By Ron Sandison
“Eighty percent of people with autism experience depression and anxiety.”
Dr. Tony Attwood
After I interviewed a hundred young adults with autism while writing my fourth book Adulting on the Spectrum, I discovered one of the main hindrance to transition and independence is a hopeless complex. A hopeless complex can form by repeated bullying, chronic illness, difficulty with communication, struggles in academics, a distorted perspective of all-or-nothing thinking, emotional breakdowns, low self-esteem, and failure with relationships and employment. Fruits of the hopeless complex can include despair, lack of motivation, fear to take healthy risks, depression, and other mental health issues.
Dylan Volk, author of Bad Choices Make Good Stories, describes the autism hopeless complex, “My life is such a minefield of failures, no matter how hard I try. And I try really hard. I can’t keep a job, I can’t keep a girl, I can’t even keep track of belongings for God’s shake! Even with my perpetual optimism, everything in life tends to go wrong, more wrong than I ever thought it could. I feel like my optimistic nature is being slowly and painfully eroded by my increasingly soul-crushing life experiences.”
For years I experienced a hopeless complex. My hopeless complex was the result of years of bullying and struggles with gainful employment and relationships. I felt hopelessness in my thirties as I received wedding invitation from my friends while I was single and living at my parents’ home.
I was able to overcome my hopeless mindset by developing self-efficiency—the belief that when I set about a goal or task I had the power to accomplish it. This mindset motivated me to keep pushing forward even when I experienced little success. A hope complex combined with perseverance has empowered me to have a family, career, and four nationally published books. I have learned eight ways to develop a hope complex and experience relief from anxiety and depression.
1. Keep moving and stay motivated this prevents you from remaining isolated and depressed in your home. An object in motion stays in motion; a person in motion stays motivated. By doing small activities each day like making your bed and self-care of showering, shaving, and brushing your teeth. After I complete each small task, I do a self-affirmation by saying, “I got at least one thing done today!” This makes me realize I am reaching my goals one step at a time.
Don’t start when you feel motivated—just start—motivation will follow. Actions produce results. Writing a book, getting a job, passing a drivers tests, or moving out of your parents’ home all begin with a plan followed by actions. It may seem like an enormous task to undertake. But like eating an elephant all it takes is one bite or step at a time.
2. Write on paper your long term goal and with the help of family and friends break your goal into manageable steps. Your plan of attack to accomplish your goal may look like this:
Goal = Move into an Apartment
First step, cut free from toxic relationships. People who are negative and make you feel worthless or friends who influence you to make wrong choices like drink or use drugs or skip work. You don’t want toxic people in your apartment.
Second step, create a support team, friends and family members to motivate you and hold you accountable to reach your goals.
Third step, daily task, each day spend an hour searching for jobs and email your resume to at least three companies a day until employed. You will need employment to pay for rent on an apartment.
Fourth step, once employed save money for apartment deposit.
Fifth step, research cost of apartments in the area and create a monthly budget.
Sixth step, purchase items you will need for your apartment.
Seventh step, move into apartment.
Eighth step, a housewarming party to celebrate your new independence.
Notice a plan of attack requires actions. Without actions a plan remains only an idea.
3. Strive for excellence and not perfection. Perfectionism can make us feel frustrated, anxious, and angry especially if we constantly criticize ourselves for not doing a good enough job after spending a lot of time and effort on a task.
Dr. Steve Greene wrote, “People who seek perfection are rarely satisfied, often disappointed, and generally less productive. Perfectionists simply do not get as much done as individuals who accept excellence as their goal.”
Perfectionism destroys our self-esteem by unrealistic expectations which can never be achieved and leads to loss of creativity. Learn to analyze all-or-nothing thinking and to verbalize obsessive thought patterns. Doing this enables you to see new opportunities for solving problems and boast creativity in your brain. Life is not just black and white but also grey.
4. When you feel depressed or anxiety have a support team you can share your feelings with. Depression makes our minds groggy with discouraging thoughts, low self-esteem, and a lack of motivation to hang out with friends, grab a coffee, or go to work. When we experience severe depression we only want to sleep and forget our problems.
Depression can lead to substance abuse of drugs or alcohol to dull the pain. Recent research studies have shown that people with autism who drink or use legal drugs are more likely to abuse these substances than those not on the spectrum because they tend to use in isolation rather than with peers and to repeatedly use which increases the risk of addiction. If you find yourself abusing drugs or alcohol seek immediate help from family and medical professionals. By sharing our feelings with others our depression and anxiety will decrease.
