Struggling as parent of adult with Asperger's and OCD

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It is funny, because looking back on my son's life, he always had Aspie issues. But we never saw it. We thought he was just stubborn and fixated on OCD issues and channeled that into things that interested him. . About three years ago, the lightbulb went off that he manifests every single symptom of Aspergers. the black and white thinking, the focus on things of interest, the inability to understand social cues and other's emotions, and so on.

He was always smart and did well in school. At one point in middle school, we considered taking him out to homeschool because of anxiety and fixating on things. Things bothered him that didn't bother our other kids. The seams on his socks would upset him. Little things.

He never got a special ed diagnosis in school. Graduated from high school in top of class. Went to college and got nearly a full ROTC scholarship. Completed his degree.

Just a few weeks before graduation, he got into some trouble with a minor rules issue with his unit., and long story short, got kicked out and now has to pay back an extraordinarily large sum of money to the government.

He has a hard time holding a job because he gets stressed out from anxiety, which manifests in anger and physical health issues. He has a degree that could get him employed in a heartbeat, but cannot hold a job.

He first spoke to a psychiatrist two years ago, but. Instead of seeing the big picture, put son on Concerta for ADHD. This seemed to escalate son's health problems and he feels like doctor can't help him, will just give him poison drugs that will not be natural and make him feel worse.

Medical marijuana helps calm his anxiety and anger, but his frustration with the world around him is getting worse. Noise bothers him. He lashes out at family members. He is becoming more and more anti-social. I do not worry he will hurt us physically, but the temper tantrums are getting ridiculous. He will go on a rage about something insignificant and be unable to cope.

I feel powerless to help him, but more than anything, I worry for him. I do not see how he will ever support himself at this point and now has a staggering debt. He doesn't want to live with us, but has no resources. He has unrealistic notions about living off the land away from people and noise.

I am absolutely frustrated, not knowing what to do to help him. Hypnotherapy? Cognitive behavioral therapy? Medication? Talk therapy?

Any suggestions would be helpful.

For me, MMJ helps most when I use it in conjunction with other relaxing herbs or teas. On it's own, it eventually takes on a depressant effect in the wrong context.

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It sounds like he has sensory issues that have never been addressed. Seamless and tagless socks and underclothes and a pair of headphones would be a good start. Try looking at other areas of his environment that make life intolerable--do you have fluorescent lights that flicker and hum? A noisy TV that is left on all the time even if no one is watching? A few small tweaks to your living space might make a world of difference.

Arielhawsquill - We live near a busy airport and are pondering a move to someplace with less external sensory output. I will look into noise canceling headphones.

Cberg- I am wondering what kind of relaxing teas you would recommend? I do notice that depressive effect. When it helps, he is focused and can concentrate and is relaxed. When he is depressed, everything gets fuzzy for him and he starts venting and spirals.

Hi, please note that I'm not a parent, but I am a person who lives life on the Spectrum self-diagnosed.

You may be siding with the world against your son.  The situation with ROTC sounds like a body blow and a big bad thing.  And it may well have been a poor decision on someone else's part to lose an outstanding student.  Or, it may have been bullying behavior, either targeted at your son or your son standing up for someone else.  And often when a person is fired in a messy situation, it's not quite lying to clean up the facts and pilot a rational face on it, but it's close.

What I remember from years ago from a friend in ROTC, the first two years in college you're not committed, the second two you are.  But if they fire you, that may be different.  Either way, I just wonder what a good country lawyer could do about negotiating down the debt.

then the phrase 'cannot hold a job'

wow, that's just so contrary to my experience and the way I look at the world.  It makes the thing sound a whole lot more fair and rational than it is.  Or, my own experience playing poker, even if you're following good strategy of loose-aggressive in tournaments and tight-aggressive in cash games, you win some, you lose some, and that's just all there is to it.

Or to take a very serious situation, I'm sure you're well aware that with DNA demonstrably innocent people have bee freed from life imprisonment.  It's not that prosecutors knowingly go after innocent people (at least not in most cases), it's more that they feel they need to edge cheat and push the envelope to make the whole thing work.  And not just someone who's Aspie, but pretty much any sincere person would struggle with this and have trouble with this, at least at the beginning.

So, your son has had at least a double blow, finding out the way the world works and being treated personally harshly.  Please don't add a third blow by taking the other side and arguing against your son.

Aardvark,

This is why I am here. I am new to this. For two years, we have been patient, trying to help him get on his feet. We hired a very expensive lawyer to negotiate the debt, and lost. the federal government has deeper pickets than we do. It is a six figure payback.

