"Hello" and "Help, how do I focus on the RIGHT thing"

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Hi All,

This is my first time on the forums so a big Hi to everyone.

I have posted a pretty comprehensive bio but I'll try to give the short version:

I am 48, I had a late diagnosis (at 42). I have a Wife and four young adult children (3 somewhere on the AS). Marriage is hell. Work is worse. I worked for 20 years in the IT industry and could never work out why I always seemed to get into the same place - the person who knows everything but can never finish anything. Wherever my focus was supposed to be it was always somewhere else. I can focus for England - beating software systems into submission a speciality; but only when nobody else needs me to do it or at least knows they need me to do it. The diagnosis finally explained the problem, but did nothing to solve it.

Now I've switched to being a teacher, teaching Computing and IT. I love teaching because as someone used to being utterly disconnected from people, practically like a machine myself, finding that there are other people 'out there', connecting with them and using that focus to make a difference in their lives is such a buzz. Standing in front of a class room full of students who are learning something they value and enjoy is a second-to-none experience for me. Teaching is the first job I've really enjoyed.

The problem? that damn focus again. To stay in teaching I need to qualify. To qualify I have to be able to show competence in all aspects of the job. I have to complete a portfolio of evidence. I have to be able to judge and juggle the actual priorities from the stated priorities. I have to mark, plan, prep, assess, manage bad-behaviour (including the paperwork) etc. I have to not get sucked into the little side projects that really interest me but take over from what I am supposed to be doing.

Can anyone suggest some CBT or similar, something tailored to ASD sufferers, for changing focus? The general stuff I've seen just does not take into account the depth of the trench we can get into and has no handles for dealing with it. The stress of fighting the ASD is starting to make me really ill (again).

I am working on this, too. I clump my problems into subtypes to help track them, and I call this my ADHD problem. A lot of aspies have it, and for me maintaining focus on the right thing, not the thing I want, makes my thoughts scatter around and the constant interruptions and demands on my focus makes it worse. There is always background noise competing for attention in my head. Not sure if this is what you have or not. When it comes to my interests, all that is gone, but to focus at work, even on my interests, I have to come in on the weekend.

Anyway, I can't take ADHD medication because I'm really anxious -- so my therapist said anyway -- so I have to turn to other methods. The only thing that works for me is spending a lot of free time after work doing simple tasks very deliberately. Drawing patterns, for example. It's a form of meditation, and it calms me down for about 24 hours.

I'm still refining this, but I've heard some forms of meditation do help with focus issues. I'm pretty skeptical in general, but at the end of the day what works, works.

The more energy I put into ignoring distractions -- or the more time I put into the repetition -- the better. Either lots of focus or lots of time seems to do the trick.

I'm sorry that I don't know any answer to your questions. I'm only saying this to reassure you: my sister is AS and she's been a high school science/maths teacher for fifteen years. If you give it your best shot you are likely to succeed.

I would map out what you need to be doing and also what you want to be doing, and then allocate a fixed amount of time to each thing. And I'd purposefully schedule things to avoid getting wiped out. I've never taught that that level so I'm just making these numbers up, but you get the idea:

Teaching class: 2 hours per day (x:00 to x:00)
Prep for class: 30 minutes per day (x:00 to x:30)
Thing you enjoy/mental prep for class x hours per day: (x:30 to x:00)
Reading/grading papers x hours: (etc)
Thing you enjoy/unwinding x hours: (etc)

I've been playing Sims 4 without cheats . It's given me ideas for managing my own time, and I think it's aspie-friendly as well.