The Experiment

Let’s inject more autism into the world

So my therapist has given me an assignment in order to help me attack the real world and become someone who exists in the real world. Yesterday I turned 29 and age has always been an issue of mine especially since diagnosis. I have been thinking that if I had been diagnosed at a younger age I would have been given the help and guidance needed to get my life in the right direction. Since losing my job back in December I have been on JSA and looking for work and no matter what I have been applying for I have been getting rejected left right and centre. Which makes me think that I am not applying for jobs in the right sectors considering what my limitations are. So I need some guidance in what jobs I should be looking at. As you can imagine being shut in and not having a reason to leave the flat any more and socialise is taking it’s toll. Apart from the fact that I am going a little bit Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” I am living in my head way more than I would like. Anyone out there with AS knows that you need distractions and something to pull you out of your own mind, otherwise meltdowns and anxiety is going to go into overdrive. I have some serious health anxiety, the more and more I have been on my own the worse it gets. I get a cough now and I think that it is some kind of cancer.

The answer is to avoid everything and anything that could be an issue and could trigger any sort of craziness in me. So I have been ignoring every body twinge going, anxiety cause muscle ache and chest pain but you try telling my inner monologue that. Excessive computer gaming covers that one with the mind focused on something else. Anything that is causing me any kind of problems or worries like job interviews and open days, ringing certain people, meeting certain people and even going to the shops is avoided as much as possible. The longer out of work I am the more and more my comfort zone is getting smaller the more and more I am less willing to get involved in. I am in the routine now of no job and living of JSA, I am slowly losing my way. I have noticed that I stopped watching the news and political debates that I used to enjoy due to some sort of fear that the issues raised will keep me awake at night.

OK so what’s the answer? I know now that I need to try new things to figure out what the hell I am supposed to be doing with my life for a career and general well being. However when I have closed down my life to basic actions this could be an issue. My therapist says I have to try something new. The first thing being is trying one whole day of volunteer week, preferably a job that I have never done before and no nothing about. My girlfriend is going to go through a volunteer listing booklet and cross out all the things she knows I would struggle with, then whatever the tenth thing is in this booklet I am going to apply for a possibly do. I am going to be terrified and I am going to feel like crap, but the more I do the bigger my comfort zone is going to get. Hopefully I will discover my niche at the same time for my career.

So the next blog I write should be about the volunteer work I did and not about how I bottled it.

Lets do this.