Re: Passing privilege

[Guest guest]

Hi I am new to this group and found this conversation so interesting. My

husband has a probable diagnosis of AS, and is waiting for more detailed

assessment to confirm diagnosis.

The knowledge that he has in all likelihood got an explanation for the difficult

life he has faced has had both positive and negative results. On the one hand he

has had a 'lightbulb' moment where suddenly many things make sense to him. On

the other hand, he is currently appearing to sink further into his behaviours,

which have intensified lately, and legitimising them, claiming that's the way he

is and I have to accept it.

I found linked comments in another post in the thread very interesting: the

question of nature over nurture. My husband grew up in a very impoverished

household and in a community where very few people worked. He was used to having

nothing and aspiring to nothing, has struggled with finding any career, yet is

very talented. He feels somehow better than the others where he came from yet

hasn't strived for anything and has an entitlement culture. I am not sure if he

feels that things should just happen for him because if his background or if it

is part of his AS where he just doesn't know the social rules of give and take

and hasn't really been taught them. It is hard to learn these as an adult.

I work as an advisory teacher with kids on the autistic spectrum aged 3 - 18.

When the kids' difficulties are recognised early and - very importantly -

parents are on board and supported, the changes that can be seen over time are

astounding. When parents are understanding of their kids, whatever their social

background, the kids thrive.

I think it is so difficult for my husband's generation (he's in his mid 30s) who

have struggled through their difficulties and appeared their whole lives to

'cope' albeit in an oddball way to learn to adapt to what the NT world expects

of them. Some turn out to be angry with the world, like the person who spoke up

at the convention. I think my husband, currently at least as he comes to terms

with this, is very similar to that person. I hope there is a way to work through

to this type of person as I love my husband very much and despite his

difficulties he tries so hard to be a great dad to our two young kids.

As I am new I apologise if this post is too long or too personal. I have really

enjoyed reading the articles posted so far and thank you for accepting me into

this group.

Sent from my iPhone

[Guest guest]

I'm new here as well, though I was a member some years ago. My daughter is now 29 and seems to be experiencing a shift in her cognitive behavior with the help of a " life coach " . I am learning so much about relationships thanks to the posts of members. Thank you all.

Sylvia

[Guest guest]

, Because of his age (and yours), it's possible that your husband might benefit from highly-focused and narrow-objective cognitive behavioral therapy that is designed to address defective thinking [which you've well-described] for persons young enough to consider the benefits of a "thought-changing process" which CBT does, indeed, offer. There's no guarantee of its success, and it may be necessary to couch suggestions for its consideration in a "marriage partnership survival" script. I assume he would want to try to work on what's appeared to be deeply embedded, dysfunctional thinking if it's tied -- safely -- to things he can work on, behavior-by-behavior, environmental-cue-by-environmental-cue, so as to "decondition" himself to conclusions from untested and likely incorrect assumptions in favor of assumptions and going-in-thought processes that are more aligned with an actual situation in-real-time addressable problems. Envisioning global problems and their solution doesn't work. Going through role plays and real work in small problems, one-at-a-time, does work.

Normally I don't suggest CBT for individuals so entrenched in their thinking and behaviors that their consideration of what and how to change is so global and so based upon what's clearly a disproportionate threat to their known world. But, if you're committed to the relationship, and he is as well, prompting him, "with help from others, if necessary" to consider a more wholesome approach to problem-solving -- especially at first the small ones that are most easy to correct -- would provide him with positive feedback that makes working on more global and ultimately self-defeating behaviors and attitudes more palatable. If your mutual partnership in resolution of even the smallest of challenges you face as a couple is recognized from the git-go, this makes it easier for your partner and yourself to accept the normal negotiating give-and-take involved in resolving more complex issues. Often their resolution involves taking large issues apart and looking and working through them in baby steps, with frequent opportunities to acknowledge progress and positive changes in and by both partners.

