Too easily thrown off by obstacles?

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Do you find that when you're trying to accomplish something, whether it's just a simple everyday task or more of a longer-term project, you seem to be more easily stalled by problems that come up than most other people? I had the sense that this might be a particular problem for people with AS/autism.

The image I get in my mind is of someone walking down a road, and all of a sudden they come to a huge boulder. While most NT people would probably walk around it (or find a way to climb over it if it's completely blocking the road), my tendency has often been, figuratively speaking, to just stand there in front of the boulder for a while, then either sit down or turn back.

I don't feel that this is just the result of "laziness" or something. It seems like I really have a hard time thinking of alternative courses of action sometimes. It's like if something upsets "the plan," it can sometimes be really hard for me to figure out how to adapt. This is something I've really been trying to work on, though, and I feel like I have made some improvements. It still kind of seems like a tendency I have to work against, though.

On the other hand, particularly where a "special interest" may be involved, I can at times be a bit too overzealous with something I'm trying to do. In those cases I sometimes have a hard time recognizing when I've gone past reasonable limits and it's time to "give it up" or at least shift into a lower gear. As so often seems to be the case with AS, the middle ground can feel like the most elusive thing.

Look up "executive function." What you've described is a good analogy for faulty executive function.

Here's an explanation:

http://www.ncld.org/types-learning-disa ... e-function

Thanks! I have come across the term "executive function" before in regard to AS, but I didn't realize it related so specifically to what I was describing.

No, I have the opposite pattern. I am persistent in eberrything I do. I read a decision-making/reward processing study in which autistic people were willing to spend greater effort to do greater difficulty tasks to get greater monetary rewards than typical people.

I guess that must be why most autistic people are so well-off financially...

No, actually I thought that was an interesting comment. I can see how many AS/autistic people could be more persistent than other people. I can too, under the right circumstances. I'm just trying to figure out how to make that persistence less dependent on specific conditions.

Both can be true in the same person. When I have medicated my ADHD, I tend to be very persistent and single-minded at getting things done - sometimes to the point of burning myself out from too much effort.

A lot of the energy I have sometimes seems to go into "mental labor," rather than getting things done in the real world. I sometimes get so distracted by, and caught up in, my own thoughts, internal battles, and mental "noise" that afterwards there often doesn't seem to be that much energy left over for practical things.

For me it depends on how badly I want to do it. If it's something I'd rather not do to begin with, obstacles can sort of paralyze me and become too easy an excuse to stop. If it's something I love and/or am passionate about? "No force in the 'verse can stop me." But there are few things I'm that into, and fortunately they're harmless. Everything else, I'm lucky if I can slog my way through.

I was always a good worker though, as an employee. Apparently a paycheck and fear of unemployment were good motivators. With working for myself, I'm not as reliable.

If it is something I want to do I don't let anything stop me. If something goes wrong or doesn't work I find a way round it. My biggest difficulty is getting started in the first place.

Yes. I think it's down to having a perfectionistic and controlling nature so that if something doesn't go exactly as I want it to go I feel it's all a complete failure. I'm not good at accepting a compromise position of 'good enough'. This happens even with something as simple as a visit to a shop - I'll assess the general shopping experience and interaction at the till in minute detail and almost always find an aspect of it that wasn't to my liking. I can only deal with it by trying to put it to the back of my mind but my brain wants to keep analysing it endlessly. Even when an interaction goes well I'll still keep nagging away at the situation until I find something I wasn't entirely happy with. It drives me mad! It happens in all situations where I have to interact with other people outside the house.

Funnily enough I'm not nearly as harsh on myself when it's a much more serious situation or if I really do mess something up badly - I seem to be better at putting really bad mistakes/situations out of my mind - it's just daily type social interactions that make me feel I'm never going to get things 'right' enough and I use this as an excuse to avoid them a lot of the time and when I have to do them I often act in a kind of 'Ok I know this is going to be horrendous but I can take it!' type way and often it's not. I know it's because I don't mix with people enough so when I do it all becomes far more intense and fraught than for people who are used to it ie I can't feign casualness if the situation isn't casual for me.

