I've no engineering qualifications, and engineering is really fussy about that. Nor was I any good on computers, being a visual thinker not a numbers person. But I spent those twelve years helping aeronautics engineers and others design fighter aircraft cockpit displays, battlefield management displays, communications networks displays etc. I had certain attributes, clearly down to my Aspergers, that enabled me to do that and have a value.

It is worth reading John Elder Robison's "Look me in the Eye". Its a very positive perspective about someone on the spectrum who finds his narrow interests highly productive as a sound engineer for rock bands and as a motor mechanic on antique cars. I think it shows it can be done.