How on earth do you survive with Asperger's/HFA? (Poll)

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I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty much terrified of the world. I've only survived this long because my family sheltered me, but at the same time they weren't able to really take much interest in me or help me figure out how to support myself in the world (dysfunctional family, you know).

Now my parents are dead and I'm living with a brother, and being a burden on him. He's being very gracious about it, but this is not an indefinite solution.

I'm applying for disability, but doesn't look like I'm going to get it, because the rules are ridiculously stringent.

I've tried to work and support myself, but every time it's just been hell for me. Last attempt almost killed me - the stress was that bad. People hated me, and I have no idea why. I tried my utmost to be nice to everyone, even those who clearly hated me for some reason. Everyone has rejected and abandoned me in the last few years. Now I'm completely alone in the world except for one brother. Basically, I don't want to live like this anymore. I feel my life is coming to a premature end. I can't function. I wish I was never born. I'm terribly sorry if this offends some people - I understand that autism doesn't affect everyone the same way - this is just how I feel about my own life, and autism is only part of the reason.

Still, I read that the unemployment rate for people with (autism or Asperger's?) is phenomenally high - maybe 80%?

So I'm wondering how you are all surviving? Are you living with family, like I have up 'til now? Are you receiving disability payments from the government? Or are you supporting yourself through work? (Or other - inherited wealth, etc.)

Please tell me how you do it - I need to find some answers fast if I'm going to survive much longer.

*Thank you*

I'm a self-taught designer and self-employed.
Luckily I have a husband who does everything I cannot and don't want to do, like selling, negotiate with banks, accountants and so on.

i got married...i just can't survive a job interview.

I'm in transit right now. I luckily have my family that always takes me back after failed attempts at supporting myself. My problems are more related to executive dysfunction and over-stimulation than social problems. (I have lots of communication trouble and problems understanding/relating to people, but I truly do like people and being around them.)

My plan is to try a combination of living with family and being supported, and doing just what I can to work and no more. Everyone has a different threshold for how much they can do.

Maybe you can think back on the types of jobs you've had. Write down the parts of it that you liked that went well, parts you thought you did well that didn't go well, and the things you really didn't like. From there, you could have someone (your brother?) help you think of something you can do on a part-time basis that you can handle. Maybe something you do as a hobby could even make a bit of money! I'm not talking a livable income here, so if you need that it probably wouldn't work... but it would be a start, and just keep it small. :] ?

Well I'm 16 so I still live with my parents, but I'm working on multiple business ventures to make my own money, too.

You don't get rich by living off ya parents! Well, unless your dad is Bill Gates.

Supported by parenting-partner, the father of my 11 year old PDD/AS son, 12 years now.

I never managed to stick with a job such that it became a career, and have worked in several different kinds of workplace, either part-time or full-time; tax office, accountants, library, cafés and restaurants, charitable mental-health organisation, farms, ( fruit-picking, goat-herding, etc ), temp factory and clerical work, local free-advertiser newspaper as trainee-journalist, disastrous attempt at financial-savings-plan sales, etc.

I have often lived either wholly or partly on state benefit/aid.

I voted "Other" because my partner isn't what I call "family", and out of the 25 years I've been independent of my parents, ( since leaving uni ), I have lived about half the time on either work/employment or state benefits, and half the time supported by partner.
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Last edited by ouinon on 29 Oct 2010, 5:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

I work as an engineer. Over 24 years of working I've acquired enough social skills to do quite well--my lack of social skills when I started out was overshadowed by my ability to do the work they needed better than anyone else the could possibly hope to hire. They had an written technical exam--I had the all time high score!

My health "luckily" failed under the stress in ways that were provable and sufficient to qualify for SSDI/SSI. Living with my elderly parents nowadays as the SSDI+SSI isn't much. My parents increasingly need my help with things (which are usually (so far) things that I can manage), so in a way it works out. As bad as the 15 or so years of intense effort to "normalize" myself I did learn many things, about people and how various things in the world work (especially the ones that work nonsensically). So it wasn't all a waste.

The hard part for getting disability is proving things others can't see; the stress, and the problems people can't grasp beyond misunderstanding it as "not trying hard enough," or making things up. All I can think to recommend is a doctor or psychologist or someone else with authority to document the problems. There really needs to be more general awareness of adult ASC issues.

I have a dog sitting and walking service and that works quite well for me.
I'm my own boss and I don't have to deal much with people. Only if I have a new customer, I need to talk to them about the dogs behavior etc. but after that, I just go get them and bring them back ( and put the housekey under a flower pot) and don't have to talk to anyone.
And I usually go into the woods and meet noone and even if there is someone, they avoid to meet me, because they are afraid of the dogs.

