How do I approach my Aspie brother to get a diagnosis?

Post Reply New Topic

I would really appreciate some advice on how to talk to my younger 24 year old brother and convince him to get an official diagnosis and hopefully some treatment for Aspergers.

I really feel like time is running out for the guy. He is depressed, has no real friends, is still chasing the same girl for 6 years who clearly has no interest in him, has a rash over his entire body and is in danger of losing his professional job because of his poor hygiene (he refuses his co-workers and supervisors requests to shave).

Now, I've always had a hard time communicating with him. He is pretty arrogant and because he has a master's degree versus my bachelors, he feels that he knows more than I do. Also, he and my Chinese family have a difficult time discussing health issues, if we don't talk about them, they won't exist.

Do you have any ideas on how I can get through to him?

And if you know of any Aspergers resources/therapists in Portland, OR that you would recommend, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks Wrong Planet!

The main problem is that there aren't really any services at all that focus on professional-caliber people of any disability, let alone something that is non-physical.

Social skills programs are elementary, and are aimed at children and mentally challenged adults. Work placement programs are often unpaid, and the focus is on menial jobs. The jobs that require people or office skills are usually reserved for physically handicapped people, and that leaves anyone with a learning or social disability with the grunt work.

Personally, I wouldn't even approach it from the Asperger's angle. It's more about his personal health than anything. Even if he were diagnosed, any agency would tell him to get by on his own.

Do you think you could interest him in reading some books about AS? A lot of us, me included, were first clued in to the possibility we could have AS by reading about it and thinking, "Wow, that describes me." Maybe he would be more receptive to what "experts" have to say than his own brother?

I think that you should show him some websites and give him some books to read. Also, it's up to him to decide, if he wants help.

There is no treatment. If he's functioning well enough to hold down a job, he won't qualify for public assistance, so until that becomes a necessity, he doesn't have any real need for a formal diagnosis, unless he just wants it for his own peace of mind. Many people with AS feel it's important to them personally to be able to nail down that label and learn everything about the condition in order to understand themselves better.

Poor personal hygiene is an issue completely separate from Autism. Parts of AS mimic OCD, so having Asperger Syndrome is as likely to make you a neat freak as it is to make you a slob.



How is 'time running out'? If he has AS, it's a congenital neuropsychiatric condition. You're born with it, you live with it, you die with it (not from it). Knowing can provide a sense of emotional relief, at knowing your quirks and eccentricities are not personal defects, but the results of something over which you ultimately have little control, but there's no cure and no medication. You can't rub lotion on Autism and make it go away.

As someone who's lived inside an Aspergian brain for twice as long as your brother (if your armchair diagnosis is correct), I can assure you his troubles and woes are only beginning. After he's been fired the first dozen times, he might be more open to seeking an official DX. As for the depression, like the Autism, that's not something that happens to us, it's just who we are.

Its too bad he doesn't have a shot with the girl - you might use that to convince him to clean up his hygiene.

I've never got treatment, for my autism, and I've turned out OK.

I never got treatment as such (or even a diagnosis - Asperger's didn't exist when I was growing up), but I kind of identify with some of the description of this guy. I remember being depressed in general and being obsessed with a former (brief) girlfriend for far far longer than the actual BF-GF relationship existed. And yet I was getting the proverbial straight-As - one the best mathematics students in the whole state at the end of high school (at that time all students in the state sat the same exam, and I came in the top 50 for the whole state).

If I hadn't fallen in with a community of people involved in social and emotional rehabilitation during my late teens and early twenties, I seriously don't know what would have become of me. I had tried suicide years before (at 14) and I was bombing out academically at university, despite getting high school marks that would have gotten me into the top faculties at the best universities. After living with with another family besides my own, in a more structured life, with training and practice in social skills, I found my life skills and emotional maturity slowly catching up - if not to equal my academic skills, then at least catching up to acceptably normal: enough to get by OK in the NT world. I was very fortunate, and I am grateful still, even in my 50s.

