Yet another failure on the part of the charity which provides my support, or more recently, lack thereof, resulted in my letting the person (not my usual support-worker) who arrived half an hour later than expected know exactly what I thought of the fact that despite repeated requests to those in charge of the local branch of what is a national charity to inform me, in advance, of any changes, they had consistently failed so to do, despite my advocate's explaining that, as a person with Asperger syndrome, even small changes to my routine and/or what I am expecting to take place, causes severe anxiety which can, and this is documented in my care-plan, lead to, at best, 'shutdowns' or, at worst, 'meltdowns', the former characterised by complete withdrawal and the latter by an inability to control the consequences of fear, frustration and/or anger; it so happens that, despite my extreme frustration with the aforementioned charity's failure to accommodate my needs with a frequency of about one in every three visits, I managed to restrict my rant to the facts but using some choice and colourful adjectives.
The deputy, if you'll allow, support-worker did nothing to ameliorate my extreme state of 'fight or flight' but rather compounded it by making excuses, indeed, her abject ignorance of the impacts of my condition continued to manifest itself during the time alotted, e.g. I am hypersensitive to light and wear Orthoscopics tinted spectacles all the time, yet she seemed to feel it necessary to comment upon my keeping my curtains closed. She also fell foul of a trap, into which many an, at best, inexperienced, and at worst, ignorant health-care professional/social-worker/support-worker falls, to wit, that because I have an high verbal I.Q. - please note that there is a world of difference between an high verbal I.Q. and an ability to communicate: up to 90% of communication is non-verbal and an impairment in the latter is one of a triad which form the core or heart of a diagnosis of both Kanner's, or classic, autism and Asperger syndrome - there is nothing of which I am incapable, a mistake which leads to my being anxious, feeling frustrated and, more often than not, a failure and which, in turn, leads to the aforementioned 'shutdowns' or 'meltdowns'.