I can be tenacious and stick with projects/tasks sometimes but it all depends on how vital they are. For example when I've had to sort out admin stuff for my Dad who has Alzheimer's and is in a care home, I have to get it done as I'm acting legally on his behalf so wouldn't feel I could not do it as it's my legal/family duty. I might take a break from it if it got too stressful and I didn't have the energy for it but I'd always get it sorted in the end as I'd see it as my job and no one else would get it done.

If there's things that don't absolutely have to be done I'm very good at dodging out of them them though.

In my mind an administration paperwork/phoning an organisation type task is something I have confidence I can sort out as I'm used to doing it and doing it well but anything involving face to face interaction with people I have little to no confidence in as it is always so unpredictable and I feel I have little control over what happens as I never feel I have sufficient influence over other people so I am at the mercy of how they decide to treat me and I hate that! I can't stand being at the mercy of other peoples' assessment of me as a negative or perceived negative assessment affects me badly.

I get discouraged very easily.

No, I'm the total opposite. I will go on and on trying if I encounter obstacles while doing something. No obstacle can throw me off, because I'm stronget than them all. And I am glad of being like this, because this means I'm a strong person.

This is a generalization. I've known 9 or 10 people with autism (from AS/HFA to LFA) excluding myself, and of these 9/10, at least 4 or 5 ( more or less the half, then) were very stubborn, like me. Also, I met NTs that were thrown off by obstacles way more easily than I (or some other people with autism) did, while others were as stubborn as I am. This has nothing to do with autism. This has to do with personality.

Last edited by chlov on 15 Jan 2013, 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've been actively working on this for awhile. I do often have a hard time dealing with obstacles, and I can get discouraged easily. I also have a very hard time getting tasks or projects started, particularly if it's something for which I lack enthusiasm. On a bad day, I may even simply not do things.
On the other hand, as so many others have said, if it's something I'm driven to do, I'll stop at nothing to get it done.

Learning how to control this behavior has been one of my major projects of the last several years.

I'm going to go with what Verdandi wrote. I see both sides of this in myself, and in a number of other people on the spectrum I've met.

Some things, I won't stop until I'm dead, for other things I just can't see a way forward if I run into an obstacle thought by others to be easily circumvented or eliminated.

I'm an all or nothing person....I can be easily thrown off by obstacles, give up easily ect or I can be really tenacious and get around anything that stands in my way of reaching even a small goal. I'm never in between though....I never do a half-assed job of something...I've never been a C student, for example ......I either work really hard in school and study all the time and get A's or II just don't go to class , flunk out and then quit. Also I quit things when they start to go wrong sometimes but I go back to them. I dropped out of high school but then I went back and finished and graduated with a high A average, and the same with university, I dropped out for a couple years but then I went back and finished and graduated with an A average.Or in terms of little things I can not clean my room for months and live in mess but when I do clean my room I do it so meticulously, making sure I dust and vacuum every corner until it's immaculate.

When things start to go wrong for me sometimes they trigger episodes of clinical depression. When I dropped out of high school I just stayed at home in bed for two months and didn't eat and thought about death. I think people with mental illnesses like depression and anxiety disorders for example have problems with motivation at times, even if they can be really tenacious other times, and depression and anxiety disorders are REALLY common among people with ASD's (I can give a source for this if anyone wants).

Yes, I think so, too.

My experience is that I want to get things done so perfectly, most things feel just so overwhelming. So a small problem can devastate me so easily. Or I sometimes can't even get started because I really need to plan my course of action very clearly and that in itself takes a lot of effort. "Overwhelmed" is always the word that I use to describe how I feel when doing anything.

I realize that what other people do (such as work) is often done pretty badly because they don't worry too much about getting it done well. And that's why they can easily get started and continue, even when there are minor problems. Sometimes I feel I need to adopt that attitude because in some situations, "something" is better than "nothing".