I have a roommate I’m reasonably certain is autistic. He hates any kind of change (the migration to windows 11 is killing his soul since he can’t bring his ancient Dell along for the ride). He doesn’t remember what you talked to him about yesterday, instead remembering a completely different outcome to any conversation. He doesn’t clean up after himself, and cannot be convinced to do so.
The problem the brings me here is when he moved in I told him the common areas must be kept clean. You can make any mess you clean up after. If it has to stay a mess, do it in your room. As long as it doesn’t violate fire code or decay or cause lasting damage, I could give a damn.
So he makes his room a mess, then says he finds the mess depressing and overwhelming and migrates to a different room and makes a nest there. He forms little piles around the nest, always keeps things near him to instantly deal with. But it eventually becomes too much and he migrates elsewhere and starts again.
I cannot get him to clean up. When I talk to him about it, it doesn’t matter what tone or delivery I use. He gets anxious, has some sort of fear response, gets visibly agitated but in more of a scared way than an angry way, and will not talk. He can’t form sentences. Then it suddenly evaporates and he bluescreens. He reboots. He doesn’t recall the conversation. He doesn’t realize one was still taking place. He just walks off and does something else. Not like is an asshole dismissive way but in an incredibly frightening Alzheimer’s way.
When I do get him to talk, he says he doesn’t want to stayed coooped up in his room when working on anything because it’s messy and depressing. (Then fucking open your blinds to let in sun and clean damnit!) But it’s a change in his environment he cannot bring to action.
He also has issues with time management. Like he says he’ll do his dishes and he starts in playing Skinner box games on his phone or trying to pirate porn off YouTube (don’t ask. I’ve not been successful convincing him that is dumb) and he looses track of time. He intends to do the dishes but he ends up going down some rabbit hole and by the time he frees himself he is already late for something else and has to leave.
But he will go back to his parents and mow their lawn and at work he will skip lunches because “there are carts in the parking lot that nobody is putting away”. He can do things, even when they are someone else’s priorities or problems. But he absolutely cannot help himself. He’s just spinning his wheels.
I’m not effective here. I feel pressing any harder is just abusive. He’s clearly got some flavor of neurospicy going on but he’s an adult and aware of the issue. He needs to deal with that and he’s just not.
He is oblivious to social cues and even when I’m being verbose he doesn’t pay attention and do the fucking thing. I’m constantly moving his little hoarder piles back to his room to clean my home. He’s not improving and some of his issues, like the bluescreens, sound funny but are deeply disturbing to witness. He has other issues too, like his diet is nothing but ice cream, cookies, and fiber supplements. He’s in his 20s but turned my home into a Metamucil commercial. I’ve never seen him eat anything else. He can sit on the couch watching TV and then suddenly jolt and flail as if being electrocuted for a second then fall back into reality. “Sorry. That happens sometimes.”
Just, dude.
I don’t think this will be a conversation you will be able to have with him, but it’s probably something you need to have for yourself for your own sanity. There is the adage that “your mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility”, that I think is very applicable here. I know that the manifestations of his mental illness at this time are damaging your quality of life, but I think that you are suffering additional, semi-self-inflicted harm by internalizing any amount of responsibility for his behavior. It is a bit like intentional cognitive dissonance, but I think you would benefit from divorcing yourself of any sense of responsibility for fixing this situation.
There are some good suggestions in this thread about strategies for set cleaning times with reference images of what each room is supposed to look like, and to some extent, mild parenting techniques to get some sense of order in the house. If I were in your shoes, this is the list of things I would try to implement:
Set deadlines for cleaning tasks
Make a list or a calendar on a whiteboard in the kitchen
Clear delineation of responsibilities
(The strategy for dishes can be variable, I just feel like dishes are a good example for figuring out household responsibilities.)
Also, make it clear that his actions are harming you. It may feel dramatic, but it’s true. And I think a way around the bluescreen issue is to write a letter explaining your needs and how his actions are affecting you. I would recommend hand-writing this because it will appear more personal, and be less easily dismissed. Putting it in writing makes it so that he has a physical object to refer to when his mind tries to edit out the uncomfortable thing. But still give him the letter in a conversation. I would start it with saying:
This is my advice from having had difficult roommates and friends that don’t deal with their mental health, and from the perspective of a medical professional. I’m a medical student, but I’ve done a lot of work with mental health and substance use disorder patients and I always try to work with folks to find strategies that work for them to improve their quality of life. I see medications as an adjunct to building accommodations for oneself, but I always emphasize that the medications are exactly the same as medications for things like high blood pressure. For some folks, there’s a physiologic dysfunction that you can’t “life strategy” your way out of, and you just need to get the chemicals in your brain to behave properly so you can function.
(This ended up longer than intended, sorry for the essay)