New AS diag (brother 48), father's death, loss of job

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I'm hoping for some guidance. My older brother (48 years old) was recently diagnosed with AS. He's dealt with this his whole life but AS wasn't a known "condition" when my brother was a child. He graduated from high school and went to work immediately with my father (self employed business man in a small farming community) and worked w/him for 29 years until my father passed away from cancer in June. Not only is my brother dealing with the loss of the only employment he's ever known, he's also dealing with the loss of his father and best friend. My brother lives in his own house, pays his own bills, drives etc. In order to get him some assistance with finding new employment, we sought help from the Vocational Rehabilitation division within his county and that's when he was officially diagnosed. Since my father's death, my brother just watches TV and rides his bike around town. I've been trying to help him fill out job applications, but he doesn't seem very motivated. I've offered to help him fill out job applications, and written down some positions that might be of interest to him. He tells me he "doesn't have time" or is "too busy" when I offer to come up and work with him. I don't know if this is due to grief, AS, reluctance to take assistance from his younger sister, or what. My mother, sisters and I are very concerned about what's going to happen to my brother if he doesn't take an interest in finding new employment. I've taken a 6 month leave from my job to try to help him get his life on track, but I'm not sure of the best way to support him in finding employment. He's got some money in savings, but part of me wonders if fully understands the severity of his situation. I've been researching, Googling etc. trying to learn as much as I can about AS so I can be as supportive as possible. I've been trying to line up resources to help guide him (and me) through this process, but I haven't found much in our area. I'm struggling to understand what he might be thinking, why he doesn't see the urgency in his situation, how he might be dealing with our father's death, job loss etc. Any suggestions/insight would be most helpful! Thanks!! !

I don't have an answer for you, but I wanted to say that you're right in thinking the situation is very serious. My father (who has AS) was laid off from his job of 25 years after my brother (his only son) died and dad never bounced back from it all. He had a few temp jobs after that, but nothing that lasted and finally his depression and anxiety got too bad to work.

Look into disability now, especially into whether he will get SSD (instead of SSI) if he applies now. Time is of the essence, because if he qualifies for SSD now, the amount of money he will get each month will decrease for each working quarter he waits to apply. If enough quarters go by (I think four) he will only be eligible for SSI which is only around $600/month.

If your brother is "frozen" and not making a move to get a job and you can't budge him and a counselor or therapist can't budge him, applying for disability may be his best move. He can always come back off disability later when he has had some time to recover from the shock of losing so much and is able to find a job again.

Asperger's in itself is not a disability, but the inertia that your brother is experiencing due to grief and sudden cataclysmic changes is (as you can see) very disabling. The disability office will judge whether he is disabled or not based on what his doctor says, what a government doctor says, and whether he is able to take care of himself (which, if he is unable to go through the process of getting another job, he isn't.)

I hope I've been helpful and not too discouraging. You need to act fast because of the time constraints. Also, there are lawyers that will help in the disability process and you don't pay them up front - they get a percentage of the initial disability settlement after they win the case for you (when a person gets on disability, they get one big check at first (the amount varies) and then monthly checks afterward.)

Best wishes and thank you for being a good sister to your brother!

1. encourage him to ride his bike on a schedule for example every morning at 6am and keep a calendar of his bike rides - aspies don't like change, and bike riding is good for mental health

2. involve him into finding work for him

can someone take over the farming business your dad used to do?

Many thanks for the replies! We applied for SSD about the same time we started with Voc Rehab. SSD made their decision on his claim last week, so we'll find out this week whether he qualifies for anything. He is working directly w/the voc rehab couselor. She has him writing cover letters, picking up applications, dropping them off etc, so he is involved in the process. I'm not expecting him to be proactive necessarily, as that could be part of the AS for him, but when I lay out 13 job openings he could be investigating and he claims he's too busy to look at them, that's when I get concerned. Because my father passed away from cancer, he was involved w/Hospice and we have bereavement counseling available to us for a year. I'm wondering if I should get in touch w/that counselor and mention my concern over my brother? Maybe there's something she can do to assist him with his grieving process. When any of us ask him how he's doing, he just says "fine". Again, I'm not sure how AS plays into those responses, as I've never really seen him express much emotionally. As far as the bike riding goes, I'm absolutely fine w/him doing that. He's lost some weight, which he needed to do, so I agree that that's been a really good thing for him, as long as it's kept in balance w/other things in his life. As far as my dad's business (plumbing/heating/air conditioning), there really isn't anyone else in the small town (or surrounding ones) that was interested in taking over. We aren't sure that my brother can operate the business on his own (working with gas furnaces and other high liability repairs/installations). He has also indicated that he'd prefer to work with someone vs. alone. For those reasons, the business is in the process of being closed (probate, etc.). He still does some "odd jobs" for previous customers around town, but even that causes concern for insurance, liability reasons, as he doesn't seem concerned about getting liability insurance on himself. He also currently doesn't have any kind of medical insurance, so we're concerned about what happens if he suffers any kind of medical issue. The costs could very quickly wipe out any savings he has. That also tends to limit the amount of professional care we're able to seek for him. I'd be willing to help cover those, but I'm currently unemployed so I could assist him w/time, and I can't afford those costs right now. What I was really hoping to do was help him identify his areas of strength and find a job he'd really enjoy doing. He didn't really "choose" his occupation after high school--Dad just took him on and trained him. I've been trying to find someone who could help him identify those areas of interest/strength, as when I ask, he says he hasn't really thought about it and doesn't know.

