Post assessment hand hold

[SensationalSusie]

Hi, Long story short I got assessed, I did the ADOS-2 assessment with the silly frogs book, couldn’t successfully explain how to brush my teeth and then really struggled to tell a story with 5 objects. I am still hung up on the last exercise as it was such a mind bender… I just could not see the objects as anything other than what they were. And the example the assessor gave turning inanimate objects into a whole world was just ludicrous… I was looking like that is just a X… why are you turning it into a person.

I had to delve pretty deep to answer all of their questions. I’m so upset and want to cry all the time but I can’t talk about it properly.

The assessment is really difficult emotionally. It takes quite a while to recover from.

Thank you for replying.

I had to do online assessments as well. I must have taken an age to do them and I keep worrying they will discount my responses over this.

I didn’t know there would be 3 assessments (expected two) and didn’t know the first one would be on mental health. It totally threw me. I was so stressed I was reading out the questions to myself and then checking through multiple times that I was totally happy with it.

I redid the tests independently as I wanted to know how I scored and it was very high for autism traits etc… so I thought ok, I’ll keep doing some more, maybe it’s just these tests that are the problem. I did the empathy test, I have always thought I was mega empathetic, I scored 19!

I think I am finding it mega full on as it’s Christmas time which is always stressful and I’m trying to get my child through various assessments and statementing process at the same time.

Perhaps I should have waited for my assessment until later but I really wanted to have it resolved once and for all.

How have people felt about
a) the assessment
b) being autistic

What benefit has pursuing diagnosis brought to your life?

How do you cope with all of this?

thanks

My assessment was...exhausting. Bearing in mind that I suffer from insomnia, I slept for six hours straight after it.

Personally, I'm totally happy with being autistic - it explains just about all of the weird shit in my life, whereas previously I had a whole complicated web of explanations to make myself feel less weird.

From that perspective, it's tremendously validating. It hasn't changed who I am one iota, and it's a good explanation to the people around me as to why they're likely to see me change bit-by-bit as I start to mask less.

I thought the scores I was given were completely invalidating to my lived experience.

I found they never mentioned things like my skinpicking I have done since I was 9, they glossed over a set of questions as I am married (to somebody also Autistic) as if I didn't ever have relationship problems previously.

I worry the "score" is somehow relevant to any further support or accommodations I might ask for if I return to work.