It's confirmed: I must get undiagnosed: how?

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Thank you for the video link, that's very interesting.
I noticed something interesting the other day. When I behave hyperactive (I don't have ADHD, I just have that in acute stress or overload) people very often misstrust me, especially strangers, but when I behave in an OCD-manner (I've very slight tendencies) than people behave in the opposite way. I even get time to finish my OCD-things and so on.
I was very astonished when I noticed this.
But it actually goes in the same direction.

I also like the new diagnostic criteria for ASPD. But I think that it propably doesn't apply to all criminals anymore how I understood that? That it's more the old concept of psychopathy. But so it's also easier to missdiagnose people with ASPD who don't have it and I also think that the name "psychopathy" applyes better to it. Because the old diagnostic criteria of ASPD just meant that someone has antisocial behaviour and not necesseraly that the person is actually a psychopath.



I've the same guess.
To beginn I wasn't sure if you have Borderline or something else, but now, because of your description I think you have Borderline. The thing is that many psychiatrists still have difficulty diagnosing personality disorders in autistic people, also because of the high overlapp and they don't want to "overdiagnose" autistic people.



I find that highly interesting.
In the past when I had severe traumatic symptoms I had also huge trouble to read social cues, I could usually understand.
It was like the "social areas" of my brain where complitely shutting down by stress. But also other autistics told me, that they have this, just in a slight version compared to me. But the trauma mostly passed and so did the symptom.



My personal guess is, that the extreme male brain theory doesn't apply to all autistics, like all the other theories about autistics. So far I know is the problem with ALL autism theories, that they just explain some subgroupes of autistics, but not all.



Here were I live it's the same. Insurences just pay for DBT when you are diagnosed with Borderline, that's why BPD is highly overdiagnosed in my area.
DBT is supposed to be very good and I also would like to give it a try, because it also helps by other problems and disorders and so on, but the problem is the diagnosis thing.

I don't think autistic people as a group have "hyper male brains." That's a silly theory based on social constructs, and doesn't reflect what autistic neurology actually looks like.

Should I bring up BPD ("quiet," "waif" or "acting in" type) to my current therapist who has a ton of data and has run multiple tests, even though she claims she doesn't usually diagnose personality disorders in the presence of ASD?

I have so far kept quiet about it for several reasons. For one, until I heard about the "acting in" type, I wasn't sure enough I had it myself, and I didn't want to be embarrassed or seen as a hypochondriac. I think I have plenty of evidence to back it up now, though. Plenty. The PDSQ I took a long time ago before I knew about BPD strongly supports it as well.

My psychologist has a whole bunch more evidence. The question is: Is she going to simply overlook it due to rigid framework thinking and stupid f*****g gender stereotypes?

Here's perhaps the problem. Although I may seem free (even too free) to talk about personal embarrassing stuff here, I am the opposite in person. There are two things I can't talk about and haven't mentioned:

1. self-harm
2. history of sexual abuse

I literally can't talk about them. For the first one, hearing myself talk about it makes me think another listener would think I am just pathetic and looking for sympathy. The second one, I literally can't talk about. I go mute.

I go mute in a whole bunch of situations, even little things.
I wrote them down and also a lot to my old therapist. I'm not sure if it really helps, but it was at least a way to comunicate for me. To "say" what needed to be said.
I didn't do this with my new therapist and somehow he's nice but I don't really care about his opinion.

I don't really see any evidence that the can't coexist. Maybe the DSMIV is written is such way as to make diagnosis of a personality disorder harder if the symptoms can explained by something else. In your case they can't be better explained by anything else though. I think the problem is a lot of female ASD people are misdiagnosed with BPD because they might be emotionally immature and have meltdowns. The causes are different though. For an ASD rage is usually brought on by stress or inability to cope with imposed changes. For BPD it's brought on by feelings of shame.



The problem is to really get help you probably will have to mention everything eventually. I sense you're uneasy about bringing things up that might implicate your parents negatively. Since you mentioned you're thinking of moving ( is it a real plan, or just thinking? ) you probably want to find someone you can stick with for a while. For now with the current therapist it's probably okay to just take it slow.

Well, it's funny I sometimes have that uncanny sense as well, despite being extremely introverted and socially inept. It's more that I feel extra sensitive to other people's sensitivities, almost to a disabling degree. Like I notice when people are uncomfortable or embarrassed in any way and it sets me on edge. Some of it might just be projection but I don't think it is all the time. Most of the time I feel like I'm the opposite of the "blunt aspergers" stereotype in that I'm often too eager to please and say what I think people want to hear. I only let down my guard and become blunt when someone upsets me, or when I'm around people I'm totally comfortable with (like family members).

