I need advice about a friend with Asperger's!

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hi, my name is Jeff.
my closest friend, Lou, has a brother who is only 3 years younger than him.
his name is Pete and he is 23. and we think he may have Asperger's. but he has never been diagnosed.

Pete's behavior has always been odd, and sometimes problematic. he hasn't had any friends since high school and has never had a girlfriend. a few years ago Lou started bringing him to parties at friends houses hoping that if he had more interaction with people he would learn to socialize better. it hasn't worked yet but he's become sort of part of the group when lou brings him out.
Pete can come off as very rude and inconsiderate and often annoying, but we all try to brush it off like "oh, that's just Pete". although he really drives me nuts sometimes i've begun to think of P as a little brother.
Lou and i have talked many times about how to talk to Pete about improving his life. he doesn't make any attempt to meet new people, let alone girls. he goes to work, then goes home and sits in front of his computer and tv at his mom's house and drinks beer, obsessed with obscure brands of beer. he's clearly depressed about his situation in life, but doesn't know how to fix it. and i'm concerned about his alcoholism.
it was only recently that Lou came to me with the suggestion that Pete may have something like Asperger's.
i did some reading online and it makes a lot of sense.
he means well, but he never looks at things from other people's point of view, doesn't understand that some things he says are rude, doesn't realize when the person he's talking to is annoyed or uncomfortable or offended. he even does a flapping thing with his wrists habitually.

my question to the people on this forum is: how do you tell someone they may have Asperger's and they should look into it?
maybe if he realizes this about himself it will help him deal with it and get out of the rut he is in.
any advice from someone with Asperger's or someone who knows about the topic would be very very appreciated.

thank you!

Hi, Jeff, and welcome to WP!

You do not. Instead, you look into it first so you can understand him. Being told he needs to come around to whatever else everybody else seems to be doing will only make matters worse for all of you.


Nope. If he could do that, he would have already done so.


You are most welcome!

Personally my depression lifted after I figured out about Aspergers. I could understand the disapointing situations. The sense of hopelessness went away.

There is an AQ Test that you can find on wired.com, its on the internet and all disclaimers apply etc but its surprisingly reliable.

hi
My name is Lisa and I'm a 32 year old with high functioning autism (Aspergers), Pete may have Asperger's but chances are if he does it will be very hard for him to change his behaviour if he hasn't had intervention since being younger. People with Autism can learn to act like NTs (neurotypicals) but it takes years of practice and learning to do so.
approaching it as if it's a huge problem may end up putting him in more of a funk than not. Autism is not a social death sentence, I am quite social even though I was painfully shy in middle and high school.
As for not dating, maybe he's gay, or maybe he's just not interested at this time in girls, I know it's hard to believe but not all guys think with their pants (not to be crude or vulgar, pardon me) instead of their brains.
Can you give an example of how he's rude?
A lot of people I find get engrossed in what they are saying that interests them that they can't always tell the other person is bored to tears, that isn't an exclusive autistic trait just a human one!
I hope you can help your friend get out of his funk, no matter how that happens. Would he be open to talking with a counselor or psychiatrist?
Lisa

Be careful about telling someone they have a neurological disability. I'm glad now that I know, but I wrestled with depression and denial and anger for years after finding out about my diagnosis. And while I'm relatively comfortable with my diagnosis now, I have lost something. I used to have a sort of confidence -- my friend (who is also asperger's) calls it "fake confidence" and that's a pretty good description.

How this fake confidence worked was that I didn't know anything was "wrong" with me. Of course I noticed all the symptoms like severe bullying in school and inability to fit in well with others, etc. But I didn't know it was part of a syndrome or that I was fundamentally different from others. So in a social situation, I'd just keep trying and I'd keep hoping that I'd get it right this time and something would come together.

Since finding out that I have asperger's, I've become more and more reclusive over time. I feel less hope about fitting in and make less effort to leave my house and participate in activities. I went from someone who was frequently out in public, going to pubs, joining clubs, being a political activist, etc. to someone who is virtually housebound. I go to classes (most of the time) and I go to the grocery and that's it. Just the thought of going to a club or pub is exhausting to me.

