Dr. Gwynette: Spot to be in, isn’t it guys?

Clay Seim: Yep.

Joshua Miller: It is. Because it’s like I’ve said before, when it comes to me personally, I feel like I’m my own worst enemy on a lot of things, when it comes to putting roadblocks in front of myself and whatnot and stuff like that. I want friends, but then I don’t want to be around people. Or I want a job, but yet at the same time … How do I put this? It’s not that I’m lazy, but I don’t like doing menial work. Does that make sense?

Dr. Gwynette: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Joshua Miller: I worked at Dollar General and I lasted all the year, and I’m not going to lie, it was boring. It just seemed like there was no light at the end of tunnel. I would stock a shelf, 30 minutes later, it’d be messed up again. I’d have to go fix it. It was never ending.

Dr. Gwynette: Yeah, frustrating.

Joshua Miller: There was no sense of accomplishment, no finality to it.

Clay Seim: Well I don’t know if we … You said we talked about college. I don’t remember us … I think we may have skipped ahead in the agenda.

Dr. Gwynette: Yeah.

Clay Seim: But like he was saying, you get stuck in these menial jobs and really the only way out of that is maybe a degree or a trade or something like that. But again, you run into some different problems with that as well, as again, you got to worry about paying for it, you got to worry about, for me, it was the fact that I was on a nine credit hour semester. So it was going to take me easily twice as long overall. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but about twice as long to get what I wanted out of college experience. And what I would end up doing was trying to take an extra class, bring it up to 12 credit hours, inevitably having to drop that class after the drop add period, which it gets a little dicey there. You don’t want that messing up your transcript. So I had to work around that a lot of times. Because I would find once class would stress me out so much, that the rest of my performance would suffer.

Dr. Gwynette: Right.

Joshua Miller: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Clay Seim: And so it’s … I’ve got all my gen eds out the way, and I withdrew at the end of the semester, I’ve made sure I’ve dotted all my I’s, crossed all my T’s, so that my record isn’t negatively effected. But yeah, it’s odd. Because a lot of what I get fulfillment out of, because he hit on an important part there, is that fulfillment is very important as well, and especially important when you don’t have emotional stability for somebody who’s neuro-typical who just hates their job. They probably trudge along on that for years and years until they burn out. But for somebody who lacks the emotional resilience to do something they hate every single day without it causing serious anxiety and depression. And that’s really the trouble and also … The greatest trouble and the greatest benefit with explaining problems on the spectrum, is that most of the time … Actually I would say not at least 90% of the time they’re problems other people face. Even sensory stuff. People have certain noises and sounds and things that bug them. It’s just the dial’s cranked up, and it’s cranked up on different issues. Maybe your sensory is not as bad. I know I have some sensory issues, but not a ton. But maybe your social component’s worse, maybe your anxiety is worse, your [inaudible 00:04:02] worse.

But for however people are differently impacted by it. You’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met a person with autism kind of deal. It’s all these issues that are just cranked up to 11. And they end up … Like I said, it makes it easier to explain to people what’s going on, but then they’re like, “Well, everybody has that happened to them.” And you’re like, “Yes, but it’s much worse for people on the spectrum.” And saying that just sounds like, “Well, it’s just worse for me though. I’m just such a poor pitiful person,” and that’s not how people want to come across. And so it’s hard to explain without sounding like you’re trying to throw yourself a pity party. And to a certain degree, you have to be careful that you’re not psyching yourself out as well. You got also got to worry that, is this just me not being able to do this, or is this making excuses for myself? And you have that balancing act also with the guilt that you’ll feel. So [inaudible 00:05:10] feeling guilty, and maybe it is within your control, and you go back and you try and analyze it and … You can see how murky that gets so quickly.

So quickly it comes from, “I have a disability I need help. I should be self-sufficient,” kind of black [inaudible 00:05:28], good and bad ideas to, “Am I making excuses for myself? Is this really beyond me, or am I just quitting too early?” And all of a sudden it becomes this thick quagmire of morality and ethics to where are you truly performing to your fullest potential, and is it you or your disability that’s preventing you from doing so?

Dr. Gwynette: Absolutely. That’s such a huge factor, and I’ve seen many individuals who, for instance with college, they’re going to college, things are going reasonably okay, and then we get an mid-semester and the stress starts kicking in and the assignments, there’s lots going on, lots of demands, and the overwhelmed feeling comes, and then the decision to either drop a class or just withdraw from the semester happens. And there’s also a sadness, almost a depression because it’s a feeling of failure after.

Clay Seim: Oh yeah, for sure.

Dr. Gwynette: And Josh, have you experienced something like that in your college work?

Joshua Miller: Yeah. Every time I drop out, with the exception of this last time, but I dropped out this last time because of whatever’s causing me to be sick. So I wasn’t really as depressed. I was, but nowhere near to as bad as I was in years past when I would drop out. But yeah, every time I would have to quit a job or drop out of school, yeah, there’d be that instant depression.

