in regard to my husband I am pretty sure I am dealing with a bit more than aspergers here. he has been diagnosed with "severe" depression in the past, abruptly stopped taking it 6 weeks ago, and I know he is slipping again into his old mindset of dwelling on "what people have done wrong to him".
Over the past year my husband and I both saw separate psychologists who worked on a) getting me to pull back from being so controlling and b) getting my husband to be more independent with decision making. I thought things had really improved in this area but now my 10 year old daughter has told me that he now approaches her for reassurances and answers to questions.
eg: does he need to read her little brother his book or can he read it himself?
does your mum want me to hang the washing outside or put it in the dryer?
Apparently this has been going on for quite some time, but my 10 year old has only now got to an age where she can recognise what is going on and start expressing her thoughts about it.
I work and study up to 50 hours a week. My husband works too, although work has not really been stable for him over the past 2 years and he has encountered problems with a colleague complaining that he talks to loudly and brings up random subjects which he goes on and on about. This has really knocked his confidence and I wonder whether I should speak to his work about the concerns I have about his health.
It just seems to me that as he is getting older (mid 40's) now, he just seems less and less capable of functioning. Or maybe it is just that I didn't know about it before because the kids were younger and they could not tell me what was going on when I was at work. In any case there has definitely been significant changes over the past year.
He has always had a short temper, angers easily and has been abusive to me. This still flares up from time to time.
He is more and more withdrawn. Retreating to the shed to sit on his own.
Needing to sleep more (a definite sign of depression)
His memory is just getting worse. I mean, I often had to remind him about stuff, but now it is at the point where he starts ordering drinks in a restaurant and he has already ordered them or arguing with a clerk over a locker key which he thinks he has paid for but didn't.
Losing things all the time.
He has no discipline strategies with the children, even though we have talked over this again and again. He just gets overwhelmed and shuts off. This was particularly concerning to me when it was bought to my attention that my son had made some embarrassing comments about my daughter in front of his friends. My husband was present at the time and did nothing to reprimand our son or acknowledge our daughter's upset at what was said. In fact, he made some sort of "joking" comment about himself instead.
My husband has not been back to the doctor for months. I don't really want to leave my husband but I need him to help himself to get some answers about what is going on. As our children get older I find their emotional needs are greater. i am not sure i can continue also provide the level of emotional and practical care my husband needs as well. There are so many worries going through my mind. Is this Aspergers with depression? Or could he possibly be developing some sort of early onset dementia? Maybe all the signs are just an indication of a severe anxiety state and he is just shutting down from all the pressures of the outside world.
12 Feb 2011, 10:20 am
