Just want to start my saying I am not autistic, but my older brother is. He is low functioning-ish because he can eat, shower, walk, talk (very basic conversations), etc himself but can't live without carers (he lives in a special home) he can't express himself. He basically lashes out aggressively whenever he gets angry, upset, whatever because he can't say how he's feeling or what's bothering him. For years he was fine, he would hardly ever lash out and even when he did it would be a mild, short-lived incident. His routine was to visit us once a week for dinner and then spend the day on special occasions.

However something changed a couple of years ago. He suddenly became extremely violent and lashing out every 5 minutes in really scary ways to the point where he had to be sectioned and taken to a mental health hospital. Clearly something must have traumatized but like I said he can't express himself so we don't know what is going on in his head and I don't even think the mental health hospital knew why, they just kept trying different medications which didn't seem to work. He was released eventually but still very violent and aggressive. He had an awful incident, the worst I've ever see, when he visited our house a couple of months after being out of hospital and it was so bad they decided we couldn't see him for a while. So we haven't seen him in 6 months. In that time he seems to have gotten a bit better. Doctor said he was making progress and they increased his medications (they want to eventually reduce it again though which scares me a bit) and that they weren't worried he just needs to settle in but he still wasn't ready to visit us because it wasn't fully safe. His carers suggested instead we visit his home so we're going next week and I am absolutely terrified. He is kind of big and VERY strong. I am 150cm and 40kg. I could be really injured if he hit me and I know his carers will be there but even they struggled to hold him down last time he came to our house. After that incident I lost my appetite for days, I didn't speak to anyone. I am so scared to visit him I keep having panic attacks and I feel sick to my stomach. I told my mom I'm scared but she only thinks about my brother saying "look at his point of view, he hasn't seen us in months, he's been waiting, the sooner he gets back into his routine the sooner he'll settle." I understand that but why can't my mom and dad just visit him for now? I don't want to be here, I want to cry. I really just want to disappear. I have to prepare for a couple of job interviews in the coming week but I cannot concentrate or focus on anything.

I know sharing this won't do anything because nobody here can help or control my brother, or stop me from getting hurt, but I never speak to anyone about this so I wanted to vent. And also I just want to say I'm not trying to offend or be unsympathetic towards people who struggle with autism I'm just really anxious right now. I worry things will never go back to how they were before since we don't even know what made him suddenly change like this in the first place.