Anything official

Sillyboo said:

I have a great fear of officialdom.  I currently have over a month's post waiting to be opened as I know I will have to deal with things which are uncomfortable, difficult to understand and people, who have no patience or understanding.  I used to have a volunteer who helped me with this, but now I have had to move house, I am once again on my own.

Why did the volunteer stop?  You could go to Citizen's Advice to ask for help with your post maybe?

Another option is to ask your council for an assessment of need as an adult with a disability if you haven't already had this, and see what they can come up with.

I have a problem with post too.  Junk mail stresses me out for one.  My main thing is that I seem to have a huge anxiety opening them and I manage to miss important blocks of text in letters, which means if I don't go back and re-read them a few times I can get the "wrong end of the stick" about the content.

I think many of us have issues with post, but being unable to open it at all is not good so you do need to seek support with this before it spirals out of control and you end up with problems from not having opened important things.

I'm a bit paranoid about letters, thinking the worst of every envelope. Usually when I open them they are nothing like as significant.

The problem for most people (NTs and people on the spectrum together) is that most mail received is junk (unsolicited advertising,and the impersonal stuff the postmen have to put in your letter box to help keep costs down - Direct Mail).  For years I got mail for Mr D. Duck that some joker must have filled in a mailing consent form for my address as a laugh - Mailing Preference Service needs the unwanted individual's consent and weren't impressed when I said I'd try Disneyland.

The other nightmare for me is the persistent advertiser who cannot be got rid of through official channels (Advertising Standards). My old street had been laid with video cabling for a certain provider (V..... Media), and as well as the direct mailing for them from the postman I got a fortnightly booklet telling me what I was missing. After I moved they were still being forwarded to my new address (which doesn't have that company's cabling). Some organisations have money to burn and no concern for destruction of forests, or the unwelcome landfill of glossy coated paper.

The upshot of this is most people actually worry about losing something important they mistake for junk mail and put in the bin.

So if I could encourage you to think of most of it as innocuous, opening it isn't the big issue. I agree reading it isn't so easy. Tax letters, council letters (seem to be the most illiterate of the lot), energy provider bills and all those offers of maintenance contracts, often aggressively worded to scare you into paying. It's not good.

But you could reduce your anxiety to half the pressure or less if you were able to open and get a gist of the tricky ones, and throw away the rubbish ones. Opened it is easier to pinpoint the ones you need help with.

This must be a problem for many elderly people, partially-sighted people, people with a learning disability or poor reading skills, and maybe Age Concern or Citizen's Advice Bureaux can direct you to where you can get help.

You shouldn't be left without recourse to help with something this important (and of course if the Ault Autism Strategy was anything other than window dressing, you shouldn't).

Also is this something that ought to be on the NAS web page?