The biggest challenge you'd both face -- if skilled CBT is involved -- is to find a practitioner who honestly accepts and understands where your husband's thinking and behavior "is" at the moment, and is willing to accept descriptions and feedback, on occasion, from YOU with regard to progress, if any, in the therapeutic relationship that has had a direct, objectively determinable effect on your relationship. It may be all well and good that the therapist and your husband make a good team, but if the result is a "shutout" of your welfare and the health of the relationship as you experience it, then one of the moral imperatives a good therapist should be following is not being observed. I'm sure there are many spouses who can report counseling experiences of their partners that have fallen prey to lazy or "ignoring the other half" of the reason why the partner has sought therapy in the first place. Many therapists, regardless of the number of years they've been practising, fail to recognize that recovering or creating a balance in a clients relationships in order to have them survive involves conscious periodic professional self-assessment.

For nearly ten years I was a co-facilitator in a clinical counselors' best practices group whose members looked carefully not only at their obvious roles in the counseling relationship, but also sought guidance from others in other clinical counseling disciplines. In a good number of instances, counselors in thoe other clinicial disciplines would propose periodic consultations with supervising therapists or others who could help the inquiring therapist through ethical and pragmatic challenges. When results were reported in later meetings of the same group, they were generally positive.

So, to get back to your situation...

You've mentioned something about your husband's family environment that I noticed, time after time, has had a profound influence on mature adults' attitudes toward work and its rewards. Early in my research for the Asperger Syndrome Employment Workbook ( Kingsley Publishers 2001) I recognized the weight of research findings by experts in the study of "attitudes toward work" among the disabled. The closest group with sufficient numbers to study were persons with chronic mental health disabling conditions. It wasn't a "far reach" to look at the conclusions of some of the researchers, among them Hagner, Ph.D. of the Institute on Disability at New Hampshire University to recognize the effect of poor or altogether missing attitudes about employment in many families affected by severe mental illness and behavioral outcomes of parents' or close relatives' attitudes about work. In study after study, and in other work by vocational rehabilitation specialists, it was shown that children in their early years of primary school have pretty much accepted their family's values and attitudes toward gainful employment. What they "learn" they've learned by a kind of osmosis, observing the effects of frequent joblessness, transient employment, frequent family or family member moves to new jobs or more supportive environments in which to raise children or keep household expenses down. While an exact one-for-one translation to "family of origin attitudes toward work affecting attitudes towards work by late-diagnosed mature autistic adults" wasn't possible when I wrote my first book, it WAS possible to see shadow behavior both mimicking as well as contrasting attitudes and behavior towards work in adults who described what they learned about work and its values from their upbringing. Contrasts were strongest among mature adults who'd managed to escape dysfunctional families, or adopted proxy parents and proxy families even when still stuck in an impossible family of origin. Also, one or more significant parents (or step parents) plus teachers, mentors, role models, or stand-out relatives appeared to make a difference on what the child ultimately settled on in terms of their attitudes toward and value of work (as well as financial independence and as much functional independence as they could gain as mature adults).

Some of the biographies and memoirs of "successful" adults on the spectrum mirror these findings.

Being in one's mid-thirties isn't the end of the line, nor do seemingly intractable differences prove to be so insurmountable as to constantly elude resolution. For persons who have a dysfunctional familial background, so much of their learned behavior has to be safely unlearned and substituted with equally emotionally-valuable replacement thoughts and behaviors that the whole process is quite slow and frustrating. If both partners are committed to a future with one another, they'll undoubtedly start to make successful and emotionally rewarding accommodtions and allowances for one another

which may result in surprising role reversals or casting aside majority cultural expectations. If the "price is worth it," the partners involved in such choices are the ultimate determiners of whether going against the stream, or deciding not to swim "in" that stream, is worth the cost.

