Good morning Tom, thanks for posting your questions and experience.
From what you have posted, these stand out as significant points :
Social stuff does not come easily
It has been noticed that you make less eye contact than is usual.
Using the AQ, which is a screening tool you came close to the threshold (score of 29, threshold 32, typical persons score is around 15)
The possibility has been suggested to you by someone who is informed to some degree in the area.
All this is consistent with having traits which are consistent with parts of the Autism Spectrum.
You have also mentioned being fired from employment on two occasions. If you can bare to look back over those two incidents, what seem to be the reasons.
Now people can get fired for things regarded as Gross misconduct. These are the sorts of things which destroy trust and make a working relationship employer to employee un-viable. Examples would be Stealing, committing Fraud, harassing another worker, telling one's manager to get stuffed or worse language.
People can get fired after a process. For example, poor performance, more minor misconduct, for which they have already had formal warnings and the situation has not improved, leading to their getting a Final warning, and again if no improvement, dismissal.
Jobs can also get lost because a firm falls on hard times and there is not enough work for the number of people working and the firm has to employ a redundancy process, which can involve a whole mixture of looking for volunteers, and scoring people on their strengths / weaknesses, and selecting those least able in teh view opf the scoring process to leave.
If any of these applied to the circumstances in which you lost those two jobs, did it appear to be weaknesses in any of these areas :
Social interactions with other workers - the social stuff again.
Ability to keep yourself generally organised and motivated. This sort of stuff comes under the heading of "Executive Function" and is often another area of difficulty in the area of the Autism spectrum. Example - In a YouTube televised lecture at "The Tuke Institute" on the subject of Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, the lecturer cited the case of an individual, very intelligent, to the level of being a university lecturer, who was diagnosed as Autistic, and as a result of the diagnosis was able to receive help funding a part time PA.
The screening tool is just that, it screens out those definitely not on the spectrum (typical score of 15 for non autistic people), but the diagnosis relies on the combination of accounts of you from others such as parents, siblings, LONG term friends, the observations the assessor makes of you during the face to face, a whole array of tools in fact.
14 Apr 2017, 3:41 am
