Occupational Therapy

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For those with an ASD, have you ever done Occupational Therapy?

I'm going for my third appointment today.

I did it when I was 11 and 12. Before that it was on occasions. Plus when I was in special ed full time our class went to it.

No, but I would have benefited from it, I think. There are so many things I had to hash out for myself... everything from self-care to driving. I was so late on many of those things.

They forget sometimes that if you're good at schoolwork that doesn't mean you're good at other things.

I'm getting occupational therapy for the last few weeks and it's just now that everything we've been working on is beginning to sink in and take effect. This morning, for instance, I was able to get up, showered, groomed and dressed in half an hour flat. That's the first time I've ever been able to do that. Before this I was taking at least a solid hour just to do those things! The solution has been to use visual cues for everything. My thoughts are extremely disorganised and I cannot think through the steps of each task I need to do without the steps all jumbling up inside my head at random. I now list every step for everything I need to do, from getting up in the morning to making meals to going to the shop for milk. I can't think in steps, but I can follow written ones and cross them off as I go. When I got the hang of doing that, I looked online for task-managing apps, and found Taskpaper. I now use this very simple app for this part of my occupational therapy. I can save all the lists I want to my computer and cross off tasks I've done, uncross tasks I want to redo, divide projects into mini projects which I can view in their own window... basically, I'm going to save a small forest while also not having to decipher my own messy writing

My OT is also getting me into other services that are available locally. She made sure I got in touch with my college disability support officer to organise some assistive technology for me and there are three amazing items they're going to give me - a Livescribe Smartpen, Read&Write GOLD and Dragon Dictate. These will make my hyperlexia, dyspraxia and ADD much smaller barriers between me and my college degree! My OT has also shown me where there is a disability employment support service in town, currently close for holidays til Monday, and she got me in touch with a local Aspergers/HFA association who I'd tried to apply to by myself before, but without success. It does make a difference having a professional, who's known to these groups, on your side!

If there's anything i'd advise, it's to just be honest. The more honest you are, the more your OT will understand about you and the more he/she will be able to do to help you. For instance, I'd been putting on my usual public face, i.e. acting and pretending to be ok which is what I do around people all the time, during an appointment for which we walked around town. I was so focused on hiding my struggles from both her and myself, and trying so hard to just concentrate on what we were doing, that I didn't even realise that I was building up a load of reactions. Once we parted ways at the end of that session, I went into total shutdown and actually ended up sick all week including vomiting and extreme fatigue. I decided to email her and describe it all. She now knows how severe my sensory processing problems are and is trying to organise some sensory integration therapy for me. So even though I was doing my acting thing and not showing my real self and my reactions at the time, I still told her the truth after, and being a therapist it's her job to understand and trust that I'm telling the truth. The result is that I'm now on the way towards getting more help specifically to combat that problem. I'll stop writing now, sorry my posts are so long-winded! I don't know how to say things concisely

Yes, as a kid when I had no say in what went on with my own body and my own mind. It didn't help and actualy made things worse.