16 year old with extreme anxiety

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I am new to this forum and have been amazed at the amount of valuable and helpful information and advice I have read here. I am the mother of a 16 year old son diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome and am hoping that someone will give me some ideas that I haven’t tried yet.

My son has more or less dropped out of High School, due to extreme anxiety and school phobia. At the moment he is just doing one simple subject one lesson a week one-on-one at school with a teacher in a room by themselves, and one subject online at home. When he goes to school for the one subject, I have to drive him there and escort him in and out. This situation has developed over the last few years, and is just getting worse.

My son did alright at Primary School, had a few friends, was and is extremely bright. The first couple of years at High School were okay, he managed the work but had no friends. Then it all seemed to fall in a heap. He became extremely anxious, lost all his confidence. He said it was like his brain stopped working. He struggled on, the school was fantastic, they gave him extra time, he didn’t have to hand work in etc. but things just got worse. He would have meltdowns, have to leave the room, would go to the coordinators room and lie on the floor in the foetal position.

He has been to 3 different psychologists, the current one he at least likes, but there is not much real progress. Any sort of relaxation therapy makes him really anxious! Things like relaxing your muscles, staying still etc don’t work for him.

I don’t want to use medication, because that just covers the problem which is still there. His doctor is of the opinion that it is only a short term fix and whatever is causing the stress (school) is still there and will still cause the stress.

Now I am just so worried about his future. Tony Attwood said that if you just leave them in their rooms with the computer there is no problem, there is no Aspergers. But the longer you leave them in their room, the harder it is to get them out again. And they have to come out some time.

I am also worried about depression, which exists in both sides of his family. I want him to become independent, be happy in the world doing whatever he wants to do. If he wants to live alone, that’s fine. At the moment all he does is play computer games and talk to people online about Lego. I make sure he does some exercise each day and some chores.

So my questions are :

1. Schooling, should he persist with attending school for the one subject, even though it stresses him being there. Should he concentrate on doing subjects online? Should he give up on school altogether?

2. Should he just try and get some sort of job, any job?

3. What can we do about the anxiety? Nothing we have tried has worked so far.

4. Should I just leave him alone? As a mother, all my instincts are against that. I think it will just make things worse, he will find it harder and harder to do anything out in the real world. And also as a mother, I feel I need to do everything I can to help him, and never give up on him. The problem is knowing what to do.

I feel like I'm reading about myself here, things were also "okay" in my first couple of years at school but things slowly fell apart after awhile, I just didn't have the coping skills that all my peers had, everyday was a battle.

Here's what me and my therapists are doing with regard to each of your points, because my situation is fairly similar:

1. For now school is at the bottom of my priorities list, it really isn't something I should be stressing over because my life is already difficult enough, if I was to be sent to school now I would shutdown for the rest of the day, if I was doing what he was doing now it would probably be making things tougher, thing's sound already hard enough for him, is school reallly the number one importantance right now?

2. With anxiety so bad that he can't attend full school I wouldn't advise a job, it would probably make things worse, I certainly couldn't work at a job right now, I can imagine a nervous breakdown.

3. I notice you're against medication, I think you should have a talk with the doctor/therapist about it, it isn't always a quick fix and they don't seem like the types to be irresponsible and perscription-happy. For the son it could be the difference between continueing living a difficult life or medication, what if it eases his suffering if only for a short time? What if it makes his anxiety managable enough to go schooling more?

4. What to say? I think you should say all this to his main therapist first, one step at a time.

I remember the very page that Tony Attwood said that, I'm not autistic when I'm alone, I'm autistic around people, it's apt.

It wouldn't hurt to have them do a medical workup on him. There are many medical conditions that can cause anxiety and brain fog, and they are generally easy to treat.

He could be stressed by all of the impending changes in his life but he could also have developed some sort of anxiety disorder. A lot of parents have been talked into medicating their children in an effort to get them to comply or conform to certain standards of society, and that is a misuse and abuse of the medications. However there are also valid uses for the medications medications, and an unrelenting anxiety disorder is one of them.

If his medical workup come up clear and he doesn't have a vitamin deficiency or some thyroid condition or something of that sort, then I would have him evaluated by an anxiety disorders clinic.

If it is an anxiety disorder then you might want to consider an in patient program or outpatient day program at a clinic. A lot of the better clinics will attempt non-medicative therapy before trying the medications.

Hello.

