So, starting to doubt my self-dx.

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saw that, lolzed to myself picturing Borat doing that retired/ret*d thing

This is your choice if you get a real diagnosis, not mine.
So why should you care asking me about that?
I don't like it much when ppl try to make their decissions dependent from me, please make your choices independently from me. It's your life, not mine.
But at least it explains partly your behaviour in that conversation. Do you think if you would have delusions, you could recognize them being in the middle of one for example? And do you think psychosis, paranoia and delusions have anything to do with intelligence or education?

Last edited by Raziel on 18 Oct 2013, 4:25 am, edited 10 times in total.

Let me introduce you the new autism researcher with his new team:

I'm not interested in a professional diagnosis at the moment. I am perfectly fine coming to my own conclusions. You are the one that thinks it lacks validity so I found it interesting that you yourself where characterizing my traits as autistic. My comment was sarcastic and my apologies for that.

Do you think everyone in the world should seek professional help? I mean any one of us could suffer from psychosis, paranoia and delusions and how would we know? Maybe non of us should make any decisions about anything because we might be delusional.

I'm not a diagnostician and I can't possibly know who here is just self-dx and who here is professionally dx and even if they tell me I can't know for sure. So I make my assumptions about behaviour I've often seen in forums and actually ASD is by far not the only disorder were ppl having a low ToM and second of all I don't clame to be right and also doubt my own opinion on topics like this and don't see it as valid either. Maybe I'm totally wrong about this assumption? I actually can live with that fact. There is nothing wrong about being suspicious about areas like that. So you are just self-dx, I'll remember that.

I didn't even talked about that everyone should be dx professionally and not at all that everyone should seek professional help. You are totally missunderstanding my thoughts. Exactly, we can't know ourselfs for sure if we have from time to time delusions, paranoia or psychotic symptoms. That's why we need a second fiew from the outside and that's all I'm saying.
This has nothing to do if you seek professional help or not.
But so long your symptoms didn't get evaluated, you can't be possibly sure about the nature of those symptoms. But if you really do that or even seek professional help or not is totally up to you. I think the same about ppl who have delusions, paranoia and psychosis by the way. So long they don't harm themselfs or others, it's totally upto them if they seek treatment or not and what they do with their lifes.

It is totally upto you what you do with your life. Is this really so difficult to undestand?

In my profile "Have Aspergers - Undiagnosed" and that IS my point. You keep making assumptions about people you don't know yet feel that their own personal self DX is not valid. I would at least want to know how they came to that conclusion before I made any judgments one way or the other.


So I'm confused then. Should only people who believe they fit the criteria for autism be concerned that they are delusional? I only ask because you brought it up. It does seem to be a bit of a circular argument though as it seems that anyone could be delusional about anything.


I do understand. This is not what I am talking about.

What do you want?
Tell me, what do you want?

I agree with it wholeheartedly. There are many disorders and issues that can look very similar and if you don't have the proper schooling to narrow down the diagnosis then you shouldn't settle on one. I suspected I had aspergers, I would never claim to have it until I had an official diagnosis. The reason being it makes a difference in treatment of the core issue dependant upon what that core issue is. Someone could think they have lung cancer and request chemotherapy when they might actually have pnumonia.

One reason I love/hate these 'asperger' forums is because of this very issue. I come here for information but often I feel like I have to wade through a lot fo posts by people claiming to have aspergers when they clearly don't. To actually be diagnosed with aspergers you have to have a marked impairment in 6 of these areas (at least 2 from group 1, and at least 1 from each of the other two groups); I am bolding the ones I deffinately show.

(1) qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:

(a) marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors, such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction
(b) failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
(c) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest)
(d) lack of social or emotional reciprocity

(2) qualitative impairments in communication, as manifested by at least one of the following:

(a) delay in, or total lack of, the development of spoken language (not accompanied by an attempt to compensate through alternative modes of communication such as gesture or mime)
(b) in individuals with adequate speech, marked impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others
(c) stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language
(d) lack of varied, spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play appropriate to developmental level

(3) restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities as manifested by at least one of the following:

(a) encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
(b) apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals
(c) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting or complex whole-body movements)
(d) persistent precoccupation with parts of objects

I often see someone in a forum such as this looking for help on the aspergers topic and there will be replies where people claiming to be self-diagnosed aspies deny having a lot of these traits. If these traits don't sound like you... you might not be an aspie, which is fine. Its ok to have something else. In my opinion everyone has something.

You are making a lot of assumptions about how people self-diagnose.

Also, if you believe that people can't really diagnose themselves as being autistic, why are you able to claim that they are clearly not autistic when you not only are not a mental health professional yourself, but all you have to go on is forum posts. You have even less information to go on than they do.

It's kind of exhausting how self diagnosis threads always turn into these convoluted appeals to authority while also ignoring the professionals who have said things like "if you think you're autistic, you probably are."

Also, given the number of people on this forum who have self-diagnosed and had that confirmed with a professional diagnosis, this becomes an argue of theory about what people should do while ignoring the reality of what people have done. Your argument rests on a notional basis of professional authority being required to officially label someone as autistic, but you're failing to address the real people who self-diagnosed and followed up with professional diagnoses, thus confirming their self-dx and vindicating any doubts directed at them.

Also, the comparison to lung cancer is rather off. No one is going to just get chemotherapy to treat what they believe to be lung cancer because they'll get tests to identify the actual problem and then go from there. In that case, a self-diagnosis can be wrong, but it at least led the person to seeking professional help.

So yeah, "self-diagnosis is never a good idea" is a demonstrably wrong statement, and easily so. All the logic in the world cannot change the fact that so many people self-dx accurately and until you can address that simple fact your theoretical argument is not relevant.

I read it a view times when the ppl found out that they had something else instead after seeing a psychiatrist.
It's not that rare actually.

You know I once had ALL classic symptoms of a complex medical disorder and got checked for it. My general doctor even talked to an expert because of that and everyone was convinced I had it, then I got tested and suprisingly I was negativ. But eventhough this disorder was not that common the propability was even far less that I fitted all the common symptoms by accident.
S*** happens.

But I know, some think cases like this are rare, when in reality they are not.

When you think you are autistic, you have a higher propability beeing autistic, yes I agree. But I don't belive that the truth is always that simple were I've seen many difficult cases with complex histories actually. But maybe I'm an exeption there...!
You know, I've my reasons to think what I think.

Raziel,

Was that Huntington's disease?

No, it was Porphyria.

I even have relatives from an area were it is more common. Have a with the desease associated extreme light sensitivity with the typical skin problems, strange reactions to many medications, of course the psychiatric symptoms and so on. I'm nearly like a textbook case for porphyria, just one problem... I don't have it.

That's been my point all along. People claiming someones self DX is not valid out of hand is based on far less facts then the self DX.

School isn't the end all be all. The most brilliant people I know couldn't finish school. Now they make a lot more money than the average mental health care professional doing some truly innovative things. I personally got a crappy education at school and taught myself to program robots and make a good living at it. I also taught myself to fix cars and houses. I've never taken my car to a mechanic, hired a plumber, electrician or carpenter. I just installed my own hot air furnace and tuned it to a proper burn. I've also build racecars and off road buggies, program computer application and grow my own garden. I could keep going but I think you get the point. I've been researching autism for about 2 years now. I think I might have learned something about it.