Am I doomed do be unemployed for the rest of my life???

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I hate how work-obssesed our society is. By the time you're 18 people want to boot you out of your parent's house, study your brains out in college and then find a job and work until you die. Most "normal" young people aren't mentally and emotionally prepared for such things. I was not prepared to be a teenager, let alone an adult. My life in juniour high or middle school or whatever you call it now was terrible. I was not like other teen girls. I was not interested in "teenager" things and found most of them stupid or boring. I didn't fit in with anyone and was constantly tormented and bullied. I did well in grade school as a kid but in junour high my grades plummeted and I had to repeat grades 8 and 9. I know I wasn't really stupid. Then I finally entered high school but dropped out (horrors!) because I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I never completed high school. My parents put me in a group home when I was 21 because I had nowhere else to live. Unemployment has always been a problem where I live nearly everyone I knew as a kid had to move far away just to find work. I can't move away because I need to be close to my parents. They're all I really have. They tell me it's all right, but it isn't. Being unemployed in society's eyes makes you the ultimate loser and yet if I were able to get a job, the stress, anxiety would send me back into a home. That would be worse than DEATH. Sorry this message is so long and uncheerful.

A few things:

What are you good at?
What can you do?
Do you live near a large town?
What's it like living in a group home?

I feel for you - do you live in the US or elsewhere?

I was not mature enough or socially adept enough to handle college either... a great opportunity wasted. I could not understand how the other girls my age handled it all so well.... social lives... romantic lives.... the brutal academics (I was lucky in that a lot of it was easy for me... but some wasn't) ... their own inner lives.... all of those things put me on the edge of cracking, in fact I did crack.

And then out in the "real world" -- I was like a lost lamb --- still am!

I can relate to a lot of what you're saying, even though I did go to college. I don't like how people's images of themselves are so tied to their jobs. I think "doomed" is a pretty strong word. Are you trying to look for work? Volunteering can be a good middle ground; you could get some skills without the pressure of a paying job. Anyway, that could be something to think about.

I disagree with this, but for the following reasons.

It is NORMAL for people to be ready to take care of themselves and be productive adults BEFORE they reach the age of 18. Sociological changes (for the worse, in my opinion) now take off of young kids the imperative to "grow up" and be self-sufficient as prior generations accepted as the norm.

So, we see people (NT) at 18, 21, 25 who cannot conduct themselves as responsible adults BECAUSE WE DO NOT encourage them to develop their independence from mom and dad, take chances, start working, etc. at a younger age when the AVERAGE person should be more than capable of doing so. Give a kid the option of going out and making their way alone in the world or staying home with mom and dad where they can be fat and happy, and don't be surprised at the choice they make.

Even I having AS and knowing that there are good reasons for being back with my parents today, I resent living with them because I know I'm getting too comfortable with the arrangement and that it's a discouragement from going back out on my own. I can take care of myself (even if I don't eat as well or have as nice a place to sleep), so I don't NEED to be living with them.

I honestly believe that if my parents pushed me to go out and get a job, be responsible, take chances, etc. rather than shelter me well past 18, they would have KNOWN something wasn't right about me (rather than "suspect" at best) and maybe I could have gotten real help long before I did stuff that left deep emotional scars that I still live with to this day.

When you are a kid/teen, you can do some stupid stuff and learn from it without the long-term impact on your reputation. Once you hit 18, all bets are off. Your first mistake after 18 will be held against you as if you knew better where with minors we presume they haven't yet learned better.

Work is a reality of life. There's no escaping that.

I am at the point of facing that when it comes to work I can be extremely low functioning. I am a very hard worker, actually, but the interpersonal stuff that goes on at work is beyond my capabilities to deal with. It wrecks me. I need to work alone, or with as few people as possible. And the people I work with need to be interested in me not at all, nor I them...we just need to be slogging through life side by side at our jobs. I am going to try to find work as a security guard alone in a building at night in addition to cleaning office buildings which I do now. It has been a terribly long road to accepting this, I had a bitterly hard time accepting and facing I can't do certain work, work with certain types of people or in certain environments, and I am going to always be this way. I no longer feel like a failure in that way, I suppose.

i concur, I am new to the site, it's just great to read this stuff and feel like someone gets it, i guess that's why it's called wrong planet.

Because most employters have their heads
furmly jammed in their armpits,
I finally had to makemy onwn job here
in Idaho.

I am a video editor.

I don't quite agree. Work isn't a reality of life, it's a reality of civilized society. I'm not saying that I'd rather not live in a civilized society but in the end, paid work is very new in comparison to life. There's no escaping it? That's not quite true. There's plenty of ways to escape it but lets just say that your standards of living might be less than satisfactory compared to what we are used to.

In my opinion, "studying your butt off" in your teens and working for the rest of your independent life is only important if you make it important. If society thinks that you are a loser because you don't work, then what should it matter? Work provides money, yes, but money doesn't provide a happy life.

Well, think about it. If you just went someplace and wanted to live in a cabin in the woods....

How and where would you get water to drink?
Where would your food come from?
How would you do repairs to your home?

All of that will compel you do either work to produce it (hunt and farm, carry buckets of water, cut trees and fix your home) which is a good bit of physical labor or you'd have to have a way to pay someone to do it for you.

I think that "work" can be a very different thing from "paid employment". I think the former has always existed, but the latter is relatively recent. Zer0, it sounds like you're talking about "work" while Brittany is talking about "paid employment".

QFT.

Definitely a good point, and one that we (my partner and I...ASD and ADHD) have been considering of late. We are not good at getting jobs, and we're not very good at keeping them either. Whatever you do though, don't get into debt. That will make it virtually impossible to ever escape the grind. Maybe you can find a counselor. Since you [the OP] are considered "disabled" you should be able to work with agencies to find placement. However, these jobs will likely not be jobs you will enjoy...they will be a little money in your pocket and that's it.

However, it sounds like you have no skills and no education. It also sounds like you have very little desire to work. Anyone, NT or on the spectrum, is going to have a REALLY hard time finding a job without working to acquire the skills needed. This could be through getting a job (washing dishes at a restaurant) and then moving up (to lower-level management) within that job. This could also be through getting your GED (don't know your country, but this is the equivalent of a HS diploma) and going to the local community college or taking online courses. Either way, you're going to have to do some work in the literal sense before it will be able for you to find a paying job.

I am probably in the minority here.

I have difficulty finding a job (interviewing is my weak point), but maintaining a job is easy.