Self-Diagnosis

Post Reply New Topic

Why would people want AS for social reasons?
I don't know about everyone else, but it doesn't help me socially at all. Not one iota.

In some social circles being autistic is more socially acceptable than having anxiety problems.

I don't understand it at all either, but I'm aware that I've seen people fake it because of having convinced themselves so strongly that they were an aspie (I'm willing to say that because it was admitted later by the person).

They managed to convince themselves so strongly that they adopted the behaviors and such? Did they do this consciously or did they even trick themselves?

I was worried I was doing this early on (I don't worry about this now) and doing google searches to see if it was even possible, but I didn't find anything then. It is something that makes me wonder. I've also met someone who convinced himself so thoroughly that he had bipolar disorder that he had manic episodes, but he never really had bipolar.

I'm not sure. It made me so scared that I was doing that that I had stopped identifying as an aspie after having been self-diagnosed though.

She is also introverted, a geek, and has social anxiety from bullying, so there was something to start from, but I'm not sure how it got to there.

I actually had the opposite happen to me: A therapist convinced me I had social anxiety so I explained nearly all my autistic traits that I could even identify as "social anxiety." Sensory overload from being around too many people? Social anxiety. Freaking out when people show up unannounced and avoiding them for hours so I can engage in my normal routines? Social anxiety. Prefer to spend as much time alone as possible? Social anxiety.

And then I actually read up on social anxiety and noticed when I was going to meet people I would have anxiety about everything but actually meeting them. I had anxiety about car wrecks, getting arrested, running out of gas in the middle of nowhere and not being able to get help, about having medical emergencies and not being able to go to an emergency room, and so on - and most of this was based on the person I was traveling with having unmedicated ADHD and I knew the statistics for automobile accidents and ADHD (more frequent, and more severe).

I did a screening test for social anxiety and actually tested well below the cutoff. At some point I looked back over stuff I'd written about social anxiety and most of it practically blared "autism." Weird. I do think believing I had social anxiety affected my behavior, however.

There are also people who have decided that AS is a collection of super abilities composing a cohort of super beings, with the only drawback being social awkwardness that can be overcome by training oneself to act NT, which is apparently something that anyone can do, with only negligible difficulty and stress, if only they applied themselves and stopped defeatistedly accepting their condition, which is not autism in this worldview, because autism is definitely not a collection of super abilities composing a cohort of super beings, with the only drawback being the aforementioned social awkwardness of the completely overcomable nature. The question I was trying to answer was the one about why anyone would want to have AS.

The problem is that the DX of AS made by a medical professional is very much a subjective thing, unlike things like HIV, cancer or asthma there is nothing like a blood test, a X-ray or air flow measurements to help a medical doctor to work out if a person has AS or not. I suspect that some self-DXs are just as good as ones made by some of the poorer quaility doctors.

I agree it's too easy to get caught up in labels. It feeds the "us v them" mentality.

As for being diagnosed by a doctor, I think it is important to be diagnosed if you are impaired. You should go and find out what is causing the difficulties. Professionals should be consulted.

As a child, I had to undergo evaluations at clinics because they knew something was going on with my development and I was in a high risk group.

Since Autism is always a subjective diagnosis, I don't make a big deal about self DX vs pro DX. Aspie posers are annoying, but not annoying enough to me that I'd make a big deal about questioning other people's DX credentials. I actually rather like the unofficial policy of AS board Intensity Squared known as dunc's law; a Godwin variant stating that a thread is over when someone's diagnosis is questioned by another poster. I personally have a professional diagnosis from the doctor who now heads up the UW Autism research program, but people still occasionally question if there's actually anything wrong with me because I'm both high functioning an well adapted. I've also met obviously AS individuals who are clearly tormented by their lack of a formal DX and their inability to get one and/or convince people that their problems are real. It's hard enough coming to terms with the diagnosis whether it's formal or only a personal suspicion, I don't see the value in making it harder for other people by trying to deny them their identity.

To this day, I have a lot of trouble with looking people in the eye, and have been told that my face is often blank when I should be experiencing some emotion.

As a child, any attempts to develop relationships with peers were disastrous. Even now I can only fake normality with people for so long, my social circle consists of one person.

