Why Do I Keep Hitting a Brick Wall? How an SOI Learning Profile Can Help Adults
You can be intelligent, creative and capable, yet still feel as though you keep hitting the same brick wall.
You may have good ideas but struggle to organise them.
You might understand something during a conversation but be unable to remember it later.
You may know exactly what you mean but find it difficult to put it into words.
Perhaps you have repeatedly struggled with work, training, paperwork, appointments, managing your home or completing things you genuinely wanted to do.
Over time, these difficulties can be mistaken for laziness, carelessness, poor motivation or a lack of commitment. Eventually, you may start believing those things about yourself.
But the problem may not be a lack of intelligence or effort. It may be that your individual thinking and learning abilities are uneven.
Adult life still requires us to learn
We often associate learning difficulties with children and school, but learning does not stop when we become adults.
Adult life requires us to:
understand spoken and written information
remember instructions
learn new systems
organise tasks
manage time
solve problems
compare options
make decisions
communicate our ideas
complete tasks in the correct order
adapt when something changes
These abilities are used at work, in education, when managing money, completing forms, attending appointments, running a home, parenting and navigating relationships.
The environment has changed since school, but the underlying demands have not disappeared.
What is an SOI Learning Profile Assessment?
SOI stands for Structure of Intellect.
An SOI Learning Profile Assessment looks at an individual pattern of thinking and learning abilities. It helps identify the abilities that are currently stronger, alongside those that may be making certain demands more difficult.
Rather than asking only how intelligent someone is, it looks more closely at the different abilities they use to understand, remember, process, evaluate and apply information.
Although SOI is often discussed in relation to children and education, SOI assessments are also available for adults and relate to education, careers and everyday life.
Why can someone be capable in one situation and completely stuck in another?
This is one of the most confusing experiences for many adults.
A person may be highly creative and able to generate lots of ideas, but find it much harder to evaluate those ideas, decide which one is realistic and work out what to do first.
Someone may understand information clearly while it is being explained but struggle to retain or retrieve it later.
Another person may be strong at visual problem solving but find it difficult to understand or communicate information when everything is presented through words.
This can make somebody appear inconsistent. They may cope extremely well with one task and feel completely overwhelmed by another.
An SOI Learning Profile can help make sense of these differences.
What could an adult SOI assessment help to explain?
A profile may help an adult understand:
why verbal instructions are easily lost
why written information takes longer to process
why they can start tasks but struggle to complete them
why they have many ideas but cannot organise them
why making decisions feels exhausting
why they need information presented visually
why they understand something but struggle to explain it
why they perform well in some areas but need considerable support in others
why everyday administration takes so much mental energy
why they repeatedly become overwhelmed in work or education
The purpose is not to create another list of things the person cannot do. It is to understand the pattern behind their experiences.
Turning self blame into understanding
Many adults have spent years thinking:
“Why can everyone else manage this?”
“Why do I always get things wrong?”
“Why can I never finish what I start?”
“I know I am capable, so why can’t I do this?”
Having a clearer learning profile can help replace self blame with understanding. It can show that a person is not failing across everything. They may have significant strengths, alongside particular abilities that require more support.
That understanding can be incredibly validating, especially for somebody who has spent years being misunderstood.
Using the results in everyday life
Understanding the profile can help an adult find more suitable ways to manage information and complete tasks.
This might include:
asking for instructions in writing
breaking information into smaller stages
using visual plans, reminders or checklists
allowing more processing time
reducing the amount of information given at once
using external systems to support memory
developing a clearer process for comparing options and making decisions
choosing learning or working methods that use existing strengths
The results may also help an adult explain their needs more clearly to family members, tutors, support workers or employers.
Instead of simply saying, “I struggle with this,” they can begin to understand what part of the demand is creating the difficulty and what might help.
Understanding yourself after an autism or ADHD diagnosis
Receiving an autism or ADHD diagnosis can bring an enormous amount of validation. However, a diagnosis alone does not explain every individual thinking and learning ability.
Two autistic adults can have very different learning profiles. The same is true of two adults with ADHD.
One person may have strong comprehension but difficulty retaining information. Another may have excellent creativity but struggle with evaluation, organisation or completing tasks.
Understanding your individual profile can add another layer of information. It moves the conversation from simply knowing that you are autistic or have ADHD to understanding more about how you personally process and use information.
It may also help parents recognise why they find some parts of parenting particularly demanding and understand similar patterns they notice in their children.
An SOI assessment is not a medical diagnosis
An SOI Learning Profile Assessment does not diagnose autism, ADHD, dyslexia or another medical or developmental condition. It should not replace an assessment by an appropriately qualified health or educational professional when one is needed.
Its purpose is different.
It provides a practical picture of the thinking and learning abilities a person is using at that point in time. It identifies strengths, areas that may be creating difficulty and possible ways of providing more effective support.
You are not looking for what is wrong with you
An adult SOI assessment is not about proving whether somebody is intelligent or producing another label.
It is about understanding why a capable person may keep encountering the same difficulties.
If you have spent years feeling that you should be able to manage, perhaps it is time to stop blaming yourself and look more closely at the abilities involved.
You may not be lacking intelligence, determination or potential.
You may simply have been trying to meet demands without fully understanding your own learning profile.
SOI Learning Profile Assessments are available through The Autism & ADHD Advocates CIC for adults, as well as children and young people.
To ask about an adult assessment, email sarahjane@autismadhdadvocates.org or call 07958 496689.
