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Updated: Initial assessment today!

M

I have my initial assessment at 1pm today and I'm so worried that they'll think I'm just weird and attention seeking and definitely not autistic! I'm imagining it being really humiliating to explain lots of personal reasons why I think I'm autistic just to be completely wrong...

I think I feel they're just going to say this is all anxiety and nothing else. 

Any words of advice from people who have been here?!

UPDATE: I did it! 

I have a headache now and I'm pretty tired. It took about 90 minutes and the assessor was really clear. At the end he told me I'd benefit from a full assessment to get a diagnosis as it would help me to explain my needs to people such as employers. I have to do a developmental history questionnaire next but I can try to answer it rather than needing a family member to so that helps. My mum is still finding it all a bit of a surprise I think and seems in denial of any difficulties I've had or have. I suspect she is actually autistic too.

Parents

  • Is it normal to analyse your behaviour and answers after an assessment? I'm starting to feel like I don't know who I am because I'm questioning if I'm masking when I'm being normal or am I exaggerating when I'm saying why I think I'm autistic. 

    I can't stop thinking about it and I feel like even though the assessor believed me today (or seemed to), other people who know me (or think they do) don't seem to be convinced. They all know I struggle with anxiety and would describe me as "odd", but being "autistic" seems to be something they find hard to believe. Is this because they don't understand autism and the differences across "the spectrum"? Can I really just be so good at masking that nobody notices?! Is that really how we can be? 

  • in reply to M
    M said:
    Is it normal to analyse your behaviour and answers after an assessment?

    It is standard procedure ~ especially considering how much forethought and afterthought has to go into using social camouflage and personal masks, what with neurological and behavioural divergences not being on the whole accepted, but more often rejected.

    So yes ~ prior and post analysis is a relatively normal behaviour.

    M said:
    I'm starting to feel like I don't know who I am because I'm questioning if I'm masking when I'm being normal or am I exaggerating when I'm saying why I think I'm autistic. 

    Well you are either autistic or have enough autistic traits to warrant a full assessment, and no one actually knows who they truly are anyway ~ as what we are (as a conscious sole or individual personality) is an indefatigable mystery that is revealed through the clues or traits of our psychological and physiological embodiments; ecologically and sociologically.

    M said:
    I can't stop thinking about it and I feel like even though the assessor believed me today (or seemed to), other people who know me (or think they do) don't seem to be convinced. They all know I struggle with anxiety and would describe me as "odd", but being "autistic" seems to be something they find hard to believe. Is this because they don't understand autism and the differences across "the spectrum"?

    Most people that know us or of us will have emotionally invested in their personally developed and socially integrated typology of who they think we are, and any other typological reassessment and identification or verification will take time to adjust to, just as their previous personal and social assessments of you took time to develop in the first place.

    M said:
    Can I really just be so good at masking that nobody notices?! Is that really how we can be? 

    Social camouflaging is another factor to consider along with the personal masking, plus most people are more concerned with their personal position in the social hierarchy along with others in general ~ being that they do not want to be an outsider as safety in numbers is all they really know, and all they really want to identify and get along with. This is of course remembering that social conformity is both a shared and an enforced state of affairs, and hence most people preferring to remain faithful to it rather than not.

  • in reply to Deepthought

    Thank you. All of this makes sense. It is a lot to try to process and I always want to just know something. I think I need to see this as a longer learning process and one of rediscovery. 

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