Filling out forms: anxiety, confusion, despair...

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I have always hated filling out forms. From the very first one. They confuse me, bore me to tears if they are simple, infuriate me if you have to flip back and forth between instructions, the actual form, and some table you need to fill in numbers oh yeah those are called doing taxes. Any way, I came across a blog post about a woman who needs a sick day to register her car. Read at your own risk, it is horrifying what she went through. She did come out okay at the end though. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/12/0 ... er-my-car/ So, while I am reading this I had a minor anxiety attack and got very fidgety my heart is still racing. I don't know what that happened, but I was still determined to read the whole story. Because the reason I haven't finished my degree is a long boring story of how some paper work derailed my entire education. I couldn't cope with it. I seriously and completely could not cope with it. Even if my life depends on doing paperwork I would at times not be able to do it. In fact it might depend on me doing paperwork. There is this deep dark place paperwork takes me. I get very confused every time even if its a form I have seen a dozen or more times. At least putting my name on it isn't a problem anymore. I used to always forget with my homework. Nothing will make me cry faster than having to fill out forms. Tomorrow I have to do some paperwork, I am thinking I am going to go to my youngest daughters house and get her to help me.

It's perfectly okay to have a trusted family member help you fill them out, don't feel bad.. we all get anxious about something, even if it feels "unusual" it's who you are and it's not worth getting upset about.

I completely understand. I struggle to do paperwork. It is impossible and I just banish it a few inches away and ignore it forever. It is really a mess when someone comes and asks for the completed paper and it is still sitting there, gathering dust. It's embarrassing, but there isn't anything I can do about it. I can only do paperwork when it has to be done, right now. If there is any way around it then it just doesn't get done.

Yep and a lot of times I would rather suffer the consequences of not doing the paper work than just getting down to doing it even if those consequences are fairly severe. Like once I got kicked out of supportive housing, because I had a melt down (maybe shutdown is a better term) over all the freaking paperwork.

I don't know that I'd rather suffer the consequences, but unfortunately, it is often easier to just let the consequences happen than making myself do paperwork.

Sorry to hear about your struggles as well.

Yes, I guess somehow I feel it's easier to just not do the stupid paperwork. I have a lot of it to do. I started making a list of stuff though that may or may not be related to having Asperger's going back to when I was a child. The first page is things people said to me a lot as a child. Then I ran across a word; discalculia, I don't have all the problems listed I do however have a lot of them probably more than the average person. I didn't learn how to tell time until I was older than 15. Everything I am learning and remembering points to some serious problems even if it's not Asperger's, but even so I can definitely relate.

Very belatedly: This is so me. Every single page of any form gives me anxiety attacks. It doesn't even matter if it's a straight forward form; it's still going to make me crazy, sweaty, short of breath, and pounding heart. It's just a matter of degree between the simple and the multi page panic inducing horrors.

I'm in the process of immigrating. The paperwork is tremendous, to the point where I've occasionally thought of staying in place, despite my urgent desire to move. At least when I get to my location, I'll have a facilitator to walk me through all the bureaucracy there. And since it will all be in Spanish, I won't have to pretend to understand, just answer one question at a time.

I have clonazepam for anxiety, but I hate to take it. Looks like today may be a day I do. Ugh.

I wish there was an officially recognized "phobia" for paperwork.. I'd be the poster child of that. I've procrastinated so many things simply due to paperwork. I've also been scolded countless times at work for not being competent at paperwork and admin stuff (for some reason, they assume that because I have 2 Masters degrees in STEM subjects, then I should be a wiz at paperwork and that couldn't be further from the truth.)

Filling out forms -