Good morning everyone.

The good news: After three and a half years, I have a court date for my disability hearing. It is ten weeks from now.

The not so good news -> bad news: Though I know that it is more or less standard these days, they have denied me until this point and as a result, I am experiencing a good deal of stress over the upcoming hearing. I feel as if I have been holding my breath for the last three-plus years and my lungs are going to burst any moment. I have no back-up plan if I am denied and I have no illusions left that I can continue to work.

I have a rather nasty auto-immune disease that is incurable and has been the cause of death for every person I know that has had it. In addition, and this is far from a comprehensive list, I have heart disease (three heart attacks), chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, chronic lung disease, severe nerve damage, etc. All of the previous have been brought on or exacerbated by this auto-immune issue.

The disability judge who has been assigned to my case is not here yet; he is being transferred from another state to deal with the incredible backlog of cases awaiting a hearing in my area. I looked him up. He has one of the most abysmal approval percentages out there - he has only approved 27% of the people who have appeared in front of him for disability.

Here's my biggest concern... I am fifty-one years old. For all my life I have, with ingenuity, quick thinking and constantly staying on the move (I've lived in well over two hundred places in the last seven years - forty states and a dozen countries or more over my lifetime), hidden my mental health problems from the vast majority of folks I've come in contact with. Now, grounded by my health and no longer having the strength to run away, I started seeing a mental health professional to figure out how to live without running away.

I was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder for those unfamiliar). No surprises - I knew. But that information is going in front of the judge. It took me fifty years to talk honestly about this with someone outside my immediate family - and heck, very few of them know. I trust my wife. I trust my therapist. I don't trust this judge. I know me; if he asks me about it, I'm going to shut down. If he condescends to me or treats me like I'm malingering, I fear I'm going to go postal. I may be sick but I have one more short burst of temper tantrum in me - and really, I've nothing to lose but a life that is slipping away anyway.

Alternatively, he could send me to a social security psych doctor for diagnostic confirmation re: the DID diagnosis. Please believe me when I tell you - it is not a choice: I can not talk to someone in an adversarial position about this. I feel a great deal of shame, fear, etc., over the diagnosis and my go to is to isolate. If that doesn't work, walls go up and I freeze and shut down completely.

I can't walk in to the hearing unprepared - and can't figure out how to prepare. I need some help.