I know what your son is experiencing because I used to suffer from the same difficulty, and still do to some degree. I used to be extreamly shy, terrified to go anywhere or do anything alone. This was built up over a long period of time, a side effect of constant protection from support and a general difficulty with the general environment of school.

There is very little that you can do as a parent or other an external influence. When someone is terrified to do anything, most encouragement comes to moot, and force will ALWAYS make the situation worse. The turning point for me was when I came to accept myself for what I am, an autistic human being. There is nothing wrong with me, the problem is our society itself. Once I had made that realization, I was able to start working towards improving my independence on my own, successfully as I now live independently.

It's difficult, but you just need to let things take there coarse, focus on encouraging him and don't force anything. The following articles describe some of the ways I made these changes for myself:

Schools can never support autistics
how to find your independence
There is nothing wrong with teaching yourself using the Internet and other resources

Hope this helps.

All I can think to add is be careful not to underestimate any depression that might be going on. I'm sure you are on the lookout as you mentioned the family history, but at that age I was very depressed, but didn't show it or verbalize it such that it was ever recognized.

Thank you so much for the replies so far. I feel a bit better and more hopeful already.

It does seem like school is not the right thing for him right now. I ask him what he hates about school and he says "everything".

Can I ask you Phonic what you are doing now that you are not at school, and where do you see your future? Or is that something that you are not thinking about right now?

Chronos, when you say a medical workup do you mean a medical checkup or assessment? I have done that and he is extremely healthy actually. I am in Australia, and we dont really have anxiety disorders clinics as such. The counsellor he sees is trying to work on the anxiety, but often he wont cooperate or "share". This is gradually improving, and at least he is willing to go and see her so I am persisting with that. He would not willingly attend that kind of clinic, I know.

robh, your post was very informative, I have also read the links you posted to your website. Your point about accepting yourself the way you are is very relevant, I dont think he has done that as yet. How did you come to that realisation, did it just happen, and at what age?

Apple_in_my_Eye, I am very watchful of depression. My best friend's son committed suicide at the age of 17, and so did my mother at the age of 62. I honestly dont think my son is depressed, he is quite happy and relaxed most of the time when he is at home. We go out to see movies sometimes as well. I think I would recognise depression in him.

In conclusion, it seems that the advice is not to force him to go to school, or to try medication. I will consider both of those.

Thanks again to everybody.

Glad I could help

Accepting myself was a long and rather painful process, After getting diagnosed I still lived in complete denial of the condition for years. When I was 19 I goggled the phrase 'taking everything literally' and on the first page was a post from 'Life With Aspergers', reading through this blog started to convince me that I may have the condition, but I still denied it publicly. What changed that was achieving a tripple distinction grade on a course I was taking, and gaining two awards from the college. That lead to my realization that autism was more than just a disability, a different and perfectly valid way of being. Starting the blog shortly afterwards to inspire other young adults and adolescents on the spectrum to make the same realization.

Hello there

I would like to add some input here. So, I will go through your list and answer as best I can. Starting with:

I am going to answer these 2 questions together.

The trap that many parents fall into is they try basing their plans on what everybody else is doing as opposed to basing their plans on what is reasonable for them. For example, you may be looking at your child and thinking, "Everybody else his age is going to school, shouldn't he be in school too?" Or perhaps, "Some of his peers are working part time jobs, shouldn't he be working a job as well?" There is nothing wrong with comparing your son to his peers. After all, thats how you can identify what does and doesn't work. But the problem is that when you make what everybody else is doing as the goal, then you wind up not looking at your case individually.

So then, what do I recommend?
To start with, I would set some good, long term, goals and then figure out how to best make that happen. For example:

1. Goal number one is to get your child some self confidence.
Get him to the point where he can interact with other people, and live his life without crippling social anxiety. The reason that this is goal #1 is because nothing can be done unless this gets resolved first. It doesn't matter if he gets a doctorate in quantum relativistic physics if he is too afraid to leave the house and do work. It doesn't matter if he is fully capable of living independently and taking care of himself if he is too afraid to go out and do his own shopping. Basically, until you have gotten this issue settled, nothing else matters.

If it helps, think of your child's success as a chain. Each link in the chain represents something your child needs to be a successful, independent, happy adult. Education might be one link in the chain, Job hunting skills might be another link, and so forth. And right now, the social confidence link is very very weak. So when you pull on the chain (which life will do to you), where is it going to break? At the weakest link of course. So if your child is going to get any better, you need to focus on the weakest link.