N. Meyer

Re: Passing Privilege > >Hi I am new to this group and found this conversation so interesting. My husband has a probable diagnosis of AS, and is waiting for more detailed assessment to confirm diagnosis. > >The knowledge that he has in all likelihood got an explanation for the difficult life he has faced has had both positive and negative results. On the one hand he has had a 'lightbulb' moment where suddenly many things make sense to him. On the other hand, he is currently appearing to sink further into his behaviours, which have intensified lately, and legitimising them, claiming that's the way he is and I have to accept it. > >I found linked comments in another post in the thread very interesting: the question of nature over nurture. My husband grew up in a very impoverished household and in a community where very few people worked. He was used to having nothing and aspiring to nothing, has struggled with finding any career, yet is very talented. He feels somehow better than the others where he came from yet hasn't strived for anything and has an entitlement culture. I am not sure if he feels that things should just happen for him because if his background or if it is part of his AS where he just doesn't know the social rules of give and take and hasn't really been taught them. It is hard to learn these as an adult. > >I work as an advisory teacher with kids on the autistic spectrum aged 3 - 18. When the kids' difficulties are recognised early and - very importantly - parents are on board and supported, the changes that can be seen over time are astounding. When parents are understanding of their kids, whatever their social background, the kids thrive. > >I think it is so difficult for my husband's generation (he's in his mid 30s) who have struggled through their difficulties and appeared their whole lives to 'cope' albeit in an oddball way to learn to adapt to what the NT world expects of them. Some turn out to be angry with the world, like the person who spoke up at the convention. I think my husband, currently at least as he comes to terms with this, is very similar to that person. I hope there is a way to work through to this type of person as I love my husband very much and despite his difficulties he tries so hard to be a great dad to our two young kids. > >As I am new I apologise if this post is too long or too personal. I have really enjoyed reading the articles posted so far and thank you for accepting me into this group. > > >Sent from my iPhone > > >------------------------------------ > > "We each have our own way of living in the world, together we are like a symphony. >Some are the melody, some are the rhythm, some are the harmony >It all blends together, we are like a symphony, and each part is crucial. >We all contribute to the song of life." > ...Sondra > > We might not always agree; but TOGETHER we will make a difference. > > ASPIRES is a closed, confidential, moderated list. >Responsibility for posts to ASPIRES lies entirely with the original author. > Do NOT post mail off-list without the author's permission. > When in doubt, please refer to our list rules at: > http://www.aspires-relationships.com/info_rules.htm > ASPIRES ~ Climbing the mountain TOGETHER > http://www.aspires-relationships.com >

[Guest guest]

"Re-sent" with the assumption that my first "reply to all" didn't get processed by my clunky Earthlink.et web mail.

, Because of his age (and yours), it's possible that your husband might benefit from highly-focused and narrow-objective cognitive behavioral therapy that is designed to address defective thinking [which you've well-described] for persons young enough to consider the benefits of a "thought-changing process" which CBT does, indeed, offer. There's no guarantee of its success, and it may be necessary to couch suggestions for its consideration in a "marriage partnership survival" script. I assume he would want to try to work on what's appeared to be deeply embedded, dysfunctional thinking if it's tied -- safely -- to things he can work on, behavior-by-behavior, environmental-cue-by-environmental-cue, so as to "decondition" himself to conclusions from untested and likely incorrect assumptions in favor of assumptions and going-in-thought processes that are more aligned with an actual situation in-real-time addressable problems. Envisioning global problems and their solution doesn't work. Going through role plays and real work in small problems, one-at-a-time, does work.

Normally I don't suggest CBT for individuals so entrenched in their thinking and behaviors that their consideration of what and how to change is so global and so based upon what's clearly a disproportionate threat to their known world. But, if you're committed to the relationship, and he is as well, prompting him, "with help from others, if necessary" to consider a more wholesome approach to problem-solving -- especially at first the small ones that are most easy to correct -- would provide him with positive feedback that makes working on more global and ultimately self-defeating behaviors and attitudes more palatable. If your mutual partnership in resolution of even the smallest of challenges you face as a couple is recognized from the git-go, this makes it easier for your partner and yourself to accept the normal negotiating give-and-take involved in resolving more complex issues. Often their resolution involves taking large issues apart and looking and working through them in baby steps, with frequent opportunities to acknowledge progress and positive changes in and by both partners.

