I am tired of having this fixation

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I can’t stop obsessing over my diagnosis. I want to forget about it but I can’t. I can’t just end it and say oh I have Aspergers or it would feel like I want to have it and it doesn’t make me feel good about myself. To make things less confusing for me I just tell myself I have PDD-NOS but then on here I find out there are aspies who are slow in self help skills and in the criteria it says There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction) and curiosity about the environment in childhood and it makes me even more confused. I don’t know if the criteria is just bull or maybe lot of us really don’t have AS and we have PDD-NOS instead. I can’t even stop thinking why am I diagnosed with AS instead of PDD-NOS. I hate this confusion, it's driving me crazy.
I’m just going to have to ask my mother why the doctor diagnosed me with aspergers instead of PDD and if she has heard of it. I also want to ask her if I was slow in the curiosity about my childhood environment and adaptive behavior. I hope she will answer them and not get mad at me. She says the closest the doctor could come to for a correct diagnoses was Aspergers. Wouldn’t PDD-NOS been correct since its used for when the patient doesn’t meet any of the specific PDD criterias. I seem to jump all over the spectrum because some of my problems seem higher on the spectrum than AS and other times I seem lower than AS because I’m doing NT things and then I’m on the AS.
I’m thinking about seeing a counselor or something who knows about AS and other autism conditions so I can get some answers about the criteria and all, I will see I have PDD or AS. Then my confusion will be all over.

Would it make you feel any better to know that the diagnostic criteria are being rewritten, as we speak?

Would it help if you knew that the people who are writing the diagnostic criteria don't know everything, and they certainly don't know as much about it as we, collectively, know ourselves?

Also, PDD-NOS means Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified. The NOS is very important - it's a diagnosis that is given when they can't pin down anything else. Not to denigrate the diagnosis, but it's like the rubbish can in a way - if the doctor can't figure out the EXACT diagnosis based on the current, faulty criteria, he/she can choose this one.

Please don't let yourself worry about this. You're fine.

likedcalico i often feel the same way about my diagnosis. My parents make it harder by suggesting that i dont have AS and i should get a second opinion... aylissa is right though, the diagnostic criteria are a long way off being set in stone. I wouldnt be surprised if in the future that sub categorise aspergers into several different conditions....

ne way just be glad to be you! being an individual is a real blessing,

all the best.

and after all, what is a diagnosis?
aspergers is just a quite random delineation on a multifacetted spectrum - whether the criteria are delineated that way that you can be officially called an aspie or not dont really have an impact on who you are, what you have problems with and what you are good at.

an online friend recently asked me what i think must be wrong in our times that almost everyone has this or that disorder - and i answered that i am sure its not that people in our times are more prone to something - its just that people are happy to categorize things, and therefore have a name to as many things as possible. what can be called a name conforms to certain rules and therefore, the chaotic horror of total individuality is eased somewhat.

if i am called aspergers by doctors or not doesnt really affect me - from what is written about aspies, i saw that i have a lot of problems in common, yet on this forum, i see as many configurations of problems and abilities as there are users. each of us is different, also in aspieness. we can use the label of "aspie" to find people with similar configurations (rather: configurations to a similar effect), but that doesnt imply that we all have exactly the same thing.
its just a scientific categorization, and by that, very random in regards to the nature of things.

The diagnosis isn't nearly as important as the symptoms. It is a label, nothing more. Most useful for insurance purposes for the majority of the psychological "issues" out there. (Issues isn't likely the best word, though I didn't like disorders either, couldn't think of a good one so I just picked one.)

Sometimes I wanna cure my aspies 4 the same reason as you