2. Goal number two is stress management.
You say that you have browsed the forums a little bit (which is good), and I am curious if you happen to have read my book (available from the link in my signature). If you haven't read it yet, thats fine. But I talk a lot in that book about handling stress. For your child, the social anxiety is probably the biggest source of stress, but that doesn't mean that it is the only thing causing the problems. It is important to teach your child how to recognize, and deal with the stress effectively, because if it is not dealt with properly, it can cause severe problems (which you are currently experiencing).

The problem is likely that your child is stressed out, nervous, and tense most of the time (whether at school or not). And this makes the social anxiety worse. When you go into a social situation, already being nervous, it is very easy to get even more worked up. If you can help your child to relax, calm down, and manage his stress in general (prior to the social occasion) then the social event will seem much less threatening, and easier to handle. And if he does still get social anxiety, at least that will be the only thing causing him problems as opposed to the social anxiety PLUS all the other stresses in his life.

I understand that you may be thinking 'well of course, we tried to control his stress, but the breathing techniques don't work'. But I am not talking about self calming techniques, I am talking about changes in how your child spends his time, how he recognizes, handles, and avoids problems, how he handles the unavoidable things that cause him problems, and so forth. Learning to manage stress isn't so much about what to do in the moment, but learning strategies to deal with the build up of stress over time.

3. Goal number three is to have your child learn executive functioning skills.
I don't know (based on what you have written) if this is a major issue for your child. But it is always something to keep in mind. For example, does he have enough organizational skills to make sure things (like paying bills) get done? Does he know how to deal with day to day life problems? (Leaky faucet). This may seem like a somewhat silly question, but I had to put in a good bit of effort into teaching myself routines, methodologies, and systems to keep myself organized. If I didn't have my routines, I probably wouldn't remember to use deodorant or brush my teeth in the mornings. Learning, setting up, and implementing useful systems of organization is a vital skill for anybody who has difficulty keeping things straight.

Once again, this can be considered another link in the chain. In that if you don't have effective organizational skills, you aren't going to get much done. Your child can have an IQ of 200, be incredibly self confident, and attend MIT. But if he can't remember what he is supposed to be doing, or organize his tasks, then he isn't going to get very far. So, thats why I am listing organizational skills as #3.

4. Goal Number four is to get GOOD employment.
I put this as number four for a couple reasons. Primarily, if you can accomplish goals 1-3 first, then your child is perfectly capable of living on his own, taking care of his own problems, and what not. That means the only thing preventing him from living an independently is the ability to afford doing so. Which is where goal #4 comes in. Notice that I said you want your child to get a GOOD job. What do I mean by this? Well, that means he has a job where he isn't going to be a nervous wreck, and also that he will make enough money to actually live off.

For starters, look at jobs that your child will be able to actually live off of, and don't be afraid to think ahead. Your looking for a good career, not just a short term deal. Does he have an interest in how things work? Is he good with mathematics? How are his deductive reasoning skills? Does he have an interest in mechanics? I don't know enough about your situation to give any advice, but if you first deal with goals 1-3, then there is no reason your child can't hold down a good full time job. I have worked full time as an engineer, and many autistic people have done so as well. The idea of a job isn't unreasonable at all, you just have to take care of items 1-3 first.

Just keep in mind that your child doesn't NEED to get a job right away. My first real job (that I had to interview for) didn't come until I was 20 years old. So, don't worry that your son will never be able to work if he isn't employed full time at 18. He may take a bit longer to get there, but there is no reason to panic if he is just running a bit late. As I said before, these are long term goals, not immediate priorities.

5. Add your own goals as you see fit.


So, now that you have some good, long term, goals set, plan accordingly.

So for your first questions, should he attend school?

Well, think how that affects your goals. Is attending school helping him to build self confidence? Is attending school helping him to manage stress? Is he learning good organization and planning skills at school? Is the material he is learning imperative for him to know in order to get a job? And if the answer is yes, is this the best way to accomplish that goal? For example, attending school might teach him mathematics (which would be useful in eventually getting a job). But is the limited mathematics he is learning worth the damage it is doing to his ability to handle stress? Would he learn better in a home schooling environment? Would he be better served by just taking a break from schooling in general until he isn't a nervous wreck?

