Sarahsmith wrote:
I'm not meant for the real world.
I get colds whenever one goes around. If I work with a cold it becomes worse.
I could never work in an office.
Yes, remember thinking similar things—knowing these things—even before I left school.Sarahsmith wrote:
I think I would get suicidal again if I had no choice but to work. I would feel trapped. I wouldn't see the point in life.
Yes: been there, got tee-shirt. You are not alone here.Sarahsmith wrote:
I don't know what's wrong with me.
Um, an A.S.D. of some kind? With possibly comorbid Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Neither of which would be your fault, clearly. The difficulties you describe are redolent of social anxiety and pathological demand avoidance and fragile self-concept, all of which can go with the A.S.D. territory (as you probably know).Sarahsmith wrote:
I'd like to go to therapy because I'm not happy with life but I'm afraid I'll be pushed into getting a job. The free therapy you get around here seems to be centered around getting people to work.
Therapy is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be. You can peruse some therapy threads on Wrong Planet and see how mixed everyone's experience of therapy is! It worked miracles for me, in terms of enabling me to be less unhappy with life, but it isn't necessarily a magic bullet. I got lucky with an inspired & iconoclastic psychotherapist—and even then, it took her about 15 years to get me turned round.
And yes, mental health workers sometimes seem to have an almost Orwellian interest in simply turning you into a Functional Economic Unit, rather than actually helping or enabling you to be happy—never mind to be yourself! Well spotted. Thought you said you weren't smart?!BDavro wrote:
I haven't worked for a decade, I've always started jobs just killing time until my inevitable sacking/firing. Never been proven wrong. My benefits are paid to me to keep me away from the workplace and I think it a small price for my country to pay to prevent the utter chaos I cause. You are not alone in how you feel, jobs terrify me, mostly due to human interaction and all their shite, I just don't want to partake.
Yes, I get my benefits paid for exactly that same reason. Please may I print out that quotation from you and put it on my wall to help me feel less shame?! Very well said. I've been incapable of earning my own living for approximately 15 years out of the past 20, and every attempt on my part to support myself has made me even more of a mess than I already was before (thus increasing costs to health services), cumulatively inducing something akin to P.T.S.D., not to mention all the collateral inconvenience to employers and colleagues when I inevitably flaked out.The Grand Inquisitor wrote:
Pretty much nobody wants to work. You're not unique in that respect. Most people just have to tough it out.
Sir, you introduced colour to my world, and for that I shall always always always adore & respect you. But...
I hope nobody on Wrong Planet would ever tell a depressed person to "just snap out of it", or an anxious person to "just stop fretting about stuff". Many of us with A.S.D. have enough experience of depression & anxiety to know it is not that simple.
And some of us are alas just not able to "tough it out". It isn't a question of our failing to summon up enough toughness: it's because that toughness is not there in us to be summoned up. I know this from my own experience because every attempt I've ever made to do any kind of regular work has ended up leading to complete physical & mental collapse. For years I kept trying, against the advice of my psychotherapist and my doctor, and kept making myself severely ill, until at last my doctor & my family persuaded me it would save them and the local ambulance service a lot of hassle if I just finally gave up the effort.
I have done my level best to earn & be a taxpayer, and my attempts ended up costing John Q. Taxpayer a lot more than would have been the case if I'd never actually tried!Sarahsmith wrote:
....Anyway, if the answer to this is to tough it out because work sucks then that sucks. Because I'm not tough.
Don't worry, poppet: the answer is not to tough it out. Not for you. If you were in a wheelchair, nobody would dare suggest the answer was to just get off your arse and run up those stairs, would they?
Can't help being reminded of the Ilse de Lange song, "I'm not so tough" (apologies: slightly irrelevant).
Some of us simply are not tough. Not our fault. No shame in it. Fact of life. Could be pathological demand avoidance, social anxiety, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, other historical issues not connected with A.S.D. at all (personality damage, for instance), or any combination of any of those things, but the end result can be: not tough.Sarahsmith wrote:
There is that thing of working online from home. I know a woman who supports her kids by selling vintage stuff online. I don't think I could ever do anything like that though. I'm not smart enough.
Stop saying you aren't smart! If you're smart enough to identify this problem you're describing as the major issue that it is, then you're far from stupid!renaeden wrote:
Have you thought about volunteering?
Volunteering could, unfortunately, be just as hostile an environment as a paid place of work. I do a limited, ad hoc bit of unpaid "occupational therapy" sometimes, with the sanction & encouragement of my G.P., i.e. driving buses occasionally if one of the local bus companies happens to be desperate, which you would think would be great for me because I've always had a thing about buses, but in practice it often takes more out of me than it benefits me: pathological demand avoidance, social anxiety, too much interaction (passengers sometimes like to talk to the driver, and this is a lot more stressful for me than, say, squeezing a 57-seater through a tight gap in the middle of Blackpool on a Saturday afternoon!), and then afterwards, total exhaustion & disorientation; so, for me this so-called "occupational therapy" is less than 100% therapeutic! But it gets me out of the house, and when I get to wherever I'm going I can photograph other coaches in the coach park, & do some shopping, without having to spend precious money on petrol to get there under my own steam. However, you can see this idea of volunteering could be a double-edged sword: the sheer knowledge that you have a commitment you're expected to honour, and honour reliably, can become nightmarishly stressful and constraining.
And the authorities might argue that if you were fit to volunteer on any regular, on-going basis, then you must be equally fit for regular part-time employment at the very least, and that you are already in fact half way to rejoining the World of Work and becoming a Functional Economic Unit.
It probably would be quite a good idea for you to refrain from making remarks along the lines of, "If I had a cushy job that I loved, where I could go in whenever I felt like it, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But the reality is that most jobs suck." For one thing you are handing the capitalists ammunition they can use against you, for another thing you're feeding the propaganda machine that says all mental illness is narcissistic self-indulgence curable by a good hard kick up the arse, and most importantly, if what you say about your problems is true then even a cushy job that you loved would make you ill! I had a cushy job I loved, teaching Latin in an eccentric little girls' boarding school (I mean the school was little & eccentric, not the girls ... although actually, come to think of it ...). Anyway, it was fulfilling and fun and well paid, and it nearly killed me. So much for cushy jobs you love!
Do not let the capitalistic and the heartless and the insensitive and the sceptical convince you that you're being lazy: you're not.
If you were a millionaire, you would be "delicate". Actually, you are delicate, but because you don't happen to be a millionaire, you can't expect to be given that particular badge. But that is what you are, and there is no shame in it. People will try to shame you. You don't have to let them.
What to do to support yourself, I wish I knew. I respect the fact that money is a problem. The world isn't really set up to believe in people like us, but that doesn't mean we don't exist or are merely a figment of our own imagination.
Joe sneakily posted the following while I was still busy typing mine. Go, Joe! You nailed it!Joe90 wrote:
I do understand how the OP feels and the last thing she needs is criticism or clichés. It's a shame there's not more understanding support for people on the spectrum who find work too daunting to deal with.
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You can't be proud of being Neurodivergent, because it isn't something you've done: you can only be proud of not being ashamed. (paraphrasing Quentin Crisp)
16 Oct 2019, 6:57 pm
