Worse Psych Advice you've had:

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All this childhood analysis and implanting false memories...
Sounds very Freudian and psychoanalytical to me.
Freud was similarly accused of planting false memories in his patients.

A long time ago, so that explains it.

That story becomes more amusing every time you tell it hear. Little details that I hadn't heard before spice it up just a bit more.


For me, it wasn't what people told me, it was what people told others... My dad, although he suspected me to be on the spectrum from a very young age, was convinced that it wasn't possible by others because I had a high IQ. I also got diagnosed with ODD, which basicly means I did what I did because I enjoyed disobeying. That was not the case, I desired simply to enjoy life and nothing more. My dad was told to treat me very harshly and strictly until I learned to behave properly, but when that wasn't working in the time frame it should have, I started to get looked at for something else, and got diagnosed AS. My life was hell during the ODD diagnosis though.

Definitely this whole:

"How does it make you feel?" business with no practical strategies.

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned AS to her...

That is so sad that someone had to put that little seed of doubt in your mind, casting a shadow on your real memories of your grandfather. You never really do erase that doubt, even if you know that logically it didn't happen. I didn't start to put the pieces together until 2 of my children were dxed with autism (one classic autism the other PDD-NOS). That's when it all started to make sense. My sensory issues are not "body memories", my anxiety is not "PTSD", and my social issues are not due to "a bad attitude".

Definitely this whole:

"How does it make you feel?"
business with no practical strategies.

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned AS to her...

At a guess, because it illustrates two diametrically opposed fads in psychology and psychiatry, based on the nature/nurture debate. On the nature/medical side, one fad is that all problems can be solved through medication. On the nurture side, there is the fad that all problems must be the result of childhood sexual abuse. That idea probably has done even more harm than the theory that autism is caused by "refrigerator mothers". Berthajane Vanderbilt describes the consequences of that idea. Back on the medical side again, there was the fashion for lobotomy, created by Freeman on the basis of someone else's experiment with one chimpanzee, if I remember correctly.

I welcome the latest fashion in the medical field: evidence-based medicine. It's revolutionary! If you look at evidence, you could find out what can be done by talking and what by medical intervention. Imagine that! Do you think someone should tell the chemists, physicists, geologist etc about evidence, so that they can try it, too?


I don't know how reliable the profiling is. I am sure that explaining everything by repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse has little basis in fact. And if you engage in recovered memory therapy, you can't rely on what you get. It could be true, it could be false. There are hundreds of research papers on the subject, and several books. The trend seems to be that the people who do the experiments say "You can create false memories, with the procedures you use in recovered memory therapy, so be careful!", but the people who do the therapy more often say "Nonsense! I know what I'm doing, and what I get my patients to tell me is all true!"

Someone who concentrates only on the possibility of repressed memories of sexual abuse and excludes all else I would immediately classify as a quack.

I actually don't remember much of my childhood, and I know that I have forgotten a lot of things I don't want to remember, and I can still remember some things I wish never happened, and I wish I could forget. I know for a fact that I was never sexually assaulted though, as that has nothing to do with my problems.

Evidence based psychology is something I also agree with. Imagine that! Can you believe it is new?

Still I am a little suspicious. After all, SO MUCH of this "evidence" is padded research that is paid for by Pharm Companies.

I was involved in a study that was going to make it known to alll that Paxil works for ABC. It was awful.

So I am not sure about all this "evidence based" stuff.

I do wish that we were treated in a a NEUROLOGICAL setting nad not psych setting.

WHy ARE we treated as psych pts? Why are we not treated as Neuro pts?

Lol yeah, it's probably one of my favourite stories because it's so ridiculous. I have memories of this woman telling me about this patient with a sleeping disorder she had 'cured', and showing off all this memorabilia type stuff she was given in "everlasting gratitude" or something by the parents, and the kid, etc etc. I also remember her talking to me for like an hour at least one session about not "beating around the bush", and for that whole hour I had this beautiful vivid mental imagery of bushes in forests and whatnot, and I don't think I actually understood a word she was saying; I think I had taken the whole "beating around the bush" analogy literally and had conjured up this entire show-reel in my imagination.
Like, me going around these bushes and getting scratched and her saying somehow I had to magically get *through* the bushes, etc etc.

