Autism Assessment Process

I received the report on 25 February. I asked my carer to go through it with m because I knew that I would struggle, mainly because it was 18 pages long, and my eyes would object to reading that much all at once, and I wanted to understand it fully. I won’t bore you with every detail, but I want to clarify a few things, and some are very interesting and helpful for others to know. I think the first thing is quite stupid… The report suggested that I deliberately banged my hand

On 20 February, I received an email from Questa stating that they had reached an outcome and wanted to call me to discuss the assessment results. When I received that email, lots of emotions ran through my head; initially I was just really excited to finally get an answer, but then I felt incredibly anxious and a bit sick because I had been dealing with this situation of uncertainty for so long and I thought that if they said that I'm not Autistic, I would look like a fool an

I didn't see this myself, but my mum said that I react differently to different people. Of course, everyone acts differently depending on whether they're with a friend, family member, someone you know in passing or a mixture of these relationships. I had to really think about how I react to different people before I wrote this because I wasn't sure, but I tend to be less chatty with people I don't know very well because I don't know what to say, and I don't want to say anythi

I know this is a fine line between an autistic trait and a characteristic of the startle reflex caused by my CP, but I don’t like sudden loud noises. If you put my CP aside for a few minutes, and I know this may sound ridiculous, but my autistic side says loud noises hurt my ears. If noises are really loud, I can cry because they’re too loud and my sensitive ears can’t handle them. This is one of the reasons why I don’t like thunder or fireworks. The build-up to loud bangs of

On 11 February, I had the phone call assessment. I haven't really got much to say about this, but I will tell you what was spoken about… On the phone, my mum and I spoke about my childhood. Although I knew how many friends I had at primary school, it sounded quite sad because I didn't have many.  We also spoke about bullies. I was bullied at primary school and senior school, and we spoke about why it might have happened, and then a thought-provoking comment came up: what if I

In the assessment, I was presented with a box full of various toys, and I was invited to “play” with the toys. I thought this was quite weird because I don’t really play with toys anymore, but I went along with it. There was one particular thing with lots of pins in a rectangle, where you could push the pins through to make a pattern or picture. I said that I could possibly do this with my feet. I poked a few pins with my toes. We turned it over, and I said that it sounded li

It wasn’t long after we submitted the last form before I got the appointments for the assessments. There were two assessments. Before the two assessments, I asked two of my friends about what I should expect because I was anxious about them. The first one was face-to-face in Havant, and the second one was over the phone. The day before the face-to-face assessment came, and I was absolutely bricking it. I was aware that the assessment may have changed days, because, after all,

I am generally healthy and don’t need to see my GP often, so I didn’t involve my GP to get on the waiting list for an assessment because I have regular appointments with my consultant. Once I had that initial conversation with my mum, it was relatively straightforward to get on the waiting list. I had been wanting to get on the waiting list for ages before I actually did, but I was worried about what my mum would say because I remember having a bad experience when I brought i

Knowing who you are plays a massive part in accepting yourself, and ever since I started college, I’ve struggled to know who I am. I feel that not many people really know me, and not many people actually want to make the effort to get to know who I am on the inside, and that hurts me deeply. I may not know how to explain them, but I do have feelings. I do want to have conversations and relationships with some people, but I just don’t know where to start. For as long as I can

April is Autism Awareness Month, so it's the perfect time to talk about the ASD assessment process... For the past year or so, I have been on the NHS waiting list to have assessments to see if I am on the Autistic Spectrum. I have always known that I was different from most of my peers at school, but I just assumed that it was all because of my physical disability. As I grew up, I began to realise that something else was going on. At school, I was a happy child most of the ti