Did my autism assessment go wrong?

[Glittarain]

I recently had an autism assessment under right to choose. I feel I probably don't have it. Its more of a tick box thing because of other things.

I'm not sure if it was done in right way there was about 8 tick box forms I had to do each with around 50-90 questions each. You have to tick a box for what answer fits you. But alot of them didn't fit me but I was forced to tick something. So the answers don't show a true me. I said this to the person doing doing the assessment and she said there was several options for the answer. Which there was but they didn't fit me.

She asked me a bit about school about going from primary to secondary. How did I cope with the change I said I went to a sen school the primary and secondary were one school. I just moved rooms with the same peers we stayed in the same class for most lessons apart from things like PE but that was the same as primary the only change was the tutor teacher and I already knew her. She said ah ok then asked the question again the reason I found it hard to answer is because i wouldn't have had the big change that children in mainstream have wheh goung from primary to secondary.

She didn't ask about my learning difficulties maybe it wasn't relivent I'm not sure.

I had also written about how when i was a teenager I used to sit on the floor behinde the teachers desk and avoid everyone. When i was told to move because lesson was starting i would move my chair right back so I was away from people as much as I could be. I didn't talk for a whole school year if I was asked a question I would only ever say yes,no if it was an open question I would say don't know even if it didn't make sense. I wasn't asked about that either. Maybe it wasn't relivent either. But when I mentioned it at the end of the assessment she did have a brief shock face.

Does that seem right?

The fact you don’t know answers the question.

The thing is, the sleep questionnaire example is a different thing. That sounded like a quick screener designed to give a rough idea of whether somebody has unusual sleepiness or not.

The questionnaires you've done are longer and they are not screeners - I think you said there was 80 questions on one, or something? Those give a more in depth score, but they are different to screeners. You do not normally have screeners in an assessment unless they are screeners for other conditions, like ADHD or OCD or depression. A screener gives a rough answer - it tells you very quickly if the person should speak to a professional for a more in depth assessment. For screeners, it can help to do it with somebody who is trained to know what the question is trying to find out.

For long questionnaires they are not used as the only tool to answer the question of "Is this person autistic?" - they are not designed for this, and they do not give enough information. What they do tend to give is a score, in numbers, which can be useful to put in a final report and say "This person scored X in the Y questionnaire" because this can feel more "scientific" than a written description of what an interviewer noticed. And having both scores with numbers, and written descriptions means that the report in the end is more rounded and complete.

You should have at least one interview during your diagnosis - whether this was online, or in-person, and whether or not this involved any kind of tasks - like the one with a book with no words, or explaining how to brush teeth to an alien. The doctor looking at everything will use both the interview and the questionnaires.

With long questionnaires, each individual question is less important and it does not matter very much if you weren't sure what it was asking, because each question by itself the answer isn't important.

So what I mean is, whether or not you have trouble starting and stopping conversations is not what they want to know, even though it is the question they asked. It's the pattern across all of the questions. Autistic people will show one pattern, and neurotypical people a different pattern. You can see from this thread and other places online, that autistic people often find it hard to answer questionnaires because they like to be precise, whereas neurotypical people seem happier with answers which "sort of" fit. I think it might be that the pattern of different answers actually comes from this kind of confusion as well as autistic people generally having a harder time with social interaction, or whatever the questions are asking.

Neurotypical minds can intuit it. It feels like a natural skill. It’s part of social cues and norms we pick up because society is designed for neurotypical minds in this way - but neurodiverse minds can struggle to even understand how someone would know that they know because they don’t read social behaviour in the same way.

Sorry its going over my head its to much to take in. It's a me thing though. I did see somone via video call

I hope you can get some reassurance when you get the results.

I do get it an example could be when someone says do you drink i know that means alcohol rather than any drink. But now I'm going to contradict myself if someone says they didn't sleep all night. But then it turns out they slept for 3hrs then I think so you did sleep then?, because i feel like its not really the truth and it invalidates someone when they truly did not sleep.

If they slept for 3 hours they didn’t sleep all night, they slept part of the night?

But i would take it they meant they didn't sleep all night would mean not at all.

I think @Glittarain means that when someone says "I didn't get any sleep last night" but then they did sleep for 3 hours, she thinks that they shouldn't say that unless they mean that they didn't sleep at all (I agree!). They should say "I slept badly last night" or "I didn't sleep well" or "I didn't get much sleep last night". Whereas most people wouldn't take it literally and would think that they just meant they slept less well than they'd have liked to.

I agree I know I'm thinking literally in that case. But if i haven't slept all night at all. And somone says they didn't sleep either but then really they did they are invalidating my non sleep 😅

My son is like this it bothers him SO much when people aren't exact in what they say. What was it he was bothered about tonight? Oh that's right, DH threatened to kick him out of a game, because he was messing around and he kept on and on about how Daddy was going to kick him. No, nobody is going to kick anybody, you know kicking isn't allowed, being kicked out just means you are banned from something.

Then later he had some dry skin which was bothering him, and I said just wear your PJs without pants, to let your bum breathe - and he said wait, is my bum alive?! And I just meant so that the skin could get some air and not have sweat trapped up against it, but this invoked a whole new round of questions about how skin breathes. If he doesn't understand something then it really bothers him and he really NEEDS to know the answer but it always sparks off 12 more questions, and I do understand but it is also exhausting at bedtime.

I always think I am quite straightforward, but there is a level of literal thinking which is far above the random things I unthinkingly come out with. It must be really difficult to navigate this kind of disconnect all the time. I read that ND people tend to have far fewer difficulties in communication with other ND people, which is probably because they say what they mean and don't use confusing turns of phrase. The difficulties in communication are when we are trying to talk "across" neurotype.