One piece of advice I find myself giving to people in situations like yours is to advise a break from school. It seems to me that your child's major problems are not academic, but stress, and anxiety related. And being in school is just making it worse. Continuing on your current path of keeping him in school really isn't going to teach him much of anything (it is difficult to learn when you are stressed out), and only doing 1 class at a time means his graduation is going to take till he is 21. Taking a year off, and focusing more on dealing with the anxiety and stress (as opposed to math homework) seems like a much better usage of your time, because you will be focusing on the important things first. And then once the important things are done first, you can go back to learning things like mathematics. It may delay graduation a few months (less if you skip the pointless courses and just do the basics) but I think that would be better then delaying graduation indefinitely due to nervous breakdown.

Likewise, your second question: Should he get a job?

Well, your ultimate goal is to get him a job that he can live off of, so I would say yes. But as I said before, thats not your primary goal. In other words, don't worry about getting him a job when he is still a panicking mess because thats like putting the cart before the horse. But if you do get him settled with the important things first, a part time job to get him some extra spending money (and experience) might not be a bad idea. But just make sure that you help him find a job that will work for him.

Many people say that you should shoot for basic jobs like working at McDonalds (at least to start). This is bad advice in my experience. McDonalds is full of loud, beeping machines, cramped spaces with lots of people, and little kids running around yelling. I can barely deal with eating there, let alone trying to work a shift in the kitchen. I am pretty sure that if I tried working at a place like that, I would either quit, have a nervous breakdown, or get fired within 2 weeks (if I am lucky). So, while service industry jobs might be the 'standard' job for a teenager, I would advise otherwise.

I mowed lawns around my neighborhood for most of my teenage years, and that worked well for me. There were no poeple to deal with, and no beeping machines. Your son might also do well working at the local library, or some other job where he can work in the back room with just a few co-workers. But as I said before. Make sure you focus on goals 1-3 prior to goal 4. Because if you try getting your son into a job before he is ready for it, then he will just fail, and thats not good for anybody.



So, now then moving on to:

I am going to echo the advice of other people, which is that there is nothing you can really do to fix the problem. You can encourage, promote, and enable your child, but you can't deal with his anxiety for him. For him to deal with his anxiety, he is going to need to do it himself. So, I really can't give you any advice to help your child, but I can tell you what worked for me. Hopefully, your son might be able to relate to what I have gone through, and use my experience to help himself.

I don't like to get into this much, but my childhood was not a pleasant time. I was continually bullied at school, treated poorly by my teachers, and constantly harassed by my mother at home. I was living my life constantly on the verge of meltdown, and I had some health issues because of all the stress I was under. I was terrified of leaving my room, going to school, going anywhere, talking to anybody, or even eating dinner with my family because I was afraid of how other people would treat me. No matter what I did, said, or tried it was never good enough. I would inevitably get mocked, punished, or yelled at and I just didn't want to deal with it anymore.

What started as a rational fear of just a few people (bullies/mother) became generalized of pretty much every situation. I was afraid to talk to any adult for fear of being yelled at. I was afraid of making ANY mistakes for fear that those mistakes would be used against me. The problem was that I had built up the 'punishment' in my head so much that I was terrified of doing anything wrong. Every time I got punished, I felt horrible because I had internalized the idea that only bad people get punished, and I didn't want to be a bad person. I was raised with the idea that making mistakes was unacceptable, and that I should feel bad if I made one. Basically, the anxiety that I built up around the 'punishment' was for worse then the punishment itself. I was afraid of talking to any child for fear that they would mock and insult me. I basically was terrified of doing anything. I tried to cope with this by being the 'perfect child'. I tried to never make any mistakes, follow all the rules, never say or do anything which might raise any concern, and never draw attention to myself.

The problem is that doesn't work. If people don't like you, they will find reasons to be upset with you (rational or not). I had teachers who just didn't like me for some reason, and no matter what I did, they would always find some reason to give me sentences to write (the standard punishment at my school). Children would always bully me, regardless of how I tried to act. I wasted ridiculous amounts of effort trying to fit it, pretend to be normal, and act as I was taught to. It didn't make any difference, I was still shunned by my peers and treated like crap.

My lowest point was at about 11 years old, I was tired of being harassed, bullied, yelled at, mocked, and treated like crap all day long. The only thing I had to keep myself sane was sitting down and playing some video games after school, but while that helped, it didn't exactly make up for the rest of my day. I was just sick and tired of dealing with the anxiety all the time, and I was giving serious consideration to just committing suicide and getting it over with. The only reason I didn't go through with it is because I didn't want to make my father sad. I don't know where I would have ended up had I continued down this track, but I don't think it would have worked out very well.

