My diagnosis has ruined my life

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I was diagnosed as a kid and that ruined my life. I was treated like I was half my age until I got into middle school. When I was kid I did have friends, but they all treated me like funny. I think they treated me funny because I was in special ed. All this crap has stunted my emotional development. I'm 17, but I feel like I'm 14 or 15. When I believe my diagnosis is true I have zero motivation to to do anything. I don't even feel like being alive is worth it. When I doubt my diagnosis I feel like there is hope. Like life is worth living and I will eventually have more friends and fall in love.

It isn't the diagnosis that ruined your life, it is your condition.

Even if you didn't get a diagnosis, other kids still would have treated you like crap. But you wouldn't have undstood why you were constantly picked on. As it is, you do understand why. That doesn't help any, but I'd like you to believe being what you are without a diagnosis would have been a LOT harder.

You're 17. You're mental age may well be 14 or 15. You're not in a position to know.
Let me put this to you, every diagnostic book out there about Aspergers, all say we are imature for our age.

I don't doubt you are smart at 17, and at that age you've gotten to the point where you can feel your own power. You know what you can do with you're mind. You feel smart, and I'm confident you are very smart in some areas. Just not everywhere.

Aspergers is a difficult and emotionaly restrictive condition. It will take you many years to take charge of yourself and get on top of things. I'm 47 and am still subject to the whims and whiles of Asperger's emotional deficite. It is a hard condition to live with, and harder still to master.

You are at the pinnical of your youth and you want to break free. Be yourself and be treated as an equal.

I'm sorry to do this, but I'm going to hit you with some reality. You will never be there equal, and you will never be treated as an equal. But.... You could be superior in whatever field you chose to make a career in. It's a narrow focus, but you could truly be respected as a profesional, or artist, or whatever you chose to do. You just will never ben an equal.

PS: I'm in engineering, and 47 years old.

Welcome to the real world.

Autism/Aspergers shouldn't prevent you from doing cool stuff

Hi DevilKisses,

For me it was the other way around.

I'm 39 & have only just been diagnosed with Aspergers. If I'd have been diagnosed when I was a child I reckon that my life would have been very much better.
When I was 17 I managed to secure an apprenticeship with the UK Minsistry of Defence. After 3 months I was given the choice to either resign or be sacked. What led to this was both the ADHD & the Aspergers manifesting which led to this "life crossroads" (of course no-one knew at the time why I was the way I was because back then I wasn't diagnosed).
Had I been diagnosed as a child I would have been put on the meds I am now to combat the ADHD, and had support to deal/manage with the Aspergers stuff.

I could look back in time with HUGE regret; but I choose to look forwards.

Thankfully these days there is LOTS of support available for young people in a simular situation to the one I was in.

I'm off to college later this year to try to catch up with all the years that NOT BEING DIAGNOSED has stolen from me. With support I hope to try my best to regain all that time that not being diagnosed stole, and to make a better life for myself.

Last edited by StarCity on 19 Jan 2014, 5:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I have good reasons to doubt my diagnosis. Other people that know me in real life doubt my diagnosis. Even ASD specialists doubt it. I even make normal eye contact according to other people.

I make "normal" eye-contact as well.
Well, actually I'm told that I make too much of it & that some people find it intimidating.

Too bad it's not helpful.

I worry so much that "labeling" my daughter will afect her adversely but, I could never have let her go her whole life undiagnosed. Her dad, who commited suicide in October of 2011, went his while life undiagnosed. I do believe him not having the support he needed to teach him how best to deal with how he felt added to his depression. Not knowing exactly why he acted or thought the way he did absolutely destroyed our marriage. I only started to suspect my daughter having Aspergers just around the time he did it. I'd give ANYTHING to know then what I know now.

Maybe I could have helped him maybe not but, at least I would have had the chance to try.

Don't doubt yourself!! Don't doubt your dx even. Just be yourself and realize that even NTs struggle with relationships and how to just be ourselves. You're not so different that you're "less than" you're just different. You learn differently, you think fldifferently and act differently. That in no way means you are less than anyone else. Even if you are emotionally immature (which my daughter certainly is and it's very noticeable by others), it doesn't mean that there's something "wrong" with you. However, kids are cruel and someone else commented that you would have bedn treated differently even without the SpED label. But, educationally, you would have suffered if not for the dx. The experts may question your dx because you don't present with all the traditional ASD symptoms. Or it may be that, as you've gotten older, some symptoms have become easier to hide.

I can't say if the title has actually affected you in a negative way or not but, you really need to focus less on the dx and more on you and how you deal with your life. 17 is a hard age for anyone and harder still if your dealing with Aspergers. But, you can't give up because I assure you that would cause many others that love and care about you more pain than you can imagine. I know that Aspie's typically struggle with empathy and you may not get why you should care about how it would make others feel but, I hope you'll just keep fighting to find a way to maneuver through your life. Like the others here said, you can still be amazing at whatever you choose to become in life. I promise you that you can even fall in love and be loved. I loved my husband more than he ever understood and I always will. So pls don't give up!

I wholeheartedly disagee. There is no way in hell that I'm ever going to consider myself as being inferior to a neurotypical. NTs put their pants on the same way I do; I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of thinking that they're better than I am because they happen to not be on the autism spectrum. Saying that a person on the spectrum should not expect to be treated as an equal and to just accept it and get over it is horrible advice, if I may be so blunt.

I do doubt my diagnosis. Doubting my diagnosis makes me feel like I'm human, believing my diagnosis makes me feel inhuman. I just don't feel like the person inside me has Asperger's.

Unfortunately I have to deal with this label every day. I constantly feel like I'm put in a box because of this. This diagnosis hasn't helped me. I think my problems are just psychological or physical issues.

