sorta new and looking for resources for undiagnosed adults

[eriktrips]

I haven't introduced myself since joining a couple of weeks ago so I thought I should say hi at the same time that I ask for some help in finding diagnostic services as an adult. I'm Erik and I'm 47 years old and a female-to-male transsexual living in San Francisco CA. My real work is writing but I only get paid for editing, currently. I do all my

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[eriktrips]

The editing I am getting used to. At first I was really concerned that their papers made sense, when all I am paid for is to correct grammar. The papers themselves can be awful; that's not my concern. So this is an ok job for now. The hard part is working enough to pay the bills: that is soul-deadening and always has been, no matter the job. Right now I am trying to do what I do more quickly so that I can double up my workload and maybe do two papers a night. :)

I'm only writing my own stuff though. I tried ghostwriting for a little while but it was just impossible--I could not put myself in someone else's place to tell their story. The only story I know how to tell is my own, and even there I am only going on and on because I can't find a good stopping place. But it is still what I consider my "real job" and what it is I am here to do, to the extent that anyone is here for any particular reason.

In another time and place I could have been the eccentric cousin who lived upstairs writing poetry but ate very little.

Or something.

[kisekileia]

You can't qualify for disability if you've always been too disabled to work?! That is all kinds of fucked up.

That being said, you sound Aspie to me, and I hope you can get diagnosed and get disability. I wish more professionals realized the extent to which autistic adults were neglected as children and can often mask our symptoms. I even managed to work a sales job involving complex social interaction for a few months last fall, and did well--but I had no energy for anything else, even though I was only working 18.5 hours per week, and I'm still catching up on the university course work I didn't get done because I was too drained from the job.

[eriktrips]

You can't qualify for disability if you've always been too disabled to work?! That is all kinds of fucked up.

Yeah the federal government is very creative in coming up with reasons not to help somebody out. Because that would be--*horrors*--socialist!

I'm still trying to work this piece out though. There may be a way around the Catch-22, but I don't really know yet. It takes me a very long time to deal with this sort of thing, with all the forms and all the signatures and stuff. I can do, like, one page a day on the application. There are at least twenty pages--and this after the Paperwork Reduction Act of 197whatever. We need another one, I think.

Thanks for your kind words. I too get exhausted at very few work hours, and it increases exponentially according to the amount of contact with generic people required. School at least was a kind of shelter from much of that. But now I am supposed to go out there and be somebody. I'd rather be what I am.

Sweet icon. Your bunny?

[skyrabbit]

Welcome!

Your cat looks almost exactly like one of mine!

[eriktrips]

wow he's even got the black/white whisker pads going, if that's him in your userpic. I love Santiago madly; I'd never had a tux cat and he's a complete charmer, clown, acrobat and just a little bit evil. everything a cat should be. ^..^

[skyrabbit]

Yes, that's her! Quite an old photo, but she is still very sleek and glossy at 13.

I just realised she and your cat are actually mirror images of each other - the white spot by her mouth is on the opposite side from Santiago's.

She has a number of names; online she mostly goes by Bam Bam.

A little bit evil - yes! When she wants to wake me up in the morning she will paw my nose (with just little bit of claw involved) and will then proceed, rather disconcertingly, to sniffing my eyes.

[eriktrips]

my cats are apparently the only ones in the world who don't try to wake their person up in the morning. in fact they make it very hard to get out of bed because they will lounge around for however long I want to sleep. I do leave out dry food for them at night, so maybe that helps, but they don't even seem to need attention if we are all snoozing together.

Santiago will paw at my face and sniff my eyes as we are settling down to bed. feeling a little wet cat nose in the corner of my eye just makes me laugh. I haven't a clue why they do that.

I miss him. I'm on vacation and return home tomorrow. I hope he's doing ok!

[concrete_stare]

Maybe not helpful, but I suggested autism to several of my therapists and psychiatrists and was either told that it would have been detected during my childhood (it was, but it was called other things, since AS didn't exist as a diagnosis at the time) or else was told that an autism diagnosis "wouldn't be useful" and that I should go on with just a diagnosis of panic disorder and chronic depression, with no need to look at exactly why I was anxious and depressed.

However, once I had two kids who are both flamingly autistic, diagnosable beyond any professional being able to deny it, I got my own professional diagnosis pretty damn quickly and easily. (i.e. I was diagnosed shortly after my second child was diagnosed- the first one wasn't enough, apparently.)

And for me, diagnosis was life-changing, because understanding the why of my long-term anxiety and depression allowed me to find ways to cope with those issues, and now I am no longer depressed and only anxious occasionally.

[eriktrips]

mental health professionals are a highly variable lot, I've found. mine are both supportive but have no real idea where I should go to get evaluated and so far none of them are willing to diagnose me themselves. not sure why--it's in the DSM IV with all the other stuff they use. I think they want me to find a specialist or a center, but so far those are the places saying that "if he were AS he'd have been diagnosed as a child" before asking how old I am.

it's quite frustrating. I have severe social phobia and have been extremely introverted since infancy, but how everything unfurls around that is still somewhat unclear. I definitely have PTSD but figuring out how much of it is due to my particular traumas happening to an untreated AS child would be very helpful, I think.