If Pete is asperger's, learning about it will change his life. Maybe for good. Maybe for bad. And you can't predict. So be VERY careful what you do with that bombshell information. I used to know one guy who had a pretty good job and a handful of friends and found out about his asperger and lost his job and drifted away from his friends and lives on disability now. Knowing about one's asperger's can be a gift. It can also be a curse.

All that being said, if you still want to tell him about asperger's, one option is to pick the most interesting, informative book (or pamphlet if he's not a big reader) about the topic and leave it somewhere where he will be likely to pick it up and read it. Let him discover it on his own and let him decide what to do with the information. If anything.

Hey
You sound like a really supportive friend, coming here.
But you've come to the right place

For me, I discovered that people were reasonably open to talking about aspergers - they didn't know much about it, but they did want to know more.
I showed my friend a list of symptoms, and didn't quite specify what it was about - I just asked if this sounded like them.
If you (and Pete) know another aspie, it might me easier to talk openly about symptoms with them - maybe Pete wouldn't want to feel different.

I think that people are quite open to hearing about aspergers, especially if they realise that there is improvement for their life - and also that they're not just a weirdo, or whatever.

However, telling Pete would just be the first step - you'd have to be prepared to go through a journey of getting a diagnosis - and it's not easy.

You will have to help him find a diagnosis - it's impossible to get one on your own.

Hope that helped

yeah OP, i understand your desire to help your friend's brother. it could go either way for him, and honestly you might want to have a close look at your motivations. if it comes from a desire to help him change himself, i should tell you that he may do the opposite - he may decide to accept himself for how he is and become more entrenched in his ways.

i started my diagnostic journey when i read a list of the criteria out to my husband. i was going to ask him if he thought our nephew may have asperger syndrome, but he said, "oh no, that's YOU." i was shocked and a little perturbed, but it definitely helped me to hear that. i was already going a see a psychiatrst because i had an employer suggest that i look into what was 'different' or 'wrong' with me anyways...

interestingly, i unintentionally returned the 'favour'. i work with a man who seems decidedly aspie, and one day he talked about a 'friend' who he thought had asperger syndrome. wthout thinking, i said, "i think that YOU might have it." i realized what i had done, and i turned it into a silly joke and the moment passed, but 6 months later he finally admitted he had been asking about himself.

it definitely helped me to know what was different about me, but not everybody feels that way.

i don't know how to do the cool quote posting thing so i'll address what some of you have said this way..

leejosepho: i'm not thinking we should tell him to act "normal". he's clearly not happy in his life and i just want to help him out of his rut.
"maybe if he realizes this about himself it will help him deal with it.. Nope. If he could do that, he would have already done so."
i don't know how he would have learned about Asperger's on his own. he's not the "seeking out knowledge" type. he acknowledges that he doesn't have friends and he wishes he had a girlfriend. and he's clearly depressed about it, though he doesn't really express it.

ghdcanada:
"maybe he's gay, or maybe he's just not interested at this time in girls"
that crossed my mind, but i don't think he's gay. he's been caught by his brother watching straight porn and he expresses interest in girls. he's has said to me that he wishes he had a girlfriend. he's even tried online dating sites, to no avail.
"Can you give an example of how he's rude?"
he will say very blunt things without any filter put on them, then doesn't get why people think he's being a jerk. also, if you are talking about something he's interested in and you say something that he believes is incorrect he will interrupt, correct you, then go on a one-sided speech about the topic, not noticing that he's bumming people out.

flamingshorts:
i'd like to hear more about your case, how did you figure it out? i can't see him figuring it out on his own, and Lou and i want to find a way to talk to him about it, or at least nudge him in that direction.

hyperlexian, and all:
my motivation isn't that he start acting 'neurotypical'. i'm concerned about his drinking and his depression. and i think the root of these things is his frustration with his social life. he has career goals. and he's good at his trade. but he doesn't have a social life outside of when his older brother brings him out to parties. i've read the entire Wikipedia page on Asperger's and it all adds up. i feel like i understand him better now that i know (or at least believe) that he's an aspie, and maybe if he realizes he's an aspie it will help him, and he will become less depressed.