This rule violation happened in fourth year, and are demanding four years of tuition be paid back.

He had two good engineering jobs, and one day, with no notice, just basically gave notice each time. Came home without a job or giving the boss any time to find a replacement. The stress was too much for him. He is incredibly bright.

The world is against him. I get it. I am a NT trying to figure out how to help, and he wants the world to change. I only want some sort of happy medium, where we can function together as a family and he can function as an adult in the world, learning to cope.

We are committed to helping him, emotionally and financially, but need to know how to do that.

What has worked for you?

I do think he got a bad deal with his superiors in ROTC. I think he was starting to manifest awkward social behavior at the end of his training and didn't realize how close to the edge it was. They could have helped us, but didn't.

It is a huge setback and impacts his view on the world. So how do we help him see it is a stepping stone to something better?

Hi lannistua - I am a newbie to this forum too. Welcome, and I hope we both find answers. Your post sounded so similar to mine; an adult son who graduated from high school with flying colors, went on to graduate from college, then everything fell apart. I waited 5 years to start looking for help. For me, it will be baby steps all the way. This forum is a good beginning.

Okay, I am fifty years old, and soon to be fifty-one.  After living on my own from 1985 all the way to 2008, I have been back living with my parents and it's difficult at times.  And the years independent, often with some financial help with my parents.  When my parents have tried tough love or cutting me off cold turkey as if I'm some kind of heroin addict, which I certainly am not, that have not had the most healthy or positive results.

I've had a wide variety of jobs, copy center manager, high school math teacher, waiter, cashier, furniture sales person, H&R Block tax preparer, etc.

One thing that has worked is jobs where I deal directly with the public, rather than through some gate-keeper.  That has also been the case with my writing.  If it's some venue where people can directly read or listen to my writing and decide if they like it or not, I usually do pretty well.  If it's some gatekeeper deciding whether the public will like my writing, since it's unusual, I often get judged negatively or at least cautiously.

In a speech, Temple Grandin said Aspies often have one of three preferred cognitive styles (with some overlap of course) :

1) abstract reasoning, such as math or music,

2)  story / narrative understanding of the world, or

3)  visual thinking, like Temple herself.

I'm very much the story / narrative thinker where I'm very motivated to understand something and then explain it.  And this explains why I'm good at some sciences but not others.

As an engineer, I guess the baseline odds is that your son most likely is an abstract thinker with possibly some overlap in other categories.  So, please take what I say with that grain of salt.  Our experiences may be different.

Okay, it's certainly not good that your son quits a serious job with no notice.  One option is to say, I'm going to need to take a couple of days to address a mental health issue.  But that's hard to do if you haven't at least mentally rehearsed it, and I can see why someone would put that off till things were terrible.  Another method might be the half quitting method and lie of deflection, Some family matters that I have to take care of.  When I was younger, I would be against this.  Not so much now.

One thing to look at, with high school and college, your son had dozens and dozens of opportunities of getting the lay of the land of a class, pacing himself, etc.  With the engineering jobs, a grand total of only two.  So even where they grossly underestimate the time in some cheap motivational ploy and you have to re-negotiate the other way and not take the thing that seriously and let it rattle you, well, that's extremely stressful if it catches you off guard.

And, once an experience unravels or comes crashing down, it takes a while for me re-group, re-center, mentally go back through.

Like months, or more.  It takes a while.

And he might have been hired by HR.  And his immediate supervisor may never have been in his favor as a coach.

And, are you talking about classic OCD, germaphobe issues, cleanliness issues including delaying showers, doorway rituals, counting, etc.?

I am surprised by the quitting thing your son did. Might there have been some workplace bullying? Or some additions to his job that were new and stressful? You might want to try checking out 'Asperger's in the workplace' by Rudy Simone, who herself has AS.

By the by, I have cognitive behavioral therapy and it can work.

I am a story thinker by the by.

As a stepping stone to something better... um... trying to think of a few ways to frame it.

Did he learn new skills he can be thankful for during his time there? Did he see elements in others that he would or would not repeat? Then the time was not wasted. He has tried a profession and can take the good stuff that he has learned to the next job. He has been through the worst, and is a trooper... it can only get better.

When I was OCD at my last job, it was like a stress reliever. I wanted to that thing the best possible, and because it was a high stakes job, I did like five zillion times till everyone else was a half hour late in leaving. Now, I have a check list that relieves the ocd tendencies somewhat. I hope the best for you.

