I think I'm autistic: what to do now

None of what follows has to happen this week. The question has usually been circling for years before it gets put into words, and a few more weeks change nothing. What does change something is turning up to the first appointment with concrete material rather than an intuition.

1. Write down precise, dated situations, going back as far as you can. A break time spent alone, a timetable change at eleven that threw the whole week, a dining hall whose noise became unbearable: three old examples carry more weight than a copied list of traits.
2. Separate what has always been there from what appeared recently. The French guidance of July 2011 describes an assessment that reconstructs the path since childhood: how far back the difficulties go is the first thing a professional looks for, before intensity.
3. Raise it with your family doctor, notes in hand. They are the ones who refer you to a service or a professional trained in adults, and a written referral often saves a step in a congested system.
4. Find out how the service you are referred to actually works before you assemble a file: documents required, order of steps, stated timescale. The twenty-seven French autism resource centres do not all apply the same admission procedure.
5. Do not wait for the outcome before adjusting daily life. Cutting noise, scheduling recovery time after social days, telling one colleague or one relative: none of that requires formal recognition.
6. Know that self-identification is widely accepted within autistic communities. It grants no administrative rights, it also does not have to be justified to anyone, and both of those sentences hold at once.

No. A formal route exists to obtain something specific: written adjustments you can point to, administrative recognition, access to funded support. If none of those three is what you are after, doing nothing is a defensible choice, and nobody has to approve it.

The context has shifted recently. France's national strategy for neurodevelopmental conditions for 2023 to 2027, published on 14 November 2023, sets out eighty-one measures and states that one person in six is concerned by a neurodevelopmental condition, autism accounting for 1 to 2% of the population. Part of that catching-up targets adults, long left outside systems designed for children.

We could not find a published, current national figure for adult assessment waiting times in France, and we would rather say so than repeat an estimate that circulates without a source. What is documented is the structure: twenty-seven autism resource centres cover the country, overseas territories included, each with its own admission procedure.

Four things make the wait vary from one file to the next, and two of them are within your control.

• The region and the service concerned: capacity for adult assessment is not spread evenly.
• The way in: a referral from a family doctor, a hospital department or a local practice do not lead into the same queue.
• What the file contains: an incomplete file goes back to the bottom of the pile, and that is the most avoidable cause of delay.
• Whether other things need exploring: when another difficulty is described alongside, the assessment usually takes more sessions.

The practical consequence fits in one sentence: ask for the stated waiting time when you submit the file, write it down, and treat the wait as part of the process rather than dead time. Those are the months in which your early notes gain value, because they end up covering several seasons instead of one bad week.

That is a common and defensible answer. Some people do not want a medical file, others fear the effect on their job, others again feel they already have what mattered: an explanation that holds and that settles something. Useful work does not stop there, though.

• Name precisely what costs you: noise, the unplanned, group conversation, light, the length of a meeting.
• Adjust what can be adjusted without permission: headphones, leaving early, recovery time scheduled after a dense day.
• Choose who you tell and in what words, rather than explaining everything to everyone.
• Keep the door open: stepping back today commits nothing for later, and the notes you kept will serve if the question returns.

A self-observation questionnaire does one useful thing: it turns an intuition into readable statements you can re-read, argue with, and take to an appointment. It does nothing else. It cannot confirm or rule out a condition, and a high score is not evidence in a file.

Two readings exist on this subject and they ask different questions. A questionnaire written around autistic traits in adulthood asks about noise, change and exchanges. A questionnaire written around social camouflaging asks about something else: the effort spent making sure none of it shows. Both are offered at the foot of this page.

1. Re-read the statements you answered with « often » and find, for each one, a real dated situation.
2. Write those situations next to the score. That page is what will be useful in an appointment, not the number.
3. Take the questionnaire again three to six months later if your situation changes: two sittings tell a story, one tells nothing.