This seems like good thing to do for him. Its never going to just suddenly work, but it does help.

As other people have mentioned, getting diagnosed is hard, even when it is something you have asked for. Knowing what the problem is does not necessarily help you find a way to fix the problems in your life. even worse knowing the underlying cause of your problems is a neurological condition that will never change, can make the problem itself seem unsolvable as well. Although understanding you gain can be very valuable.

If you feel that he is depressed about his situation, and drinks too much, maybe just suggest that he needs to deal with that. Let him deal with what the cause of being depressed or drinking is.

There is a "quote" button at the top corner of each post, and clicking on that brings everything within into the new-post window where a bracketed [-quote-] and [-/quote-] (without the hyphens) frame the quotation ... and all typical edit commands are then available.


Then begin by learning about whatever you believe is causing him trouble. It would be cruel to just go tell him you have heard something about something he might have and that you think he ought now to go try to find out about it and see whether that helps.


All the more reason for you to begin first.


Those things are mere symptoms. He needs someone to actually teach him how to live with whatever he might have.

If it were my friend -

I would be concerned about the alcoholism if that is there. The other stuff [been there done that] - pressure to normalize was more likely to have the opposite effect on me. What he needs, my best guess, is time, LOW stress levels, and lucking out finding people he can talk to.

Just be sure his problems do not get blamed on the drinking. Drinking can sometimes *cause* problems, but drinking, in and of itself, is not *the* problem.

Proof: Take the alcohol away and the *true* problems are no longer avoidable via self-medication.

I was reading about social anxiety because I thought thats what I must have and what I read mentioned Aspergers. This happened a few times but it didnt click right away. When I saw people 'self diagnosing' I though 'you cant to that, only doctors can do that'. Then I dawned on me that doctors generally dont diagnose adults without prompting.

I agree about leaving pamphlets around, maybe getting the film "Adam" (which is about a young man with Asperger's) on DVD and getting him to watch it with you, stuff like that. I think he'll adjust better if he figures it out for himself, even with a little help.

If that fails, just sit him down and say "I'm worried about you, I think you're depressed, and I think I know where you can find people who have the same problems and can help you," then bring him here.

In the meantime, I must say that, for me at least, the pressure to normalize is a lot harder on me than any actual loneliness. I want to have friends because it's something I think I should want, and I feel inadequate because I'm not very good at befriending people or maintaining friendships, but I'd actually prefer to be alone. That may or may not be the case for Pete too.

Wow you are a good friend!

You should have him take the Aspie quiz test, and/or read this forum! Your friend may recognize his traits in topics on this forum in which people describe their own traits. ASD folks have very similar quirks, naturally.

How you should go about doing the above, without coming right out and asking him, that I don't know. You'll think of something.

Yeah, what you said. I what a close friend, not just because I think it's something I should want, but because it looks so good! I read Anne of Green Gables and it sounds so exciting and wonderful when Anne finds her "bosom friend." Or I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I want to be part of something so obviously special as the Scooby Gang. There are so many fictional models of beautiful friendships that it's hard not to want to taste that myself. But, like you, I'm not very good at developing friendships -- the few times it has been taken to that "next level" it's because the other person wanted it to go there.

But then I end up losing the friend anyway, in some stupid way. And then I realize in retrospect that the friendship really didn't go that deep anyway, compared with what I see in books and movies and television and even though it went deeper than any other friendship I've ever had, it was still pretty shallow on the "big scale of friendship." And all that effort is so exhausting with so little reward, especially compared to how nice it is to sit home alone and knit or read or lose myself in research or watch a great movie. Or going out hiking alone -- I can't even imagine hiking with other people; it seems just awful!

And in the end, I realize that I really don't want a friend, I want to do stuff alone . . . and then the reading and movie watching shows me all those glorious models of beautiful friendships and I start aching to have one again. *sigh*