Predicting the future

@Former-Member I am going to step away from this conversation for a little while after this post as it is starting to escalate my feelings of despair. I know you mean well, but there is no suggestion you can make that I haven't already heard (and tried) before...hence why I am moving towards the choice of suicide. Yes I have tried the disabiliy employment services (as mentioned in my previous post). They are awful - totally demeaning and no idea of mental health or ASD issues. The first thing the first person I saw did was delete my degree off my resume!!!! That went down like a lead balloon. Another one met with me in a cafe, and when I started to go into meltdown she walked out leaving me in a full-blown autistic meltdown in the cafe! As I mentioned in my other post, my previous employer and I set up our work arrangement via the disability employment service so they could get the wage subsidy. When the workplace incident happened, I called my caseworker and he simply said it was an issue for my psychologist. My psychologist in turn said "what do they expect me to do about it, they are the ones that are supposed to be helping you with employment."

In terms of ANY job, the issue is whether I'm going to have a meltdown that results in police, ambulance etc being called. But anyway, in terms of creating a life worth living, I want a job based on the degree I spent TWELVE YEARS working at.

I went into my first session with my new psychologist with a list of what it would take for me to want to live too. The thing is, my list only has one thing on it; I want a career that I find meaningful and that pays enough for me to not have to rely on welfare. And remember, she is the NINETH psychologist that I've seen in twelve months!!!! So no, I'm not going to be shopping around for anyone else.

Thanks again for responding @Former-Member, I really appreciate it.

Yep I did realise I'd gone into fix it mode @Phoenix_Rising and I apologise for that. I guess it's all a bit close to home for me which is why I grabbed hold of it. Thanks for the heads up about your experiences with DES. I'm pretty much petrified of it all. I am truly sorry things haven't worked out in the past. I'm also really sorry that the world hasn't come to its senses around autism. I am still ignorant about your life experiences with it but I know you have an amazing skill set to offer. So with that I hope that your day finds some calm and you find some peace. Wishing you all the very best @Phoenix_Rising and thanks for your honesty. 💜🤗

Thanks @Former-Member and @Former-Member. I will keep on working with my psychologist to try and figure out a reason to keep on keeping on after this last thing I need to attend to has been finalised. It just isn't looking overly hopeful now, given she and I have now been discussing this for three months. @Former-Member I think if I was to keep on keeping on, it would be in that space of acceptance that you describe - the idea of accepting that things aren't going to get better...and that that's ok. I think partly that is what irks me so much when people constantly say that things will get better - it really derails my attempts to work at the acceptance thing. I get criticised for being negative, when really I'm simply being realistic. I think the idea of accepting the moment fits better for me, than the idea of having hope for the future. I really did cling to the hope that completing my degree would herald a new and better chapter in my life. Instead, my brain is now so fried from a huge number of losses over the past 18 months plus my hellish year of therapist shopping, that I barely know which way is up. And now I have settled with my new psychologist who I truly do like...but she seems to be as lost as I am as to how to unmuddle my muddle. The reality is that there is no answer. We are trying to achieve something that cannot be done. Nothing in the world can change the fact that I spent twelve years on my degree.

Someone told me once that she thought my bewilderment around why people try to predict the future, was due to my aspieness. That thought crossed my mind while reflecting on your comments this afternoon. I don't understand the concept of people SAYING one thing, but MEANING another thing. That makes no sense to me at all. @Former-Member and @Former-Member do you want to know a secret? I don't understand what most people are saying most of the time. I feel like I live in a country where I don't speak the language.

A big part of my grief and why I'm moving towards suicide is that I DID find a counsellor who understood me, and who could explain the world to me. She was my uni counsellor, and I know that if I could have just kept working with her, I could have probably got somewhere. But alas, I lost that relationship when I graduated in 2015. When I was in crisis back in December, I called X. She hung up on me and called the police (hence another traumatic interaction with them). About a week later, I got a letter from X's boss saying if I contacted X again, they would take legal action against me. The loss of that relationship, and then the way that loss got complicated with that damn letter, is a massive part of my hopelessness. She was right there, I found her. I found someone who could really help me...and then I lost her again. That is what kept me going through my hellish year of therapist shopping. I kept telling myself that I had found X so there must be SOME counsellors/therapists who can "get" me. My current psychologist is the closest that I've come to finding someone like X. She doesn't really "get" me, but I know she is trying really hard to and I deeply appreciate that. At the moment we are constantly having miscommunications, but I know she is trying. However, as hard as she is trying, in three months we have not been able to come up with any additional resources for me beyond her, my GP and the SANE forums, and we haven't been able to come up with anything regarding my employment muddle. There is no answer. In our session last week, my psychologist said I was an anomoly. A previous psychologist had told me I am an outlier. Both of them (and many other people) have told me that the combination of the ASD and the BPD makes things really really tough. There is no answer. I so very badly want to create a life worth living, but it simply does not seem that it is to be. Thank you for your responses this afternoon and for sitting with me in my muddle.