The biggest challenge you'd both face -- if skilled CBT is involved -- is to find a practitioner who honestly accepts and understands where your husband's thinking and behavior "is" at the moment, and is willing to accept descriptions and feedback, on occasion, from YOU with regard to progress, if any, in the therapeutic relationship that has had a direct, objectively determinable effect on your relationship. It may be all well and good that the therapist and your husband make a good team, but if the result is a "shutout" of your welfare and the health of the relationship as you experience it, then one of the moral imperatives a good therapist should be following is not being observed. I'm sure there are many spouses who can report counseling experiences of their partners that have fallen prey to lazy or "ignoring the other half" of the reason why the partner has sought therapy in the first place. Many therapists, regardless of the number of years they've been practising, fail to recognize that recovering or creating a balance in a clients relationships in order to have them survive involves conscious periodic professional self-assessment.

For nearly ten years I was a co-facilitator in a clinical counselors' best practices group whose members looked carefully not only at their obvious roles in the counseling relationship, but also sought guidance from others in other clinical counseling disciplines. In a good number of instances, counselors in thoe other clinicial disciplines would propose periodic consultations with supervising therapists or others who could help the inquiring therapist through ethical and pragmatic challenges. When results were reported in later meetings of the same group, they were generally positive.

So, to get back to your situation...

You've mentioned something about your husband's family environment that I noticed, time after time, has had a profound influence on mature adults' attitudes toward work and its rewards. Early in my research for the Asperger Syndrome Employment Workbook ( Kingsley Publishers 2001) I recognized the weight of research findings by experts in the study of "attitudes toward work" among the disabled. The closest group with sufficient numbers to study were persons with chronic mental health disabling conditions. It wasn't a "far reach" to look at the conclusions of some of the researchers, among them Hagner, Ph.D. of the Institute on Disability at New Hampshire University to recognize the effect of poor or altogether missing attitudes about employment in many families affected by severe mental illness and behavioral outcomes of parents' or close relatives' attitudes about work. In study after study, and in other work by vocational rehabilitation specialists, it was shown that children in their early years of primary school have pretty much accepted their family's values and attitudes toward gainful employment. What they "learn" they've learned by a kind of osmosis, observing the effects of frequent joblessness, transient employment, frequent family or family member moves to new jobs or more supportive environments in which to raise children or keep household expenses down. While an exact one-for-one translation to "family of origin attitudes toward work affecting attitudes towards work by late-diagnosed mature autistic adults" wasn't possible when I wrote my first book, it WAS possible to see shadow behavior both mimicking as well as contrasting attitudes and behavior towards work in adults who described what they learned about work and its values from their upbringing. Contrasts were strongest among mature adults who'd managed to escape dysfunctional families, or adopted proxy parents and proxy families even when still stuck in an impossible family of origin. Also, one or more significant parents (or step parents) plus teachers, mentors, role models, or stand-out relatives appeared to make a difference on what the child ultimately settled on in terms of their attitudes toward and value of work (as well as financial independence and as much functional independence as they could gain as mature adults).

Some of the biographies and memoirs of "successful" adults on the spectrum mirror these findings.

Being in one's mid-thirties isn't the end of the line, nor do seemingly intractable differences prove to be so insurmountable as to constantly elude resolution. For persons who have a dysfunctional familial background, so much of their learned behavior has to be safely unlearned and substituted with equally emotionally-valuable replacement thoughts and behaviors that the whole process is quite slow and frustrating. If both partners are committed to a future with one another, they'll undoubtedly start to make successful and emotionally rewarding accommodtions and allowances for one another

which may result in surprising role reversals or casting aside majority cultural expectations. If the "price is worth it," the partners involved in such choices are the ultimate determiners of whether going against the stream, or deciding not to swim "in" that stream, is worth the cost.

