Hi all,
My wife and I have been married for almost 13 years, and she just received her diagnosis in September 2018 at the age of 40. She has had ongoing struggles with social interaction and sensory processing, plus anxiety and depression all of her life, but no mental health professionals ever spotted the signs that autism may be a factor, and so she only began to suspect that she might be autistic in the past couple of years.
In a way, it has been good to get the diagnosis (although she has had the reportedly quite common experience of feeling very angry about having not been diagnosed much earlier in life), but now we're both somewhat at a loose end about what happens next.
She is very dependent on me, on both a financial and practical day-to-day basis. She has not earned any money for a significant length of time, having had to quit any previous employment due to anxiety and depression. She has struggled to work as a freelance writer for a number of years but that requires a great deal of motivation, which she just can't muster. We are fortunate that I can afford to support both of us through my job, but my concern is about what would happen to her if something serious happened to me and she had to fend for herself. I have life and critical illness insurance but I don't know how well that would support her, or if she could even motivate herself to negotiate the process of claiming the funds. She also depends on me to make sure she is eating and taking care of herself. If I am not at home she will either not eat or only consume what can be eaten straight from the packaging.
A good day for my wife currently is if she can drag herself out of bed, do a couple of chores around the house, and maybe walk over to the local cafe.
She is on medication to help with the depression, but that is only keeping her from feeling suicidal. She still wishes that she was not alive, but has no intention to act on those thoughts. She does have a psychiatric appointment scheduled soon, but that really tends to focus on her current mood and whether the medications she is on are working. What I feel like we both really need is some idea of what other practical autism-specific resources are available to her to help her motivate herself and become somewhat more self-sufficient.
Is anyone else having a similar experiences? Or have you been through this and found useful strategies for moving forwards?
