Question. Is This An Autistic Trait Or Not?

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I find that on the one hand I am nurvous in a new enviroment, but on the other hand, I reach a point where I have explored every depth of the old enviroment so many times that things have stagnated, and this brings stress where I really want to move on. I hope this makes sense. The stress comes because I need a new enviroment to explore.
This happens to me in the various jobs that I have done in the past. I hate change but if I have stagnated I get depression and stressed until I do change.
I hope it makes sense? If I do change I am nurvous until I learn the ins and outs of the new enviroment but once I am settled (Which ma take a year or two and I go quiet and shy until I do get used to things... Quiet and shy when the mask of humour wears off), I am fine and do well until I stagnate and then the stress begins... Make sense or not?

Let me clarify with some more. It's like I have to explore everything but once I have explored and exhausted all my exploration I have to move on ad am not happy until I do?

I'm going through one of those periods at the moment, I think. After I got diagnosed, learning all about autism and all the red-tape for disability benefits were my main focus for a while. Now that all that drama's over, I feel like I've got into a rut where I'm just floating along on auto-pilot - my sense of time is poor anyway, but at the moment I can barely tell whether I'm thinking of a minute ago or a month ago, because the routines are so familiar. It's like living with an ominous sense of deja-vu all the time. It makes me feel very despondent sometimes.

But at the same time, the predictability can feel very safe and comforting. I've had a lot of periods like this in my life, and often it's taken a crisis to make me move on, despite all sorts of plans to take up a new hobby, look for a new job, start voluntary work, or whatever. It's overcoming the inertia to get started that I struggle with; I usually thrive on having new things to learn and new skills to practice once I get stuck in.

Trogluddite. How long does it take to be assessed?

Expect up to 12 hours, probably 8.

I was referring to the time from being accepted on the assessment list, to the date of the actual assessment. Thanks for the 8 to 12 hours though. Some say 5 hours... I don't know if I could concentrate for all those hours!

Another question...
Is it possible autism is catching? As the more time I spend on here the more traits I am finding I have! Or is it I have become a closet hypercondriact? (I hate hospitals so I am not a real hypercondriact as I would almost do anything to avoid a hospital if I didn't have to go in).

Autism is not “catching.”

It’s not caused by any infectious agent (bacteria, virus, fungus, etc)

Mine was over 12 hours, and absolutely exhausting. I also wrote 188 pages of information that I sent them a month ahead of time.

Isabella... 188 pages? Not surprizing it took them 12 hours to assess you... But wait. Do I need to have lots of pages of information? Can't a few pages do the same?

I don't know the date yet for the assessment. It was a wait of over a year... I guess they can't give a date yet as it is too early.

No you don't need that many pages, I just decided to turn the developmental history questions into an autobiography, which included scanned photos from birth, links to home videos, and an appendix of documents (school reports, psych reports, medical reports, employment evaluations, etc). I had it professionally bound. I'm OCD that way. Go big or go home. I had to tell my whole story.

I was told that the assessment would take 12 hours before I sent in such a huge missive. That was their standard assessment procedure. My doctor had read everything beforehand so that didn't add to the duration.

My wait was only a few months because I was referred through the Neuropsych department of my University. I was considered a good case study because I also had a stroke, I have Complex Trauma and I have synaesthesia. They had to untangle all of that in my assessment, and that's why the childhood data was so valuable.

Assuming you'd be using the NHS, not a private service. It seems to be very variable depending on where you live, and it depends when you start counting from!

Waiting times after referral can be anything from weeks to years. The assessment might be done in a single long session, or several spread over a few weeks. I waited about 3-4 months, though the waiting list here is now nearly 3 years, and the assessment was four hour-long interviews spread over about a month, followed by about another month for the reports to be written up and put on my medical records (they told me informally at the last interview that I was definitely "on the spectrum".) OTOH, a friend referred by a different GP at the same surgery as me had his done with a different provider in a single day - he's "Asperger's" and I'm "Autistic Spectrum", so they weren't even using the same diagnostic guidelines!

It's such a "postcode lottery" that people's anecdotes on the internet are not really a very good guide - but what I've said about mine is about as long as I've heard anyone from the UK speak of. If you can, I would see if you can find a local disability advice charity, autism meet-up group, or patient advocacy group which has more accurate local info. It may be worth asking your GP too, though it's not always information that they have easy access to. If you already know where you've been referred to, ask them if you're able to make contact.

TL/DR: It depends!

I don't have things like school reports. Umm. I do remember often it being said that I daydream in class... Not useful as they don't give qualifications for daydreaming! Umm. I need to think...


Regarding waiting times. I was told it had come down to 14 months and they expected it to come down from there as they have a new centre opened. I am reluctant to email them to ask things incase I delay the assessment... They have lots to see to I would imagine.

Trogluddite. How do I contact you via PM?

If members don't have the PM button available it is because they have switched this function off i.e they don't want PM's

In Trog's case it's not personal.