The real turning point in my life came when I decided that I was just sick and tired of dealing with the crap everybody else was giving me, and I decided I just wasn't going to take it anymore. I got pissed off at the people who were making my life miserable, and decided that I wasn't going to ruin my life just because they were jerks. I decided to adopt an attitude of, "If who I am and how I act isn't good enough for you, then screw you". Yeah, a bit crude perhaps, but it was better then the alternative. I figured that I was doing the best I could, and if other people weren't happy with that then it was their fault for expecting too much.

Needless to say, my new found courage made a lot of people upset. My teachers became annoyed that they could no longer threaten me into submission. They gave me sentences to write, and I didn't write them. So they gave me more sentences to write, and I still didn't write them. They gave me even more sentences, and I still didn't write them. I just stared at them and said no. Eventually they decided to keep my in from recess and put me in the library as punishment. I am not exactly sure why they thought this was punishment as I considered it an upgrade. From that point on I made it a habit of not completing my work so that I would get to spend recess inside.

My mother was also infuriated. She had been yelling and threatening, and harassing me for years in order to get her way, and suddenly it stopped working. I became 'impossible to deal with' in her words. But I stopped caring. I was constantly told 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' and I decided to apply this to my mother. If she didn't respect or listen to me, then I figured that she deserved the same treatment. She tried her best to make my life miserable, but when you just stop caring about what other people think of you, it makes dealing with harassment much easier.

Overall, while it did make my 'authority figures' irate, learning to accept myself for who I am, and stop worrying about whether it was good enough for other people was the turning point that saved my sanity. And looking back on my life, things have just gotten better since then.

So, my advice to your son is simple. Whether or not you have social anxiety is your choice. I know it doesn't seem like it. But you are the person who gets to decide how you will react to the world. You can't change how the world treats you, and you can't change what other people think of you. But you can change how you think of yourself. As long as you remain ashamed, and scared to be yourself, you are going to let other people trample over you. So stand up for yourself, if other people aren't happy about you being yourself then thats their problem. You just be the best person you can be, and do the best job you can. And if you have done that, then you can feel good about yourself and hold your head up high, irregardless of what other people think. You can choose to live a life paralyzed by fear, or you can chose to say 'screw you' to all your detractors and enjoy your life. But don't let anybody tell you that it isn't your choice to make.

And so now to the last question:


This depends what you mean by 'just leave him alone'. I am a big proponent of making sure that people get adequate 'downtime' to rest and relax after a hard days work. This is especially so with people who deal with a lot of problems during the day. As I said earlier, getting the chance to come home, relax, and play video games is probably the only thing that kept me sane in my younger years. And now that I am older and wiser, I still spend hours each day watching TV, or playing video games by myself as a way to relax and enjoy life.

So yeah, I am all in favor of giving your child lots and lots of downtime and alone time so that he can relax and unwind. Failure to do so just results in your child pushing himself more then he can handle and causing major stress problems. I talk about this more extensively in the book (which I recommend to everybody), so if your interested in a more detailed explanation/perspective then I recommend checking it out. There is nothing wrong with being left alone, and you shouldn't feel like a bad mother for giving your child some space.

It is also possible that by 'just leave him alone' you mean skipping school, leaving him home to play video games all day and just hoping that things turn out better without any intervention. I.E. let him sort it out and hope that fixes the problem. In this case, I don't think leaving him alone is necessarily a bad idea, but not a good long term one. Your son seems to be in a difficult place right now. And as such, taking a break from school in order to get him in a more stable place (emotionally) seems like the priority. But that doesn't mean you should abandon all hope of ever accomplishing anything.

You can still set goals like going back to school (perhaps under different circumstances) and getting a worthwhile education, moving out, getting a job, and so forth. And you can certainly work towards those plans one step at a time. So, you don't need to just leave your child alone, and hope for the best. You can intervene and help. But just make sure that the help you are providing is actually useful, reasonable, and in line with long term goals. And keep in mind that taking a break temporarily doesn't mean you never get anywhere. Sometimes taking a break is a necessary step in regaining the energy to move forward again.

So, hopefully I covered what you are looking to know. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will help where I can.

Hi Tracker, your post had so much helpful information I dont know where to start! I am in the process of reading your book and it is excellent. It is the most definitve book about autism and Aspergers I have ever read.

