Oid wrote:
I am only self-diagnosed... Which leads to one question: Is it worth it to seek out a formal diagnosis? My understanding is that there is no actual treatment, so it would just be validation....
Perhaps only for validation now. Things can change.
I spent three decades locked in a pattern of working for a year and a half, then getting fired and living on unemployment for 6-8 months while recuperating from the stress, then going back out into the world and doing it again. And I was only able to do that because I excelled in one specific career. Anytime I took another type of job, the stress would overwhelm me in a matter of weeks.
It was only after my career had dried up and I'd been unemployed
for a couple of years that I even heard of AS and had that '
Oh my gods! Somebody's been reading my diary!' epiphany. Even so, I tried to believe, as many do in the beginning stages of acceptance, that MY case of AS must only be a 'mild' one. After all, I seemed normal to everyone around me...right?
Bottom line, a couple more years go by, unemployed or underemployed - I can't even keep a part-time independent contractor job without my quirks, handicaps and emotional meltdowns getting me fired, and my boss is five states away - finally, through a series of coincidences, I see a therapist for depression, tell her I think I might have AS, after observation she agrees and offers to have me tested and evaluated by a psychologist. Finally, at the age of 50, Uncle Sam determines that I qualify for Disability just in time to keep me from becoming homeless.
As I study the disorder in depth, in order to understand just how it affects me, I have two major realizations:
1) I was never 'passing for normal' as well as I thought I was - the people around me have known for years that I was not like them. They've even discussed it at length when I was not in the room. I was repeatedly fired not because my bosses were@ssh*les (though several of them were), but because I could never conform to the neurotypical template and behave like the rest of the drones. Thinking and operating 'outside the box' is a positive thing only in theory, in real life it makes you a freak.
2) The effects of AS on my life were never remotely 'mild' - there is no such thing as 'mild' Asperger's Disorder. Autism is congential, which means you have it from birth. From the moment you pop out into this world, you see, experience and perceive the world differently than the people around you. Those skewed perceptions and experiences cause you to think and behave differently than everyone else, which in turn causes you to be treated differently than everyone else. The neural pathways in your brain almost literally cause you to live on a planet just a little off-kilter from the one everybody else is on. That's not a 'mild' difference. It changes and affects EVERYTHING YOU SEE, SAY, THINK and DO - it molds and shapes WHO YOU ARE. That is not a 'mild' effect.
Since you've spent many years muddling your way through life unaware that you were different - in fact, being told that you're NOT different, so you MUST behave like everyone else, you've learned 'coping mechanisms' - little unconscious adjustments that help you pretend to be like everyone around you. But these coping mechanisms come with the burden of tons of added stress, because your behavior is constantly at odds with your natural inclinations. You're ACTING all day, every day. Any wonder you have frequent anger issues? All that anxiety has got to go somewhere, it can only be repressed for so long. Its either going to come out as anger, or plunge you into periodic bouts of deep depression...or both.
So I've come to feel that if you can, after close study of the disorder and a brutally realistic evaluation of your own life as seen through the Autistic lens, still honestly say that the Aspergian effects on your life have been 'mild' - then you probably wouldn't qualify for a formal diagnosis, because you don't really have it. If you're enjoying a reasonably happy life with only minimal road bumps due to Autistic behaviors, you might be considered PDD-NOS at best. But why would anyone want to
claim a diagnosis for a neurological disorder if it wasn't seriously screwing up their life? I don't know, but there are a lot of people who do it.
So if your life is going smoothly enough that getting a diagnosis seems unnecessary, then why even put a label on your behaviors? If you don't have a problem, then you don't have a 'disorder'. That's kind of what 'disorder' means. If your life is in order, then you're fine.
26 Jul 2010, 6:30 am
