What's your support level(s)? And what kind of experience did you have with the intake and evaluation? Were they able/willing to get you the kind of support you needed? Did you have to appeal to get services, or were you accepted on your first try? Do you have any co-ocurring diagnoses, and did that make it harder to get approved for autism services?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who went through Alta Regional in the Sacramento area. But I'm interested in hearing from anyone that's been through their intake process.

I know this is a very long post. Everything from this point on is optional reading. It offers context of why I'm asking, but you can absolutely answer the above questions without reading the rest of this.

I need to apply there but I'm very anxious they will see my medical history and try to claim my autism symptoms are actually part of my (nearly in remission now) mental illness or my (likely misdiagnosed) physical illness and will refuse services for that. My mom said they do that often with people who look "high functioning."

I have extremely split support needs. I would probably be lvl 1 socially. I'm highly verbal and habitually fake things like eye contact due to childhood social skills training. But I have moderate to high needs literally everywhere else.

When I was a kid, my parents tried to get me services there and they rejected me, claiming I was too high functioning, supporting that claim by pointing out my decent social skills.

Now that I don't have full-time caregivers, my deficits are way more obvious, but that's still only noticeable if you look at how I function at home or when overstimulated.

In conversations, I can appear to have LSN since I do have low social support needs. I'm afraid they'll see that and assume I'm LSN across the board like they did when I was little.

I actually did try to apply again a few years ago but wasn't able to finish and send in the (paper at the time) application on my own.

I still desperately need more help, I'm very much not doing ok with the level of support I currently have. Like I can not emphasize enough how bad things are, I'm nearly homebound and heavily dependent on my lvl 1 autistic roommate/ihss worker. And, since finding depression treatment that works for me, it's become clear that is because of my autism and not my other issues like I previously thought.

But I've been putting off seeking help because I've heard so much bad stuff from my mom about how the regional centers try to deny people in any way they can.

I remember applying for disability making me suicidal because they initially tried to do the same thing. I only had to appeal once and only had to wait 6 months to get approved (which I've heard is actually pretty good), but the process still destroyed me mentally. I was suicidal from the start and until the moment I was approved.

I know I need to apply and can't continue putting it off. But, ever since deciding for sure that I'll do it, the anxiety around what they might say has been really severely impacting my life. I'm near constantly thinking about it, scripting what I should say to help them understand, thinking about all the ways I might be misunderstood or other ways things could go wrong and how I could prevent them. It's been consuming me and distracting me so badly from the rest of my life.

This level of anxiety isn't normal for me. I'm just so scared of continuing to live with so little support.