Fluffy

I used to be violent too. I attacked what I did not fear. My advice is to have an older male adult threaten/scare him into not causing trouble. It's important that your son doesn't realise that you've instigated this threat and he still trusts you. When he comes to you to explain what happened you side with him then after a day tell him that the adult male won't hurt him. He will be on edge and won't mess about. I realise this isn't plitically correct advice and no psychiatrist would recommended an agressive approach like this but I can tell you from experience that it should work in reducing the violent behaviour.

From what you've written you probably have Autism.

I'm genuinely surprised at the lack of responses.

I have ipad and it's great but I dislike the way Apple does business. It locks everything down and milks money out of everything. There are a lot of good free apps on android than ios. The implementation of the software for the tablet is best for an Ipad no doubt about it. So those apps you mentioned I think are better on the ipad, however there is no support for flash games on ipad and the work around isn't as good as android. Hardware wise the ipad mini retina easily trumps the nexus.

Some of the names being thrown around I struggle to believe had ASD. Winston Chruchill did not have ASD

Anyone try Propranolol? How easy was it to get from the NHS? Did it reduce anxiety long term and did it improve working memory?

How do strategies to overcome traumatic life experiences differ for aspies over NT's? Any aspies like to share what worked for them? I have not gone down the route of traditional medication yet and am trying alternative methods first, such as the following: Meditation (Mantra and mindfullness) Exercise (Long walks mostly) Food (Raw healthy food in a vitamix - difficult to maintain I must admit) Has anyone tried psychodelics (e.g. psilocybin mushrooms; DMT (Ayahuasca)) to treat the symptoms? What was your experience and how did it affect you afterwards? Right now I'm considering trying Ayahuasca (going to Peru) and Oxytocin but would like to see if anyone has tried them and what their experience was?

Just an update. I quit my job.

Thanks to all who responded – the posts are great. You made some good points Lancslad, especially the following quotes "make sure you find a replacement strategy in supporting your self esteem" & "I think you need to understand yourself well and what makes you tick and ensure you can cope in any new environment". My self esteem is very low. I feel like I’m just existing and not living – by that I mean I’m not doing anything fulfilling in life that gives me a sense of purpose and joy. My life is waking up in the morning to go to an emotionally unrewarding and depressing job, sitting in front of a computer screen for >4 hours and going to meetings, then coming home, eating a microwave meal then staring in front of a computer screen doing random things until I go to sleep. The cycle is repeated every weekday. I don’t know what my future strategy will be but the first step is to get away from all the vampires in my life that are sucking all my energy and keeping my self esteem so low. This means quitting my job. I think I have enough in the bank to give me time to find that strategy. I might do something physical and similar to Lancslad, especially as it would improve my health. I am also interested in meditation and taking it up seriously. I also have an interest in finance and trading. Some of you have said that I should consider staying at my job but believe me it’s not worth it. My depression has been so bad while working here that I’ve often thought about suicide. There are also no adjustments they could make to my job that would work for them – it’s just the nature of the work I do. I do want to make friends but I always seem to eventually rub people the wrong way. This includes people outside work. I am great at making enemies. There are so many people in my life who truly dislike me, including close family. It’s difficult to be hopeful and positive when you are so conscious of your innate flaws but I must try. I would like to confirm that I don’t have an official diagnosis for anything but psoriasis. I’m reconsidering getting a diagnosis for depression and ADHD, but the reason I haven’t already is because I’m not keen on the psychiatric drugs because of the negative impact they have had on members of my family. I’ve debated the issue of getting a diagnosis for Autism on this forum before and my conclusion is I don’t see the benefits of getting it in my case.

Procrastination got the better of me. I will try again.

I have high functioning autism and presently work in a well-paid engineering/construction job where I am really struggling with office politics. My whole team disrespects me because of my poor social skills and I’m feeling incredibly depressed because of this and feel I have no choice but to resign. I am also seriously considering giving up my career because I know I could take up a similar job but will sure enough experience the same abuse and again be forced to resign. I wonder if there are others on the spectrum here who decided to give up their career and how they feel about things now? I know whatever I do it’s not going to pay as much as my current job, where I earn about £60k/yr. I’m thinking about jobs that don’t rely so much on social skills, such as a cab/train/lorry driver or even home based online work, which would be ideal. I'm even considering online trading. I realise it might seem like a big step backwards but the money doesn’t compensate for the depression. I have been suffering depression for a long time and it has progressively gotten worse the last 4 years I’ve been with the company. My depression was bad even before at my previous jobs and when at University and school where I was bullied. I was also treated horribly by my family who I now live apart from. I have no friends. I am feeling depressed about what the future holds, but it must be better than how I feel right now. If things don’t work out job wise, plan B is to move to another country where living costs aren’t so high and spend my savings of which I have close to £80k. I could probably survive on that for 7 years and live OK. I don’t spend much and I have no plans to get married and have children. The other thing I’m factoring into my decision making process is that I’m not sure I’m going to live long. My family has a history of heart problems and I’m experiencing problems now and I’m not even 30. On top of that I also have ADHD-PI and severe psoriasis (on my face and all my body).

There is a computer based memory task called "dual n-back" that has been found to improve working memory. Several studies have been published showning that test subjects improved their working memory after doing the task for 25min a day for a few weeks. For more info see here and download the free program http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ This is actually old news but I was surprised to find no reference to this on this forum, especially when this game could have potentially big benefits for people with short term memory problems, like many on the autism spectrum. I will be doing this task for the next few weeks and report back on my improvements, if any. Right now I'm struggling with "3-back" and in particular the auditory aspect.

To those who want to investigate this further check out the science paper here. Mumble, I also wondered about the testing method, however the linked report does justify the method very well. The science is sound and very promising imo.

You are right about the detox bit, but my plan is to slowly take up the diet, gradually substituting raw foods for the ###### that I'm currently eating. I don't intend to eat raw meat, I just mentioned it as some people do and the diet isn't exclusively for vegans. I also have severe psoriasis and know that this diet and similar ones have helped reduce psoriasis in others.

Check out this link. I wonder if the same technique can be applied to improve social skills, especially given this recent research? Hopefully some uni's will get sufficient funding to research if there are any benefits to people on the spectrum.