Mixing with other people - Autism (PIP)

Hello,

I wanted to sense check with all the wise people on here.

I have autism which means I do not socialise to an acceptable standard (I interrupt, talk other people, have one sided conversations, awkward eye contact etc etc). I have looked at the scoring which is as follows:

9a. Can engage with other people unaided. 0 points.
9b. Needs prompting to be able to engage with other people. 2 points.
9c. Needs social support to be able to engage with other people. 4 points.
9d. Cannot engage with other people due to such engagement causing either –
(i) overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant; or
(ii) the claimant to exhibit behaviour which would result in a substantial risk of harm to the claimant or another person. 8 points.

I do not receive support from anyone to socialise. I just do it myself.

Can you only get 8 points if socialising causes you "overwhelming psychological distress" or "substantial risk of harm"?? So if it is the case you simply cannot socialise appropriately (and it does not cause psychological distress and it doesn't result in substantial harm), what points would you get? My worst fear is that I could be awarded 0 points - is that possible?

Hi Thimble_fish, I don't know if this will be any help. My husband has Asperger's Syndrome. Sometimes he gets totally irate with people; he has been asked to leave several committees, had to apologise for an outburst at a parish council meeting etc. If I am there I have gripped his arm, hissed in his ear etc [and been turned on for my pains]. If you had someone close to you with you, would they be doing similar things to try to calm you down, shut you up etc?
Just trying to help you think through stuff about 'the help you need even if you do not get it'
best wishes, Denby

Hi Thimble_fish
My relative has just had a review report. She is autistic and scored 4 points needs social support descriptor C. Good luck

I am also autistic, along with having social anxiety.

I've basically explained the issues I have with communicating and that I am totally incapible of reading body language, making eye contact, or always knowing exactly when its my turn in a conversation/when to shut up. I have then given examples of when this has lead to misunderstandings or even anger from others. As well as given several examples of when my inability to socialise "normally", understand protocalls, or "respect the social hierarchy" has reslted in my losing emploment - to show that it has a serious impact on my life.

I have then gone of to explain that these negative experiences has lead to serious social anxiety as I am now terrified of interacting with other people as I am so scared of accidently insulting people or accidently making people annoyed/angry, esspecially as 90% of the time even after the person gets annoyed I still don't know what I did wrong.

I have then explained how if I have a friend with me who understands my difficulties they can usually defuse the situation before any negative repercussions.

I don't know if this was the right way to go, but it's what Ive done, I've not had "results" as yet so I don't know if it's worked. It has also been suggested to me to get some written statements from friends/family explaining any situations that they have whitnessed or times they have needed to intervene.

I too am autistic and am terrified by social interaction, I've typed up quite a long word document containing all my answers. My answer to Mixing With Other People is quite long as I've tried to show that I have always had difficulties here. Giving very recent examples to this one is quite difficult with the coronavirus pandemic still being a thing, my examples are almost all pre-covid and labelled as such. The only example I have currently is going to the supermarket with my parents and there I desperately avoid other people, I'm purely muscle to push the trolley as my mother has arthritis. I'm currently waiting on feedback from a friend that is also autistic and so understands the point of view before I show anyone else. Despite them being over a year old I've put in as many examples as I can. I've been honest, I openly admit that I've tried to socialise from time to time, but the important point is that I can't do it reliably and it causes me a lot of distress. I have no idea if they count stress after the fact but with me that's a thing that can stop me repeating a thing for a long time. Those times when things didn't go well, you realise it and you can't stop your brain picking apart the encounter afterwards in a kind of gory autopsy of the encounter. With me mistakes get magnified and result in intrusive negative thoughts that can lead to days of depression. Those episodes then inform the next time I plan to go somewhere where there are people and cause me to loose me nerve etc...Kinda a self reinforcing cycle.

The key thing I think though is examples, I described two or three different things where I've started doing something social, had patchy attendance due to feeling unable to go some days and then had to stop altogether because of just feeling worse and worse.

Hope that helps