Earlier today I met up with my social worker to check up on my disability benefits files, and see if it's all correct.
Over the weekend I had a moment of clarity (a seeminly rare occaision) and as such reflected a bit with forms I had to fill in, in mind. I got to them and obviously one of the questions actually was; "What are your issues?" (mind you, it can be slightly paraphrased) and as such, there started the problem... where to start, where to start.
That list ended up being more elaborate by the minute, and I ended up with about 1,5 pages full of points, not in story mode, but neatly with bulletpoints.
They ranged from stuff like "messed up sleepingpattern" to "inabilty to work with other people, nor have the interest to". Also "Can't have formal conversations face to face or on the phone, and therefore needs everything written down". The list was endless... well, not really, just extensive.
So anyway, looking through the list the social worker remarked; I can see they wont fall for most of those things. To where I pointed out;
"But add them up". Apparently that was a perspective that didn't occur to her. In a vaccuum, every issue by itself is not that big, but we ended up concluding that for my list of issues to get fixed, I'd need more hours of therapy daily than I can cram hours in a day. Hardly realistic to fix it all in the long run... the short run we weren't looking at even.
I feel that this is a big problem for a lot of people on the spectrum. Single issues by itself are easy to work around with quite often, but add them up and it gets more complicated. Look at reasons why some things are. Why is my day/night activity messed up? Because I have both light and sound sensitivity issues. The darkness and quiet of the night helps me focus more to get my stuff done. It's not even a cause, it's an effect, but still... it's a problem. Chances are they will want to see if they can fix my pattern, but they'd rather just check up why the pattern exists in the first place. It's not fixing it, it's just moving the problem around.
The talk got me more thinking about cause and effect. Some habits and routines are things we got into because this works better for us. Trying to take away routine X will put some of us back to the start and eventually even totally disoriented without any sense of personal direction or aspiration. And if that happens, I feel that support fails miserably, since they're all about personal growth and success.
Over the weekend I had a moment of clarity (a seeminly rare occaision) and as such reflected a bit with forms I had to fill in, in mind. I got to them and obviously one of the questions actually was; "What are your issues?" (mind you, it can be slightly paraphrased) and as such, there started the problem... where to start, where to start.
That list ended up being more elaborate by the minute, and I ended up with about 1,5 pages full of points, not in story mode, but neatly with bulletpoints.
They ranged from stuff like "messed up sleepingpattern" to "inabilty to work with other people, nor have the interest to". Also "Can't have formal conversations face to face or on the phone, and therefore needs everything written down". The list was endless... well, not really, just extensive.
So anyway, looking through the list the social worker remarked; I can see they wont fall for most of those things. To where I pointed out;
"But add them up". Apparently that was a perspective that didn't occur to her. In a vaccuum, every issue by itself is not that big, but we ended up concluding that for my list of issues to get fixed, I'd need more hours of therapy daily than I can cram hours in a day. Hardly realistic to fix it all in the long run... the short run we weren't looking at even.
I feel that this is a big problem for a lot of people on the spectrum. Single issues by itself are easy to work around with quite often, but add them up and it gets more complicated. Look at reasons why some things are. Why is my day/night activity messed up? Because I have both light and sound sensitivity issues. The darkness and quiet of the night helps me focus more to get my stuff done. It's not even a cause, it's an effect, but still... it's a problem. Chances are they will want to see if they can fix my pattern, but they'd rather just check up why the pattern exists in the first place. It's not fixing it, it's just moving the problem around.
The talk got me more thinking about cause and effect. Some habits and routines are things we got into because this works better for us. Trying to take away routine X will put some of us back to the start and eventually even totally disoriented without any sense of personal direction or aspiration. And if that happens, I feel that support fails miserably, since they're all about personal growth and success.
