The undiagnosed - do you hope you have AS?

Post Reply New Topic

I *am* English (USA) and I can also hear more than one thing there.

Self-diagnosis can be just as dangerous as being mis-diagnosed by a professional, and delusion or ignorance are just as possible.

So with all the flim flam with AS, why even bother with it at all? Its just the medical profession playing troll games with people's lives and emotions. One spark and all the Aspies will go for their blood.

No, I know who I am either way. It wouldn't change how I want to live my life whether I get diagnosed with AS or something else. I know myself. The Aspergers symptoms explain why I was so odd even as a young child, before I could have formed any of the mental illnesses I've since acquired. I'd be a little surprised if a diagnosis came back negative, and I'd never be entirely sure it was actually negative, or whether the ways I adapted during my later childhood and teen years were good enough to fool the test.

Yes, I do hope that my self-assessment is correct.

I seem to fit the description and criteria very well. I spontaneously taught myself to read. I was considered a "little professor". I was known for monologuing about one single very specific topic. I have had significant sensory issues since I was young. I think literally and logically. I am compulsively organized. I overanalyze. I hyperfocus and forget things. I do things in very specific ways and do them exactly the same way and doing them even slightly differently doesn't fulfill the need I feel to do them. I have irrational fears. I am clumsy and uncoordinated. I did not form relationships appropriate to my age level.

I actually formed almost no relationships(and none without the other person maintaining them), and didn't even understand or consider that it was unusual not to. I didn't even realize the extent to which I hadn't formed such relationships until I looked at the criteria listed for AS and realized that I seemed to fit the criteria so well. When I found this site I didn't even know what AS was; I found this site looking for other people who had the same sensory issues I have.

I also seem to fit the proposed DSM-V criteria for autistic disorder.

Although I haven't been diagnosed, I have been told by people who are familiar with autistic people that I seem to be autistic.

I am also significantly gifted, and I know that there is some tendency to confuse "giftedness" with AS, but when I was in school I was in gifted classes. The other students in those classes were not like me. Until the hours I spent reading this site I had never read descriptions that were so similar to my own.

I think it would be inappropriate to claim to be autistic unless diagnosed by an expert as such, but I don't know the very specific steps I'd need to get a diagnosis. I want to have an evaluation, but I also believe I fit the criteria for social phobia which makes both finding out who I'd need to ask and actually talking to the chain of people I'd need to talk to in order to schedule diagnosis more difficult. I do have my own insurance, a PPO. I do have a primary care physician who I haven't been to in about ten years.

Last edited by matt on 19 Dec 2010, 4:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

similar. i have learned more about myself researching AS than i ever knew before. it's almost moot, other than being able to offer an explanation should the need for one arise.

i have always had the "dirty secret" feeling anbuend spoke about, and hope the confirmation will dispense with the shame (of knowing something is wrong, wanting to hide it, being unable to fix it), but that's about all.

Hans Asperger was certainly not doing that -- he was looking to understand and to help people. But no matter what various doctors might be doing today, the possibility of yet another mis-diagnosis is no reason for me to not at least try to understand myself better than the last time I talked with a professional (who had never even heard of Hans' work).

I have one six-year-old with classic symptoms of autism and a diagnosis. I have a three-year-old with milder symptoms for whom I've chosen not to seek a diagnosis yet.

I hope that I'm AS because it would explain a whole lot. Also, the belief that I have it, too, has always given me a lot of hope for my older son--helped to keep me going. (At one point he wasn't talking and just a little ball of anxiety; now he still has speech issues, but he is talking.) I had issues as a kid written off as shyness, but eventually got better, talked more, went to college, law school, started a business, got married, etc.

I am also worried that I have AS because I developed seizures at age 20--cured at 28 via surgery. I don't want my boys to get seizure disorder.

unanswered questions... anything about yourself you dont understand? which details is not understandable? (these are just rhetorical questions).

yes very dangerous, you could make a big chaos in your head and change your peronality to the unrecognizable.
Have no idea what you mean here! Where are the facts?

