This morning after being awake from 4:00am to 6:00am again being unable to breathe through my nose sufficiently, I then had to get up at 8:00am not just to feed the cats but to have a telephone appointment with my primary care physician, most of which about said ceasless congestion and part of which about the uptick in my anxiety over the last month or so. The latter led to me feeling cornered—entirely by internal pressure not external—into agreeing to a 10:30am telephone appointment with one of my primary care clinic’s psychoconsultants, despite still having no clarity from either my medical plan or my insurance provider on what kind of resource they are (I’ve only been told, over and over and over, what kind of recourse they aren’t). It was a waste of time, and a perfect example of why I specifically need to find people who have even a little understanding of adult autism. It was a plug-and-play conversation. Oh, you anxiety has been spiking lately? Here’s the checklist of things we tell people about anxiety. Well, no, some of those things might be applicable to me but some of them might not, as my brain literally is put together differently than the brains of the people you all made that plug-and-play checklist for. Have you tried calling these places? I can refer you. Well, yes, literally those are all of the very first places I contacted a year and a half ago; none of them work and I’ve had no luck for a year and a half of searching. I tried explaining things like “autistic burnout”, I tried explaining the research suggesting autistic brains hold onto stimuli longer than other brains, and I even mentioned how I think many psychoconsultants (I don’t use that word with them) roll their eyes when we talk about these things, and it sure felt like when I said that I’d caught her rolling her eyes. I left this conversation feeling worse than I did going into it, and I’m sure she has no idea because the easiest way out of a conversation with someone who isn’t equipped to help you is to “mask” and play nice, so I did.
I give up on this. There is no mental health support out there for me. There is just my cats, the occasional but increasingly infrequent because money breakfast out, and the weekly trip to the zoo. That’s it. That’s all I get.
Addenda
- And that means no records to support any claims to disability benefits. In fact, my not having a psychoconsultant inevitably will be used against me. So there goes any hope of a future with any sort of financial resources whatsoever.