I also have horrible anger sometimes (thoughts so horrible I'd rather not even say) and have had at least one significant public incident (thankfully the police didn't show up or anything) but I fundamentally see myself as a very gentle person and I'm so reserved most of the time people who don't really know me wouldn't necessarily know anything. I definitely have the right temperament that if I experienced significant abuse and wasn't asexual I would fit more of the symptoms. I did score above the threshold for BPD on an official personality test I took (professionally administered, NOT an internet test). I scored even higher for depression and dysthymia though.


The way you think and write you do seem to be more of a systematizer to me. You describe yourself in an analytical way. Being a systemizer does not mean you have to be a calculating emotionless person. The idea that thought/intellect and emotion are some kind of mutually exclusive dichotomy is quite frankly idiotic and based on silly sexist stereotypes.


That's kind of a difficult spot. I'd have trouble trying to self-diagnose myself to some psychiatrist even with all the evidence because I'd feel like I was impinging on their role as "expert" or making them look stupid, that or fear being arrogantly rebuffed leaving me with a mixture of self-doubt and resentment. Maybe my fears are irrational. I suppose you could bite the bullet and try. If it doesn't go well then you know you need to find a different therapist.

Last edited by marshall on 04 May 2013, 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

I guess it could work if you go to a therapist and just simply put it in a question like: "Can you help me to find out, if I've BPD?" and not on a demanding way like: "I've BPD, now diagnose me with it." If you ask a nice question than they still feel as experts how I see it.

I guess I'm just projecting my own experience with a psychiatrist that acted like a douchebag when I brought up that I was experiencing the symptoms of akathisia. I think the guy was denying it and acting defensive because he didn't think the medications he prescribed could possibly cause that kind of side effect because it wasn't "officially" listed and he had never experienced it with anyone else. No doubt pharmaceutical companies get away with not listing known side effects so as to not interfere with sales. I just can't stand dealing with arrogant "experts" that refuse to admit they could ever be wrong.

So...if female aspies are often misdiagnosed as BPD due to gender bias, is it common for the reverse to happen for men with BPD? It seems like both have some similarities but also some differences that hit at core gender biases in Western culture.

Furthermore, if I have a few autistic symptoms, how many of those are simply due to having Nonverbal Learning Disorder, and not autism? I am almost sure I do not meet the DSM V criteria for an Autism Spectrum Disorder, although I met the DSM IV criteria for PDD-NOS and Asperger's.

The similarity is both can have meltdowns and appear immature. Aspie meltdowns are due to anxiety, sensory issues, interruptions, or disruptions of plans/routines while BPD meltdowns are due to things like life disappointments, a hurt ego, or fear of rejection. I guess the core cultural difference is females seem to be allowed to display childishly extreme emotion or even have physically violent meltdowns while males are supposed to always be stoic and controlled. Because males tend to repress emotions more (or at least the outward appearance) it's going to be easier to miss BPD in males.


It really depends on your history. I'm not sure I strictly fulfill the criteria either as an adult. I certainly met most all of them at one point as a child though. My biggest problems as an adult are things not even listed on the criteria, things like anxiety, inertia / impaired executive functioning, and imbalanced cognitive abilities (being extremely good at some things and absolutely sucking at others). I still have social issues but that seems like something I could overcome today if I had more of a will to try.

Definitely complex. I definitely fulfilled some of the symptoms as a child, including language difficulties. I also had issues playing with other children but it was more due to trying to dominate them. I often had creative game ideas that other children loved, so I definitely did play with other children and probably had peer relationships "appropriate to age" by the time I was 7. But definitely lots of behavioral and acting out problems--and sometimes violent tantrums that involved property destruction. How much was due to NLD, ADHD, and PTSD? No idea. From age 8 and on, I was almost completely isolated from other children due to strict religious parents and growing up on a subsistence farm in a remote area. So I have no idea how my social life would have been in high school. Once I emerged from this environment, at age 18, I definitely had extreme social anxiety, bad social skills, and trouble with reading nonverbal communication involving others outside my family.

My irritants seem to be due to a variety of factors that span the gamut from BPD triggers to AS triggers, though I'm not sure sensory overload is a thing. It might be. When I'm tired, noise and chaos bother me a lot.

By the way, how does one ever get diagnosed with BPD? I have another appointment tomorrow, but unlike two days ago, I don't really feel BPD at the moment. I know having a totally different perspective on self and life from one moment or day to the next is part of BPD, but so how does anyone get diagnosed with it?

