Second assessment today

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I've been told it will take about 2 hours . I'm trying not to second guess,but it's hard.

Boy, was that hard. It's difficult answering whether you do x or y or not when it's just the way you are . That was why it was a good thing that my stepdaughter was there to say "Well actually...." or words to that effect.

Ironically I'm not sure the assessor was good at picking up on facial expressions. She said I looked happy when actually I wasn't feeling either particularly happy or sad. My stepdaughter said that was just my normal face and I'm really only animated when angry or stressed.

I'm sure you did a great job. When do you find out the results?

I have another appointment on March 13th. I'm not sure if I'll be told straight away after that or will have to wait to know.

My stepdaughter said I did ok, but I'm not so sure. I do wonder whether one needs to tick or cross all the right boxes , or it's accepted that there's no 'one size fits all ' profile of someone on the spectrum. That not all things have to apply or not apply as the case might be re whether one is or isn't on the spectrum.

Was asked if I talked a lot or was quiet. The truth is I don't see anyone on a regular basis apart from my stepfamily, the person who comes in to clean , and the person who does my depot injection. Hence there are days when I don't talk at all . When I do see people I'll respond if spoken to but won't initiate a conversation.

Yes, it is good your stepdaughter was there. Many times the way we perceive ourselves is not the way others perceive us. This is why a professional assessment tries to bring in comments from other people, and also why face-to-face contact is necessary. People sometimes have a different facial expression than the way they are feeling, like you described the assessor noting. Naturally, it will make relationships and social situations hard if people are reading your face in a way that differs from how you are naturally feeling inside.

Now, you are viewing this as "I'm not sure the assessor was good at picking up on facial expression," but very likely she found a conventional explanation for your facial expression and you were not even aware you had that facial expression - so the shortcoming might be in you, not in her. She did the right thing, however, by discussing it, which allows for misunderstandings to be corrected.

It was at my assessment too. But to the psychologist, this in itself can be noteworthy, especially if there are any indications as to why you find answering difficult. It's not merely isolated examples of particular behaviours that the assessor will be looking for, but also evidence for why those behaviours might be present (or absent), and how you rationalise those behaviours to yourself (or accept them without feeling the need to rationalise them at all.)

Re the facial expressions perhaps that goes to show that interpreting a facial expression is not necessarily a black and white thing. That one person may think it's expressing one thing while someone else doesn't see it as expressing that.(stepdaughter vs assessor).It also raises the question of whether facial expressions are always a good way of actually telling how a person is feeling. It does indicate that subjectivity comes into play to some degree.

Yes, that's true, interpreting facial expressions is not an all-or-nothing thing. However, NTs make up the much bigger share of the population, so statistically, interpreting a smile as indicating happiness is likely to be right most of the time. So if you have to take a stab at guessing, you'd guess the more likely answer.

I had some difficulty answering some questions about things that were just how I am, when I got my autism assessment. My assessor said that suggested alexithymia. It surprised me, because my first husband was textbook alexithymic and that was the yardstick against which I compared myself. I mean, he was a LOT more alexithymic than me, so I thought that meant I was not alexithymic at all.

I did this a little while ago. https://www.alexithymia.us/alexithymia- ... nline-test