Am I Doing Things Right?

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The guy friend I'm staying with right now has aspergers and I'm hoping I'm helping him, but sometimes I worry I'm just babying him and going to make any troubles he might have worse.

I am someone who has dealt with health issues all of my life, I have a few heart conditions and epilepsy, and I've always just kinda dealt with them. I do what I have to and move on. With my friend I'm not sure what is the best way to deal with things, because the biggest issue he has is he gets himself way too stressed out even over small stuff. I try to talk to him calmly, but he will just yell at me. I realize he doesn't really understand that hes acting out so I'm not sure the best way to deal with it to help him calm down. Sometimes me saying one word will bring about an irritated grunt from him or he'll kinda shoo me away, so I just leave him alone for a bit. I wish there was more I could do though to help him to keep from getting so stressed about things. It might start with something small like a fork is not in the right spot (just an example), and he will be irritated, but then it winds up ruining most of his day because he centers on that one event all day long.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

This is pretty typical of Aspergers. Sometimes when this happens to me, the best thing that anyone can do is to give me some space so that I can calm down. This can sometimes be hard for my mom to do because she always wants to do something to fix the situation, but sometimes the best thing might just be to do nothing as hard as that might be for someone to do. I wish I could give you more advice on this, but that is all I know. Good luck I thinks it's great that you're trying to figure out ways to help.

What is small for you may be legitimately big for him. Not everyone has the same abilities or processes/understands information the same way. Not everyone has the same needs.

Probably the first and most helpful thing you can do is to accept that these things are big things for him.



Have you asked him what would be helpful to do or what he would like you to do when he gets stressed out (2 separate questions that might get you separate answers)? He might know what he needs/wants, he might not. He might know and be able to tell you, he might know and not be able to tell you....in any case it never hurts to try asking. If he doesn't know or says "nothing," just tell him that if he thinks of anything you could do to help, to please let you know. It may be that there is nothing you can do to help him calm down, and/or that the most caring thing you can do is to leave him alone.

In terms of preventing him from getting stressed out, again I suggest you ask him/extend an open offer of help same as with helping him once he's already stressed out -- and again there may be absolutely nothing you can do.....short of trying to respect his need for consistency (your out-of-place-fork example).