Failed ASD assessment - need a second opinion

A score of 32 is quite a common score on the forum for people who are diagnosed or who are in no doubt about their traits. It is a long way from 'normal'.

Given that there are no physical scientific tests (e.g. blood tests, x-rays or similar) for conditions like this it is not unreasonable for people (even experts or experienced therapists etc) to have real difficulty in identifying one mental health condition from another. In mental health, it is common to arrive at a conclusion by trial and error. If the teratment is bringing a good benefit then the expert's opinion is right enough and if the patient is not reponding to treatment then they should look for another cause. There are lots of people who have eventually arrived at a diagnosis of ASD after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, bipolar etc etc.

If I were you I would take the possibility of ASD seriously and learn about it and also learn about CBT in the light of your understanding of yourself.

The three strands that I have for dealing with this myself are

1) educate myself about myself. Understand who I am, understand how autism nudges me in certain directions but also remember that I have other traits that are not affected.

2) train myself to accomodate some of the problems that autism gives me. This means making extra efforts to be patient with myself and others, use situations to study how I behave and how other people behave, avoid jumping to conclusions, avoid being judgemental, strive to understand how to make situations work rather than looking for reasons why they might fail. Some autistic people can really benefit from social skills training.

3) treat myself for the consequential problems. Autism leads to a traumatic life and that can lead to SAD, anxiety depression etc. Try and nurse yourself and encourage yourself to get through it in the light of the knowledge that you can gain about how you work and why things might have gone wrong previously.

With regards to employment. I am trying to figure this out for myself at the moment but I have spent most of my working life in employment but have had continuous issues in work. Now that I have a diagnosis, I am trying to rebuild what remains of my career. Employers know very very little about how to deal with someone with autism. There are training courses and there are more and less intelligent employers. My current aim is to find a more 'engineering' type employer where my tendencies for accuracy, rigour etc are more appreciated. My previous employer was chaotic and there was very little documentation (having things in writing is widely understood to help people with autism). I have learnt that I need to investigate the employers culture before accepting any job offer.

Disclosure is a question that is not easy. When I was first diagnosed, I told all of my work colleagues. This generally went down well but they were a set of highly educated IT people, half of whom knew of someone on the spectrum. In general I am learning to disclose it to fewer people as I go on - most people just don't know what it means and it is of no benefit to them or you to disclose this. It can lead to bad reactions as some people are prejudiced and ignorant - it depends on so many things that you have to make a judgement on an individual basis.

A score of 32 is quite a common score on the forum for people who are diagnosed or who are in no doubt about their traits. It is a long way from 'normal'.

Given that there are no physical scientific tests (e.g. blood tests, x-rays or similar) for conditions like this it is not unreasonable for people (even experts or experienced therapists etc) to have real difficulty in identifying one mental health condition from another. In mental health, it is common to arrive at a conclusion by trial and error. If the teratment is bringing a good benefit then the expert's opinion is right enough and if the patient is not reponding to treatment then they should look for another cause. There are lots of people who have eventually arrived at a diagnosis of ASD after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, bipolar etc etc.

If I were you I would take the possibility of ASD seriously and learn about it and also learn about CBT in the light of your understanding of yourself.

The three strands that I have for dealing with this myself are

1) educate myself about myself. Understand who I am, understand how autism nudges me in certain directions but also remember that I have other traits that are not affected.

2) train myself to accomodate some of the problems that autism gives me. This means making extra efforts to be patient with myself and others, use situations to study how I behave and how other people behave, avoid jumping to conclusions, avoid being judgemental, strive to understand how to make situations work rather than looking for reasons why they might fail. Some autistic people can really benefit from social skills training.

3) treat myself for the consequential problems. Autism leads to a traumatic life and that can lead to SAD, anxiety depression etc. Try and nurse yourself and encourage yourself to get through it in the light of the knowledge that you can gain about how you work and why things might have gone wrong previously.

With regards to employment. I am trying to figure this out for myself at the moment but I have spent most of my working life in employment but have had continuous issues in work. Now that I have a diagnosis, I am trying to rebuild what remains of my career. Employers know very very little about how to deal with someone with autism. There are training courses and there are more and less intelligent employers. My current aim is to find a more 'engineering' type employer where my tendencies for accuracy, rigour etc are more appreciated. My previous employer was chaotic and there was very little documentation (having things in writing is widely understood to help people with autism). I have learnt that I need to investigate the employers culture before accepting any job offer.

Disclosure is a question that is not easy. When I was first diagnosed, I told all of my work colleagues. This generally went down well but they were a set of highly educated IT people, half of whom knew of someone on the spectrum. In general I am learning to disclose it to fewer people as I go on - most people just don't know what it means and it is of no benefit to them or you to disclose this. It can lead to bad reactions as some people are prejudiced and ignorant - it depends on so many things that you have to make a judgement on an individual basis.