“You wake up one day and discover you’re dead,” Johnson told me. “It’s been truly surreal.”
That’s the biggest difference — my deceased guy turns out to be very much alive. Musk is contending that hordes of dead people are listed as alive in the Social Security databases, and are fraudulently still drawing benefits (which the Social Security director disputes).
Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.
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I’m on disability and the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking that I haven’t been thinking rationally about this situation and that I’d be homeless if my SSDI suddenly disappeared or was clawed back. My therapist considers it catastrophizing.
Turns out my fears ARE rational, we’re just living in a completely irrational timeline.
Your therapist isn’t paying attention. It’s one thing to obsess over theoretical what-ifs. It’s another to have evidence that a what-if is being directly threatened.
I’m still trying to get disability. I doubt there will be enough staff left to process claims in the very near future. Again, very real possibility.
Fingers crossed for both of us.
Catastrophizing is a thing, but so is pattern recognition. In the context of current events, your fears are not only rational, but they may turn out to be critical to your survival if it prompts you to start planning for the train wreck headed our way.
My personal recommendation: if you don’t have a current passport, start the process like NOW. Being able to step out of the path of the aforementioned train if needed is a huge peace of mind.
Right there with you, I have family to fall back on but I still have bills to pay
I lost that option when I had to wait 2 years for my SSDI to be approved. 😣