Published on 12, July, 2020
One of them was the demonstrating of brushing teeth, and also making up a story with 5 objects, and making up a story on a story book. I couldn't even do these tasks. Plus I couldn't even express how I feel when I am happy and sad internally. Is this gonna cause my assessment to be inconclusive?
I think you had an uber-autistic reaction to the tasks. I'm hugely relieved that I did not have to do any of these 'pantomime' tasks, because I mask like a professional and would have appeared entirely neurotypical.
I didn’t have them either. I would have flat out refused to participate.
I think these tests were designed for the assessment of small children and the NHS has not recognised that small children and adults are different. Adults can give accurate information on their traits, problems and limitations, there is almost zero need for tests of this sort.
I need a lot of 'alone-time' to recover from social exhaustion, which was a little hard on my family when I worked full time. If I knew something particularly stressful was coming up at work, I would book the day after off as a holiday, so I could recover.
Masking is automatic for me too, although it breaks down a bit when I’m tired.
The problem is for the last three years I’ve been chronically exhausted and I am told masking is a big part of the reason for that.
I think that my masking is as much part of me as my autism. If masking is not causing you distress and helps in social situations, then unmasking is not an advantage, and could be disadvantageous. My masking is automatic, it causes me no distress, it just leaves me very tired if I have to keep it up for too long. Therefore, I have made no attempts to unmask. However, my willingness to put up with situations that do cause me distress has diminished hugely following my diagnosis. I now recognise that my distress is genuine and just because a situation causes no problem for neurotypicals, it does not mean that I should attempt to put up with it.