Hi Functioning Aspies with a Breakdown in Mid Adulthood?

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Yes, there's no good reason to work if you can't turn a profit at it. I've talked to people in my area who think that giving people with disabilities arbitrary tasks to do just to say they're "working" means that they're giving them pride or something... yeah, I'm sorry, but they aren't stupid; if they're sweeping a floor that's already been swept and getting paid $5 a week for it, they probably know very well it's useless work. That's worse than no work at all.

I said most autistics can work; I didn't say everybody could. And the ones who can't are in no way inferior (or superior) to anyone else.

I got SSI on my first try too. And went home and cried after the "how defective are you?" interview. By now I'm beginning to think that's some kind of universal experience for people who go through that process.

SSI plus trying to get to school equals utter chaos. I often wonder whether they might simply be trying to discourage people from trying it through the sheer weight of the paperwork, because it's just easier to give us barely enough money every month and forget about us. The person who's been helping me get through said paperwork and the pursuit of several government employees via phone thinks I may be right--that they make it deliberately difficult for people on SSI to get anything other than the sort of employment where you do useless work for $5 a week, and even harder to get career training that involves school.

Alana: I don't know where you live. I live in the USA. There are two main programs for disabled people who can't work here. For SSDI you have to have worked a certain number of hours. For SSI you have to be poor enough and prove you can't work.

But I don't know how anything works for people who choose not to work. Everyone I know including myself who doesn't work, can't work, so it's not a choice for us. The ones who can get SSI or SSDI, get it. The ones who can't, are homeless, married to someone who can afford to support them, living with someone else who can afford to support them, and in many cases in some really terrible situations. I know a few autistic women who have found really creepy men who allow them to live with them in exchange for what's basically rape. (Such men aren't always hard to find. When I had to spend three nights on the streets because of a complicated construction situation that made my home unlivable, there was a known rapist who would walk in circles around town to find homeless women and offer them a place to stay. It's terrible but such guys know the women they target are desperate.) Most of the women I know who lived that way went through strings of such situations before they could get out of them.

But again I only really know people who really want to work and either can't do the jobs or can't get themselves hired. I don't know anyone where it's a preference thing.

I'm so glad I saw this post lol, I don't think i've experienced a breakdown yet, but I know I'm on the brink of having one. I currently work a full-time job and also a part-time one. To be honest, working all day isn't a problem for me, I don't really mind it. However i've been really unhappy at my full-time one. There's a lot about my job that bother me that wouldn't bother a normal person, but for me it makes it absolutely dreadful. It wasn't as bad in the beginning but after they moved me to my new desk about a year and a half ago, it's gotten worse by a lot. I sit in a high traffic area with people talking and phones ringing all the time and it drives me nuts. And I get people coming to me with complaints all the time and it's usually about stuff I can't do anything about. I've also noticed I cannot stand office politcs, they give me a physical headache when people start to talk about them.

I also realized a few weeks ago that I will never have any advancement in the company as I have utterly no interest in the other positions and I don't want to deal with the general public (note: I work for a big insurance company so we get a lot of cranky people, I work in IT so I don't have to deal with them). Unfortunately because of this realization, I've noticed that I have no motivation to do anything at work. I've gotten good at getting people to think that I'm actually doing anything but I know I can't keep it up for much longer. I'm afraid of getting caught and potentially fired because of it. I never really knew what to call it but now I realized I'm probably on The verge of some sort of breakdown. I keep feeling like I'm caged in whenever I'm sitting at my desk and my sensory issues have gotten worse. In the past I have always been good at realizing when something doesn't work for me and then trying to find out an alternate solution to the problem. When I didn't like my elementary school classmates, I switched highschools so I couldn't start over and be virtually anonymous (which worked well). When university wasn't working for me, I quit and went to vocational school (which went really well). Now that I'm in the situation again it's time to think of a better solution. I want to quit now but I need to take care of all the debts I've incurred over the years (due to being an impulsive shopper). I was planning on giving myself a year to work and pay it all off but now I've changed my plans. I'm planning on staying at the bad job for a little bit longer in order to save up some money for school. Since IT isn't working for me, I'm deciding to change my career path to something that will work better with my AS. Unfortunately I need $50,000 in order to pay for tuition and living costs while I'm in school so I'm forced to stay at my job a little longer than I'd like. If I got a different job now I don't think I'd be able to get a job that pays me what I get at my full-time. If I could get some sort of disability assistance for school that would help out immensely but I don't really know of any.

