Published on 12, July, 2020
I've got an appointment with my GP this afternoon to ask for an assessment referral for ASC. This is on the advice of my counsellor and a mental health nurse I've been speaking with through Occupational Health.
Going from advice on other threads I've looked at the DSM 5 criteria and looked at how I meet them, as well as doing the AQ test and several others, all of which show a strong likelihood of ASC. I've made a list/notes to go through as I find pressured conversations hard.
Is there anything else I should do/say? It's a telephone appointment.
I'm a nearly 40 year old woman who has spent most of my life masking it seems, with the usual consequences of that in depression and anxiety, as well as digestive and sleep issues, all of which have stopped me being able to work and live my life at various times, including at the moment.
Well, being prepared may have done me more harm than good. The GP has said that because I'm articulate and able to talk through this with him, and have got to this stage of my life without serious issues (ignoring the depression and anxiety), that if I were referred it would be a long wait, and it's likely they wouldn't offer me any support after a diagnosis if I got one, so there wouldn't be much practical point in referring me. I asked about the Right to Choose and getting a referral to Psychiatry UK, which he didn't seem to know about. He's going to speak to a senior GP about whether he can do a referral, and if so whether it can be to Psychiatry UK, and give me a call back this afternoon.
Yet another gp with no idea about autism, most autistic people can walk and talk, Chris Packham articulates very well and is autistic. I explained to my gp about how autism affects my life, at the end of the appointment he stated that he was going to refer me for assessment as I hadn’t made eye contact for the entire consultation. I chose not to make eye contact, I could have easily looked at his chin, I knew eye contact would have been used against me. How sad is that. Unfortunately most doctors still see us very stereotypically.
The only people I choose to speak to on the phone are people who universally talk nearly non-stop so I don't really have to talk much, unless it's responding to direct questions. I'm now wondering whether that's something I've done unconsciously!
Roy said:I’ve said before, if you can’t see the other person, how are you supposed to know when to talk?
I have spent decades being baffled by the popularity of the telephone for this reason. I have had hundreds of phone conversations and not a single one has gone well because there is simply no way of knowing when to speak.
I'm very similar, I need those visual cues to work out what to do, although I also miss them entirely sometimes.
I very rarely use telephones, it’s an entire conversation of me saying sorry because I’m talking over someone else. I’ve said before, if you can’t see the other person, how are you supposed to know when to talk? Plus sometimes I’ve got something to say that really interests me so that has to all come out in a way that sounds interesting to me!
I sat down with the DSM 5 criteria and worked my way through making notes, as well as looking into comorbidities, and any ASC non-specific neurodivergent characteristics so I definitely had that covered. One of the questions from the AQ50 is not know when it's your turn to speak, or speaking too much, I pretty much hit both of those straight away!
Yes - yours is a fair comment. It isn't my job to give myself a headache learning about autism.....but it is kinda their job to.......so when they get the basics wrong, they could (and almost certainly do) send some poor autistic brothers and sisters to the mental hell bin of well WTAF then now ?!
You're right, mate. It's just hard to be philosophical about it when we so often read of doctors getting the basics wrong. x
Thanks for the reassurance Steven. I can be both needy and unsure.
Dude - if I may be so bold as to say - 'don't be so / too hard on the doctors.'
Autism is a deeply complex affair. Before I realised that this was the root of my nature, I was probably about as ignorant and/or dismissive of the 'concepts' surrounding ' autism'.....it is the type of stuff that would give me a headache trying to understand....so I would have stayed a bit "arms length" perhaps of the finer details. Perhaps to put it another way, I would have laughed, pittingingly at you or anyone else who suggested that I might "have autism."
I don't fancy my chances of having a fulfilling path to a formal diagnosis....but I don't blame the doctors for that.....I blame the complexity of autism.
Christine McGuinness is another example, I had someone say to me that if she was autistic then she wouldn’t be able to walk up and down catwalks half dressed, what we choose to display is often smoke and mirrors, it’s an act or as we call it, masking. It’s not unusual for an autistic person to enquire for an assessment armed with about ten A4 pages and not stop to draw breath. Don’t let the GP shut you down. They won’t see how exhausted you will be later for just taking.
This is really not helping my anxiety about asking for a referral and is making me doubt whether I am autistic, which I've been struggling with anyway, even with all the tests and the mental health nurse and counsellor telling me I should be assessed.
It'd probably be more straight forward if it were an in person appointment as I wouldn't have been able to meet his eyes and would have been stimming from the anxiety of it all. I hate speaking on the phone, it just makes things harder.
Due to some doctors' ignorance, autists now have to fake being autists in order to get treated like autists.
I'll mention the Chris Packham example as I explain that autistic people can be articulate, and that I had to force myself to talk as well as I could on the phone, it's by no means easy!
Yes very much so, I don’t think he had actually listened to what I had said, the Witch Finder manual had been looked at and I ticked a box, I know it’s being a bit devious but sometimes you have to give the crowd what they want. P.S Simon, I am a mechanic.
It's like being obliged to deliberately smash your car up ahead of taking it to the garage, in case the ignorant mechanic says "Well, it's only a scratch - why did you bother me by bringing it here?"