Best Buddies Texas

This organization is probably good for some people who have disabilities, but it wound up not really working out for me at all. You'd think they'd have more mentors who are better versed in being empathetic and sensitive to their clients. Instead, the first mentor (I've never thought of her as being such) I wound up being paired with a woman who would imply that I was lazy (I wasn't), yelled at me over the phone once for not making a job fair on time, and in general would jump on me for very minor things (IE: my once just casually saying something like "I wish something had turned out differently" -- you know, just a normal turn of speech anybody would say, but she went off on me). As someone with autism and shaky self-esteem, I did not feel supported or heard -- rather, I felt like I HAD to do things, or else face this woman's wrath. Memorably, she also came to my workplace one time and ate all the snacks that had been purchased for my coworkers. Thankfully she did end up leaving, and I got two more mentors in succession. They were okay. However, the clincher is that Best Buddies works with the Texas Health and Human Resources commission, and I discovered the woman who initially put me in contact with BB turned out herself to be very harsh and aggressive when I was trying to get a new mentor because my first one was so awful (then I had to get permission from H&HR for some reason, can't remember what it was now). I told my third counselor about the H&HR woman, and his attitude was basically "Well, that sucks, but you got to do it." Again, as someone with anxiety and depression, speaking to these people did my mental health no good. If I had been given the tools in learning how to assertively engage with aggressive people, that would have been helpful, but as it stood I did not have anything of the sort. Overall I found my anxiety being triggered repeatedly, and I chose to not take any more phone calls from this woman. That was when I stopped hearing from Best Buddies. I ended up turning to Metrocare, which has been far more helpful for me, instead.