seeking help and support continued

aged 20+

• I applied for help from a Christian counselling service in Winchester. They did not come across as very professional or helpful, and contacted JM about me without permission to get further details. I attended some sessions but due to that breach of confidences and JM's usual unhelpful opinion of me, including me not being autistic but being awkward and her usual stories of me 'acting out' etc, I never settled to that counselling. And when I was working, the buses never ran on time so I simply could not get to the sessions. (funnily enough, when I arrived back in Winchester, homeless in 2010, my new GP told me no counselling was available on the NHS and I should contact the Christian counselling service, I explained to her that as Jane Fisher and the Bishop had maligned me to every church in Winchester, and the counsellors would be from those churches, it would be another humiliating waste of time at least and another avenue for Fisher and the Bishop to try and have me labelled as mad at most.
• Back to the past. I was told that 'Connexions' a youth support service, helped people with learning difficulties up to age 25, and a youth worker went with me to see them, it was a pointless exercise, they saw me twice, didn't agree that they helped people up to age 25 and told me I came across as Autistic and that I should read a book called 'Feel the Fear and do it Anyway', which was pointless advice as it had been one of my first self-help books as a teenager and was not relevant to my ongoing struggles. I remained disappointed by Connexions for a long time.
• Sadly both MIND and the Youth Service restructured at the same time, both leaving me with no real support, and the MIND social group was gone, as was the Youth Centre, and there was no real replacement, and in the case of MIND, they neither warned me nor explained, which was really really bad.
• I am mainly talking about the emotional, mental and practical support I sought at this time, I will do a separate blog on the physical health issues that the NHS let me down on.
• Anyway, no counselling or therapy or even much support by the time I moved to a new home and job.
• I became increasingly depressed, trying to earn enough to live on, trying to cope with a church social life that was overloading my system and also not able to manage the trauma from my background and also cope with day to day life, now looking after a 2 bedroomed house on my own. so being put on yet another anti-depressant. When I became very tired, I did not really associate this or the extreme tiredness and increased depression with the anti-depressants at the time, but looking back, it may well have been that.
• I was on the waiting list for autism assessment by this point, but I was waiting for a long time.