Therapy/someone to talk to?

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While I was at university, I had a few hours of counselling. At first it was weird, but eventually it was an immense help and something I looked forward to every week. I also had a support session with the disability centre, where my autism-related problems were finally taken seriously for once.

Soon I'll start to work and move out from home. On one side this is an immense relief because I'll finally be independent and don't have to deal with my mother's hysterical freakouts and accusations that my autism is just a "lazy excuse". But I'm not sure if I can deal with everything I'll have to do all on my own. I don't have any friends and don't currently get any support.

Is there some kind of special "therapy" for us autistic people? I have an official diagnosis if needed. I mean a place to go to to just ask some questions or maybe get some kind of support for things I don't know how to do on my own. Someone to talk to when I have problems, maybe some help to understand my past problems and to finally get over some things. Someone who knows a thing or two about autism and doesn't mock me or tell me I'm lazy, awkward and useless?

I live in Germany, so it might be different where you live. Still, do you have any ideas?

I meet with a support worker from the local autistic society once a fortnight for two hours. It's not therapy but she gives me someone to talk to and offers me suggestions about how to do various things if I ask for advice. Took me a while to get used to talking to her but I find the sessions quite valuable now. Not cheap though.

I'm going to need something like that when I finish college. I really just need someone to motivate me. It's all I need is just some slight input and motivation, then I am ok.

Hey Sanctus,

Generally speaking, you can get therapy fairly easily if you talk to your GP about it. Assuming that your GP is aware of your autism diagnosis, they should be able to refer you to a therapist -- the problem there (as you pointed out) will be finding someone who knows what kind of difficulties people with autism face and what solutions might work.

Some places in Germany have support groups, self-help groups or volunteer organisations -- depending on where you live, there may be one or even several of those. If you try to google "Autismus + Unterstützung + [Place you live]", you might get some results.

http://aspies.de/ has a focus on AS, but as I understand it they provide some support for people all over the spectrum. They also have a public- and a members only forum/BBS, so you might want to check that out (if, indeed, you haven't already done so) ... they seem to have a number of good resources.

Finally: congratulations on finishing university!

Could look into a support group for Autism as always tomorrow already stated.

Just wondering but isn't Sanctus Latin for holy or something like that?

I might make you happy with something that won't be available for you, but it's worth checking if it will be in the future.

The Dr. Leo Kanner House in Amsterdam is developing a serious game called "Hows" (house/hows). It's being developed for young adults on the spectrum to have some help with living on their own. (Frankly, I'm 56 and I can't wait for this game to come out. I could use a bit of help with organizing my household too. It's a mess!).

At the moment it is being beta tested with a group of young adults with ASD. This test version is in Dutch only. I have no idea if the Leo Kanner house has plans to translate it in English, but since there is an English promo, I think they have that in the back of their mind if they can get sufficient funding. Let's hope that they do.

http://www.ranj.com/content/werk/hows

The promo video is at the bottom of the page. It's rather 'loud', but the idea was to reflect how overwhelming keeping house can be when you're autistic.