Assessment A!

happy that you are happier emma90 all the best!

Great news, emma90 and I am pleased that you received an apology for the poor experience. Hopefully you can now move forward with more clarity.

Welcome to the officially recognised club. 

I got an assessment last Monday with a verbal response straight away. It feels right odd. We both have a long way to go.

Great news and also good to hear they apologised to you too 

Oh I'm so glad it's resolved, and they apologised! I hope you find some peace and answers. Congrats!

I've just had my Part B - within 20 minutes he'd give me my ASD diagnosis and apologised for the behaviour of the person who completed my Part A... it's nice to end the experience on a positive note!

Thank you for replying. I’m going with Psychiatry Uk but have seen mixed reviews for females.

Hi emma90 and Nutmeg Please excuse my posting in response to your most recent messages personally.

Hindsight yes - had lots of experience of that.  It is gratifying that you emma90 appear to be sanguine about this.  Also that you Nutmeg  are preparing for the process. 

If I may I would encourage you both to continue to work on the resources you have and seek support in this matter whilst acknowledging own personal capabilities.

In context I though am personally often caught in interplay with self blame for not being better prepared over all sorts of different things when the outcome is encountered.

So much so that only this morning I asked a large language model AI to do some research on this.

I conclude that I/we as autistic people often cannot rely on neurotypical society to treat us fairly.  So we, who often find ourselves already heavily over-tasked, have to do a lot of work to achieve balance in this.

This takes careful attention to both one's own resources and an openness to seek out others.

It is possible to achieve this.

Hehe I hope this makes sense as I'm still trying to figure it out myself!

Best wishes

I went with Health Harmonie Minds - my doctor recommended because of the shorter wait times but in hindsight I think I would have done more research and wait a bit longer for a better experience had I known! Though saying that I've only spoken to one person there so far so maybe I just had a bit of bad luck with who I got! 

Sorry you’ve had an uncomfortable time with your assessment so far. May I ask which provider you’ve used? I’ve been on the NHS waiting list for over 2 years so have just been referred by my GP through right to choose. Its so difficult to know if the provider will actually be understanding.

Autism spectrum disorder in adults: diagnosis and management   This pdf folder is a link in the first weblink  i sent - section 1.2 in this - sorry i wasn't better organised in my last post!!!

ok (assuming you're in the UK -sorry should have checked first!)  - here it is Introduction | Autism spectrum disorder in adults: diagnosis and management | Guidance | NICE  section 1.2

let me now know how you get on with them if you would like to - happy to discuss further 

That would be great, thank you :) 

good you are OK, sorry that you are not happy with how it went.

I'd like to help if I can emma90 

If you are considering whether it went "properly" and would like to compare your experience to that, there are National guidelines for how it should be done - would you like me to share a link to them so that you might do so?

emma90 said:

she asked about whether I have a best friend I see regularly and when I said that would be my partner or my sister she told me that's not a best friend and couldn't seem to fathom me not having someone else I would 'go on a night out with' as she put it

That bit doesn’t seem right to me.

I recall questions about friends during the first part of my assessment. The assessor first asked me “how do you define a friend—what does a friend mean to you?”. The question lead to me concluding that in my early years until my 40s, my friends were my dogs and other animals”. It took me a bit of time to get to that answer because for years I had a tick list in my head of what a friend should be (that didn’t include my ex. husband), so I appreciated being asked that question before the assessor went on to discuss my relationships with humans.

Sounds like lack of experience and/or interest in autism/autistic people, which in itself could be caused by all sorts of other reasons.

I'm okay, I'm not happy with how it went but it's done... I've just been sent an email to say my part B will be in 2 weeks time but again no information within that about what it involves! It seems I've chosen a fairly quick provider but they don't seem to offer much information about the process!

Great answer from Stuart333 yesterday.

How are you now emma90 ?

Took me a while to process what was going on at the time and am still doing it...

If you feel like responding, I (and I suspect others) would like to know.

It is so nice to have someone affirm what I thought in my head at the time - I have few friends because I can't manage keeping a large circle of friends. Me choosing to invest my small social battery into my family and partner to keep those relationships working isn't a failure. That's me being aware of my own limitations and prioritising what I can manage. 

I did come away from that meeting feeling like I'd failed. It just seemed to highlight my 'weird' qualities and just reiterated that people don't understand. Now I've had time to process it I do feel that I was as honest and open as I could have been and actually she didn't handle it in a way that suggested any element of a person centered approach - I was just a name, date of birth and a blank questionnaire to complete for her. 

Disappointing, but not anything that I could have changed in that moment so I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

I can't see what's wrong with your answer. They should just tick no. If they are not after spouse or relative, then the answer is you don't have a close friend.

I can't see why it is surprising not to have one. It is typical to have very few close people. I have no one I see more that once or twice a year. No partner, relatives, or friends. 

What they should be trying to do I believe is establish what social circle you have and whether this has been consistent over time. Whether you can make and retain friends, initiate conversations, interact normally. Whether it has had an impact on you.

I think it points to their forms being ambiguous, which is their issue not yours, and the person perhaps being inexperienced.

I am sorry it didn't go smoothly.

I don't really know what to say. Perhaps they have ramped up to accommodate demand and have people with less experience. 

I completely empathise with:

emma90 said:

Definitely a possibility - I'm not sure at this point what is me and what is me pretending to be whatever the world expects me to be.

The suggestion that one might be "masking" as one considers the possibility of being autistic I found to make really unsure of who I was too.

I eventually concluded that I am a summation of the expression of my behaviours.  However if these behaviours are "false" and I have been subconsciously applying them the what does that leave as the "real" me.

Especially when the mask came down I was revealed to be in a bit of an emotional state - such that my behaviour was not very pleasant to others nor myself.

I too would answer that my partner is my best friend, oh and what about my dog!  

The impression that I have is that the person might not be especially experienced at the interview process.  Or for some reason might have been revealing things about them-self.  This could be that they were "over-revealing" inappropriately by explaining that they could not empathise with your response.  After all the interview as I understand it includes assessment of social and communication issues so taken at face value not commented upon unless directly asked about by the interviewee perhaps.

Feeling judged when we reveal things might, as you say, reflect years of assessment of oneself by neurotypical standards and the conditioning of ones own response to revealing oneself openly.

Likewise it may be that the person displayed evidence that they were "judging" you.

In context I believe the process I experienced was assessment against criteria - possibly in a list sequentially or sometimes they sere skilled enough at getting a "bigger picture" and pulling the individual components out of it.  Sometimes when they were not sure they returned to the same point and re-phrased their enquiry or found another way at getting the details about that criteria to be able for the to ascertain an answer. 

The job they do is not I expect easy!  Blimey there are times when people who know me find it hard to understand me especially at the intersection of when I am finding it hard to understand myself and/or the sutuation

I would like to suggest that you have unresolved concerns about the process it might be wise to jot them down (dated) whilst they are still fresh in your mind and possibly raise them with someone with sufficient professional insight and authority on the matter.

Anyway I hope that the racing thoughts have eased off and your mind and body get a chance to relax now.

All the best :-)