The main thing I have taken on board is that my son probably doesn't yet accept himself the way he is. When I have asked him how he feels about his diagnosis of Aspergers he just shrugs. Whether or not I can help him or do much about that is unknown at this stage. But I agree that is the first priority.

You have also provided for me a sensible and achievable template of where to go from here.

So I just wanted to thank you for your help. I will post again when I have finished the book.

I feel like you just wrote all my life down, i have everything he has and dropped out of school unlawfully 2 years ago.

First I'd like to ask if it manifests itself in the form of a panic attack or just general anxiety about going? Does he have problems going other places also?

I'm asking because (remember, I'm no professional here) it sounds like to me that it could be a very specific type of agoraphobia. I had agoraphobia for years and at first would only not go certain places, then it became all places. My fear wasn't of the places themselves or the people there, it was of my own reaction while I was there. I was scared of having a panic attack or feeling trapped.

None of those CBT type therapists really helped me. I went to a ton of them. I took Inderal, Paxil, Ativan, etc etc etc. I tried everything they throwed at me to get over it. It didn't work. Some benzo's even made the panic attacks worse. Clonopin made me have bad panic attacks, but I couldn't really freak out over them because I was a zombie. Finally, one therapist got me to try Xanax. It stopped the panic attack within 20 minutes or so after I took it. At first I took it on a regular basis, daily, as the doc said to. Very low dose, .25mg, tid, with .25 - .50mg in there if needed for a bad panic attack, but obviously not too often. I was on it for a few years. Never abused it. Yes, I got physically addicted but I did not keep increasing my dose to get any "high" from it. All I wanted was to not have a panic attack. Eventually, when I started getting better, I was able to just taper down and stop taking it.

The therapist who helped me the most was a lady who used to have agoraphobia herself. She got into psychology because she wanted to help others who were in her situation. She was very up front and honest about how bad hers was.

Now, I know all this only helps if he's having panic attacks and really really phobic about school, but that may be the case. Explaining that a school (or a grocery store in my case) is safe won't help. He knows it's safe. He knows that nothing horrible will happen to him there, but if he's panicking, then it's his bodys reaction to the place, not his opinion of the place, that's causing it.

I would talk to him and try to find out what exactly it is about going to school that's bothering him.

I was scared of school as a child (I have AS, but nobody knew back then). It was the other kids and also what if I had to blow my nose during class, or ask to go to the bathroom during class, etc. At 16 I think he could really articulate those things to you, about the school, that upset him. Remember though, a phobia is an unreasonable fear of something, and the person with the phobia knows logically that it's not reasonable.

I'd also look for a therapist who specializes in anxiety disorders. Someone with personal experience if possible. I'd be happy to give you the contact information for my old therapist (she does therapy by phone for some people if need be even though it's not ideal).

Sometimes medication can be helpful to get the individual to a point where they can learn to manage the condition on their own, or make lifestyle changes that ultimately help resolve the underlying issue. I would avoid medications like Xanax, however, because they are addictive.
In some instances of severe, unrelenting anxiety, short term administration of anti-psychotics with strong sedative effects can be rather successful.



High school is generally miserable for people who don't like high school, and it can be a rather harsh environment for someone with AS. Unless he can reap the benefits of actually attending, for example, social or academic benefits he can't get elsewhere, I see no reason to make him to attend more than he is.

Whether or not he should give up on high school depends. Most jobs do require some sort of high school diploma or GED. If he is close to graduating it would probably be best that he continue, especially if his grades are good enough that he has a chance to enter university. If he isn't close to graduating or wouldn't be able to enter a university as a freshman, and he has things he wants to pursue in life, such as a subject at community college, I would allow him to pursue that.



At some point, ideally, however I think it's advisable that he enroll in a social skills program for those with AS his age. Jobs take some degree of social skills which a lot of teens with AS don't have, and that makes them vulnerable in the workplace.



Consider short term medication in addition to therapy specifically for anxiety. Active therapy, not talk therapy, as talking probably won't get him anywhere.



Frequently I do tell parents to leave their child alone. However it sounds like your son's anxiety does need treatment. So to some degree, he has to be taken outside of his comfort zone and he might have to be prodded a bit but at the same time, you shouldn't force him into a situation he's not ready to handle.

In the US, UCLA has a childhood and adolescent anxiety disorders program that caters to those with AS, (and is very expensive). You might try to see if there is center with a similar program in Australia.