I think this is a real problem, in a typical social setting with your typical Joe Bloggs, who may or may not remotely understand any MH stuff. This has been stressing me out for a long time now, and I could really do with some opinions, ideas, or just knowing I'm not alone would be awesome.

If you can't be bothered to read more, the nut-shell is "How to answer when someone asks what you do for a living." If you read on, you'll see where I'm really going with this.

Lets say you're in a pub, and you meet someone, it might go like this:

Me: "Hi there."
Joe Bloggs: "Hi, I'm Joe." *hand shake*
Me: "I'm Me, nice to meet you."
Joe: "So what do you do for a living, Me?"

ALARM ALARM ALARM

And this is where the problem rears its ugly head. Here are some possible scenarios that I've thought up:

I could say "I don't work." at which point, he (or she) is likely to think you're lazy, and might even jest as such, which'll piss you off and get you both nowhere fast.

I could say "I can't work." which begs the question of why. Now, either the person will ask why, which leads to my next scenario, or they don't ask, and will likely leave an awkward silence.

Assuming I have said "I can't work." I could follow it on, or wait for an answer; lets say I follow it on: "I can't work, because I'm disabled." This, to me, doesn't work, because most of your average Joe Bloggs will simply think 'I see no physical disability', rather than thinking perhaps there's a mental disability, and even if they do realise this as a possibility, it may cause them to feel uncomfortable (I could be a psychopath for all they know) and therefore avoid you.

Lets say, following from the previous scenario, that I follow it on in such a way as follows, as from my perspective with my situation: "I can't work, because I have severe anxiety issues which get in the way of stuff that regular people struggle with, such as working." While this is true, it's certainly not the full story, however, it's probably still perfectly viable... or is it? I spoke to my parents about it, and the general thought is that this would also scare them away.

I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't.

A suggestion of my dad's, was to lie about it all, saying I work as [insert profession here, for something which I know about, such as German, computers, mental health, etc], which I would be on-board with, except I loathe lying like this, and it causes more problems, because you then have to come up with elaborate lies to match the already said lies, and this can cause problems if these lies are used on multiple people that could know each other.

I know I've over-thought this, but I've done so for a reason. I truly think this is a problem for people like me who are "disabled", mentally, and therefore unable to work.

"What do you do for a living?" is one of the first questions Joe Bloggs (this is a term simply used to mean "any given random person") will ask you.

How do you answer? Do you struggle with this question?