AnAutieAtUni , 19 days ago

Update on prepping for my ADHD assessment:

[Update for context: I am autistic, already dx’ed ~3 years ago, there was no option for an ADHD assessment at the same time back then. /]

I thought I had basically done no prep, and hadn’t got any/many useful memories of the past, but over the last few months I’ve been jotting things down in a document that now has many bullet points of info across several pages. I didn’t realise how long it got until I just looked at it. It’s looking a lot more like the notes I made that helped me with my autism assessment. Even though I didn’t actually look at the notes in the assessment, it helped me keep in mind why I was seeking an assessment. I also sent the notes to the autism assessor, who welcomed them and skim-read them for extra info.

I’ve also been watching a few more YouTube videos by a variety of different people about AuDHD experiences, rather than ADHD-only. All I can say is I feel I relate most to AuDHD’ers, rather than only ADHD or only autistic people. I would go as far as saying I relate to 99% of how AuDHD’ers describe their experiences. (I wouldn’t expect to relate so strongly because of all the variation between different people’s experiences!)

I’ve been reluctant to delve into the DSM or ICD… I don’t want to manipulate the outcome of my assessment. But I have now browsed them so I can see it isn’t just about the presence of traits but also their frequency and impact. That’s helped me ponder my experiences now. Not all traits are present, strong or frequent, but many are and it reminded me of when I was first trying to get an ADHD assessment. I’ve had many struggles academically during my current degree but started to normalise them in recent years while waiting for this assessment (~3 years ish). (I’ve started to assume that everyone experiences what I do - easy to do that when you study alone and have no options to mingle with other students.) I almost forgot that an ADHD specialist study skills staff member sent me some tools and techniques at the time that are specifically designed to help ADHD challenges and they really helped.

My weakest form of communication is live, spoken conversation. I forget things, even obvious, important things. I’m very slow to process spoken words and sounds, generally (auditory processing disorder seems to be behind it having chatted with some other autistics who experience the same). Whenever I’ve relied on my memory working during live conversations and done no prep work beforehand to help me recall relevant things, my brain has failed me. Sometimes in extremely important situations when I had just 1 or 2 important points to share, and really thought I’d remember, but absolutely failed to share them in the conversation and worse is that I didn’t realise until well after it happened and it was too late. I guess when your processing has a bottleneck, just like with sensory processing disorder, you simply don’t have access to other mental faculties as usual.

So, it’s a balance between prepping enough to ensure I’ve got some memory of my present and past experiences related to ADHD and know why I’ve waited years to have this assessment (this will alleviate some processing demands), and not prep so much that I’m biasing my answers, and influencing the outcome of the assessment.

Then again, imposter syndrome…. I know that ALL too well.

I still welcome any advice or reassurances about ADHD assessments. It is scheduled within the coming days.

@actuallyadhd @actuallyautistic