My story is this. I passed high school and college flying colors. And got never rehired after any other contract ever since, save at my current job and a museum job that was really specialized but casual. I was practically fired once. I say practically, because I quit first rather than face the dishonor of being fired. I had moved out on my own at that point. I had gotten an evaluation of my psychological abilities years ago, but had always felt it was not quite accurate. All of a sudden, the social joke of my employment was not funny any more. Not that it ever really was. Had it gotten worse, I don't know if I would have developed more anxieties. As it stood, I became very depressive for a while.

I had spent ten months being told I was no good, and had no family around for a thousand kilometers. What helped me most was wanting to remain independent. Wanting to remain independent, I got an evaluation, psychologically speaking and was diagnosed with AS. That gave me a pathway and recommendations. It also gave me an explanation for my quirks. So, this year, when I was under the gun AGAIN, I came out. Having been fired, my new workplace pays better, has better hours, and is kinder. I know what my strengths are and will not satisfice down to what was in my bad job. From my last job, I know how not to train newbies. I do not have meny sensory issues, but have some extreme visual spatial issues so organizing is difficult. I got help by coaching from a coach in learning disabilities who was willing to try AS. Even though I was told countless times I would not amount to much as a supervisor, I have made it. After four years or five of employment difficulties and not being renewed or quietly let go. I am thirty now, and have not yet started a family, have no family nearby and am a woman. I hope the sacrifice was worth it.

I don't have a solution for you - my son is 10 and I just signed up here. I read your post and got a glimpse of what could be his future too. Our boys sound exactly the same - only difference being age.

I wish you the best with this. You sound like wonderful parents. I know I struggled a lot in life and had many setbacks and eventually found my way.

Your son might have aspergers but they've also got loving parents in their corner. That's a big advantage for him.

We're hoping that diet will help manage things for him better and maybe neurofeedback but it's very expensive.

The OCD manifests not as a cleanliness issue, but in obsessive thoughts, mostly. His compulsivity in starting a new thing and obsessing about it- ie, got an indoor greenhouse with specialized indoor lights. Trying to grow veggies out of season, and the progress wasn't as good as he hoped. Instead of just starting some new seedlings or a different type of plant, maybe strawberries or tomatoes or something, he disassembled the whole thing. So now I have this kit in my garage, just sitting there.

The obsession starts a project. Then, he just decides it isn't worth it and compulsively devides to abandon it. He might ficus every waking hour to it fir days ir weeks and then just it.

He obsessively talks about pet projects or news items that interest him. He wants everyone to be as interested to the same degrees. If not, we are idiots for not caring.

With regards to his other jobs, he was working as an engineer for defense contractors. Stressful work, but engineers have a reputation for being quirky, so they generally work without a lot iof social interaction from others.

Thanks for sharing your exoeriences, managertina. I have been looking at cognitive behavioral options, but he says he is not interested.

Robinkate - wish you the best with your child. I wish I knew them what I know now (which isn't very much). Then again, I am not sure if he would have had some of the same opportunities that he has had being so high functioning when he was younger. He always had to work harder at things, but his frustration levels would be lower than his siblings and would just persist till he finished sonething.

I think that is why it has been harder now - he would always keep at it and even though frustrated somethings, fixed it, or invented it, or solved it.

Right now he has invented a bunch of interesting things, but completely lacks the desire to bring them to market. My husband and other son has been helping him, to see that he can be the inventor and they can sell them or market them for him. Some days he is on board for that. Then, he decides it is dumb and moves on.


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That doesn't sound at all like OCD. It sounds like Aspie special interests + hyperfocus + monologing. His lack of follow-through might be due to executive dysfunction.

Interesting. I am going to have to research that.

The doctor is the one that first said OCD was a component. Is there a lot of overlap with these types of symptoms?

The doctor also said ADHD, but Executive Dysfunction looks way more accurate. They put him on Concerta a couple of years ago which honestly seemed to be when he started having most significant problems. If it was ED, that would not help him!

Kid always did fine with deadlines, and had a lot of them, along with a very rigid schedule in ROTC.

He dies not have that, now.

Did struggle with reading comprehension when younger, and we worked one on one with him on that. He could read the sentence but fuve minutes later lacked complete understanding of what he was supposed to remember. We made flash cards and a system to learn how to ask questions while reading, to see what point of passage ir book or article was. He ended up taking most advanced English classes throughout high school and became a goid writer.