can i claim disability with aspergers?

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I end up in tears from just asking for an application as I am so utterly terrfied. I have some issues I'd need to explain to anyone that I worked and I am unsure how to tell them this and have it where I still can get the job. Plus without any relible transportaion besides for my mom, I'd doubt they would even want me, as most applications I've seen ask if you are able to get to and from work.

Also... most of the jobs they do have applications for are being a cahsiers or clerk. I am hard pressed to find much else. I don't really know where to go. If I had someone point out a place where I could stack boxes I'd possibly look into it, but there are very little warehouses/etc and I don't know how they do employment as they don't really offer applications.

I have filled out some applications however (to work at bilo) but that was months ago and not a thing was heard back.

To answer this I guess I would need to understand just what it is that makes a work place, ANY work place so unbearable as to making the work impossible to perform.
Clearly, this would be on an individual basis.
I have had jobs that I nearly cried before going into.
I have had jobs where I have been treated less than human.
I have had jobs that left me feeling exhausted and empty at the end of the day.
But I went and did my best.
I cannot/will not hold anyone else- anything else responsible for making a living, paying my bills and making the best of what I have or can get.

is there anything you can advise for people wanting to work who can't?

you seem to have had difficulties yet strived through and managed to beat what could have held you back, something i've been trying to do for years.

Being able to be online doesn't guarantee work ability...

An unbearable workplace exhausts you. Eventually, your work quality starts going down, and your psychological condition gets shaky. If you're very desperate, you keep the job and keep trying despite not being able to think very well; so your work quality goes down and you slow down and make stupid mistakes and get reprimanded for them; and then you start having meltdowns, so you cry or shout at people, or hide in the bathroom, or end up late too many times; and then you get fired. If you're not that desperate, when those things start to happen, you quit. Having a job that's overwhelming in a sensory or social way generally is not going to be permanent--if you're vulnerable enough, one way or the other, you'll lose it.

Being able to work also involves having people who will hire you. If they won't hire you for the job you can do, you're stuck.

Those of you who can work should not assume that just because others have the same label, they must be able to work too. Asperger's is not all the same. Most can work. Some cannot. In many of those cases where work is not possible, it would be possible with accommodation or training. The problem is that many employers do not want to accommodate you; and training costs money.

I got SSI after repeatedly trying and failing to work. I've never kept a job for very long.

SSI is just barely enough money to live on. It's far below the poverty level. You will probably only be able to afford an apartment in a low-rent area, and then only if it's a very cheap one. You will not have any luxuries. No car; no expensive food (meat or fresh food is right out); no movies, no meals out unless you save up and go to McDonald's. No TV, unless you save up, and even then, no cable. The government will have access to your bank accounts; they will question you relatives and your friends. They will, of course, do medical and psychological tests on you.

SSI is something you do if the only other option is homelessness. For me, it was.

You are allowed to work while you are on SSI; however, anything more than unskilled work, for too long, would cause you to lose your benefits and have to reapply. A part-time job is not profitable because you lose your SSI and the job does not give you any more money than that. If you can handle a full time job and you are on SSI, go ahead and try it. If you lose the job, and it hasn't been a year (I think it's a year), then you get your benefits again. But part-time work, unfortunately, doesn't pay.

There are programs in place that, if you are unemployable as you are, but could be employable with training, you can if you are insistent on learning obtain such training. You may have to actually hire an advocate or have a family member do this for you; but I did it myself, so I know it's possible. However, I have no problems with forms, and I am not too vulnerable to intimidation; and I do not live in a big city, so the office I went to was not particularly impersonal.

One thing you should know about SSI is that it takes a very long time to be approved, and most people will be turned down at least once. It took me six months, and everyone was surprised because apparently it takes three times that long, routinely. I think it may have been because the three times I lost a job during that period, I called the social security office and told them what had happened. The last time I was literally one month away from being out on the street (including a large credit card debt) when I got my first check. It didn't just save my life; it saved my credit score, too.

But if you don't need SSI; if you have family you can live with while you get on your feet; if you can hold a job that's enough to feed you; then don't get it. But don't stay in denial, either; apply now if you're going to apply, because in a year or two you may need it urgently and have to wait a very long time...

Last edited by Callista on 08 Dec 2008, 3:43 pm, edited 3 times in total.

i get an ssi check every month. i have high functioning autism.

Asperger's is a spectrum condition. Consider some people are so much more impaired than you are, that they could never make it to your age without some kind of diagnosis (even if the wrong one).

I have also scrubbed toilets. It was a very poor deal for my employer, who could have had someone competent at the task for the same cost.
The thing about toilets, is that they need to be hygienic and look clean, but apparently looking clean is not the same as spotless. I really do not know what looking clean without spotless looks like. This makes me a very inefficient toilet cleaner. My employer does not have the time to stand over me instructing me which spots ought to cleaned and which are unimportant and can merely be wiped over with disinfectant. I find the whole thing of some spots must go but others can stay utterly bemusing. To me looking clean is an effect of being clean, and not spotless is not clean.

I do not think that is very realistic of you. Firstly being capable of something does not necessarily mean one is capable of convincing those in a position to employ them, that they are capable of anything. I personally know a number of people with AS who are very unlikely to find work without assistance to by-pass the interview stage (for instance an employment scheme for disabled people that helps match prospective employees with employers who will give an opportunity to people who have no hope of presenting themselves well in a job interview). Most of those people are quite capable of going on-line.

Certainly, but assuming that everyone who is on the same very diverse spectrum as yourself, therefore is only as impaired as yourself, is rather illogical when the whole point of the spectrum is to aid classification of very diverse manifestations of a condition that ranges widely in the kind and extent of disability.
I know teens with AS, who right now are working on making themselves ready for working. One has a part-time job but she would not have gotten it without assistance. Another is not able to find the same assistance, he's a lot less personable and although more intellectually gifted, has greater over-all impairment. They are both on the autistic spectrum but their relative work prospects are very different indeed.

