The Top 5 Worst Careers for people with Aspergers

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lostonearth35, you are definitely not stupid for having dreams. And you can still become an artist. Find a way. If you tell yourself you can't do it, your brain automatically stops searching for answers. Start focussing on what you really want. Take a little online course. Get some paints and start following lessons on YouTube. Just do something towards what you want to do. Then you will gradually come across more and more opportunities. Definitely do not give up on your dream. If you don't go after your dreams no one else is going to do it for you.

I had this massive change in perspective after watching The Secret. Its available in full on YouTube. I don't know if the Law of Attraction actually exists, but by actively changing your mind-set you definitely change your outward life. I know because I have totally transformed my own life in the past 2 years by following only half the stuff on that video. Anyway, watch the film, and best of luck.

...Hm...........

So what if it's just a hobby!? Your job is not the only thing that defines you. At least you have the liberty to fully experience the joy and expresiveness of creativity without stressing deadlines and opressive social environments.

I could maybe handle living and working on an aircraft carrier if necessary. Submarine, now way, couldn't handle not being able to go outside for months at a time. Also too clausterphobic for me.

Holy crap, this sounds identical to my current work experience. I'm getting very close to quitting specifically for those reasons, primarily because of my boss.

I'm a math teacher, but I've been having a very rough time of it. I can't do a mainstream traditional classroom, so I work at an alternative / offshoot school with a different paradigm -- a blend of computers and face to face work. I'm great at the math itself, and great at explaining it to people, including to kids, in a way they can understand. I'm not so great at making them want to hear me. I'm not so great at existing with the noise and social chaos. I end up most days just trying to survive my classes without melting down (I have become less and less able to hide the ASD lately as a result, and the kids are noticing my less "normal" behaviors), taking the opportunities where I can to work one on one with kids so I can feel like I've done something meaningful.

My ideal teaching job, really, would be all one on one or very small groups (2-3 kids at a time, though I could probably do 4). I could do that machine-gun style all day long and thrive, I think. But with 25-30 in a room, all bringing their own emotions and noise into a room, I can't sort it out very well, and I get overwhelmed quickly. Once I am overwhelmed, I get snappy with kids about their noise, which just makes them tune me out more, as no one likes to get snapped at. I have not given up, and I touch the lives of many kids for the better, but it is very tough, and the ASD definitely makes the job of a teacher much harder in some respects. Again, if it were more of a tutoring-style job, the ASD would actually make the job much easier, as one on one I have a easy time connecting with a person (no emotional background noise from 24 other kids, I can easily feel what my student is thinking/feeling, as we look at work together) when we have a common goal / activity to do, such as a math standard to teach / learn.

I don' t have a top 5 but I worked in a restaurant and was very forgetful and clueless at the job. Chefs singing, doors swinging, phones ringing... hey that rhymes...but it was so stressful and loud.

Retail is godawful- bright lights, internal politics, I made bad first impressions, I never went out with any of them socially because to me work and social don't mix. Two different worlds. Go away and leave me to wither and die under these garish fluorescent lights now please

Anything with an uncontrollable work routine such as caring professions where you look after a living thing. It gets very unpredictable. Changes one day to the next that are outside your control can cause meltdowns and overly aggressive responses to people... woops.

Management can be very difficult especially if you deal with cold hard facts first and emotion and feelings second. It can make you seem impersonal. This is apparently a bad thing. Especially as a woman.

Careers that involve unpredictability, sensory overload, heavy internal politics and ones where you are in the type of public setting that makes using a script difficult can all be problematic really. In my experience at least.

Nursing, especially for those with extreme sensitivity to lights, sounds and smells.

The flickering fluorescent lights, call lights, instrument lights and alarm lights will drive you batty.

The colliding sounds of call bells, angry residents, angry visitors, yelling supervisors, codes red & blue, feeding pump and IV alarms, doors opening and closing, elevators going up and down, people talking incessantly in the halls, gurneys and carts being pushed and pulled all over and privacy curtains sliding on metal poles will drive you batty.

The confluence of odours such as urine, poop, vomit, pus, wounds, blood, alcohol, iodine, and garbage will drive you batty.

And if that's not enough, there are the petty, back stabbing staff themselves to drive you batty.

All this craziness just to make money to pay the rent? Thanks, but no thanks.

I could never work behind a bar.

Anything in the service industry. Seriously.

Top of the my list would be: a professional jockey racing thoroughbreds, because:

it require unusual degrees of balance, grace, agility,physical stamina
it requires extremely rapid judgment of many different factors (which can literally be the difference between life and death)
it requires nerves of steel (riding a horse at 40mph+ holding on only by your knees toward the winning post)
it's extremely competitive in a public arena where there is no hiding place
it requires a degree of self-confidence and bravado that few people possess, whether NT or ASD
it requires the ability to remain extremely calm under pressure and surrounded by intense noise and danger

However I know an ASD person who became a top international breeder of Arabians, and that might be a good career choice - because horse breeding relies a lot on being good at analytical factors, a respectful affection for animals, and an intuitive feel for animals, and a penchant for detail..

Thanks for this. I want to be a teacher, and the little experience I have doing it showed me that not only am I good at being an educator, but the students genuinely liked me too. I think my AS actually helps me empathize more with the oddballs and social outcasts. Whether a person on the spectrum would do well as a teacher is a very individual thing.

Glad I'm not alone in this. All the friends I've managed to make have been the oddballs everybody else looks at like they're beyond weird. When really they just don't like being the center of attention.

I am working towards being an elementary teacher. I'd rather jump off a cliff than teach junior high, talk about a feast of sending kids to the office for discipline!
I love working with the younger kids. I am better in the 2nd-4th grade level rather than K/1st. Standardized testing has screwed up 3rd and 4th grade, in my opinion, and I'd much rather take a second grade teaching job because that's the last year they don't need to do high-stakes testing (PARCC/SBAC).
When a student and I work through a problem, i.e. a math equation they don't understand, and we both succeed, it makes both of us happy.
I better take valiums when I work however - I don't want to explode at the kids when I am overwhelmed with stress or it's a bad day for me.

Forget anything retail. Forget fast food, or any restaurant job, actually. That makes a teaching job seem like the least-stressful job ever. Running around making food like a robot; employees yelling at you; manager yelling at you; customers' patience running out if their food isn't made in X amount of minutes. They complain and write one star reviews online (Ever heard of the saying "if I could rate this place zero stars, I would"?)
Never a politician. Never. Ever. Ever.
Also, never on a professional or even college sports team. If I didn't really like PE class, why would I like to be a varsity athlete?

Circus trapeze and tight rope walker! ( maybe a clown would work, always tripping over my feet! lol)
A politician, all those people and never been able to answer a question straight! also cant master lying to people and oneself!
Air traffic controller! I think this is self explanatory! lol

Haha! I frequently say this- also I say I would run away and join the "freak circus" but fit right in- my talent would be talking to people.

((I thought this was a reallly funny form of self-deprecating humor but people looked at me like I had two heads when I said this))

I would say sales sucks! I was really good at the customer part of it- I knew the product inside out and was really interested in telling people about it- which they picked up on and liked.
But my coworkers... ah.... they were the problem. They didn't understand my humor (too direct or sarcastic take your pick) and I never wanted to gossip about people like they did and when I didn't want to go out and spend the money I JUST EARNED doing stuff with them I ended up losing because they cut back my hours as a result. So I left that end...