What is it like to have "treatment"?

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I have heard about this "treatment" on the forum somewhere. Do you think there may be treatment available for adults? What does it do?

I'm sorry, but I must know...

I think treatment for AS would involve some kind of social therapy. You would meet with a social therapist who would explain non verbal clues, how to talk to people without pissing them off, how to maintain eye contact and when it's okay to look away. All these details about socializing will no longer be a mystery and will be explained away. You might get to do some journaling and read some scenarios and do some practicing.

I don't know for certain because I haven't been to a social therapist. I am just going by the various posts I have seen on here. My guess is some WPers have been to social therapists or are going to them now.

I don't know. Every time I've sought treatment for academic or harassment PTSD or other questions, nothing ever worked. The therapist ended up trying to treat my Asperger symptoms (why aren't I more emotionally connected to people, etc). Now that I have an Asperger diagnosis, it's hard for me to find someone to treat my AS. I have been trying to diagnose my own problems and develop my own cognitive behavior therapies, etc.

I have just started therapy (had just one session) with someone who has a PhD in psychology and an Asperger husband. She has some background in Asperger Syndrome professionally and she is supposed to help me with some of my professional goals.

Presumably, "treatment" will cover my anger at the NTs who harassed me and my feelings of bitterness and futility about organizations that break their own rules and refuse to help individuals enforce boundaries against harassers in the workplace/academic environment.

Also I have talked with her about help with socialization issues: how I can function in the workplace without being so affected by others and their problems or their behavior. I also want to work out ways to "lie" and "cheat" when I have to, which is a necessary skill, if you're working in white collar America. If I know someone is doing criminal things or being abusive, I have to be able to be able to keep that secret instead of being a kind of oracle in the workplace who can tell who's being a cheat and sociopath and blurting things out or refusing to work with them. I also want help working on problems that my employer wants me to work on, instead of working on things I want to work on or doing things that make me feel comfortable with the work instead of sticking with the employer's requirements.

But just getting a start is good because I'm trying to define these things and it's making me come here to read posts, discover what some of my Asperger traits mean, and I'm doing research into the psychology of social interaction. So the "homework" makes you discover more things about your traits and your issues, if they give you homework.

Heh, yeah, see, that's the ideal. What they actually do is teach you the scripts for various social situations and expect you to magically generalize. The kind of stuff they teach you is usually really, really basic--the stuff you figure out watching people or watching TV. They ignore the subtle things you can't learn on your own. Even facial expression teaching is REALLY obvious. Their "angry" example will have his teeth bared and his forehead wrinkled in the middle and his eyes slitted, and be staring directly out of the picture like a wolf about to attack... When a real "angry" person wouldn't have any characteristic I can detect other than his footsteps becoming louder. Doesn't help if you're on a well-padded floor or they're a small person or not particularly physically expressive. And they'll probably try to teach you eye contact, which is often counterproductive...

Oh, if that's what they do, that's truly basic. I did that myself, as an engineering student, long ago. There are a lot of books on body language -- the best ones for these are under socialization topics like dating, gaining influence, being able to spot liars -- so there's a lot of material out there you can order yourself about body language, how people feel when they do things, etc. There are a lot of books and material on the web for that. I wouldn't pay a therapist for that stuff. A quick search on YouTube for "body language" gives the following in the first few results:

--How to Read Body Language : How to Flirt with Body Language
--How to Read Body Language : How to Tell if Someone is Lying in Body ...
--Tonya Reiman -- The Power of Body Language -- Book Video

As far as scripts go, there are books on small talk, too. There's also some stuff on YouTube, too:

-- small talk video training

The problem with a lot of free material out there is that they can be at varying levels of difficulty, so some of it makes not sense at first. The video above is about workplace or business small talk.

I suppose my problem is that, once you learn that stuff, what do you do? Once you start talking to people you have the problem of getting to know them. Say you navigate learning how to get to know people, then you start having the problems I'm having now, where they do bad things or tell you their secrets, and you can't keep their secrets or lie about the things they do that affect the project, etc. That kind of individual attention is what I think "treatment" for AS should be.

I can order my own books and download videos and search the Internet for social skills training. I wouldn't pay for "treatment" except if it was individual and more tricky than how to read body language.

To my way of thinking a treatment would be akin to torture and brainwashing and i'd never go for it no matter how bad things got.

Chimchar,
what sort of help is it do need? the treatment that is being mentioned a lot lately,is usually in cure threads,as a lot of users say they would prefer a treatment which wipes out the bad things of their asd,than a cure.

there are medications which can help with meltdowns,numb senses,bring on speech,improving being around people etc there is treatment to help with a lot of areas of autism and as,but its nothing new.

ephemerella, that's what I've found too. All they do is try to keep your anger at society in check so as to protect society from you. Then they teach you how to appease those in power over you. And for your benefit, at the most they'll teach you a couple tricks: how to lie and cheat so you'll get some of that social power too and you'll be in a position where others, weaker than you, will try to appease you. Sadly, all this is, indeed, what Aspies need to learn in order to be integrated in society - how to play the hierarchy to their advantage.

