Advice on starting a PIP claim

Thanks for the advice. I plan to print out a copy of my report as its the best evidence I have. You are right in that I have had difficulties life long, and with 20:20 hindsight the signs of autism are obvious going back through things like school, but because I didn't struggle academically despite frequent illness I think things were never seen as the issue that they were to me.

I plan to use the guide and work through it providing as much detail as I can. Part of the problem for me is that a lot of my issues have been covered up by having my parents to rely on as I have never lived independently from them, and its only in the last couple of years since discovering how far things really go that I have started to understand how much I rely on those around me. Its a bit of a rude shock to be honest when the penny dropped.

Hi, I have been going through the different activities and the criteria using your guide and any information I could find on other websites that relate to autism and have any PIP info. I think I understand most of the things where I may score points, mostly in relation to needing prompting to do things such cook, eat etc (I get fixated on what I am doing sometimes and will carry on rather than go eat until someone reminds me).

I had a question about the mixing with other people activity as I feel that I could potentially score 4 or even 8 points here. What is meant by 'overwhelming psychological distress'?
Specific to my situation I have always really struggled in social situations and find them extremely draining. Since I was only diagnosed with Autism during the pandemic most of my examples come from before when it was assumed that I was just depressed and suffering from generalised anxiety. Back then it was encouraged for me to try and face social situations to get over the fear as part of CBT, so I would sometimes try and force myself to endure them as I thought it was 'therapeutic'. On a rare very good day when I was in a position to attempt to engage socially I would for example go in to the local Warhammer store to see if anything new was happening locally that I might be interested in. I generally handle social situations by rehearsing in my head what to say and what sort of reaction it might get. This works fine if the encounter is something like "Could I have this bread sliced please?" but quickly becomes very complicated in a more comprehensive conversation. What then happens is that I attempt to keep up with a conversation while at the same time trying to predict where it is going. This very quickly becomes exhausting and I struggle to keep up and make some kind of mistake that my mind then leaps on and obsesses over, so I end up with yet another parallel thread running telling me what an embarrassing idiot I am, and another desperately trying to find a way to end the encounter without making me look like a wierdo.

The problem I am having relating to the definition of 'overwhelming psychological distress' is do they mean 'The person very obviously breaks down or has a meltdown right there on the spot' or does a more gradual but inevitable spiral towards single syllable answers and partial shutdown count? I almost always need quiet time to myself after interacting with people, and in that time I tend to go over and over the encounter in my head, picking it apart berating myself if I consider that I have done or said something 'abnormal'. It is not uncommon for me to end up with negative intrusive thoughts for some time as part of the aftermath, and have been known to sink into quite a deep depression.

Thanks for reading and sorry if its a bit much or hard to answer.

I feel like my previous post was a little bit of a ramble. What my question boils down to is whether there is known criteria for what they consider to be "overwhelming psychological distress", and whether some delay in feeling the full effects of that distress (due to time taken to process) means it is still valid.