Started my official diagnosis today

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So I guess today was only the intake portion and not the official assessment, but it was really just questions about why I thought I was autistic and what I was hoping to find there. I'm going for the next phase on Tuesday.

One interesting thing he said was after I mentioned I had a document listing my notes about the criteria and how I thought those related to me, is that it was really rare for people to come with lists about ADHD or other disorders. That having the list about ASD was almost always a sign that you probably are autistic.

He stressed that he couldn't say for sure yet, but from our first meeting he thought it was likely to "end up where we want to be."

Oddly enough, I'm not sad about this, which a younger version of myself would have certainly been. I'm actually excited about this phase of my life.

Congratulations!

It sounds like you are on a correct path to diagnosis. Good luck.

Sounds like you have a good assessor who knows what they’re doing. That’s great. Good luck for the rest of the assessment. It is quite an exhausting process but worth it.

Which bits are exhausting?

I have done the first bit which was more likely to exhaust the assessors than me! I talked far too much!
The rest is online and I am not good at online. There has been a small delay.

There is a long wait between being accepted and being seen to be assessed if in certain areas in the UK. I was on the waiting list a couple of months before joining this site and have been waiting since then, so having now done the first bit is a step ahead. But am concerned about what comes next because I am not sure I can do school or college related stuff like I used to.

For me it was the online questionnaires. I had 11 online questionnaires to complete. It took a couple of days for me to get through them. Another exhausting process was reading the final report, which is by nature quite deficits based.

I have already had paper based questionaires which took a while. They sent me them in the post. Was rather like those online questions that one can do as a guide to knowing if one should be assessed or not.
On the day when they interviewed me and my Mum about family history etc, one of the guys did mention I was highly intelligent. Do they say this to everyone?

Ok, I can tell that my experience is definitely NOT typical, but I have good insurance so maybe that's greasing the skids a bit. I made my appointment a couple months ago and today was the intake, but the assessment will come in just a few days as they had a cancelation. The intake was just a series of questions about me and my life. I got two online quizzes that I just completed. They were long but I did them both in about 30 minutes each. The first one was obviously geared towards children so I didn't feel very pressed to answer in too much depth?

Can I brush my teeth? Yep! Next question!

The second one was about social stuff and that was easy to answer: I'm high masking so I can be around people but it's hard, makes me tired, and I never feel great about it because of the anxiety.

The next bit will be using that quiz as a jumping off point (I agree I have a good assessor in that he knows about adult autism diagnoses and how masking works) so I think I will have a loooon conversation and then I'll wait for the results.

Thanks.

Am wondering if they assess each person differently?

I'd hope so! But I think in the US there are questionnaires, or "boxes to tick" as the doctor described them, that they have to fill out to fulfill the DSM criteria. But I would bet that the questions on Tuesday will be more personalized.

I know when I mentioned about likeing trains, that the two psycologists looked at each other. Think it must be common.

Now what you do is enjoy! I thought the assessment process was kind of fun.

However, I am in the U.S., and I was assessed against the DSM criteria, and I think different psychologists might approach the assessment with some minor differences (trying to determine the same things but perhaps coming at it differently).

That one of several stereotypical special interests. Other's include dinosaurs, cars, ham radio, computers, software, video games, role-playing-games, furries.