N. Meyer Re: Passing Privilege > >Hi I am new to this group and found this conversation so interesting. My husband has a probable diagnosis of AS, and is waiting for more detailed assessment to confirm diagnosis. > >The knowledge that he has in all likelihood got an explanation for the difficult life he has faced has had both positive and negative results. On the one hand he has had a 'lightbulb' moment where suddenly many things make sense to him. On the other hand, he is currently appearing to sink further into his behaviours, which have intensified lately, and legitimising them, claiming that's the way he is and I have to accept it. > >I found linked comments in another post in the thread very interesting: the question of nature over nurture. My husband grew up in a very impoverished household and in a community where very few people worked. He was used to having nothing and aspiring to nothing, has struggled with finding any career, yet is very talented. He feels somehow better than the others where he came from yet hasn't strived for anything and has an entitlement culture. I am not sure if he feels that things should just happen for him because if his background or if it is part of his AS where he just doesn't know the social rules of give and take and hasn't really been taught them. It is hard to learn these as an adult. > >I work as an advisory teacher with kids on the autistic spectrum aged 3 - 18. When the kids' difficulties are recognised early and - very importantly - parents are on board and supported, the changes that can be seen over time are astounding. When parents are understanding of their kids, whatever their social background, the kids thrive. > >I think it is so difficult for my husband's generation (he's in his mid 30s) who have struggled through their difficulties and appeared their whole lives to 'cope' albeit in an oddball way to learn to adapt to what the NT world expects of them. Some turn out to be angry with the world, like the person who spoke up at the convention. I think my husband, currently at least as he comes to terms with this, is very similar to that person. I hope there is a way to work through to this type of person as I love my husband very much and despite his difficulties he tries so hard to be a great dad to our two young kids. > >As I am new I apologise if this post is too long or too personal. I have really enjoyed reading the articles posted so far and thank you for accepting me into this group. > > >Sent from my iPhone > > >------------------------------------ > > "We each have our own way of living in the world, together we are like a symphony. >Some are the melody, some are the rhythm, some are the harmony >It all blends together, we are like a symphony, and each part is crucial. >We all contribute to the song of life." > ...Sondra > > We might not always agree; but TOGETHER we will make a difference. > > ASPIRES is a closed, confidential, moderated list. >Responsibility for posts to ASPIRES lies entirely with the original author. > Do NOT post mail off-list without the author's permission. > When in doubt, please refer to our list rules at: > http://www.aspires-relationships.com/info_rules.htm > ASPIRES ~ Climbing the mountain TOGETHER > http://www.aspires-relationships.com >

[Guest guest]

, Thank you very much for your response. The book you mentioned about work

sounds like it would be so interesting. There is clearly a lot of research and

information around and this group is a mine of it!

I wonder how well future generations in the UK will be able to break this chain

given the increase in nursery provision for younger children from disadvantaged

backgrounds and increasing awareness of AS in education that could mean earlier

identification and support. Providing younger people on the spectrum with tools

to develop social relationships could have a big impact on AS/NT marriages in

the longer term for example.

I will certainly talk to my Husband again about the possibility of therapy. He

isn't open to this right now as he thinks there is nothing wrong with him that

needs 'fixing'. I have borrowed books on CBT from friends and asked if He would

take a look, but he wouldn't.

It's interesting what you said about therapists focusing on one partner to the

detriment of the other. Is couples therapy something that others in this group

have experience of? I guess the therapist would need to he highly skilled and

have to be very knowledgeable about AS, as you said. This is still seemingly a

very rare combination.

Thank you once again for your detailed response. There's a lot there for us to

consider and reflect upon.

Sent from my iPhone