The psychological issues are caused by the label. There is proof that being misdiagnosed can cause psychological issues. Just read other threads on this forum. I'm sick of people thinking that this diagnosis is the ultimate answer. I know that this diagnosis has helped many people, it just hasn't helped me. I'm starting to think this is the new garbage can diagnosis.

I'm not saying this to be arrogant, but I feel like I'm more like a gifted kid than an Aspie. I've read that gifted kids are often misdiagnosed with ADHD or Asperger's. I do remember that when I was being diagnosed I didn't respond to clowns or puppets. I thought they were stupid and childish.
They even mention asynchronous development. I feel like I'm emotionally 14 or 15 and mentally in my 20s-30s. This explains why I tend to get along best with those age groups.

I have that doubt too, not sure if I have aspergers or just giftedness. They both have similar characteristics like unusual interests and sensitivity. But I guess the main difference is that in aspergers there's this issue about not reading social clues, in gifted people this would only happen if they don't have practice with social situations. Maybe it's the case you look for highly-sensitive people too, overlaping symptons.


Why don't you tell us a little bit about what characteristics led to your diagnosis and why you are doubting it now

People treat you like you a bit slow?

People treated me like I was sub human filth and I did not have a diagnosis as a kid.

In this world there are people living in war zones people that are blind deaf or quadriplegic other people have terminal cancer.

Aspergers and Autism at their root are a communication deficit there is a bit more but that is the main thrust.

I have the condition too and I am a different person on the inside to what I am able to get across to others.

Getting depressing and felling sorry for yourself will only make things worse.

We all go through negative and positive moods you need to concentrate on the positive.

I get depressed from time to time but I have learned it's not the end of the world it always passes.

Speaking for myself, no. I was a confident (not cocky, just confident and sure of myself) person before I was dx'ed at 31. I knew my weaknesses and strengths and I the only thing I lacked was a job. When I was 26 I went on my own to NYC (I'm European), and I never saw any reason why I shouldn't be able to do so, and I had a great trip.
FFW some years and I was dx'ed and it has had a detrimental effect on me. Now I can't go to the doctor on my own because I don't trust my ability to get my points across, which never was a problem before that. I went to the doc alone from I was a teen.
It has helped me understand some "why's" about myself but it has also ruined me.
The only thing I am thankful for is that I got 31 years of freedom. If I had had this dx shoved down my throat at an earlier age I wouldn't have had the best experiences of my life.


I grew up mainstreamed and I was only picked on at one point of my life, and that was at a point where I didn't engage in my usual behavior, so my typical behavior has never made anyone pick on me. I've never been popular, but I've been left alone. Save for 4th grade I wasn't treated like crap by other children.

And I am very glad I wasn't treated like I was spesh-uhl, it would've made me think of myself as inferior and never try anything at any point.
I was traffic safe at an early age, I understood stranger danger, and I was allowed the same freedom as other children, as well I should. My parents rightfully knew I wasn't lacking in any of those things,

At least I got 31 years!


That is extremely individual. I was a precocious child and fairly normal maturity-wise as a teen, but then I kinda stopped, and maybe even regressed and stopped for many years. Now I'm finally making progress again, and have been little by little for a couple of years, thanks to one new experience and some new insights.
Even in my preschool years I had enough ToM to understand what this boy understands and use it to tease people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0zTg65aaCY
I also had enough ToM at that age to predict how some things I would say would be taken (especially negatively). I understood how to push buttons of some other children. For instance at 4 I told another girl who annoyed me that she was a little baby, just to make her sour. When I said bad things as a child, I knew what I was doing.

In one of Gillberg's books I read a story of a 6 (?) year old aspie boy who would silently follow other children inside and go to their room and take their comics and take these home. To me it sounds equally incredible that he supposedly managed to sneak in and that he thought what he did was okay. That's not something I would have done at that or any other age.

And as for the experts, they also say we are also good at maths, sciences and tech, we are naive and trusting, They also say we're not creative and we don't like fiction. None of that holds true for me.


If by that you mean lacking emotions, then speak for yourself. I have never lacked emotions or 'complex' emotions. I have strong feelings and I have nuances of feelings. I have felt every feeling I have ever heard of, and I know what I feel.
I do have problems showing love and sympathy, but I feel them.

Two thoughts....

1. Your Dx didn't "ruin" your life unless people who knew your Dx deliberately treated you as if you were a piece of fragile china that couldn't risk being put under pressure. That would be a disservice because even autistic people need "stress tests" to know what their limits are. Being overprotective is not being helpful.

2. Not have a Dx has it's own problems. Had I known at 17 that I was autistic, some doors would have been closed to me, and I might have always resented the loss of opportunity, but I think I would still prefer that to blundering in the dark with no understanding of why I couldn't' master simple things everyone else was mastering in life.

I think I'm okay at reading social cues. I don't know exactly how good or bad I am at reading them. I don't think anyone can know that. I do know that I pick up on at least some social cues.

I just don't know what to talk about or do around people who aren't my emotional or intellectual peers. I think NTs have this problem as well. It's just that their emotional and intellectual peers are closer to their chronological age.

When I was a baby I got some sort of infection. That led to having extreme food sensitivities and sleep problems. Before the infection I was totally normal. The infection also caused me to display some autistic-like behaviors.

My mom didn't really know what to do. I never really fit the criteria completely and a lot of people refused to diagnose me. My mom just went from doctor to doctor until she found someone who would diagnose me. She mostly did this for funding. My family had a low income back then.

My mom decided to treat the infection naturally. My most severe symptoms went away on their own within a week or two. The other ones took longer to fade away. I still have some residual symptoms, but they are disappearing as well.