Imposter Syndrome

m_23 said:

I am about to start the assessment process and am excited to get some answers but also petrified that they’ll say I’m not autistic. Does anyone have any advice for this?

This is quite a normal reaction - the simplest way is to test yourself online and get an indication if you are in the range that qualifies.

There are a number of free tests and the one I normally recommend is:

https://www.thevividmind.org/blog/test/autism-test-online/

Be brutally honest with yourself about the answers and you should get a close enough result for it to be meaningful.

m_23 said:

I think also because I’m AFAB I’m worried my assessor won’t understand masking and just rule me out

I don't think your AFAB will have any bearing on your situation - all genders with autism are quite prone to masking and the analysts should be trained to help lift the mask in the session - hence the need to be honest in your answers.

It should help you tremendously to do some research into what are common autistic traits and write down the ones you experience. This may be a big list.

Now from it add detail about which ones are an issue for you and impact your life - add examples (again be honest) and build up this profile. Don't be tempted to gloss over something to try to make it look better - the rawer the better.

Present this to the people doing your diagnosis, ideally before the session and they will have a lot of material to work with that you may not be able to present in a purely talk based meeting. At the least have it to hand to read from if they don't accept it beforehand.

There you have it - you will be well informed about autism and yourself going into the meeting so know how to engage in the conversation in a way that gets your case across.

Good luck - it can be nerve wracking but doesn't need to be if you have done your homework.

m_23 said:

I am about to start the assessment process and am excited to get some answers but also petrified that they’ll say I’m not autistic. Does anyone have any advice for this?

This is quite a normal reaction - the simplest way is to test yourself online and get an indication if you are in the range that qualifies.

There are a number of free tests and the one I normally recommend is:

https://www.thevividmind.org/blog/test/autism-test-online/

Be brutally honest with yourself about the answers and you should get a close enough result for it to be meaningful.

m_23 said:

I think also because I’m AFAB I’m worried my assessor won’t understand masking and just rule me out

I don't think your AFAB will have any bearing on your situation - all genders with autism are quite prone to masking and the analysts should be trained to help lift the mask in the session - hence the need to be honest in your answers.

It should help you tremendously to do some research into what are common autistic traits and write down the ones you experience. This may be a big list.

Now from it add detail about which ones are an issue for you and impact your life - add examples (again be honest) and build up this profile. Don't be tempted to gloss over something to try to make it look better - the rawer the better.

Present this to the people doing your diagnosis, ideally before the session and they will have a lot of material to work with that you may not be able to present in a purely talk based meeting. At the least have it to hand to read from if they don't accept it beforehand.

There you have it - you will be well informed about autism and yourself going into the meeting so know how to engage in the conversation in a way that gets your case across.

Good luck - it can be nerve wracking but doesn't need to be if you have done your homework.

Hi Iain, thank you very much for your response. I’m glad to know it’s a normal reaction and I’m not going crazy! I have taken a couple of tests online and scored pretty highly (and even sometimes put my answers lower than they are so that I can definitely be sure I’m not putting them too high if that makes sense) I don’t think I’ve done the one you suggested though so I will definitely try that, thank you. I hope they will help lift the mask, although I’ve been told it’s my assessors first assessment. Thanks for your suggestion, I actually have already sent in my 8 page list of my traits! They said it was extremely helpful although some stuff I regret writing already as I feel I was too honest. Autism is actually my main interest at the moment so I have done my fair bit of research! I did add some examples but I’m not sure I did enough. I feel like some of it will just seem like I copied and pasted it off the internet which I definitely didn’t. Thank you, I hope by giving them the list they will have some topics to bring up in the spoken meeting without me needing to bring them up. Thanks so much for all your advice, now I’ve just got to wait for the results!