LOL. That's funny.



I don't know how to do that. I have learned tho that accusing your boss's girlfriend of being a sociopath who is jealously harassing you isn't a good way to make him happy.



I do need to know how to lie & cheat.



I'm really down on NTs lately. In my view, they are living in the world of delusions propped up by lies and dominated by their egos. But then, my being down on them reveals my own egotism...

It's kinda funny that Warren Buffett, who can't even dress himself, gets CEOs from big corporations crawling to him on their knees every time the economy goes sour, looking for a bailout. And he can't even enjoy it. The type of power one gets by kissing the rear end of some guy higher up than you only gets you so far. If you want REAL power, make a billion dollars, and everybody is your friend. If you want to be God, make that 62 times over. The two richest guys on the planet are both aspies, while NTs below them play office politics. Too funny.

You're saying Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are Aspies? Hard to believe. I'd like to see some links to references that report that... If that's what you're saying.

pezar, that's true, of course. But if you weren't born with a very sought-after, highly marketable talent, you'd better learn to play the hierarchy well, to be as far from its bottom as possible. And that's the case for almost everyone.

Autism and asperger syndrome are such complex syndromes that I doubt they could ever find a treatment and especially not a cure. I know people and groups like "autism speaks" like to brag about how they know of a cure or treatment. But what you have to remember about the autism spectrum is that it isn't just a chemical imbalance or such like depression or adhd, it is a complex brain-set. I was diagnosed with high functioning aspergers about 2 years ago. In my earlier days before aspergers was popularly known about they thought I just had very severe adhd. Before that they thought I was just lazy. But for adhd and add, ritalin, adderal, concerta, and provigil (I now take provigil for attention) can be used as treatment to an extent. As for autism and aspergers, the only thing I have ever taken that has made it easier for me to act like an NT is believe it or not cannabis. Bust don't wait up for them to start prescribing it.

I was in therapy but stopped. They just know too little right now.

But if it helps, I am all for it.

Example: A friend was addicte4d to Percocet legally through the dr's carelessness. When she tried to get off, life was hell. She was completely worse than me on a bad day. For like 3 days I thought she will kill herself or go mad.

So they refered her to a METHODONE CLINIC!! THat is when the madness really started. For severeal months, she went and tried to do as they said. Take it daily- 7am- go up on the dose every time she asked to go down! They have a theory to get them up high enough to not want other drugs, but all it did was get her addicted to Meth. She gained 40 pounds, blood pressure sky rocketed- they were killing her and I was in tears.

Well, a miracle occured. I saw a pamphlet for a new drug that treats opiate addiction by nixing the withdrawal. It is a TARGET drug, not one to cover up symptoms or guess at what may work.

OH MY GOSH. In two days- andI have never in my life seen anythinglike this. I have been in nut hosues where people struggle for years. In TWO DAYS, her symptoms stopped. She is on the new drug and will be for a long time, but but they are tapering and she has had no relapses, is working again, blood pressure is back to normal and she has her life back.

WHEN THEY CAN DO THAT FOR US. WHEN THEY HAVE A TARGET DRUG then I will go back for care.

A target drug is what makes the difference, not this crap with "Try this."

I want to know the gene and have a drug to blast it to hell.

At that point I will go back.

HOwever, I have had way too much bad treatment and if you get a good therapist up front, then it may help, so please don't go by my expereince. I am from a very far far away planet.

I'm seeing in ASD therapist.

Well, I also started with a very across-the-field knowledge, starting with the fact that eye-contact exists as well as an excellent knowledge of how others are supposed to feel in many different situations.

It helped a lot. But yeah well, I'm in Germany and if you're actually successful in getting and ASD therapist, they're usually awesome because they know what they're talking about.


I was told, however, that psychotherapy or standard therapy would be totally useless for me. I can imagine. I need somebody reflecting me who is not autistic but who understands a lot about autism. Normal therapists are usually not the ones who fulfil this criterion.

The treatment I have gotten was in my childhood. I had occupational therapy, went to group therapy and the teacher would talk to us and tell s about passive aggressive, and assertive and we role play and we earn chips and we use them to get prizes. They were like money. I had speech therapy and we played board games and earned speech bucks for using our skills we were learning. We used the bucks to get prizes. I also had counseling and we played games sometimes and we talk and she gave me some advice what to do, taught me how to relax by taking deep breaths, etc.


I don't really get treatment except I still see someone like every two weeks. I had an appointment with her yesterday but cancelled it because I'm in Montana and I wanted to be with my parents. I didn't want to leave Sunday.