Published on 12, July, 2020
Just collated this list..........honestly I will stop thinking about it soon & getting it down here will help get my mind off it (stops me worrying that I'll forget something!).
Still haven't had official confirmation of my ADOS date (told by phone last week that it's mid July) but will be glad to get it done.
Still can't imagine how ADOS will fill in the gaps, as it focusses on Social aspects rather than RRBs ..................
Score on the RBQ2a (a new standardised self-report on Restricted and Repetitive behaviours in Adults) is 1.6. This is 0.53 standard deviations away from the ASD score in the reference, and 1.84 standard deviations away from the NT score.
EDIT 5th June 2019 - added a few extras to the list and decided I'm going to print out and show my GP when I see her later this month...........
Yeah, also 'stereotyped/repetitive behaviours' - I wear a short-sleeved white shirt, tie and smart trousers Mon-Thu even though my workplace has a casual dress policy... so does this 'count'... my psychologist says 'Yes', on the basis that a Bank Holiday Monday ruins my pattern (I wear a shirt twice) as does not having a shirt available on a 'shirt' day, to the extent I seriously considered being late to work so I could, wash, dry and iron a shirt.
Equally, my psychologist spoke about a patient who (contrary to common wisdom about people with autism) does go abroad - but they always book the same room in the same hotel... so on the surface they 'don't look autistic' to use that ld chestnut - but it's because they've learned to camouflage...
I got chatting to an OCD researcher yesterday - a lot of the things I thought were just sensble are classed as obsessive by NTs. Things like arriving early to appointments and doing things properly and fully are *not normal*.
Who knew?
After talking to her, I'm having to re-evaluate a lot of my behaviours as it appears NT's sense of 'normality' is way worse than I had imagined.
LOL. Yep, I believe it's not normal either to want to know yourself as deeply as I want to know myself, to have visualised force vector diagrams when I opened doors when I was a teenager, or to wish I could visualise the equations of quantum mechanics in the same way I can visualise vector calculus and Fourier transforms, nor to prefer these significantly to how your cousin is doing on his birthday.
When I was badly depressed for the first time at the turn of the millennium, I did a serious bit of analysis to discover why I was unhappy and others apparently were carefree, and I genuinely concluded "Happy people have low standards" :-).
Ignorance is bliss. It really is.
Intelligence and happiness are inversely proportional...