I could use some suggestions...
Help me if you can, please.
I'm someone who was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome as a 35-year-old adult. (I am now 37-years-old.) Before the diagnosis, I had been fired from so many jobs that no one would hire me. I had to move back in with my parents. I went back to school to get a certificate in medical transcription because that was the only thing I'd ever truly enjoyed and ever had confidence in my ability to do. The first job I got after that I lost because I couldn't focus on my work. I kept doing things I enjoyed instead. After I lost that job, too, we just didn't know what to do with me. No one would hire me locally because of all the job losses, and I couldn't apply online because I didn't have enough experience in the field, according to their advertised requirements.
Well, because of some behaviors toward friends and family and toward people online, I decided I needed to see a psychiatrist to rule out bipolar disorder...or diagnose it. So, I asked for a recommendation, and went to one 30 minutes from my home. She listened to the things I said, the situations I described from past and present, and the various diagnoses and experiences with medications I'd had in the past, and she told me I was neither bipolar nor obsessive-compulsive. She tentatively diagnosed me with Asperger syndrome complicated by severe depression, but she didn't want to firmly diagnose the Asperger syndrome until she'd seen me for a little while longer and done some thyroid and pituitary tests to rule out issues with them. The severe depression, though, was definitely an issue and could be treated right away.
Anyway, to the problem at hand: I now have an at-home job that I got from having my resume on Monster.com. They called me! :-) Anyway, I had been doing really well. I had started with a system recommended to me by the Yahoo Group Ask-the-Aspies, which is run by 2 Aspies who also give seminars, and the members post any questions they have, and the Aspies will...eventually...answer the questions. It takes a while because they're very busy. The system they gave me was to set a timer for 2 hours to do work, then set it for 1 hour to do something I like, 2 hours of work, 1 hour of play, etc., etc., so I know if I do 2 hours of work, I will be rewarded with 1 hour of fun. As that starts to work, I can lengthen the amount of time I work for the 1 hour of playtime. It worked great! I had actually gotten to the point where I was working a regular 8-hour shift.
Then, my neurologist increased my antiseizure medication dose (I'm also a medicinally-controlled epileptic), and I went through a 2-week period of serious somnolence where I slept about 16 hours a day and often slept through my work shift, only getting in about 1-2 hours of work, if that. Once I got to the point where I was able to stay awake through the night again (I work 3rd shift), I had gone back to square one. I would sit at my desk, saying to myself, "I should be working," but I would do something fun on my computer instead.
I got so angry and frustrated that I had regressed after the amount of progress I had made previously that I just left my computer, thereby depriving myself of both the things I was supposed to do and the things I liked to do on it. As you can well imagine, this isn't exactly doing wonders for my depression, either.
Can anyone think of anything I might do to get myself back on track? Thank you for any help!