Importance of being totally honest during Autism assessment

This morning I wrote the paragraphs below in a separate discussion thread on this site. Do you have thoughts on it, based on your/your loved one’s experiences being assessed?



“For what it’s worth, some advice I would share regarding going through the assessment process is to be extremely honest in answering all questions, regardless of how “bad“ or “cold“ or “messed up“ you might think it makes you appear.

I found that I answered the test questions and replied to the interview questions in ways I would not have done even one month prior, because I had realized ahead of time that I would need to be extraordinarily honest with myself and with my clinician about my true feelings and my true preferred behaviours, when I wasn’t masking and camouflaging.

My impression in talking to my psychologist is that, especially for women, it’s common to go into the assessment process and minimize or even omit mentioning their true feelings and behaviours. By not doing that, I was able to emerge from the assessment process with the feeling that the result reflected who I am – not who I have worked over two decades to appear to be.”

Parents
  • In my initial interview, when asked about weighted blankets I responded negatively as I don't use one, nor have I ever really felt inclined to.  But the interviewer strongly hinted that I should reword my response to include something like getting tucked tightly into bed, which I later discovered was because that was supposedly one of the requirements for entry into their assessment process.

    So not technically the truth, but I think she could tell or at least suspected strongly enough that I was on the spectrum to be worth giving me a nudge in the right direction.  Other than that I think I left my mask at the door, went in completely unprepared as I'd purposely done no research on the process or what I was or wasn't supposed to say and just told them everything.  I was quite surprised at how good she was at getting me talking, it was uncomfortable in places digging up stuff I prefer not to think about, but at the same time it felt good to just unload.

Reply
  • In my initial interview, when asked about weighted blankets I responded negatively as I don't use one, nor have I ever really felt inclined to.  But the interviewer strongly hinted that I should reword my response to include something like getting tucked tightly into bed, which I later discovered was because that was supposedly one of the requirements for entry into their assessment process.

    So not technically the truth, but I think she could tell or at least suspected strongly enough that I was on the spectrum to be worth giving me a nudge in the right direction.  Other than that I think I left my mask at the door, went in completely unprepared as I'd purposely done no research on the process or what I was or wasn't supposed to say and just told them everything.  I was quite surprised at how good she was at getting me talking, it was uncomfortable in places digging up stuff I prefer not to think about, but at the same time it felt good to just unload.

Children