People on the autism spectrum can be widely different. When I was 3 or so my parents were concerned that I was having absence seizures because sometimes I just sit and not respond to anything, though I was normally responsive and talkative. They did all this testing and couldn't find anything. It turned out I just went mute and stopped processing information for short periods. I also have auditory processing disorder where I have trouble understanding people on a telephone or with a lot of background noise which I can't filter out. I also went through a phase where I had to change my underwear and socks several times per day because I couldn't stand if they felt at all dirty or sweaty and I got extremely obsessed over it to the point where I couldn't get my mind off it. Plus I was a terribly fussy eater for a long time. When I played I often made up games but got upset when other children didn't follow the rules I made up. I don't know if this was intentionally dominating but I know I mostly played with kids either younger than me (including my younger brother) or much older than me (including adults) because I could get them to go along with me. I also had obsessions that I would talk nonstop about for months at a time. These sorts of things definitely pointed to me being on the autism. I don't know whether I ever had trouble reading body language or tone of voice. More often I was oversensitive and tended to think people were angry at me if I noticed even the most minor frustration or abruptness in their tone. I also had this thing where I would make adults take quizzes or make them watch something and then watch them and obsess over their reaction. If I had no theory-of-mind or understanding of expressions I don't think I would be doing things like that but it was considered odd.


I found I've been generally irritable my entire life. I'm easily stressed and get very impatient sometimes, especially standing in lines or waiting in traffic. As a kid I would sometimes have temper tantrums for no other reason than I was extremely bored and it felt intolerable. Also, whenever I've tried new sport that it turned out I wasn't naturally good at I'd tend to get pissed off and rage-quit right away. I have no idea if this is autism related or what.


I wish I knew. Maybe you could ask to take an official personality test.

Could you tell me more about this?

Also, the other stuff, definitely can relate. The obsessions were definitely there in childhood as well. I would sit for two hours watching an ocean science video and then cite it back verbatim after seeing it once, and I had obsessions like this, flags, nature, or similar things that I talked about all the time. However, story and narrative played a huge role in my childhood imagination as well, which is probably the only way I could actually play with other children. I tended not to so much make up games with rules as to create entire worlds and narratives. Other children often loved it. As a very young child, my parents told me I deliberately avoided other children, and I'd often have conflicts as an older child too. But I remember at 7 having a similar-aged boy and similar-aged girl as friends, as well as a 14-year-old girl as a very good friend, probably my best friend. Anyway, I was very sheltered so never had the opportunity to be bullied. To the extent I had problems with other children, they were nearly all my fault exclusively.

I can definitely identify with you regarding the tantrums. I also definitely had a language delay, however, and even a regression period from 4-5 where I lost almost all comprehensibility.

I don't know the name of the one I took. It was all T/F questions and the results were a bunch of scales for different categories. I think it was similar to the MMPI but the categories were different. I just remember it had scales for "depression", "dysthymia", and "borderline" on the right and I scored really high on all three.[/quote]


I created narratives to some degree with my younger brother. It was more like goofy characters we would collaboratively invent and then act out. There were entire worlds, but they weren't serious things. The point was the stuff was absolutely hysterical to the two of us but nobody else that wasn't "in" on our bizarre sense of humor really got it. I think even at the age of 5 or I had at least one similarly aged friend, but I still always wanted to get adults and much older children to play with me, watch me do things, or listen to me recite things I'd heard. I was extreme in my demanding and pestering of adults and older children and they would get tired of me. I didn't really experience bullying until I was 11 or so. At that time I became much quieter and less outgoing in school. It wasn't until my teens that I felt the big disconnect with other kids and stopped trying to be social at all.


I never had a real language delay but between the ages of 3 and 5 I sometimes became unresponsive for short periods, enough for my parents to think I was having seizures. I don't remember any of this though.

So, I sort of got undiagnosed today of autism with the professional with whom I've been working. I have been doing a bunch of personality tests and projective tests over the past several months, and the results were overwhelmingly in one direction. Supposedly, my level of trauma is "off the charts," but I don't know what to say. I don't even remember it being that bad. Like 3 x worse than a woman who has suffered rape with major disassociation that causes flat affect and hating people and only vague memories of the trauma itself that come and go.

She said I have "Complex PTSD" (never heard of this) and met 8/9 criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder. However, she said she was hesitant to diagnose me with BPD because given the level of trauma that supposedly occurred, the BPD symptoms are a very logical response (or something along those lines), and BPD is stigmatizing. I asked her if she could do both (and I could choose which paper to show) because I think it would make DBT easier and easier for me to go to access support resources for BPD, and she scheduled another appointment to discuss it.

Not sure what to think. I think insurance would more easily pay for PTSD. But there are other support resources mostly for BPD, and I think it would be easier to access them if I could say I had BPD. I do actually meet 8/9 of the criteria for BPD, but she is still hesitant to diagnose me with it officially, and I'm not even sure completely why.

How should I approach this?

Well, sensitivity could be genetic, plus you might not even remember the degree of trauma.