You just borrowed a page from my life. I have the exact same problem--where is "good enough", and how far is it from "perfect"? Given enough time, I can speed up my "perfect" to the time it takes everyone to do "good enough"; but that is usually longer than they are willing to wait.

I've scrubbed toilets too. For me the toilets weren't a problem, but vacuuming floors was BIG trouble.

As I might've mentioned- the only thing I've ever done is just to suck it up or block everything else out but the goal: find a job and go to work. The alternative is being homeless (something I've been and refuse to go back to). I currently have 2 jobs and am still in the red by the end of the month. I have an interview for a night-stock clerk on Tuesday. It's minimum wage and the hours suck but at least it's a job where I don't have to deal with customers.

I do recognize that because we all live within a "spectrum" there are those who are affected to a greater extent than I am.
But that still doesn't eleviate the fact that we ALL need to make a living of some sort. I base my assessment on what I read here, since I don't know anyone IRL on the spectrum. I read very concise, well-thought-out posts which lead me to believe the person(s) making them is/are intelligent enough to try and find something they can do.
Yes- it may mean being excesivley humble, feeling panick-stricken or even melting down. I've done each a number of times. But then I simply got hungry enough (quite literally hungry) to pretty much beg for anything, any hours, any wage. It's less about having Asperger's- or being on the spectrum and more about survival.

I concede that if you are unable to "survive", then you may very well need the assistance and help.

I see AS as the disability of the mind more than of the body itself.

Intelligence has NOTHING to do with it. Absolutely nothing.

Can you imagine, on top of how hard the world is for all people, if you had a social and cognitive disability?

If you got disoriented and became unable to talk like a clear person, just because you get distracted or had a bad lunch?

My husband notices that, when I don't make him a breakfast smoothie (nuts, fruit, yogurt), he doesn't have as good a day. He doesn't have as much energy, confidence and he is less productive. There's a good reason for that, because the smoothies have quick-metabolizing coconut milk medium chain fatty acids to give great energy without a sugar high or crash, the fruits have a lot of energizing substances and nutrients in that that support good cell metabolism, the proteins in the nuts provide precursors for the brain to make neurotransmitters that it needs to function well during the day. So when my husband doesn't get a smoothie in the morning, he has a bad or exhausting day and is more likely to come home depressed (he's under a lot of pressure).

The difference between my husband and I is that if I didn't have my smoothie and went to work without food, I wouldn't just have a bad day, I would be unable to think or interact clearly. I'd sit in my office fuzzy and unfocused. The same is true of when I get allergies or have some disruption of my sensory system.

And it's not just smoothies, it's everything. If he's having trouble with someone at work, he works through it and either it resolves or he has to deal with it. If I have trouble with someone at work, I can't work because thinking about social problems is such a complex, disorienting thing for me that it takes up all my "bandwidth". I can't "multitask" my problem-solving in that way, and certainly not if one of the problems is how to deal with a social problem. So one as*hole at work can shut me down, just by making me have to think about social and political problems at work.

Imagine going through all you went through, with a lot of social and cognitive disabilities, any one of which can pop up at any time and take you down for about a week, so that you underperform professionally and socially, despite all your efforts. On top of how hard the world is for everybody, you have to constantly struggle with how your own mind isn't working that day.

I for one don't agree that this kid should go on disability, either. He should get his GED (equivalency) and try to go to community college, at least, where he can have a more flexible and open-minded environment than he probably had at high school. He can at least get more education (at government expense) and maybe find that thing worth digging into as a career. Community college is a lot better than high school, for AS people.

Last edited by ephemerella on 08 Dec 2008, 4:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you're 18 years old, you haven't even tried to attempt being in the "real world" of work for very long. Yet, the assumption is being made that you're "disabled" because of an ASD and entitled to a hand out. Please cheer up and don't feel that way.

First of all, it's difficult for folks who are even college educated to get by. I don't even want to think about how tough it is for someone with only a high school degree, and without even that you're nothing career speaking. Pursue a degree that can provide you in the end with a career that pays well and is rewarding. College was the greatest time of my life. It was hard to live off of financial aid, but I did. I had to work 35 hours a week and go to school full-time. There are things I would have done differently but I can't change the past. What I would have done differently is work on building up a contact list of people that could help me with my career.

And therein lies the problem: To an employer, it is ALL about inteligence (inteligence = ability), isn't it? And since you are aplpying to their business, you need to play by their rules.

Would you need both your legs broken to understand why someone else needed a wheelchair?

Just because you can do something doesn't mean everybody can.

Just because you COULD go and work in those jobs, on those terms, doesn't mean everybody else with AS can

Something else you are completely leaving out of the equation is the discomfort third parties feel with the idea of working with, or employing, some of us.

That counts too.

I find it impossible to understand how anyone could possibly berate others as vitriolically as you have in this thread for being different people to you, with different limits.

But you still did it.

M

I only have a GED- I sucked sufficiently at school so that I wasn't able to graduate with my peers. I failed at my first attempt at community college 20 years ago.
Now, at 40 years old I am talking with my partner to see if we can afford letting me go to community college and only have a part-time job so that I can better my skills. I think I have the patience and maturity now to stick with it.
I cannot fore-see trying to get minimum-wage jobs while competing with kids 18 years of age for the same position.

You can file that under "Autism101" Callista...

The second lesson being that intellectual ability doesn't have much to do with it either...and not just for autistics...

We are currently in the throes of the kind of recession that means millions of capable, intelligent, NT people will never work again...

M