"I would say you don't have Asperger's..."

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*sigh* I was afraid it would come to this.

I finally broke down and went in for help with depression. It happens cyclically and I know when I need help keeping it under control. So, while dredging through my laundry list of stressors, I brought up my daughter's dx and my suspicion that I have Asperger's as well. I really don't think a dx would help me in any way but I asked the doctor if they had someone familiar with diagnosing adults. She said she could (without any confirmation of how much experience she did or did not have) and preceeded to tell me that she didn't think I have it. After a 15 minute conversation about my depression.

Her reasons - you've been looking at me, there are certain 'mannerisms' that I did not have, and that people with Asperger's just had this sort of - oddness - about them that I just did not have.

I think I started laughing in a very unfunny way. I informed her that I had twenty years to learn how to make people think I was looking them in the eye when in fact, it makes me crawl out of my skin each and every time. I was also sitting there a crying snotty mess because of my depression. I'm not sure she would have been able to see anything but that.

In reality it was easy to 'make eye contact' with her - she wore glasses. I could give you an exact description of them, draw you a picture and probably sculpt the damn things from memory blindfolded but I have no clue what color her eyes are. I didn't look at them once. Yet she said I made eye contact the entire time. Woohoo! The self training has worked! Glasses make it so much easier. But damn if it isn't going to work against me as I feared.

She did get a jolt when I mentioned the sound sensitivities though.

Dunno what will happen in the coming weeks. I'm not really in the frame of mind to deal with the third degree trying to 'defend' my belief in this self dx ATM. Cripes - a 15 minute med meeting and I'll need to sleep for 2 days. This seriously makes me question if it's worth it at all.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I don't have Aspergers because I love my kids. LOL Disregarding people based on these textbook reasons that are easier to see in children but won't always be immediately prevalent in adults is a flagship sign that someone does not have the experience or knowledge to diagnose AS. It makes me angry because people like that waste my time.

I haven't bothered with an official dx. I'm closer to 50 than 40, and I've had a lot of time to evolve as a person and develop skills.

Knowing about AS gives me insight into myself, where I have been, and what my differences are from the norm.

I wonder if you'd get a better response from a therapist with an autistic relative?

As long as they love and have compassion for that relative.

And as long as that relative isn't one of the extremes.

I hesitate to bring up Aspergers because I know I'll be laughed at or talked down to like a child.

Same thing happened to me, OP. I was depressed and not really able to recover from some major transitions and losses in my life. Nothing seemed to explain it until I started looking into Asperger's and suddenly all the pieces fell into place. Therapy wasn't working, because therapy was aimed at helping me with the wrong stuff, and the trauma from spending my life covering my true identity, always hiding the fact that I'm socially about five steps behind everyone else...it made me look like an abuse victim in the worst of my depression--and yet nothing was really helping.

I finally sought help for an Asperger's diagnosis and met with the same reaction. The problem is most clinicians are only trained to assess children. The research is ALL done on children. The diagnostic tools are developed on children and aimed at detecting this in children. In addition, gender differences between men and women (who even as NTs are incredibly different emotionally and socially) have not even been researched. That means it is very hard to find someone who can detect ASDs in adult women. Make sure that you look for someone who has experience with adults, and particularly female adults.

I went to a center that provides services to whole families. There is a diagnostic tool called the ADOS which can be applied to verbal adolescents through adults, which may provide some answers. If you can find someone who uses this tool, and is experienced with using it--and knows how ASDs present in females--you will probably have better luck. The point is, maybe you already know and don't need the diagnosis. BUT, until I got the diagnosis and started working with someone experienced in working with aspies (including meeting with a group of adult AS women), I was stuck and unable to move myself forward.

I'm probably still going to have bouts of depression, but for the first time in my life, I actually accept myself thoroughly (flaws and all) whereas before my internal voices used to constantly attack my failings as appearing normal as I faked my way through life. I hope you can find the right professional to work with. It's well worth the work and effort and the ignorance that you may face until you do.

I am undiagnosed AS. I have no oubt though that I am on the spectrum. I have only known for seven months.

From my point of view, I see no benefit from a formal diagnosis. If I am on the spectum it is a result of my genes and there is nothing I can do to change that. In my work and social life I pass reasonably well as an NT it is only when people get to know the private me that my AS becomes apparent. I have no typical AS 'mannerisms' and I don't think that I am percieved as odd by my peers. In looking at the text books though, I have many of the attributes associated with AS. I would win top prize for my results in the on line AS tests. While the on-line tests are only as credible as anything found on-line these days, the ones that I have tried do reflect my own attributes fairly well. They have also shown up the very strong NT characteristics of my eldest daughter and my wife. There are a few tests linked to by this site.

