Medication that helped you especially between 18 -21

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Labeling and dogma aren't the worst parts of therapy. It's usually not too difficult to figure out your therapist's dogma. 99% of the time, if you gush emotions and make them look good, you're golden. Just watch a Latin telenovela like "Los Ricos Tambien Lloran", pay attention to how its actors behave, and you have the right idea. Of course, you usually don't figure out what your therapist wanted to hear until you're crying yourself to sleep after a traumatizing session.

The real problem with therapy is that it's more rife with unwritten rules and requires stronger social skills than a school dance. You gotta think on your feet and watch your back, the whole time you're in session. You have to figure out what your therapist wants to hear, come up with it in a split second, phrase it in the way he/she likes it, be able to elaborate on it, and have verbal comebacks ready when he/she pushes your buttons. That's a HUGE Achilles's heel for most aspies. I wrote a thread on the subject, teaching hacks (tips and tricks) aspies can use.

I GET that some people benefit from therapy. But I were to see a therapist today, I know I'd end up doing one of these two things: (1) figure out what they want to hear, and keep saying it as much as I can stomach it; or (2) sneakily learn their emotional buttons, and try to (re)traumatize them.

Thanks everyone! There are some really good viewpoints here. Primary care doctor agreed we should have a neuropsych that is called a clarification of diagnosis. I think his primary care doctor is sensible in asking him to identify two symptoms that bother him the most and work on treating those. His response was anxiety about himself and others and his lack of focus. Fear is a big part of his life. He thinks people stare at him. He does have the additional problem of food allergy and extremely severe eczema so the staring thing is not just his perception.I’ve noticed it too. I think to clarify his diagnosis would help though I hate labels. I think getting him into social situations he can handle would help his depression as he wants to be around others as he is terribly lonely. He did ok with 5 mgs of Prozac a few years ago but when they upped the dose he became more and more agitated. Therapy is hit or miss with him and I agree sometimes talking itself one on one is not helpful. Current therapist is trying to help him find resources to stabilize him. In that sense when you’re lost it helps to have a guide through the system. He was hospitalized and it terrified him. The meds they prescribed were Gabapentin ( I wish it had worked but no made him spacey and negative) he did better with mild dose of Ativan or clonezapam and a TCA antidepressant called Nortripyline.... that made him feel awful. His psych then tried seroquel and omg one dose and he exploded in paranoia and mania. Even my husband was frightened and he’s not easily scared. Anyone here have ADD and ASD? What then? He is a lovely unique young man and it pains me to see him suffer❤️ No matter what I say it seems to be wrong but that’s just his age perhaps. Lexapro and Effexor seem interesting and I will mention to psych. Thank you all for the unique viewpoints.

Therapy works for NTs with mental health issues and psychological and traumatic issues in life. Therapy does not work work for the majority of Aspergers/Autism because therapists are NTs and they do not have Autism/Aspergers and they do not understand the way we see the world.

The best therapy would be Therapists with Autism/Aspergers that have lived and experienced the difficulties and struggles of life and not being accepted or understood

It is the Autism/Aspergers that leads to many other issues in our lives: mental health issues, social issues, employment issues, etc. Not having this condition would make life a lot easier and understood by NTs and mainstream society.

We need more therapists with Aspergers/Autism to work with people Aspergers/Autism to help them cope with the difficulties in life that we face. I do not trust or understood therapists that do not have the same condition because they have not experienced the struggles and difficulties in life and they do not understood.

What we need is extensive training for therapists on the realities of life. Most of them never experienced the hardships aspies experience, so they live in a whimsical dream world of cuddly kittens and rainbow-farting unicorns. A dream world where toxic families and cruel kids don't exist. When you tell them about your parents fighting in front of you or classmates pretending not to know basic facts, they either don't believe you entirely or think you're exaggerating. So they try to gaslight your problems out of existence, since they don't go along with their own beliefs. It's like Mark Zuckerberg denying the reality of Facebook's privacy abuses.

Perhaps aspies age 10 to 20 can act as guest speakers in graduate classes future therapists are required to take. Aspies can talk about the problems they experience, from watching their parents fight to classmates feigning stupidity for no good reason. Professors will grade the students on the quality of the solutions they provide, and aspies' evaluations will be a major part of the grade. This way, therapists will get trained to actually HELP an aspie during a therapy session, not just coo at him or smile patronizingly.

