Published on 12, July, 2020
During my autism assessment, the psychiatrist said that although my autism affects many aspects of my life, I was still able to communicate to her well and therefore only had it “mild”. I understand that I have low support needs and that other autistic people have different or more extreme struggles and need more support, but I was masking a lot in the assessment in order to answer the questions as clearly as possible, which completely exhausted me and impacted how I felt over the next couple of days. As Keedie said in the TV show “A kind of spark”, her autism only seems mild because ‘we make it so, at a great personal cost’. Autism has a huge impact on my life, even if no one else can see it, and especially if I’m purposefully changing my behaviour to fit in or adapt to other people. Just because it seems mild to you doesn’t mean it actually is to me. I feel like this is why the terms “high functioning” and “low functioning” are being used less in favour of “support needs” which I feel is more accurate and less diminishing of autistic people’s struggles. I’d be interested to know other people’s opinions too as I know some people don’t mind the word “mild”!
I'm an autistic heretic in that I firmly believe that autism is a disability, and comparatively speaking some are more disabled by it than others. That doesn't mean that those doing relatively well, are difficulty/problem free. That's not what I believe,or will ever believe.
firemonkey said:I firmly believe that autism is a disability
I agree - an autism diagnosis is a disability diagnosis in medical terms.
There are a lot of neurodivergent people who do not reach this threshold though - do you think they should also be classed as disabled?
Should the 'neurodivergent' equivalent of the worried well be regarded as disabled or impaired? I would say 'no'.
'Out of their way'= typing/writing lots of info as to why they are autistic. Some, not all by any means, do that. As for how 'severe' or not. The waters are muddied somewhat in my case in having a comorbid dx of schizoaffective/schizophrenia .Both ASD and sz/sz-a affect cognitive functioning. Especially in my case when it comes to executive functioning. Teasing out how much is due to one and not the other is a Herculean task. What I do know at a basic level is that I was assessed as being classically autistic when it comes to social communication, and at Asperger's level for social interaction. With such a mixed presentation the Asperger's dx was the one you were given.
That,of course, doesn't happen nowadays. However it doesn't require a great intellect to see that being at Asperger's level for one is different from being at Asperger's level for both. My sister provided a letter re how I am that was more suggestive of my being autistic than I saw my self as being. Several years before being assessed I had asked her to answer the Online RAADS tool based on how she saw me as being. She scored me significantly higher than I scored myself as being.Whether support needs are a better way(or not) of assessing things than level of functioning ,there's a very strong element of subjectivity to that. There are no concrete markers that place you as needing support,substantial support, very substantial support. I think it's far easier to decide whether substantial or very substantial support is needed , than it is to decide between support and substantial support. I find it incredibly difficult to say which of those 2 categories I fit. Again the waters are muddied somewhat by a psychiatric care plan that mentions 'support needed to live independently'. Take away the mental health dx would there still be the need for the degree of support I currently get from my daughter?If it was compulsory to give an answer then I'd say 'yes'. The executive functioning difficulties would still be there. My daughter does quite a lot for me, to the extent she was asked by social services whether she wanted to do a carer's assessment - which she agreed to.
I'm the cliche. But a lifetime of masking without knowing what I was doing has taken a big toll. I feel like I am having all my burnouts at once with no end in sight. I'm pretty sure that I didn't go out of my way - does anyone? What would be their motives? I scored 'severe' for several categories - not just from my own responses, but from what my wife said. I wasn't aware.
People who may have some degree of difficulty/problems, but not at a clinically diagnosable level.I think I was very different than the average person who was diagnosed with ASD. I didn't go out of my way to increase the likelihood of getting the diagnosis. It was very much a case of WYSIWYG with me. I'm also not one of those who post diagnosis had a blinding revelation that that they've been masking all their life. It's now virtually a post diagnosis cliche.