Yeah, Okay

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I had a conversation with someone today. Shared some intimate struggles about how it's hard for me to do certain things because of how my brain works. The person suggested I get mental health therapy and when I said that it's hard because without an official diagnosis which in the US is sketchy to get if you are over 18 because resources won't be available to you anyway and a diagnosis might cost up to $2000.00, and could even hinder you in many ways. The person said "well, if you just go work it shouldn't be that hard to come up with $2000.00" and if this is important to you you should be able to do whatever it takes to learn how to function and cope with these things you have problems with in every day life and counseling is not expensive if you get it at the Jewish Community Center especially if your insurance pays for it. By the way I found out the hard way that my insurance copays doubled this year.

Okay. Am I wrong to feel frustrated? Because the person has a great point and I know the person well and I know that this was all out of great love for me and wanting to help me and I think a lot of what they are saying is true but I still feel frustrated like I could go pay for all the counseling in the world and it might not make a damn bit of difference. I have had counseling in the past and none of it has ever helped. But I can't help to think that they are right in what they are saying but I just don't know if I could do that.

You are right to feel frustrated.

It's easy to give cut n paste responses to another's problems.

You could find yourself in the position of doing a job you can't cope with in order to get counselling geared to helping you to cope with a job you can't cope with.

It's facile to suggest that if you really needed to, you could do it. If that were the case, you probably wouldn't need the counselling...

And, as you say - who's to say the counselling would do any good?

You feel what you feel. It's neither wrong nor right. She is trying to be helpful and truly has no idea how useless her advice is. She would find counseling useful. Might maybe you would, but I would guess the likelihood of usefulness is lower for you. Still, if you find just the right counselor who has familiarity and empathy with Asperger's.....
I think you should just be grateful that she is trying to be helpful. Whenever people sent me useless articles about autism and useless advice about my severely autistic daughter, I thanked them because it was kind of them to think about us. Most people don't mean to make our life worse. I try to accept the intent.

I spent more than two years going to a therapist and while I liked the therapist very much as a person, I don't feel it was ever making any difference in my life or my state of mind. I'm not one to spill my guts in front of others - in my experience that's a very bad idea that only leaves you vulnerable to attack for being who you are - and we usually ended up talking about the weather or what was in the news or on TV that week, or various conspiracy theories that I found compelling.

I finally decided to stop going, because changes in my health care status were going to put me in a different category, which would require that I meet with a psychologist who would form a "care plan" for me (most likely involving pushing me to take pharmaceutical meds, which I will not do). I've had a hard time holding a job for 40 years because I don't work well under other people's 'plans,' so that sounded like a terrible idea to me and I stopped going. It's not like I was going to be 'cured' of my autism, anyway.

The only thing that's changed is that now I don't have an excuse to leave the house and go talk to someone for an hour every other week.

Thank you for your responses. It helps me to read them.

I honestly do not see how an NT therapist could help an autistic be a successful autistic. I did go to an NT cancer therapist who I asked to request that I bring in a schedule every week to break up the inertia I was experiencing. I could have asked someone else to help me with that.

I also have a good NT friend that dispenses what would possibly be good advice were I an NT. She also tells me that what she most admires in me are my integrity, loyalty, and lack of pretentiousness [all common traits in autistic people]

You are NOT NT. You are autistic. Be proud of that. And if you come up with that $2,000, that could buy you one heck of a vacation in the Caribbean with it.