How much extra help do you need day to day?(Read first post)

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This topic came up on another thread so I thought I'd make a poll out of it. Keep in mind that everyone needs help with a lot of things. I'm specifically asking about help that's out of the ordinary that you need because of being autistic or closely related things. Needing no help or making it on your own in this context means needing only the sorts of help your society considers normal (and in many societies this help is treated as if it's no help and as if only disabled people are dependent on others rather than that all people are heavily dependent on others).

IMPORTANT!! ! This poll is about what help you need, not what help you get. If you're living in an apartment where you are starving and sitting in your own crap all day, DON'T vote that you do just fine on your own!!

I know there are problems with this poll. The most glaring is that it's subjective. One person's a little help may be another person's a lot. I actually tried to come up with explanations for each item but it got too bogged down in details I couldn't calculate. Like one level of help could mean a little help with a lot of things or a moderate amount of a small amount of things or a lot of help in one thing. It tangled my mind in knots and I gave up. The other big problem is that a person might need an extreme amount of help occasionally and a little help most of the time. I couldn't find a good way to handle that either. In that situation you can pick the average, pick what you need most of the time, pick what you need when you need the most, or whatever answer you happen to think works the best. I don't care which you do as long as it seems as right as you can get it within the confines of the poll.

Also be aware that each item on this poll is a range, not a single point on a line. This means that for instance the most extreme form of needing help doesn't just mean the help needed by someone who can do absolutely nothing for themselves, it also means the help needed by people who can do some things by themselves but still need a lot of help with everything.

Also try not to judge how much help you or others get by where you are living. A person can get just as much help in an apartment alone or with a roommate as they can in an institution. (And often institutions don't offer that much help, just supervision. I've been refused admission or kicked out of some mental institutions because they "didn't have the resources to care for someone like that" and I've seen severely physically impaired people resented and treated like crap by psych nurses who got the job in the first place based on the common saying that it was "the bucks without the bedpans".) So just because you live in a group home doesn't mean you're getting more help than someone who lives in an apartment, and there is no actual such thing as "a person who could never live in their own apartment", merely a society that refuses to allow certain people the services to live in an apartment. So be careful with your assumptions.

I don't know. I don't even know how much I receive.

Crap I forgot I don't know and other. It won't let me add them either. Well that makes sense but still majorly irritating.

One thing I would say is that sometimes the help i need is a lot with anxiety and stuff which I guess NTs like my sis get from their relationships and stuff. I can do practical things ok pretty much, its my anxiety that messes everything up...

I voted 'a very small amount' but I'm not sure for several reasons if that was the right answer, or if I should have answered 'none':

a) I'm not sure if the kinds of help I'm thinking of count as out of the ordinary.
b) I'm not sure they count as day-to-day.
c) I'm not sure how much they count as things I really need; I don't get most of them, and I have been doing mostly okay without. But they're things that I worry could make serious problems some day.

(They're mostly things like dealing with paperwork and financial matters.)

I think it's other people that need help, not me. Unlike most people I know, I don't have to be out and about just to be happy. As for financial stuff, sure I probably need more help with that than most people do, but then again, that's why I'm happy, and normal people are not. All that stuff is too unnecessarily complicated, so the only people that can do that stuff are people that are too complicated. I'm too simple for my own good. Or maybe others are too complicated for their own good. One or the other, I guess.

I don't really need all that much help, living on my own.

I live with my girlfriend and her mom. Her mom pays for everything except my food so I guess she helps a lot.

Getting by with needed help topic

I have lived on my own and been a mother for thirty seven years.

I have no cognitive or physical challenges that require assistance with ADLs, but in my experience there have been cutbacks to this sort of service over the years, to those who qualify for it, so the need is greater than ever.

I don't have any day to day help, other than my mom texting me every day to make sure I'm still alive. I answered a very small amount, because I could use some help with some things. Mostly just reminding me to shower and tidy my apartment. I think if I had a roommate, that would be help enough because then I would have a reason to do those things, to be presentable, but right now I really have trouble getting myself to do anything. Once I actually start cleaning it's usually not particularly difficult and I'm physically capable, I just have trouble getting started. Sometimes I need help prioritizing too.

Oh, I probably need help with several things, although I am not sure where it qualifies on the list (small?). Mostly to do with housework, cooking, in general prioritizing things, initiating, sequencing, and completing tasks. Left to my own devices I tend to forget everything. Occasionally, I forget to eat.

Part of it is I need to schedule better. With more routine I'd probably do much better, but I have never been good at housework even with routine. Even when I do clean it's like...incomplete and storage spaces get totally out of control.

I guess I really don't know. Since nobody is truly independent, I can venture a guess as to what would happen if my wife wasn't around. It would be disastrous.

I think stress kept me motivated most of my life. When I was away from work and at home after the second day my mind would fall into kind of a fog. I was a different person at work; laser focus every day for eight hours. My wife kept the home life and shopping in order. Her planning and organizational skills have always been better than mine, but she still insists that I am the smart one.

After medically retiring, my wife provides a great deal of assistance for me in regard to cooking, shopping, and housekeeping. She always has, but it is related to my survival now. I don't think I would do well at all, as an isolated individual. I am very fortunate.

I have a friend who is the same way with her boyfriend. She needs nearly the same amount of autism-related support I do (which is a whole lot) but her boyfriend helps her with it. Including things as "simple" as avoiding being hit by cars and stuff. But nobody realizes how much help she needs because it's "normal" to get it from a significant other. (She also helps him with stuff so it's not a one-way thing.)

I am truly independent and actually support others.

I'm not sure if not working counts as help. That's probably the most helpful thing. When I was working my functionality at everything else was decreased (like having trouble making meals and such).

Other than that, I don't need a lot. In college, I found that with a small amount of informal help I was ok (later crashed, but that was mostly from the academic load). That help consisted of a cleaning person who'd come in every other week, and the landlady (I was renting a room) had a system where dishes would go into the dishwasher, which she would run and unload. Also, renting a room where 2 other people (who I actually got along with) were around meant some mimimal degree of human contact, which was helpful. (I previously lived in a seperated unit where I basically didn't talk to anyone for about 5 months, which effected my metal health badly. So, the minimal humant contact was important, since I wasn't good at getting friends or social opportunites on my own.)

And that's about the state of things these days as well. I live with my parents, and they do a lot of the day-to-day stuff (I help them with the non-routine problems that come up, as they're both a little cognitively impaired). As they've gotten older I've had to help out more and more and am a bit concerned about when they pass on. When my mother was in the hospital for a month, I had to manage everything from keeping my dad fed to getting the right documents to their 'tax guy' (CPA), and a hundred other things. I crashed pretty hard after that. I plan to sell the big house with the big yard and simplify as much as possible. Hopefully that will make things manageable.