Asperger's and Deathly Afraid of Change

Hello all.

I think my roommate may have Asperger's and she's deathly afraid of change.

She just moved in about a month ago. She has some pretty awkward social quirks and has an absolute obsession with Anime (which I suspect is because Anime has such exaggerated emotion that it is easy for her to understand ... Japan is considered the Great Holy Land where people must understand her).

Anyway, right now she's been an emotional wreck. She was previously living with her mom and her mom has met a new man in her life. Her mom is considering this man moving in and my roommate has met him once in passing. Another thing about my roommate is she has a fear of men (all men; she doesn't trust any of them).

The reason her mom wants this new guy to move in so soon is because although they get along great and she truly likes him, she is having trouble paying the rent without my roommate around.

Now my roommate is freaking out because she thinks if she fails at "living on her own", then she won't be "able" to move back home because a man will be living there. So even though moving out was probably the best thing she's ever done for herself, she's now considering moving back home just so that this man doesn't move in and she "saves her spot".

I was with her and her mom the other night and it was mentioned in passing that this man was going to come for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. My roommate was so angry, it was shocking. She went on about how it should only be family, and even when her mom said "Well what about when our neighbours came that year, you didn't have a problem with that," my roommate continued on her "just family" rant. The fact of the matter is that my roommate hates any man that her mom dates, regardless of how nice they are or how good of a person they are. When her parents divorced, her dad started seeing a very sweet lady and although they've now been together for 7 years, my rooommate takes every chance she can to make her feel bad. She even said to her mom, "I didn't make her life easy and I can't promise I won't do the same to this guy."



So on one hand she's just a spoiled brat, on the other she's definitely got Asperger's and it's hard to communicate with her effectively, and on the other hand she just really hates change or taking risks.


My question is this: How does anyone get through to her? In a perfect world, she'd be seeing a therapist but in a perfect world, we'd all have the money for that. I want to support her but sometimes the things she says is so entirely selfish that I just want to smack her and tell her to smarten up. I said during that talk, "Why would you give him a hard time if he's a good guy. You're lucky if he's a good guy. I had to share Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with my mom's boyfriends who were really NOT nice guys." but it didn't seem to affect her. Is it even worth it?

Anyone been in a situation like this?

 

Well I have Asperger's but all Aspergians are different so it's tough to know what to say. Does she have any idea that she might have AS? It's a tough spot to be in because your first instinct is probably to help her to learn more about herself by talking about it, perhaps by giving her a book about it, but she could be extremely offended and totally collapse upon learning about this. And of course there's always the possibility that she doesn't actually have AS and you've just given her a really bad mind**** that she will obsess over for quite a while.

Is this her first time on her own? If so, this is going to be a very challenging time for her. I fell apart completely upon moving to college and became very isolated, anxious, self-destructive, and even borderline psychotic after a while. Like her, I have a bit of "spoiled brat" to go along with my AS. In fact, some people don't even think I have AS and that I'm just a spoiled, anxious egomaniac, but I know my mind and my life better than anyone and learning about AS has helped me and that's all that matters.

How did you meet her and how long did you know her before moving in? And I guess my most important question is what do you hope to accomplish here? Are you trying to help her to feel better, to help her understand herself better, or are you simply trying to deal with her volatile emotions (not that there's anything wrong with that)? Feel free to PM me if you want and we could talk about it on AIM or whatever.