How can I prove that I *don't* have aspergers?

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Well if we go by a list of things people on here who have been told they couldn't possibly have AS for, it would be...

At least ONE of the following:

Having made at least one friend in life.
Not looking like you have AS
Able to hold a conversation or speak articulately.
Over the age of 18
Is too self aware
Can make eye contact
Knows to say "hello" and "goodbye"
Is a girl
Doesn't seem like another person with AS
Has capacity for emotions
Doesn't like numbers
etc etc etc...

If you would like a more official way not to have AS, and had been diagnosed as a child, you can wait 10 years until your records are destroyed and are an adult, and then tell people you have AS, at which point their strong emotions of doubt will officially absolve you of having AS.

Honestly though, there's a new brain scan that can detect autism and AS accurately a supposed ninety something percent of the time.

That's genius!











Of course, this means you're not Autistic.

Exactly what I was thinking! (The entire post's humor doesn't seem autistic enough.)

But, seriously, [bold = affirmative; underline = negative]...



I know not any one of those in isolation is really supposed to be a negation of possessing the affliction, but would the above combination suffice for 'proving the negative'?

swbluto, you sound as aspie as anyone here, to me.

and if you feel at home on the board, who cares. otherwise if you cannot live with the ambiguity, go for a diagnostic assessment.

And, how would I do that?

Do I just go the doc and say... "I think I might have a mental disorder. Please check and tell me what you think it is!"

Or do I ask directly ask about aspergers? Because, you know, the power of suggestion could be particularly powerful... if it hasn't already.

The thing about social geniuses is that they convince anyone what they want them to believe about themselves, particularly what they themselves might believe... now, I'm not saying that I'm particularly genius in the social realm, but it's possible... maybe. You know, a hidden social genius?

It's entirely possible to not be disagnosably autistic but have many autistic traits. You could be half and half. Splitting the difference. Bridging the gap. Our brother from an NT mother...

I'm not sure what you're asking though... do WANT to be an Aspie or NOT be an Aspie?

Why would I wish for something that would make my life harder?

If you've got it, you've already got it. lol

As for seeking a diagnosis... that depends on your area but it's generally not a good idea to just flat out say you think you have X.

If you feel you need answers, I would suggest going to your GP with a list of symptoms that concern you. Don't mention any diagnosis, just give the list of symptoms. Before doing this, though, you should check into ASD services and professionals specializing in ASD locally to get an idea of what kind of road you may have ahead of you.

i'm not sure what you're getting at with this social genius stuff.

from stories i have read some doctors are ill informed about the autistic spectrum (or have issues with relinquishing power and thus won't take a patient's self-knowledge seriously) and if you don't bang your head into a wall or sit in a corner rocking, they will dismiss your concerns. if you trust your doctor, you could inquire, and ask for a referral. or you could seek out a diagnostician yourself but look for one who regularly sees adults.

For someone with such a genius IQ you sure are making some pretty silly threads. You can google everything you want to know about the criteria RE ASD and Aspergers and a DX is not going to make you a different person. If you have AS, your life is just as hard as it is now. If you do not have AS your life if just as hard as it is now. What exactly is this thread about?

Numero uno: I never claimed I was a "genius", and anyone who presumes IQ denotes genius is clearly not one themselves. The "social genius" thing is highly unrelated to IQ, [I'm responding to katzefrau here] and the implication about the 'social genius' part was that, if I were a social genius, I would be able to persuade people to believe whatever I may have believed myself about my myself, so if I believed I possessed aspergers, I could just be exceedingly talented in subconsciously bringing up particular diagnostic criteria and relevant evidence to support my suspicion, and thus everybody could be unwittingly hoodwinked into believing I possessed aspergers when, in reality, I might not. Of course, I could.

Numero dos: I was simply challenging someone's logic in responding -- it's this thing called a conversational reply. Yes, of course I realize that my desires do not change my neurocognitive reality. Oh, the tragedy of life.

I'm starting to think I'm trying to word things to influence everyone to believe that I don't possess aspergers, lol. I hope it works! *crosses fingers*

I still don't get what this thread is about.....

If I was to go off and convince all of the PsyD's who labeled me will that change something? I don't think so.

What are you (specifically) trying to do (to what end) with this thread and this information?

Thread's purpose: How can I prove that I *don't* have aspergers?

Basically, I'm looking for surefire diagnostic criteria for proving that I *don't* have aspergers.

Something like...

You do not possess aspergers if at least 4 of the following 7 features apply to you:

You've had a genuine best friend (That is, it was reciprocated)
You're able to make eye contact
You're able to engage in small talk
You know what it means for a check to bounce.
You don't talk in single-sided monologues about your favorite subject.
People are comforted by your presence.
People distinctively remember you.

Maybe something like that...

is this dry humor? i still don't understand.

how could anyone be that manipulative (worst case scenario) or socially adept, thoroughly subsumed by the power of suggestion, unaware of what behaviors or traits exist and what ones are a product of deeply repressed subconscious motives, and yet systematic, blunt, motivated by the need for absolute answers and introspective all at once?

assuming you are sincere (just, IMO, confusing):
i will answer your original question with a question. what precedence is there for disproving the existence of something? you can rule it extraordinarily unlikely if virtually none of the typical criteria are met, but diagnosing (or even self-diagnosing) is not an exact science. there are people on the autistic spectrum who post on this board (or whose parents post on this board) who (among other things):

can maintain unflinching eye contact
are married
don't or are unable to talk much at all, let alone monologue
can surely balance a checkbook (?)
and so on

if i am not mistaken, even the presence of schizophrenia would not necessarily mean you are not autistic.

It was just a possibility that couldn't be so easily discarded, but it seems you've thoroughly evaluated the plausibility and I suppose it would be a bit unlikely, and would not easily escape the evaluation of someone sophisticated enough in their interpersonal judgment. I presume many posters here don't actually possess aspergers and would actually be well suited to interpersonal judgment, since there are multiple other reasons why one would feel you're on the 'wrong planet' unrelated to autism, such as the type who would laboriously formulate the next dangerous set of chemicals to use on unsuspecting victims in a scheming scientist's efforts to take over the world!



Personally, I see the autism spectrum and the neurotypical spectrum as lying on one big combined autism/neurotypical spectrum. In that regard, I'll admit I'm probably somewhere *up there*, but so far, there exist no diagnostic criteria for deriving a percentage (or sets of percentages). So, it's not that I believe the 'true answer' is an absolute one, but those are the most practical to obtain with the current diagnostic climate. (Maybe another half-century in the future, we'll have brain scanners that will tell you what exactly your social abnormalities are, and then maybe there'll be a combined autism score based on that analysis.)



Well, remember, diagnosis usually deals with 'clusters of symptoms', not just one here and there. So, in the same way there are 'clusters of symptoms' that one must meet to be officially diagnosed autistic, I'm looking for 'clusters of symptoms' one must meet to be officially diagnosed neurotypical. I'm thinking it might be easier for me to prove I'm neurotypical than it would be to prove I have aspergers, which is the rationale for 'proving the negative'. ("not autistic" = neurotypical, so we could just think of proving neurotypicism as 'proving the positive', which isn't as hard as proving the negative, is it?)

Last edited by swbluto on 06 Mar 2011, 10:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

How about if you like parties and social chit chat, and consider any weekend without some social life wasted, and try to talk to as many people as possible, because the more you talk to people the better you feel about yourself? That's probably enough to make you not an aspie.

Of course that doesn't mean you're "normal". My mom is a social butterfly as described above, but she's not normal either. I'm certain she has BPD.