If I had the choice to work or not, I would always choose to work mostly because even though I'd enjoy the time away from everyone, I'd feel utterly useless since I'd have to rely on my parents to support me or some sort of government program. I think that anyone can work, it's just finding the right job that is the tricky part

I've thought about the possibility of this for a long time, virtually fried my nervous system in my early and mid 20's trying to quite literally beat the aspie traits out of myself - with the obvious results that I simply found out what was what, the 'actual' rather than conditioned aspie traits stayed.

I've been much more compassionate with myself these days, working more on blending my traits out with other things, keeping my social rapport at an energy level that I can keep up with without frying myself. I still have a lot of things pushing me upward in terms of needing success on an internal level though - ie. I have a good job, graduated college highest honors, still single however, I've had the urge to go from accounting into international business via acquiring foreign languages and a big side project of mine - Kali, have to get a black belt. A lot of these things are good, though some (particularly my business aims) may be a bit grandiose. Overall though I am the kind of guy who barely feels at peace with himself unless he's doing something that has him climbing the latter in some way - so yes, I really have to watch myself.

Anymore though I'm coming to understand what would cause me to wreck out. There are times where I can take a full run at things all day long, and there are days where I will feel a tingling sensation all over my head - inside and out; bad sign. When I realize that my energy reserves are like that I make it a point to take it easy until I can get my wind back. I think the problem for successful adult aspies would be simply if they don't listen to what their bodies are telling them, I could be wrong and perhaps I'm lucky that my limits are this self-evident, others may not have it quite as clear cut.

Also, as I get older, I'm really hoping that better working understandings of the world that I've worked incredibly hard at over time will help me expend a lot less energy. It seems like neural energy supply and demand is what this really revolves around. The more skills acquired the less extra juggling that has to be done, the easier things get, and when that happens you have less occurrences of your facial muscles and/or your ability to speak shutting down simply because your mind is burning what little fuel is left.

Its important to remember also that anxiety itself is a huge killer in this regard. The more you can put yourself at ease with blending your challenges out, having good damage control policy, knowing how to handle yourself physically if that's an issue, gaining confidence in your abilities to teach yourself the things that you need to know or build marketable skills - all of these things will help a lot. If you find yourself in places where its all based on speed rather than skill sets and the situation simply can't get better - you're likely in with the wrong people or at the wrong job, either find a compromise with yourself (try rolling back to part time and finding a calmer second job, if your friends are social butterflies just make sure you do get enough rest between days out with them) or, if that's not possible, simply try to find a healthy way out.

Some of the other obvious things - make sure you eat enough throughout the day, if you can eat a light breakfast and lunch and plan to have snacks at mid morning and mid afternoon - it will keep your brain from shutting down and thus keep you from struggling with social issues quite as badly as you would on an empty stomach (better for metabolism anyway). Also, if you can get involved in physical activity three to five times a week - by all means do it. I'm sure there are other energy management techniques that you can work with but, energy management again is the crux of it.

In the United States you have SSDI, in Singapore we get nothing. The little state welfare in Singapore which is available is set up as sort of a private charity and they make you beg for the money.

I have opted out of the workforce for the last 7 years and every day I count my blessings at not having to work. I live with my family and so rent is taken care of but I do contribute in nonmonetary ways like giving daily lessons to my niece. The rest of my needs are covered by my savings and investments from the 3 – 4 years I spent working. I also spend less in a year than most of my peers would spend in a week. Some of the people whom I started out with on Wall Street could easily spend what I consume in a year on the first hour of a raucous Friday night.

The key is in accumulating enough capital to invest and then knowing how to deploy the money while minimizing as much as possible all expenditures. When I did work, it was not at minimum wage positions, although if you counted the hours that I worked it was not really that much more than minimum wage. That made it possible to set money aside. Also, when I was working, I was extremely frugal. One you do have some money, and you do not need all that much, options become available.

Instead of doing really horrible things like prostitution, you should look to acquiring temporary shelter like a van. http://cheaprvliving.com/index.html Moving to a place where the cost of living is low would also really help. Many former Wall Street types are moving to Rio de Janerio because their money will go further there. If you come from a country where English is your native tongue, moving to Asia and supporting yourself through teaching English is another option. The point is that you do not have to live in fear of utter destitution if you proactively seek the available alternatives.

But like I said, not everyone has the option or can make the choice.

This is possibly my favourite ever WP thread.

