I need help, can't cope anymore.

HannahB1996

Hello everyone,

I'm new here and I'm looking for help/advice. I suspect I have autism and I'm waiting for my referral to come through from my doctor.

But I'm just not coping with life at the moment and no one seems to want to help me. I've tried contacting counselor's but they refuse me because my problems are to extensive. The wait for the referral could take months and I don't know how I can manage.

I have burnouts/meltdowns every month where I just feel completely drained of energy and life. My job is the main course of this, I hate my job, socializing, loud noises, busy environment, it destroys me as a person. I'm so awkward and miserable most of the time, I don't have friends, not that I mind that. 

I have money problems and depts I need to pay off, because I get compulsive when buying things. So I can't leave my job. 

I don't know what to do, I'm crawling through life. I wish I could just stay in my house all the time, that's where I'm happy. Help is far away and my will and effort in getting through life is breaking fast.

Any idea of where I can go?

Cher_Alumni

Hi @HannahB1996 and a warm welcome to our community, I'm sorry you join us at such a challenging time but hopefully we can help make things that bit easier.

It's great that you've started the referral process for autism and looked into counselling, but I imagine frustrating to come up against barriers such as long waiting lists and refusals.  Unfortunately, the waiting lists are something we hear about a lot on the community so you aren't alone, but I appreciate that is little consolation.  As your daily life is being so impacted by the burnouts/meltdowns, I wonder if it would be worth revisiting your GP to explain more and get their advice.  Have the counsellors you've contacted been private?  And if so, would it be worth exploring a referral to your local Improving Access to Psychological Therapies team, which you can do here online.  

Work sounds difficult to deal with too, are your employers aware of the health issues you're facing?  Although it's a personal choice to share this, you are entitled to reasonable adjustments to meet your needs and make your job more easily manageable.  You can visit Scope's reasonable adjustments at work advice page for more details about that.  

If you want to explore finding a job that better works for you, then Scope have lots of free employment services that can help you start that process.  For instance:

Support to Work
Support to Work is for you, if you:

• live in England or Wales

• are looking for paid work

• are happy with online and telephone support

Support to Work programme information.

Likewise, support is available to help with your spending.  It's good that you've recognised debt and compulsive shopping is becoming an issue, and you can make an appointment with someone from the Citizens Advice Bureau or Stepchange to look at organising a money management plan that works for you.  

Alongside this, you can visit the Autism Services Directory to find services and groups local to you to for support around managing your suspected ASD.  While the National Autistic Society has lots of advice on how to cope with ASD-related behaviour such as meltdowns.  

I'm going to send you an email outlining more help we at Scope can offer so please do keep an eye on your inbox.  Take care and I hope you have a nice Thursday.  

steveo928

Hi Hannah and welcome, 

Like you I have struggled for a long time and didn’t get any real help from my GP. They continued to prescribe anti-depressant’s.

Eventually I referred myself to healthy minds, they offer counselling etc, who ended up referring me to my local community health team. Within 6ish months and two appointments they’re screening me for ASD which will determine if to proceed to a formal diagnosis. I’m told it could take 2 years but I don’t mind this. 

Don’t give up hope. It may be worthwhile to ask your GP for referral to your local community mental health team. Or potentially find the online Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire online, complete, and send it to your GP via letter detailing your struggles etc which may help support you if you ask them for a referral. 

Also defo speak with your employer so they can make reasonable adjustments for you.