If You've Not Seen This, Some GOOD info:social, jobs, life.

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Although this document written was effectively "done" in 1997, its author had reached some advanced and quite amazing conclusions. He was attempting to create a bridge across the differences that are so troubling for so many of us. His death at an early age was considered possibly the result of an autistic person having forced himself to spend so much time interacting with people who are or were NT and being very much on his own. Having lived through years of this myself, I will assure you that it can be at minimum distressing and at most unbelievably devastating. I've often considered suicide -- and I was older, more stable, when my so-called NT "friends" chewed me up and spit me out, leaving me homeless, traumatized, unemployed and so scared of people that I was no longer able to successfully get through job interviews.

And so, as someone who has "been there" and is struggling still, I will recommend this person's life work: the data he gathered was and remains exceptionally good. The advice he offers is worth taking seriously. He discusses issues which still plague a great many of us: employment, driving, relationships, how to distinguish true from false friends, job interviews, humor, Reasons to understand the NT world. Having been one of the first people formally diagnosed with Asperger's in 1981, this young man must have been very brave in taking on such a difficult task at a time when there was so much less support than there is now. You will notice that not a lot has changed since this document was written -- and maybe we need to to quit hiding as much as we do and being wrapped around our own problems and begin to make more of a collective "noise" on behalf of every one of us. How many of us need help, need housing, need one true friend, need to find a job where we are paid fair wages, need to know when i's really safe to trust that we will not get hurt? When will it be acceptable for us to love unconditionally and not be treated with suspicion or molested or be treated as imbeciles to be used and discarded?

Here is what he left for us and it is linked to a Wiki where we can edit and add good information to keep expanding the Survival Guide: http://www.autismusundcomputer.de/engli ... ml#finding

Thanks for this. I like how someone built a wiki on it for contributions!

Thanks for this. It will take me weeks to read it all-- more weeks with summer coming up-- yard work, the garden to weed, my summer homeschool curriculum to set up and administer (to unwilling children looking forward to twelve weeks of sleeping late and double-digit hours of TV like the last two summers). But read it I will.

Perhaps a moderator could be persuaded to sticky this thread????

I read his advice a number of years ago

I think it's a good thing to set it all down like this to help others but on the other hand, being the cynical person that I am, if the advice was so good, why did he end up killing himself?

This is how my mind works ie - it's not an effective survival guide if he didn't survive

Saying things like this never goes down well in group situations though

On the one hand it is logical to conclude that this isn't good survival advice if he didn't survive. On the other hand, his death may have had nothing to do with what is written in that link.

I read over the advice and thought it was excellent. It is more or less the way that I have been living my life for decades now. Some of the things he lists are things I never much thought about but do anyway. Others are things I stumbled towards through trial and error and eventually figured out to do in the way he has written. Since he has parsed everything out so painstakingly, I am guessing he stumbled towards it by trial and error too.

Here are a few excerpts of things it took me awhile to learn but I am so glad I did. I never saw them written down (as he has helpfully done) and just stumbled towards figuring them out the hard way:



It took me awhile to learn that. But he is absolutely right. Figuring out who you can talk to and about what was key. The internet has made this both easier and harder. There are now many anonymous places to discuss problems (like here!) but the flipside is that it is much easier to carelessly disseminate damaging information about yourself. His advice has become even more necessary in the internet age.

That is just one gem among many. I had never seen this link before it got posted here (although it is apparently pretty old). If nothing else, my post bumps this thread. This is a truly great resource full of great advice. The only bad thing I can think of is that some of this advice will be far easier said than done. Maybe that's why he didn't survive. Burnout? Or did he commit suicide because of something unrelated to this list? I don't know. But if anybody can implement even any of this advice without undoing themselves, it will help them. If these things are too hard to do or impossible then that is what it is and there's no use in torturing yourself trying to do something impossible. But none of this advice is wrong. It is all 100% correct. I live it and would advise anyone to live it if they can. The only possible fault I can see is that portions will not be implementable for some. But if anyone can implement anything from this link, they will find it helpful.