feeling like a fraud for claiming benefits

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I'm starting to feel less and less deserving of claiming benefits/social security, simply because of the apparent amount of deceit which is involved in order to get a single penny in the first place.

My PIP (Personal Independence Payment) assessment is coming up next week and my mum is starting to say stuff like "watch what you post on Facebook and other social media, they can use it against you if they see that you've been travelling/doing things on your own", and I've also been told to "play things up" during the assessment. I've had reservations about claiming benefits from the very beginning and they were always a last resort for me. Even now I'm trying to build a freelancing career so that I can eventually come off them. But my parents are absolutely adamant that I claim every single shred of help and assistance available. To be fair I can understand why they'd want me to seeing as it would take a lot of the burden off of them because they supported me financially for most of my life, and still do a fair bit for me. As I speak, my mum is deep-cleaning my oven and fixing other stuff in my kitchen for me

A bit of background: I've been actively looking for work for the past 13 years (apart from when I've been studying full time) and I've maybe had about a dozen interviews in that entire time. The only jobs I ever *did* end up landing were the worst jobs for aspies - customer service and cleaning - so I never lasted very long. Even volunteering placements would often require skills that I either have poorly or don't have at all. As I'm sure many of you are painfully aware, the longer you go without "steady" employment the less employable you become, and it just snowballs from there. So I feel like I've become "disabled" more from circumstances than my actual condition. Truthfully, I *do* have difficulties with going out and socialising most of the time, but I also sometimes force myself to go out and live life simply because I get no appropriate help anywhere else and the fear of life passing me by is actually stronger than my other fears at this stage. I'm diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum but the only "help" they ever offer is for those who are much further down the spectrum than I really am, even though I could use support sometimes, so I simply do without and try to go it alone. I really do want help but they only ever offer me phone numbers for social groups (I have a borderline phobia of using the phone) and the last time I made the effort to attend a group they were so severely autistic that I actually felt that I had less in common with them than "neurotypical" people. It was such that I once again began to genuinely doubt my diagnosis, which I used to do all the time.

But now I'm beginning to feel like more of a fraud because I feel like I need to act and be like a different person to who I am to get any financial assistance. I absolutely hate lying and the last thing I want to do is to feel like a scrounger for the rest of my life, but I feel there are no other options right now.

The UK benefits system -- these days -- is now so stringent, harsh and even unjustly withheld from some deserving cases (those ones make the news quite a bit) that even people with genuine need of this help would be well advised to "play up" their deficits, only because the system is so harsh these days.

Your mother is giving sound advice for this day and age, unfortunately. It shouldn't be that way, but it's come to that. They are actively LOOKING for ways to legally deny you benefits, the universal you, everyone who applies. The system is supposed to be there to help people who need help, but instead of the testing process being one of leaning toward getting you that help, it has become one that leans towards finding any way they can to say "AHA!! Look! There! You don't need this, so we're not granting it! Your life looks great, we've been snooping your Facebook posts!"

Your mother isn't wrong, sadly.

Think of it not as playing up anything, but just laying very, very bare the ways in which you can't manage. Think of it as completely unmasking what truly trips you up instead of being strong like we all normally have to be about our daily struggles.

To give a figurative example, it's like when someone says "Hi how are you today?" and the whole world is supposed to answer "Fine thanks!" like nothing's wrong. When really in truth, one person is deeply depressed and barely coping with life, one person just had their child die, one person is fighting cancer. etc.

Think of the way you have to be in this interview as being like you're shedding the urge to just go "fine thanks" and just telling it like it is, what you REALLY struggle to cope with.

That's all you're doing and that isn't lying, it's actually an act of very honest revealing.

I agree, I find it very depressing and dystopian, even, that we now live in a society which paints all of those in need with the same wide brush as the "scroungers." Of course people taking advantage do exist, but everyone now seems to believe that's ALL a person must be if they receive any state help with anything at all. I think that's an appalling attitude.

There are statistics out there that someone researched, which claims or surmises that actually only a small fraction of claimants of any benefit are fraudsters, the rest being just ordinary folk who genuinely need the assistance and are not faking anything. But sadly, there is an appetite for a "torches and pitchforks" mentality these days, with people overly eager to get mad about anyone on welfare help at all.

As for how you feel your autism can feel selective, try to think of how many times here on WP people have posted about how they function better when around supportive, caring people or situations that don't stress them, and they function "more autistically" when around people or situations which stress them.

It seems to be a widely-experienced phenomenon that when stressed by factors that create tension and overwhelm, we all tighten up and seem to "get worse" if you will.

And when we are well-rested, away from sensory overload, away from people-overload, doing something that calms us, many traits and symptoms either gentle-down or it's that we can cope with them better.

I know I feel and must seem "more autistic" when my world is crashing in on me and I'm overstimulated by things that cause me stress, and "closer to normal" when nothing and nobody is rattling my cage, so to speak. It's not that the issues go away, but that I feel stronger to cope when fewer factors are pushing my buttons in the first place.

This seems to be a very common experience on the spectrum and you would be legitimately tense and stressed by these interview situations.

I think the typical black/white thinking most aspies have also plays into this--disabilities are almost always shades of grey that have a hard time fitting into our world view.

I used to feel extremely guilty about claiming benefits for one particular reason; I had the idea that whatever I was claiming was being taken away from someone else. Now I've come to realise that it doesn't actually work that way, they have a certain (albeit rapidly dwindling) amount already set aside for those who want/need to claim it, and probably huge numbers of people aren't claiming what they're entitled to.

I didn't even claim until I was in my mid-twenties despite being "on the radar" for at least a decade previously. No-one even so much as suggested that benefits might be an option until one particularly helpful therapist took it upon themselves to investigate. If it weren't for that one person I'd most likely still not be getting a penny.

I try to remind myself of that any time I feel guilty but like I said, the poisonous rhetoric is so pervasive that it's really hard to shake off. People shouldn't actually be afraid, when they do claim, to do any work or to show the slightest signs of "having a life" at the risk of having everything taken away