Diagnosis and Disability

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Well, it is finally coming up; I'll be getting some names of psychiatrists and autism specialists that are on my mother's insurance plan within the next few days. Just in time for my disability appeal.

It feels like my life has been crawling at a snail's pace (so to say) and all of a sudden without warning, I've lurched into fast-forward. I know I've got issues with instant gratification, and it felt as if I had been suspended in time while I watched everyone else's lives march on by me, but now I feel entirely unprepared to deal with all of this. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has felt this way; it's just new to me.

After half a year of waiting and procrastinating, I'm finally going to be going in for an official assessment and hopefully getting on the path to no longer feeling so reclusive and fearful of the world. The thought of getting back into the "real world" after so much time spent locked away in my room is a daunting one, to say the least.

My regular doctor recommended that I get on anxiety medication and look into therapy. For those of you that have been on medication and/or gone to therapy (and are willing to share,) what were your experiences? It has been years since I was in any form of therapy, and haven't taken medication since I was in middle school, so I'm a little behind the game when it comes to knowing what to expect. Also, if anyone has anything to share about getting on disability (especially if attorneys were enlisted) I would like to hear from you. I was denied last month, just turned in my appeal today, and the social worker I was working with handed me a list of disability attorneys "just in case." I immediately shut down even thinking about having to take that route.

Any insight/anecdote/tidbit is very welcomed. Comment or PM, as I know I'm kind of asking something semi-personal. I don't really have people to talk to that understand my fears/concerns, and I am trying to push myself to interact with people more (whether in person or online) so I thought that WP would be an effective tool in this instance.

Sorry if this is kind of long. I'm pretty anxious.

Don't worry about it; you're communicating just fine.

Assessments vary widely... it can be anything from just talking to them for a half hour to taking a day's worth of neuropsych tests. Be honest and do your best on any tests, and ask to take a break if you are getting tired or overwhelmed.

Anxiety medication can be helpful; unfortunately, the ones that work quickly also have tolerance issues, so they are the best for short term problems, like if you had to go to a big party or something. Some antidepressants will reduce anxiety more gradually, and are usually better long term solutions. Talk to your doc about your options if you decide to go for meds.

Therapy depends quite a lot on your working relationship with your therapist. They have to be willing to listen to you and be flexible enough to understand that your mind works differently; whether you have autism, social anxiety disorder and sub-clinical autistic traits, or both, or neither, changes how you think and there's no one-size-fits-all approach. Try to make them stick to concrete goals; that way you're not just sitting there and talking about nothing. You want to be there to solve problems; use a therapist as a sounding board, someone who you can talk at and think aloud with, someone who can point out when you're getting overwhelmed by emotions or when you're "listening" to maladaptive things you learned in the past.

Disability income can be helpful. I'm on SSI, and it's pretty much the reason why I'm indoors and eating regularly. But it's not a lot of money--bare subsistence, often less. Don't let it force you to give up on the potential for working; there are many places that disabled people can get job training and employment assistance. Just being on disability doesn't mean that you can never, ever work. It just means you can't work *right now*, or can't work full time, or can't work without support. A person can't just sit around, after all.