I've got my ADOS tomorrow morning, I'm feeling anxious about it. What if I mask?
I've got my ADOS tomorrow morning, I'm feeling anxious about it. What if I mask?
Hello, I hope it goes well for you. It is perfectly valid to feel anxious, the process of autistic identification and formal diagnosis is life changing.
You say you are worried about masking but a competent clinician should make you feel as comfortable as possible and therefore hopefully you won’t mask. Also even if you do mask, the clinician should know enough about autistic experience to pick up on that and recognise that you are maybe an internaliser.
I hope this response is helpful.
Thanks, that's really helpful. There are going to be two of them, and they're videoing it.
You are very welcome. I haven’t actually had my assessment yet, so I don’t know what to expect.
Just another thought that I should have included earlier, many autistic people are likely to be anxious on the day of the assessment, so clinicians are probably used to it.
There are going to be two of them, and they're videoing it.
Does the videoing make you feel more anxious?
I’ve started a collection of American numbers plates, I have about 20, I’m trying to get one from each state so I have a little way to go yet. I’ve got them displayed on my workshop wall. Particularly like my Texas one, it has seven stars in the corner of it, one for each astronaut that died onboard the space shuttle Columbia.
That’s cool, I have car number plates on my bedroom wall. Your collection seems really cool.
That's cool. Have you thought of expanding that memorising capability to other things? Using numbers as reference?
I was working on one my Special Interest projects I would call Memory Indexing before burnout hit me 2 years ago, and I'm thinking of continuining that, now that I recovered at last, the only problem is time, working full time, and heat summer time, ADHD wins with autism summer time, can't really focus on anything
One of the AQ50 questions is about recognising patterns in things like car number plates. I’ve actually got a large collection of number plates and can name the car make and model the plate came from and normally it’s colour. Some go back to the 1950’s. My late father often bought and sold cars, as soon as I see it’s number plate, I can remember the car in detail.
3 big A4 folders and a tray with lots of the metal ones in.
How big is your badge collection? Autistic dedicated interests are so cool.
It is, I completely forgot about my other collections, I'm going to include them when I email them (they'd like any letters I can find about diagnosis).
Thanks for the information about the assessment, it will useful for me when I have my one.
I had to pretend to brush my teeth, and make a story from 5 objects
I have heard about this part, it must be quite difficult unless you think in pictures.
I also showed them my badge collection, and we talked about it
Cool, I imagine you felt quite comfortable talking about this. Is this one of your dedicated interests?
It started off with lots of questions about relationships, whether I'd been bullied at school etc. Then she used a picture book of a boy dreaming about chess pieces, which was difficult but I managed it. I had to pretend to brush my teeth, and make a story from 5 objects. I also showed them my badge collection, and we talked about it. I wont hear until the end of August, although I've got a self-report interview to do too.
Well on the letter that I received last year, the waiting list was 2 years. So I may consider private diagnosis instead. I know I am autistic, so I don’t really feel like I need the validation of formal identification but I will still go through the process so that I have evidence of my support needs.
How did your assessment go today? I appreciate it if you need more time to process and reflect on the situation. We are here for you as your autistic community, if you want to chat about it.
Thanks! will you have to wait long for your asssessment?
Ok. I hope tomorrow goes well for you.