I don't know much about ODD, what's that? I've been diagnosed with ADHD when I was around 17 or so, but I personally have my doubts about that diagnosis.

The whole implanting childhood sexual abuse memories is sadly not a dead practice. Just last year, where I live, there was a case of a woman coming to believe, after encouragement from her psychiatrist, that she had been sexually abused by her father. The father was taken to court and was suspended from his job (I think. He may have lost it).

In the end, it was discovered he had done no such things to his daughter, and the memories the psychiatrist had probed for and 'found' (and which she had come to believe were real memories) were not genuine.

For me, I'm lucky that the worst advice I've received from a professional was merely ridiculous. I told him I don't get on with my flatmates, and he said, "Well, you could tell them you have AS."

I really cannot imagine any situation where it would be advantageous to tell people with whom one is not friendly about having AS. This information would probably wind up being used as ammunition.

ODD is oppositional defience disorder. Basicly the person who has it doesn't behave because he prefers to be an a** and screw with people and break rules, and disobey people, and act like a childhood criminal basicly. In adulthood, if ODD exists at that time, the person will likely end up a convicted criminal because of the nature of enjoying and wanting to be disobedient. Treatment is punishing to break the will for the person to do wrong and borders something I call personality reconditioning, which is a form of torture designed to force someone to give up their beliefs and allow reprogramming of the personality portion of the mind (sorry guys, AS isn't personlity, or the ODD therapy would have worked on me, so personality reconditioning will not make you NT). I have used a basic personality recoditioning to alter peoples beliefs about a situation, and the fact that I was successful shows people don't want to argue with me, and I have been good with arguement since a very young age (gr.1), and personality reconditioning just flowed naturally to me once I learned how it worked.

Two weeks ago I was told to do yoga to make the thought insertions go away. Sorry, relaxation techniques don't actually fix that.

Actually, my brother has AS and ODD, and I've always thought of it as an anxiety disorder. Basically, he has a very finely tuned fight-or-flight sense, and little things trigger it, and he chooses to fight instead of flee. It's almost admirable. Perhaps the diagnose has changed since your time?

Well, nothing as bad as all that. Worst I had was going to someone I strongly suspect followed the psychoanalytical path. For those not familiar, that's basically like trying to get help from a slightly smarter and more competent version of ELIZA. That didn't last long.

Sorenna:
"WHy ARE we treated as psych pts? Why are we not treated as Neuro pts?" - what difference is there between the two that's relevant?

Me: "My Moban is making me hallucinate like crazy! I am seeing stuff 24/7 and even occasionally hearing voices which it wasn't this bad BEFORE the Moban. I think I need to get off the Moban." By the way Moban is an anti psychotic and one of its "rare" side effects is that it makes psychotic symptoms worse.
My pdoc: "You have to continue taking it until your next visit (this was awhile ago) to see if its going to work"
The good news is in the end (the last visit, not the one before) said I finally can get off of it on Monday. But the thing is right now I am having severe teeth pain from grinding and probably broke one tooth and damaged several others and I have several pain related conditions in my shoulder, it even hurts to type or use the computer or draw, so I am taking painkillers which I can't take with my psych meds (because it is a narcotic) so I stopped taking most of my meds (including some of the less powerful pain meds that didn't touch the pain) and I haven't had any bad results, no increased psychosis or anything like the pdoc would expect! So maybe, my "schizoaffective" was med induced and I really don't need anti psychotics!

Look up the wikipedia article on ODD. He may be OCD, but I believe it is impossible for him to be ODD and AS, the two mindsets are opposite to each other. To be ODD, you have to be aware of what you are doing. And as for finely tune fight or flight, I have that, always have, always fought, not because I wanted to, but because I honestly thought I was right. An ODD person would consciously choose to fight, not in a fight or flight response.

Wow, I can see how being diagnosed with ODD would be really upsetting. It seems like a very harsh thing to diagnose anyone with, couldn't they instead say the child was "troubled" or "had behaviour management problems".