If you feel a diagnosis is right for you, go for it. Otherwise you can do much to understand your own positioning on the spectrum or if you are there at all. In my case. Understanding that I am will not change me as a person. It is helping me to understand my limitations and why I have difficulty coping with some situations.

On the down side, I am very much in the guilt phase of realisation at the moment. I can see that I have inadvertently and unknowingly caused grief to those close to me over the years. I cannot turn back the clock and I cannot change the way that my mind reasons but I now know that I need to work a little harder than most to understand the bigger picture. I realise that my good intentions have been flawed because I have made judgements on partial information. NTs benefit so much in being able to instinctively communicate in ways that I will never understand and, until recently, did not even know existed.

On the up side, knowing my limitations will arm me to deal better with future situations.

If you do decide to look a little further into yourself, do a self diagnostic or seek an official oppinion, please do this for yourself and not for others. I am by no means an expert and all this is new to me but understanding yourself better may help you to tackle your depression.

Best wishes and good luck

True.

It could easily turn into "My [relative] is Autistic and you are different from them..." That kind of ignorance is almost worst because there'd be no room for discussion. They think they know and that's it.

I've only told a few people in real life that I have AS. Being treated differently (like I'm alien or unpredictable) is a major fear of mine. I was treated that way in the Catholic Church because I married a divorced non-Catholic and my children were excluded from Sacraments and classes because of it. And that's a very silly reason to be treated differently. Having an actual diagnosed condition that alters your perception and behavior... yeah, I'm concerned people won't know how to handle it or will believe that it really means something in the big picture. I'm afraid my kids will be alienated because of their ignorance. So only a few trusted people know and it goes no farther.

Some of these people are really, REALLY incompetent. I had a couple sessions with a psychologist once, for ADD-like symptoms and sensory problems. I had gone to a doctor who was honest enough to admit that he wasn't qualified to diagnose anything. After the first session or two with the psychologist, it became painfully apparent that I actually was more knowledgable about attention deficit disorder than she was.

Did I mention I was fourteen years old when this happened?

In the eighteenth century, laypeople were more effective at treating diseases than were medical doctors, because they stuck to common sense methods. In the twenty-first century, laypeople like us are going to be more effective at identifying, categorizing, and understanding mental disorders than will psychologists. If a fourteen-year-old aspie has a better understanding of abnormal psychology than her doctor, something is wrong.

I've told a few about the possibility and only one (the babysitter that thinks she knows everything because she nannied for one AS girl a long time ago...) basically told me I don't have it. The cousins that know told me they suspected long before I said anything, my sister just said "no wonder you're weird" (Gee, thanks :-\) and a friend of the family who doesn't know much about it.

The friend just seemed interested and let me ramble on about it for over an hour. I took it as a good sign, especially after she called and wanted to come over twice after that.

A professional, though, I have my reservations. Most that are qualified to identify it can only do so in children. Not to mention the pat on the head professionals tend to do when the general populations becomes more aware of things like this.

"Suddenly everyone thinks they have it..."

They just stop listening.

What people fail to realize is that people with AS do have somewhat of an IQ, so that means we can pick up social skills like pseudo eye contact and simple theory of mind. Also, female aspies have are under greater pressure to pick up these things because it's an unwritten expectation for members of our gender to be social. Female aspies are not always as talkative as male aspies and they have a greater tendency to go mute in social situations. I don't know about you, but I definitely don't fit the "verbose" criteria. On the contrary I sound a bit slow when I have to talk face to face. Basically alot of the textbook diagnostic criteria is generalized towards male children who have never been taught social skills. You would need a more experienced clinician for a diagnosis.

If you haven't seen this yet, here it is. It's from Rudy Simone's website.
[img][800:656]http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58d4f6a/images/img244154ad237783e339.JPG[/img]

You should have replied "I would say you aren't very experienced with adults with Asperger's"

Maybe you don't actually have AS but she pretty much incriminated herself on the issue of experience.

I can't read that, rabidmonkey4262. The font is far too small for this poor blind Tea.

Here's the link to the image instead. Rudy Simone is AWESOME, I love her! Her book, Aspergirls, is a must read for women who have or suspect they are on the spectrum. It was life altering for me, and I look at this list of common traits and see myself--I think the only one that doesn't fit me is the misdiagnosis of other psychological disorders when the root issue was AS. Good luck!

http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58 ... 83e339.JPG

GAH! I can't read it still!

Oh well... :-\