I used to dominate conversations as a child, babbling on with no clue that the person I was talking to had no desire to hear from me. Until, of course, they'd snap at me. I learned to just keep my mouth shut, so now I suppose it's less obvious, but hardly speaking at all shows just as much a lack of reciprocity as my earlier behavior.



I've had several of these obsessions. My current, and longest lasting, is cars, I get all the major monthly magazines about them, read each issue upwards of a dozen times, spend hours watching and rewatching television shows about cars. I can name every make and model sold in this country, along with all of their drivetrain options.

If the routines I create for myself are interrupted, I react very poorly. If I cannot get back to them, I often lose control over my emotions.



I spent 12 years bouncing from one menial BS job to another because it made higher education impossible. I couldn't hold down any of those jobs for more than a few months. I'd do quite well for a short while, then start alienating my coworkers. Lots of sleeping on people's couches or sometimes in my car, because I couldn't take care of myself. I've been so socially isolated that I've had months long stretches where I literally had no conversation more substantive than "can I get a pack of pall malls? thanks." This sounds like functional impairment to me.



All three of these are true of me.

Does meeting the DSM's criteria count?

How about if I add in the fact that there are people with diagnosed asperger's/autism in my family. Plus the (okay, highly subjective) gut-level feeling of "oh god, that's me" when reading the descriptions of it from people who have been diagnosed.

Every person with diagnosed asperger's or autism was undiagnosed at one time. Did they not have the disorder until the doctor said so?

I grew up in the eighties and early nineties, when a diagnosis of asperger's was far less common. I was sent to multiple doctors as a kid, none of whom could seem to figure out what was wrong with me. Do I not have it because I was born in a decade before people knew or cared what it was?

Do I not have it because now I make too much money to get government assistance, but not enough to afford health insurance?

Do I not have it because I finally found a job that I can do well (because I'm finally left alone all day, doing something I used to do for fun), after years of crap work and near-homelessness?

Do I not have it because I've decided to fight for the things I want out of life, which means adapting as best I can to the NT world? Or do I not have it because I manage to look past my failures at doing so, and focus on my successes?

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have seen a vague similarity between the symptoms and their own personalities, and decided that they have it based on nothing more than that. I'm sure there are people dumb enough to base their diagnosis on the results of an internet test. But please do not paint every undiagnosed person with the same brush, some of us do know what we are talking about.

Last edited by mds_02 on 27 Sep 2011, 7:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is exactly my fear concerning the evaluation process I'm going through currently.


For the sake of enthusiasm of obsessive/compulsive nature. You can call it maniac, too. Also, the feeling of belonging. Objective reasons like getting help, identifying what the nature of a disability might be. This latter doesn't come naturally, in fact, I've found rather difficult to get a sense of it.

Well said.

When I brought my worry about that up the first time back in December, leejosepho (haven't seen him in awhile) said he had exactly the same worry.

Thing is, if it's real, your history will show it. From reading your posts it sounds like you have something going on.

What UTTER NONESENSE.

I self diagnosed about ten years ago after watching a TV program about AS.
I then visited an AS website to check my symptoms against those listed.
I don't need to be told what I already know.
I have every single one of the standard AS traits.

At this point in my life, the only purpose I can see of getting an official diagnosis is so that I can come on WP and say that I'm officially diagnosed, instead of self-diagnosed and mother of a child waiting for autism assessment (initial assessment suggests she probably has Aspergers). I'm a full-time mum and coping better with this than anything else I've ever done, after half a life spent thinking I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown (at school, uni and work). The fact that I'm female, born in the early 70s, did well at school and always did as I was told means that it's unlikely that anyone would have suggested that I needed to be assessed for anything. Until recently, I hadn't a clue what the cause might be or that a doctor might be able to help figure it out, so I just struggled along.

Having read the diagnostic criteria, I tick all the boxes. What else could a psychologist do other than look for physical signs (e.g. eye contact, which I do make, but only because I'm constantly correcting myself)? So, I have to do this all on my own and I haven't built up the courage yet and the need is not as pressing as it once was anyway. I know the wait will be long too (2 years for my daughter and I'm not nearly as urgent as her).

BTW I don't tell people I have Aspergers, but I do say that my daughter probably has it.

Self-diagnosis is the only reliable form of diagnosis.

A professional diagnosis can be too expensive for many people.