dearcastle
New Here
I don't know where this "should" go, so I'm posting in this forum... hope that's okay (don't get mad at me). ;)
On Tuesday I found out that my disability claim with an employment insurance company was denied. I had 6 months of benefits (Sept - April) and then the company did a review of my claim last month, and they denied it. They said that I don't have an "ongoing impairment". This is maybe the worst thing someone with complex ptsd can hear... I wish this f*cking company knew how much this is affecting me right now. I've been pretty much gaslighting myself into believing that I don't have any problems and I need to "get over it". "Get over it" is a phrase that my parents used on me a lot growing up, so it's not a great sign that I'm saying this to myself.
I wish this diagnosis was more well known in the US and that it was taken more seriously. When I applied for my claim last summer, I had over 1,000 pages of evidence. This time around I didn't have nearly as much evidence and I hadn't gone back to the mental hospital (I was in the hospital for 4 months in 2023), so I'm guessing that's why I was denied. It's like they want me to be very, very sick in order to get help.... but I am sick! I'm just not in the hospital anymore. I can't afford it. I can't work. I have crappy healthcare that basically covers nothing, not even a single mental health clinic (it only covers addiction support, which I don't need).
The other part of this that is so difficult to explain is that my family is actively against mental health assistance. In ~2001, I went to my parents for help because my OCD symptoms were so severe that I couldn't function. My parents laughed at me. Can you imagine working really, really hard (at 15 yrs old) to go to your abusers, the people who subjugated me my entire life, and begging them for help, and they LAUGH at you?! In 2007, I had my first suicide attempt and I didn't tell anyone except my psychologist. I didn't think I deserved to go to the hospital so I "just dealt with it" on my own. A few months after that attempt, my academic advisor called my parents to tell them that I needed help. My parents told him that it was "really inconvenient" for them. The timing was bad, according to them. (The only reason I finished my bachelor's degree is because that advisor signed off on a bunch of credits that I didn't really take.... he had also been abused as a child and knew what I was up against with my parents.)
When I found out that my claim was denied on Tuesday, I went way up (hyper arousal) then I crashed (hypo arousal). I've been frozen since Tuesday afternoon, more or less (the only thing that shakes me out of freeze is cannabis). I've been scrolling through job sites and aggressively adjusting my budget to make my savings last as long as I can. I'm a big fan of maslow's triangle and I know the reason I'm frozen is because I don't feel like I have the bottom tier. The physiological tier and the safety tier are compromised when I don't have a job. (This has happened to me before; I finished undergrad in 2008 and was unemployed for a long time. I was also unemployed and in an abusive relationship in 2016 when I was looking for a job after graduate school.) I know that I'll survive based on past evidence: I've been unemployed twice and I still survived. I've lived in my car. I've been homeless. I've been on food stamps. I've had to pawn stuff to make rent. I've had no car and didn't have anywhere to sleep. I still survived all of it... so I know on some level that I can survive this, but I'm overwhelmed and frozen, so I can't believe it even though I know it.
The last layer to all of this is that I cut off my whole abusive family last May 1st and I got this message cutting off my disability on April 30th... It's been a whole year since I talked to anyone from my shitty family. Having a shitty family, having cptsd, having a low threshold for change/disorder is so frustrating!
On Tuesday I found out that my disability claim with an employment insurance company was denied. I had 6 months of benefits (Sept - April) and then the company did a review of my claim last month, and they denied it. They said that I don't have an "ongoing impairment". This is maybe the worst thing someone with complex ptsd can hear... I wish this f*cking company knew how much this is affecting me right now. I've been pretty much gaslighting myself into believing that I don't have any problems and I need to "get over it". "Get over it" is a phrase that my parents used on me a lot growing up, so it's not a great sign that I'm saying this to myself.
I wish this diagnosis was more well known in the US and that it was taken more seriously. When I applied for my claim last summer, I had over 1,000 pages of evidence. This time around I didn't have nearly as much evidence and I hadn't gone back to the mental hospital (I was in the hospital for 4 months in 2023), so I'm guessing that's why I was denied. It's like they want me to be very, very sick in order to get help.... but I am sick! I'm just not in the hospital anymore. I can't afford it. I can't work. I have crappy healthcare that basically covers nothing, not even a single mental health clinic (it only covers addiction support, which I don't need).
The other part of this that is so difficult to explain is that my family is actively against mental health assistance. In ~2001, I went to my parents for help because my OCD symptoms were so severe that I couldn't function. My parents laughed at me. Can you imagine working really, really hard (at 15 yrs old) to go to your abusers, the people who subjugated me my entire life, and begging them for help, and they LAUGH at you?! In 2007, I had my first suicide attempt and I didn't tell anyone except my psychologist. I didn't think I deserved to go to the hospital so I "just dealt with it" on my own. A few months after that attempt, my academic advisor called my parents to tell them that I needed help. My parents told him that it was "really inconvenient" for them. The timing was bad, according to them. (The only reason I finished my bachelor's degree is because that advisor signed off on a bunch of credits that I didn't really take.... he had also been abused as a child and knew what I was up against with my parents.)
When I found out that my claim was denied on Tuesday, I went way up (hyper arousal) then I crashed (hypo arousal). I've been frozen since Tuesday afternoon, more or less (the only thing that shakes me out of freeze is cannabis). I've been scrolling through job sites and aggressively adjusting my budget to make my savings last as long as I can. I'm a big fan of maslow's triangle and I know the reason I'm frozen is because I don't feel like I have the bottom tier. The physiological tier and the safety tier are compromised when I don't have a job. (This has happened to me before; I finished undergrad in 2008 and was unemployed for a long time. I was also unemployed and in an abusive relationship in 2016 when I was looking for a job after graduate school.) I know that I'll survive based on past evidence: I've been unemployed twice and I still survived. I've lived in my car. I've been homeless. I've been on food stamps. I've had to pawn stuff to make rent. I've had no car and didn't have anywhere to sleep. I still survived all of it... so I know on some level that I can survive this, but I'm overwhelmed and frozen, so I can't believe it even though I know it.
The last layer to all of this is that I cut off my whole abusive family last May 1st and I got this message cutting off my disability on April 30th... It's been a whole year since I talked to anyone from my shitty family. Having a shitty family, having cptsd, having a low threshold for change/disorder is so frustrating!