Persistent depression requires professional support and counseling. Some signs you should seek professional help for depression: feelings of unrelenting hopelessness, an inability to make decisions or experience pleasure in activities you once enjoyed, unexplained aches and pains, an increased use of alcohol or substance abuse of legal or prescription drugs, changes in sleeping habits or appetite, a heightened irritability, agitation, or moodiness, and thoughts of suicide, or self-harm.
5. Exercise each day for thirty plus minutes to produce endorphins that make you feel refreshed. Endorphins, which are the body’s natural feel-good hormones, are helpful in reducing stress and sensations of pain, as well as promoting feelings of positivity. Think of this as the most natural and healthiest high possible.
Exercise promotes growth and connections for nerve cells in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps to regulate mood. This, in turn, can help alleviate depressive symptoms because increased nerve cell growth and connection improves our brain functioning and decrease the size of the hippocampus (a smaller hippocampus is linked to fewer depressive symptoms).
Exercise provides stress relief by relaxing the muscles and relieve tension in the body. The body and mind are connect so that when your body feels better so, too, will your mind. My favorite exercise for producing endorphins and decreasing depression is taking my dog Rudy for a run.
6. View each employment opportunity and relationship as a learning experience and don’t become discouraged. Before I met my wife Kristen, I dated over 300 women and had many heartbreaks. In 2005 when I was laid off I sent over five hundred resumes and received hundreds of rejection letters. For the next three years, I was underemployed even working for a moving company, breaking my back lifting heavy furniture. These experiences made me feel like an utter failure.
The only way to overcome the relationship and employment failure complex is refusing to give up. No matter how many times you experience rejection or are knocked down refuse to allow this to define you as a person or cause you to loss hope. The best thing you can do is keep working until a better job comes along. In relationships keep meeting new people and improving your social skills until you meet someone you click with.
7. Positive people empower us to experience hope so we should avoid those who are critical. My dad says, “If you want to sour like an eagle, why are you hanging around with turkey vultures.” One of the keys to my success is friends who enable me to see a silver lining. When I feel discourage at work, I call my friends and they remind me of the good things I have going in my life and encourage me to take healthy risks.
8. Putting the past behind and marching forward with confidence we experience hope. Our hopeless complex was formed over years and sometimes decades of unresolved pain, abuse and a sense of failure. What if we can reverse this process and cultivate hope?
We can cultivate hope by forgiving yourself for past mistakes. Think of each mistake as a learning process. Write in a journey the lesson you learned from them. Use journaling time to make a list of the qualities you like about yourself, including your strengths and talents. This can help boost your self-esteem when you’re feeling down about a mistake you made.
We can cultivate hope by making plans for the future and blueprints to accomplish them. Plans make the future look brighter. As I mentioned earlier have a plan of attack; write down your goals on paper, and the steps to accomplish them. My plan for the future is to be the first US congressman with autism.
Abraham Maslow an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, stated, “I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental health.”
A hope complex empowers us to experience independence and accomplish our dreams. We cultivate a hope complex by developing a healthy self-efficacy—the belief that we are able to accomplish our goals. As we put our past behind us and march forward in hope, we will see new opportunities for employment and relationships and have the courage to take healthy risks.
Where Hope Can Be Found: A Mental Health Seminar on Developing a Hope Mindset Video:
Ron Sandison works full time in the medical field and is a professor of theology at Destiny School of Ministry. He is an advisory board member of Autism Society Faith Initiative of Autism Society of America. Sandison has a Master of Divinity from Oral Roberts University and is the author of A Parent’s Guide to Autism: Practical Advice. Biblical Wisdom, published by Charisma House and Thought, Choice, Action. Ron has memorized over 10,000 Scriptures including 22 complete books of the New Testament and over 5,000 quotes. Ron’s third book Views from the Spectrum was released in May 2021.
Ron frequently guest speaks at colleges, conferences, autism centers, and churches. Ron and his wife, Kristen, reside in Rochester Hills, MI, with a baby daughter, Makayla Marie born on March 20, 2016.
You can contact Ron at his website www.spectruminclusion.com or email him at sandison456@hotmail.com