But working in a normal office would be a complete desaster for me.

I have always scraped by, working and muddling through. I am chronically under-employed or in positions wholly unsuited to my temperament.

My only real support has been a fantastically patient, even if often baffled, wife.

Basically, I have lived a life of exquisite mediocrity, always banging my head against a wall of unrealized potential. I have always been deeply frustrated with my life and relationships. It is my hope that discovering my autistic tendencies hasn't come so late in life that I an unable take this new knowledge and use it to find some measure of contentment before my time is up.

I work and support myself. My wife also works. We have two sons (one diagnosed with Asperger's like myself and the other with strong Asperger traits).

Ever since I began Kindergarten, my routine has been school. So...it only made sense to me that I remained in that environment---I became an English teacher. There I could create assignments that were often centered around my special intense interests. I actually wrote an essay (which received an "A") on how to teach English by using roller coasters. I also used music to help stimulate writing amongst my students (my Master's thesis was on using music for writing). After 19 years of teaching English, the gifted intervention specialist job opened up at my school, and I accepted that position. That is what I am today---a gifted intervention specialist. I relate well to my students, because like me with Asperger's, the gifted students also have similar issues in their lives. And we have many strengths that make life fun and rewarding.

I am delighted to be autistic. Even though I have challenges in my life, I try to focus on the many strengths that autism has given to me. Here are some (and these are often drive me through an enjoyable life):

*Music---I became a professional musician by the time I was in high school (trombone). I worked many gigs while in school. I got to play jazz music with the "big boys" and it was a lot of fun. My musical interests later centered Appalachian folk music---hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, etc. Today I have my own music ministry, and I go around to various local churches performing on these instruments. Autism generated my musical abilities because as a young child I became incredibly obsessed with electronic organs and synthesizers. I was fascinated with the gadgetry on them (sliders, tabs, buttons, switches, etc.). I learned to play the organ based on this fascination with the mechanisms and how they controlled the sound.

*Roller Coaster---I cannot begin to tell you how incredibly fascinated I am (and have been since a child) with my special intense interest of roller coasters. I drew them in the margins of my schoolwork, I did assignments based on them, and by the time I was in high school I had memorized (without trying) the statistics of every roller coaster in North America. Today I have a collection of blueprints and am building HO scale reproductions of them for my model amusement park.

I have other interests too. And these interests make life fun for me. When I sit down to study my blueprints (and collections, etc. on other interests) I feel like a child getting ready to open gifts.

I am currently working on three writing projects---1. a novel utilizing many of my interests, 2. an autobiography focused heavily on my childhood, and 3. a musical using some of my music.

I am also working on my model amusement park and thinking about recording some of my organ and dulcimer music.

To sum up---I manage my life with Asperger's by working a job where I can relate to my students. My job is a routine I have been used to since Kindergarten. I am driven heavily by my interests. I often work on projects centered on those interests.

I'd like to live on my own but I don't see that happening anytime soon. What would happen if I couldn't and my parents died? I have another family member on the spectrum who is worse off than me as is... I won't be worrying about it until the time comes.

I am supported by disability benefits. Before this, my parents supported me, since I got fired or quit most jobs I had. I also make some money selling my artwork. (paintings). I do feel lucky to have disability benefits, since it seems alot of people on WP don't have them. It adds a level of security to my life that reduces stress quite a bit.

College educated, graduate school, working well below my abilities.

While I can pass schooling, getting in on a good job and keeping it has always been my problem. I don't have bad relations with people, but where I'm content to go to work and just do my job and interact with them, it seems more often than not I just don't connect well with people AND this is why I have not been able to get ahead in life according to how much I've tried to get ahead.

Fortunately, I've always manage to earn enough money to get by, but I'm in over my head with student loans that simply WILL NOT get paid back on what I make.

Engineering, working in R&D at a company that makes aerospace and power generation components. No college degree, just worked my way all the way up from the bottom. My fist position at this company was cleaning the floors.

I'm married with children. My wife does not work.

It can be done. Aspies are not dumb. We just have to learn to use our brain to take control over some of our different natural instincts.

Same here. My father started his own business while I was still very young, and that ended up giving me an opportunity to learn some things within an industrial setting all the way through High School ... but then he sold that business and I spent the next forty years bouncing from one job to the next and never really finding a place where I fit in as well other people seem to do.


I am essentially living with my wife in her mother's house, but I am presently at least getting food stamps so she does not have to pay for that. If you have not done so already, you might check into something like that. Your brother's income might mean you would have to get the food-stamp "nutritional assistance" only for yourself and with him excluded, but at least he would then not be bearing the burden of providing everything you eat.


Same here ...