That's a relief! I know I don't know you or your brother, but I have been thinking about him and concerned.



Two things might be happening here. 1. Due to the AS, he may not really understand how he's feeling or what he's going through. It can be difficult to be in touch with the world of one's own emotions, especially complex feelings with lots of layers, when one has AS. As much as people with AS "live in their own world" or "live inside their own head" most of us don't really have good touch with our internal emotional world (and, for some of us, not much touch with our internal physical world. For example, I didn't realize I was pregnant until I was five months pregnant because I'm so out of touch with what goes on in my body.)
2. (and remember, I'm speculating here, based on what I know about AS. I don't know your brother so temper everything I say with your own knowledge of him) if he's not in touch with the full complex range of what he's going through right now, he won't have an appropriate vocabulary for it. "too busy" may be the best he can struggle his way toward expressing what's actually going on inside. It's not (I'm guessing) that he believes he's too busy to get a job, it's that "too busy" is the only phrase he's been able to come up with to explain to you what he's going through that's blocking him from moving forward in his life.



That might (or might not) be a good idea. If he goes into more counseling with someone who's not specifically trained to work with someone with AS and experienced with working with AS adults, the counselor risks doing more damage than good. I'm speaking not only from my personal experience but also from studies I've read. People with AS have special counseling needs and a counselor who does not fully, professionally understand AS and how to interpret it and work with it is treading a dangerous ground in agreeing to work with a known AS adult as if they were an adult who is not on the autistic spectrum.

If you do decide to try him with a non-qualified therapist, keep a very close eye on the effects the therapy is having to determine if it's just making things worse for him instead of better. Speaking personally, now, I have gone to therapy sessions with professionals who had no understanding of or training in or experience with AS and those sessions were very traumatic and damaging and set the timetable of my healing back by years. Not days or weeks, but literally, honestly years. Tread carefully!



He has lived his life in a well-worn groove and has probably never thought about the possibility that life would be any different. His entire life has been shredded up like so much scrap paper and he is probably feeling very lost and anxious. Change is extremely difficult for people with AS and your brother has just gone through a whirlwind of changes. There's a good chance he hasn't caught his metaphorical breath yet. Even though you perceive your father's death and the following process as slow or normal speed, for him there is a good chance that it feels like he blinked his eyes and when he opened them again his entire world had been destroyed. He may never have had a chance in his lifetime to build the coping mechanisms you have.

Imagine if a twister picked you up and dropped you in the middle of rural sub-saharan Africa with no telephone, no postal service, no motorized vehicles and no one who could speak English and you'll start to have an idea of how lost your brother is when it comes to helping himself out of the situation he's in.

There's a chance that, if you could find him a job that suits him, he would just start going to work every day and things would be, for the most part, okay. Hand him a new groove to wear in and he might just go back to his regular, familiar pattern of getting up and going to work every day. It's this transition period that's so difficult. He is being asked questions (how do you feel about x?) that might as well be in a foreign language for all he is able to answer them and being asked to use skills he has never developed. He probably just wants life to go "back to normal again" so the most help anyone could be (and I realize it doesn't seem fair to anyone else) is to just hand him a new job and tell him (explicitly!) what is expected of him in his new role.

Give him some direction and rules and boundaries. He doesn't know what to do. After he's established in a new job (or established on disability, if that goes through) you or someone else can start working with him to develop a better ability to recognize his emotions or develop the skills he will need if his new job falls apart for any reason. Right now, he just needs a new normal for his life.

Thanks for listening and I hope I haven't been offensive in my response. I can be blunt (I blame the AS for my bluntness but I do try to overcome it and be more diplomatic) but please know that I have said all these things out of concern for a fellow Aspie who is obviously going through a hard time. I hope I have provided a little more insight and, again, I apologize if I offended in any way.

footnote: edited to add: I remembered the word and it's alexithymia. And it's not that rare in autistic spectrum disorders. And I totally got it wrong what it means -- it means pretty much what I've been saying about not being in touch with emotions.

Here is the wikipedia page on alexithymia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

I think a lot of what's written there will be helpful to you in trying to understand your brother.

don't be so quick to close the business and don't sell the tools yet. he can find a job in another HVAC company and most bosses want you to have your own tools and your own truck. for him, getting a job in a small HVAC company is the way to go.