Dr. Gwynette: Yeah.

Joshua Miller: And me trying to figure out where I went wrong, because … I say, “When I work,” because I only … I stayed at Dollar General lot longer than anything else, including school. Obviously post high school. So I tried to figure out what I did wrong because I worked during the thousand year flood, when that building was sinking. And I worked during the hurricane. So I tried to figure out, if I can do that, why am I not able to stick it out?

Clay Seim: Yeah. Well, we’ve talked a little bit about the snowballing of issues, and that’s part of that, is something that’s a minor issue to start with. If it’s a recurring issue though, it can easily start to get out of hand, and that leads to stress, which leads to more issues, yada yada, yada yada, yada yada. As soon as it’s just this huge weight that’s pressing down on you all the time.

When I burned out my job at BI-LO, the schedule was kind of all over the place, you never knew how busy it was going to be, and it could go from quiet to busy like that. So it was just so unpredictable and they’d get you to do side jobs that weren’t part of your job description, all the-

Joshua Miller: Oh god. I hate that.

Clay Seim: Cleaning bathrooms, restocking shelves. I was a cashier, but at the time I was bagging my own stuff. I had a wonderful manager who worked with me night and day to try and accommodate me. And that’s why I lasted as long as I did, I’m convinced.

Dr. Gwynette: The support.

Clay Seim: But those things can snowball out of control, and it just comes death by 1000 pinpricks. And to the point where when I would walk into the building to go to work, the doors opening and the sounds and smells of the place would trigger an anxiety attack. A small one. Not jabbering on the floor, but I’d be in no frame of mind to be ready to go to work. I’d just be like, “Get me out of here. No, no, no, no, no. No more of this.” I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was every time I had to go to work it was just such a feeling of dread that it was not feasible, and it was not healthy for my mental health for me to continue to work there. I needed to find somewhere else.

I did. I ended up finding another job. I’ve been there longer now, I think, then I actually worked at BI-LO. I work [inaudible 00:09:44] north of broad and it’s just a smaller environment, it’s a lot more controlled, it’s a lot more regular in the routines of what you do. Even when it is slow or busy, what you’re doing every day is a lot more consistent. All of the staff and the managers were just wonderful, wonderful people that have been nothing but supportive for anything and everything I’ve needed from them. The thing is, when I have a job like that that I can do my little bit and come out, it’s not enough to sustain me for if I was to live independently, but it’s something to where I can be putting money in the bank and start saving some of that.

And I think of it as treading water, honestly, because it’s kind of a race. It’s kind of a progression to becoming independent. You have to eventually continue to move forward. So after a certain while, if you’re just treading water and you need that push … And that’s another bit of that ongoing, it’s always that little thing of, “Okay, you’re doing all right, but you need to be making progress. All right, you’re doing fine. But you do need to be thinking about trying to get another aspect.” And it feels like while you’re treading water you’re building up this house of cards, and it really does feel like house of cards, because all of these different aspects of it. I’ve got the life skills. Okay, I’ve got a car and a license and I can drive now. And you’re just building up all of these little aspects that create independence, but it just always feels like you’re just one bad card placement from slipping back and half the thing falling down and you just press.

And that is a very real, because of that cyclical progression and regression in social skills, and in life in general for people on the spectrum, transition age feels like all of the support and all of this infrastructure of skills and job that works well, finding something that you’re passionate enough about to go to work every day without burning out, something that doesn’t have sensory triggers, something where your manager’s not somebody who doesn’t understand what a developmental disability is, and thinks that you’re just a gold [inaudible 00:12:09]. All of these elements together. And it just feels like you’re just slowly, slowly with just the most minute care, trying to build this up all while somebody’s behind you’s like, “Come on, come on, come on, go, go, go, go. You got to keep moving. What are you doing? You got to get that up to the point where you can be independent.” And you’re just desperately trying not to knock this thing over.

You’ve got some bedrock. You’ve got friends and family, people that you can rely on. Or I do. Some people don’t. I’m incredibly lucky that I do have that bedrock. And I would include actually even the people at my job in that bedrock.

Dr. Gwynette: Very good. Clay Seim, Josh Miller, thank you guys so much for joining us and shedding light on this important topic of independence for adults with autism. I know the audience will really enjoy all the wisdom that you shared today, and also the firsthand experiences. And thank you so much for that. You can see this podcast at youtube.com. You can also, of course, hear it on Apple, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Please follow us, theautismnewsnetwork.com on our website. And also you can follow me at Dr. Gwynette on Twitter and Instagram, and [inaudible 00:13:34].

Joshua Miller: This is Joshua Miller at the Autism News NetWORK. If you liked this video, please like and subscribe, and thank you for listening. Goodbye.