Sure, I still have problems with sensory sensitivity, executive dysfunction, and lack of emotional self-understanding (I am still alexithymic). But I am married, with great teenage children, and have a well-paying job. Without the emotional problems, I would have done better still. But I have done well enough to feel that I reached some significant part of my potential.

Looking back, I really think in an ideal world that someone should have identified my problems and intervened. Fortunately, people did intervene even without recognising my exact problems. They knew enough to know that people who were floundering needed emotional and social skills. Anyway, that was my experience, for what it is worth (a statistical sample of one!).

Autistic personality traits are never "cured" - they are who you are: e.g. the gifted loner making original contributions to a field of knowledge. But the clinical impairment that many people with autistic personality traits experience can be treated, and can be improved - at least in some circumstances.

Thank you for all the great replies! I am sorry if some of my language came off as offensive...I really want to help the guy and I've been feeling pretty emotional about it and I didn't think as deeply as I should of when writing the post.

As for books, were there any that you found to be exceptionally helpful?

And do you think he would find it too offensive if I brought up Aspergers directly to him?
Like..."hey man, I've been reading about Aspergers and..."
Is there a soft way of saying he might have it and/or to check it out?
How would you do it?

If you want to try the "soft sell" you could try giving him autobiographies written by people on the spectrum rather than actual clinical books. Two excellent ones are Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robison and Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin.

Maybe you could try saying, I read these books and the authors reminded me of you in some ways, so I thought you'd like them?

Edit to add: the first book I read that got me thinking was Shadow Syndromes by John Ratey.

Last edited by bee33 on 12 Apr 2010, 8:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I haven't found much to read about it as far as self help books and "guides" on AS (there are a lot out there, I would just have to buy them) but I picked up a copy of "Look Me in The Eye" by John Elder Robinson and I liked it a whole lot. It's a memoir, I guess. It reminded me of myself a little, even though he's a male (I'm female) and he had a very different childhood than me, plus more stereotypical interests such as trains and cars. Here's the book on amazon, though I found it at my bookstore:
http://www.amazon.com/Look-Me-Eye-Life- ... 068&sr=8-1

I first realized my eccentricities were an identifiable pattern applicable to others as well, when someone close to me emailed me a link to a webarticle on Asperger Syndrome with the header "Read This, It Sounds Like You", and like many of us who went through the school system before anyone was looking for AS and discovered it later in life, I felt like someone had been reading my diary. It was downright eerie how a bunch of psychologists who had never met me could be describing my life as though they'd been following me around with cameras for years...

It was some time later before I had the opportunity to get formally diagnosed, but I knew from that first description they were talking about me. There was absolutely no room for doubt. So, if you can expose him to the idea without making him feel like you're accusing him of having a mental illness, he might actually find the idea fascinating. You can't shove information down an Aspie's throat, you have to intrigue them with it, so they want to know more about it...

Good luck!

Hello Willard. I love the new Avatar..........are you a closet philatelist?

I fully agree with your post and would add that in business (sales) too.............NO ONE likes to have 'information' shoved down their throat'.

Keeping this in mind has made me more money than I can shake a stick at

Good to see you on the Forums as ever.


Your friend


H

No, just an incorrigible punster. There's a style of tattoo, typically favored by females that is known in the biz as a 'Vanity Belt' - that stretches across the center of the lower back. In the last few years, the peasantry has taken to calling them "Tramp Stamps', which is unfortunate, because it has caused a marked decline in their popularity and IMO they can be extremely attractive (depending on craftsmanship and aesthetic judgment, of course).

When I saw the Commemorative Charlie Chaplin 'Little Tramp' stamp I thought it was very amusing, since it is of course, the only AUTHENTIC Tramp Stamp. So I blew it up, framed it and hung it in my tattoo studio. So far no one has gotten the pun without having it pointed out to them.