I'd be the "diet and relaxation" subtype. I've never had a breakdown, and my burnouts have kind of blended in with my shutdowns.

This is an extraordinary thread. On so many levels, reading it has been like reading about me. I have had a series of nervous breakdowns since middle age (my first at age 38) and my most recent only last autumn (age 64 going on 65), but I felt the onset of the first from the age of 30, due to overwork.

A gifted child, born into a religious family framework in Wales in the final year of the Second World War, I studied Architecture, Town Planning and Estate Management by church correspondence courses to assist in developing missionary settlements abroad, which I believed was my calling from God, but was so ridiculed and bullied at state school that I attempted to commit suicide at age 8 and suffered severe retrograde amnesia and loss of personal identity due to a serious head injury there shortly after qualifying at age 15 to work in Commonwealth countries abroad.

I was therefore taken under the wing of the Local Education Authority as a direct entry trainee, for them to find me alternative employment, and they got me involved in a design competition to devise an infrastructure development masterplan for a fairly major government project at home, through which I eventually qualified in Civil Engineering Works and Highways Management.

The head injury had turned me into a number cruncher and I obsessed about equations defining ‘ogee curves’ allegedly used by the architect John Nash to design the vertical and horizontal alignments of a road bridge across a small river valley in West Wales, and I even walked in Nash’s footsteps for a while, by working on a few projects at Windsor.

My IQ was tested shortly after obtaining that qualification as a reorganisation of local government was on the cards and I scored a AA in the Alice Heim test, and 135 verbal, 155 spatial and 170+ numeracy in the Peter Eysenck tests.

On the reorganisation I was assigned the task of developing a computer-aided, integrated land use, transport and economic development system to manage a £50m+ highway programme (1974 prices) for a whole county, which burnt me out mentally and physically, so, believing that I was finally going to see my maker, I escaped to West Wales, to specialise in Highways and Transportation aspects of Town and Country Planning, thinking it was my swansong, which, indeed it was, because, shortly after the Structure Plan I helped develop was approved, I suffered another bout of severe retrograde amnesia and total loss of personal identity.

This was accompanied / caused by my thyroid packing in and my head filling up with so much fluid that I began losing my vision because my eyes were forced out through my eye sockets at differential rates as one of my eye sockets is larger than the other.

Another factor may have been the stress of becoming a father, as I lost my memory and identity the day my one and only child was born, which was shortly after the Structure Plan was approved.

I am convinced that my memory and identity loss on that occasion was partly, if not wholly, psychosomatic, as, in counselling, many years later, I was able to recall ’mesmerising’ myself to switch my memory and identity off, to protect my child from being stolen by Freemasons, to make me reveal state secrets.

I managed to hide from my employer the fact that I had lost my memory and identity (and was completely nuts), by developing a habit of working by day and studying by night, surviving on only a couple of hours sleep every night.

Ten years later, my father died in distressing circumstances and my mother began drifting into severe clinical depression, so I then dedicated those couple of hours each night to keeping her company; but I was unable to save her and she committed suicide on roughly the anniversary of my father’s death.

One of my cousins then began corresponding with me about her memories of childhood, when she and her family had lived with us, so I dedicated those couple of hours each night to her, and what she said was very disturbing - she called my mother a witch and accused my father and grandfather of Satanism - and as I couldn’t remember back that far, I was unable to confirm or deny the allegations, but her ramblings began evoking quite terrifying ‘memories’ in my head, which I could not tell were ‘real’ memories or ‘false’ memories.

After about six weeks of this badgering, one day, in the office, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop. I phoned my boss to tell time, and he sent me home and arranged for me to receive psychiatric counselling, in the course of which, the counsellor, after quizzing me about my life said that he thought I probably had an Autistic Spectrum Disorder, most likely Asperger’s Syndrome.

I bought a copy of the British Medical Association’s ‘Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia’ [1990] to read up about these conditions, but they seemed so irrelevant to the reason for my nervous breakdown that I thought no more of them, until I had a series of further nervous breakdowns and my job was restructured ‘to have more to do with strategy and less with operations’.

That was 6 years ago, and, surprisingly, the only time I have cracked up since then was last autumn, when I began worrying about my impending retirement (last Sunday).

This account only scratches the surface - my relationship with my wife and with our one and only child are also critical - but they are only peripheral to my core relationship with myself, and my service to God, Queen and Country, because the God, Queen and Country thing came into my life before them.