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Hi @Former-Member, thank you for your reply. I feel so utterly bewildered. I know I might come across as sounding angry, but I'm not really - I'm just SUPER frustrated. I simply do not understand this concept of people saying one thing when they mean another. I don't get it. I spent all those years very clearly asking for help - e.g. "but what am I going to DO with my degree." I wasn't asking for some airy-fairy fluffy encouraging words...I was asking for real help with my real puzzle. And I'm not talking about one or two people here, I'm talking about dozens of them over the years.

You are correct in thinking that something to do with data rather than people would be a good fit for me. I am very good at inferential statistics. The problem is...even in jobs that are very data focused, you tend to need to have the soft skills such as able to work under pressure, able to organise and prioritise tasks, able to work well as part of a team. I don't have any of that.

The one idea I've had over the past year since I graduated, is tutoring in statistics. I have done a little bit of that - i.e. someone referred someone to me who in turn referred a friend. I had vague thoughts of setting up a tutoring business. After therapist take-one decided to close her practice last Feb, 2016 became a blur of the nightmare of therapist shopping. I finally settled with therapist take-seven in June and my plan had been that once we were working well and I was a bit on top of the trauma and depression stuff, I would look at this business idea. Therapist take-seven and I didn't end up working well at all. Even so, I told her that if she could just STAY and provide some stability, I could get on with my plan. However, she ended up dumping me in November. Thus my plan of spending the summer working on this idea of a tutoring business fell apart. And now, here I am three months into working with therapist take-nine and SO depressed and SO hopeless that that which seemed at least vaguely achieveable in November now seems utterly pointless.

The general consensus seems to be that I probably could set up a tutoring business, but it would only ever supplement the welfare payment. I really have no hope of having an actual career. And therein lies my despair. If I could get on top of the depression etc. I could probably get accepted into a Phd. But for what purpose? To fill in a few years, become Dr. Phoenix_Rising, and still be no more employable than I am right now.

I can see that things would have probably been very different if the ASD had been diagnosed earlier. Up until three years ago, whenever I'd say I didn't understand something, the response was always "yes you do, you're very intelligent, you're just pretending not to understand." Since I got the autism diagnosis, I have noticed that people (e.g. my uni counsellor, current psychologist) seem to hear me when I say I don't understand something. The uni counsellor was super good at rephrasing things so that I could understand her, whereas my current psychologist doesn't seem to have a handle on that yet. Thus we keep discovering that we've had a magnificant miscommunication which neither of us realised at the time, and these miscommunications are triggering a lot of overwhelming emotions - not the least being the despair around not being able to communicate effectively.

Anyway, thanks again for your reply @Former-Member

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Hi @Former-Member,

Thank you for your very considered reply. I haven't ruled out doing a PhD if I can get on top of the depression and actually make my brain work again! The past 18 months have been SO destructive and I am in a worse space than I've been in for decades.

For me, a career would mean financial independence (from the welfare system), something that I could throw my time and energy into, and a way to meet my relatively low need for social contact. I loathe being dependent on welfare. I managed to support myself for about fifteen years, until I finally couldn't cope with work anymore and went onto the DSP five years ago. I hate it.

Now that the year has geared up, I do have stuff in my schedule. This was a big issue over the Christmas break as all the things I normally do ceased. However, that isn't such a problem now.

I'm sorry to hear that your family doesn't respect or value you. I don't have any family. My parents are both dead and my siblings and I parted ways 12 years ago. This is one of the reasons why having a decent job is so important to me - I don't have any family who would take me in if I ever reach the stage of not being able to pay my mortgage. I am extremely aware of the fact that if I have an accident or develop a serious illness, I don't have anyone who would help me out in any way. I know that whatever help I need, I have to pay for - hence why I want a decent job.

Thanks again for your reply.

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