Age is probably a big part of it.

A young man wants to know he has a reasonable chance at jobs, friends, romance.

And he doesn’t want to hear falsely optimistic reasons from his dad or anyone else.

Okay, a couple of open possibilities . . . if your son likes some zen ideas, the idea that it’s worth trying with deliciously light touch even though long odds. And in meeting and getting to know people, slightly under-trying does seem to be the coin of the realm.

And job-wise, please try to avoid entry-level, which can be among the most brutalizing of jobs, and not in a good way. And 50% of sales jobs are rip- offs.

And volunteer work can be as disorganized as anything else! But still might be worth pursuing.

Maybe think mid-term, jobs such as X-ray tech, etc. And long shot interests are sometimes worth pursuing, I guess with that same light touch.

I can not stand therapists that tell me to stop being a victim, take responsibility and they dismiss my problems like they never happened. I have told therapists to get stuffed and just walked out and never returned. I refuse to take the medication because that does not fix my issues in life, medication can make depression and anxiety worse. Medication and therapy does not help with people accepting me in social situations nor does it cure chronic loneliness. Chronic loneliness has no easy solutions that therapy or medication can fix.

Of course, some of us are pushed into therapy by schools, parents, medical professionals, court systems, or even well-meaning friends.

I think ask the appointment setter:

‘Can Dr. Green please call me back. I want to ask him how familiar he is with Aspergers-Autism Spectrum.’

If Dr. Green calls back and says, I understand people on the spectrum can have gaps in social skills, as well as sensory issues . . . that’s actually a B+ answer.

If he gives a bunch of generalities or doesn’t call back, well, that’s an answer, too.

You can also vet the hypothetical Dr. Green this way. Call him, and say the following.

"I have some problems that I would like to go over and resolve. Dr. Green, will you be able to offer workable, constructive advice to put my problems where it belong, rather than just empathizing with me and discussing my emotions?" ("Where they belong" implies "the past" or "nonexistence", and therapists will get this.)

If he says anything other than a resounding "yes", say: "Thank you for your time. I will explore other options."

Another thing. Women therapists, due to their stronger family-centric mindset, will often tell on the minor patient to the parents, to "bring the family together". They may also act patronizing with the patient they perceive as "cute"; this is VERY bad if you're 10 or older. Insist on a man therapist, if possible. Unless you're a parent, of course.

Yes, I certainly agree this would open the door to improvement.

But on this one . . . I may be more radical than you!

For I want to de-professionalize the fields of “psychology” and “therapy.” I want to widely disseminate the information which is fairly well supported by evidence, so that teachers, coaches, and just people in general will know about it.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 20 Jan 2020, 6:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'm actually pretty radical. In one other thread, I even suggested that we need to have children and teens acting as therapists. Most adults, especially parents (and many therapists are parents) don't remember how tedious, unpleasant, and disempowering it is to be a child. So most forms of therapy, as practiced by adults on kids, are just plain unhelpful. Only someone who's a child themselves will fully understand another child's problems, and therefore actually take him/her seriously.

Also, another thing we should do is mandate all therapists to get RN or NP degrees, thus giving them the ability to prescribe medications to patients upon request, as well as training in antidepressants. This way, a therapy patient will actually feel better, rather be strung along for months, if not years, with countless lies, manipulations, gaslighting, and false promises. Then, there will no more patients crying themselves to sleep. Just patients always smiling and getting a cuteness overload from puppies.

There's nothing to de-professionalize in therapy. Other than requiring a Master's degree, it's really not a "professional" field. It's about social skills and charisma, not intelligence or good judgement. A 10-year-old child can do that job easily, which goes back to the first paragraph. A child or teen patient will benefit far more from a therapist his/her age, than from some adult who sides with the parents due to closeness in age, and thinks of the patient as "cute", defiant, or both. These non-adult therapists will not have prescription powers, though.

This is an example of a crappy psychologist giving a pat answer, I mean if I’ve ever seen such an example! Yes, a pretty blatant example of the psychologist basically just phoning it in, and not putting forth the effort to have any kind of real dialogue with his or her client.

And good for you for telling said therapist to get stuffed, and walking out of the place. I myself might be able to pull that off one time out of four.