I first mean to be recognizing the danger of self-diagnosis leading to the chaos and such you have mentioned, and I then also mean to be saying the same is possible even when a professional diagnosis has been made. Personally, and because of the possibility of delusion and/or because of my own overall ignorance of meanings of terms and so on, I make no more attempt to actually prove my own self-assessment correct than I do to try to prove a professional wrong. "Aspie" (as of about a year ago and self-assessed with a bit of confirmation from others) makes much more sense to me than "manic-depressive with psychotic tendencies" (professional diagnosis, 1977), yet I still listen whenever anyone adds still more thought of their own, professional or not.

As a former fabricator and trouble-shooter of industrial machinery and mechanics, I must get down to root needs, causes and/or conditions before I can actually move toward resolution ... and the same applies in relation to myself. Some people are satisfied with Band-Aids and patches -- I am not. The difference between a mechanic and a mere parts changer is in knowing which part/s to change, and that is also often the difference between a good doctor and a mere dispenser of pharmaceuticals (a pill pusher).

This was irony, sorry I didnt make it clear enough. I really dont understand why you think its dangerous. I know more about myself than anybody else does, professional or not... And psychology that has been categorized by others, professionals or not, makes it possible to concider it for myself.
I agree with this: "I can simply focus on whatever I must do to live with whatever I have", but I dont think anybody else can tell me more about "whatever I have" than I can find out myself, and I dont think Im limited because Ive dealth with many things before, that have changed my quality of life to the better. Its a matter of working with identified issues, which means not to be "trapped" by some diagnosis, but instead to use knowledge to brake through own limits, and to cope with "whatever I have".

Simply because a mis-diagnosis can lead to big trouble. When I was young, I thought (as I had been told) "getting saved" in a church would/should somehow "change my life" like so many other people claimed "salvation" had done in theirs, yet the diagnosis of mere "sinner" or whatever soon began proving quite insufficient while nevertheless leading to a long period of self-righteous delusion that can still cause me trouble even now, a half-century later. Then add what I believe is a professional mis-diagnosis at age 27, and now add the confusion of whatever adjustments or adaptations I have made over the years ... and that brings us to the here-and-now with an "unrecognizable personality" virtually impossible for anyone to diagnose accurately if even willing to try.

Beyond all of that, however, I had seen mis-diagnosis (either one's own or made professionally) lead to medication startings and/or stoppings that result in irreversible harm and even death. In my own case, however, a prison guard once saved me from some of that by encouraging me to stop taking Thorazine.

It is nice to hear there are people such as yourself who just might actually understand themselves thoroughly and know what to do from there, but that kind of thinking is highly suspect in my own mind and is just not the case for all of us.

I'm undiagnosed but I'm pretty much 100% sure that I have AS, I'm not thinking much into it. I have mild aspergers and I feel I'm pretty smart so I think my troubles in life will be limited compared to some other people.

Im no computer and can only focus on one thing at a time, but I think trying is the best option. Of course a professional (or google) can give me knowledge that is useful for understanding myself, but who else can get to the bottom of it, than me? I think its more suspect to rely on judgements made by others. I would never take a drug that I dont completely understand the effect of. I believe my body doesnt need anything but food to function as it should. (I dont exclude that other people might be needing drugs to function better, I dont though). I could take something against being too brained or against anxiety, but I dont because I want to face it the hard way.
We humans like categorizing, but for me it doesnt end here, and the sentence "it is just the way it is" makes me yawn and wanting to proove the opposite. A hypothesis doesnt become true because of statistic. Psychology is individual whatsoever.

You and I actually think alike, Maje, but my extra 30 years have left me quite skeptical of my ability to sort things on my own and provide solutions from within. However, I am not in any way meaning to imply you are headed to that same place.