UC50 is turning out very hard, mentally

Commanded2bwell

Hello

I have no specific question. I'm just having a very hard time completing form UC50.

I'm claiming based on autism, which was diagnosed late in life, which means I have A LOT of baggage, guilt, regrets, and a lot of horror stories and failures from the first twenty years of adulthood, during which I thought I was just bad at being human, without the context and self-awareness of knowing I was mentally disabled.

Claiming PIP was pretty rough, but UC50 is harder. I don't know if that's because it's like PIP all over again, but slightly worse, or because I just don't want to do it, again. Going deep into all your incapacities, itemizing everything you can't do, providing evidence for it all... the problem with a mental disability is that 90% of this stuff involves dredging up memories of when you were socially horrible, when you got into trouble in the workplace and didn't understand why it was happening or how to defend yourself, when you were ostracised and punished by a social group that you stupidly thought were your friends, when you offended people you loved and they didn't know why, and you didn't understand. It's too much. I'm cracking up. I can't keep reliving it all over and over just for the sake of filling in another form. I've had enough of filling in these damn forms!

And I'm even more gutted because my niece has just been diagnosed with autism. She's four years old. I remain sceptical that it's accurate at that age... maybe I'm just behind the times on the science... but if it is, I know that she'll have problems, but she'll also have the great advantage of that self-awareness right from the start. But she'll still struggle. Maybe she'll still have to fill in forms like this one. That's not fair. Neither of us could control this. Neither of us chose this. Yet these forms make you feel like scum because you have to relive your worst days in order to write down the best examples, and thus avoid them forcing you do something you know will kill you. I was suicidal once before, and that's why I can't get a conventional job, again. I haven't got the emotional or mental energy to just put up with the stress like I did when I was younger. And when I ran out of that energy, my only option at the time was to end it all. I got past that. I probably wouldn't get past it a second time.

Every day I have to force myself to sit down and tackle another page of questions that are cunningly phrased to be ever so slightly misleading, and read advice online that talks about the discrepancy between what the law says, what a tribunal would say based on the law, and what the assessors are trained on, and the difference is definitely no accident! These private assessment contractors must be getting kickbacks for the number of people they can find reasons to reject. The assessors are clearly trained in ways that will maximise the chances of rejection, and thus force you into mandatory reconsideration and perhaps tribunal. And it's grinding me down. The intentional way these things are written so as to deceive, trip you up, give them reasons to reject you... it's all so hateful. And so utterly unnecessary. Disability claimants are not responsible for the national debt, interest rate rises, or breaking the NHS! Targeting us isn't going to save any money and leaving us alone isn't going to harm anyone. I'm sick of feeling like a victim. And you know what? I am honest to god sick of being autistic. There, I said it. There are some people who would want to burn me for saying that, but I don't care. It's how I feel.

And I still haven't finished this god forsaken form.

Albus_Scope

Hi @Commanded2bwell, I'm so sorry to hear things are getting on top of you. 

 I'm a late diagnosed autistic, I'm coming up to one year after diagnosis, so I can empathise with the feelings of grief, guilt and feeling like a round peg in a world full of square holes.  But please remember you are not alone here!