Self-diagnosed people: why have you not obtained...

Page 5 of 7 [ 111 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Next

Joined: 25 Nov 2010
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 212

28 Dec 2011, 12:14 am

I'm over 50 and was before I ever heard of AS. Like others, when I learned about it I realised that it perfectly described the way I'd felt all my life. That's really all I need to know. At my age a professional diagnosis isn't going to change anything.

To be blunt, the only thing that would motivate me would be if there was some kind of financial support payment that went with it.

unduki
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 21 Oct 2011
Age: 65
Gender: Female
Posts: 652

28 Dec 2011, 12:24 am

SylviaLynn wrote:

Ok, I'm going to be snarky again.
I have seen this same kind of divisive "I'm real and the rest of you are fake" crap in some form or another in every single community I've ever known of or been more or less part of. Blind from birth are more real than previously sighted. Gay are more real than bi. Blah, blah, blah. For craps sake I thought this place would be clear of that. Silly me. :roll:

I hope you aren't taking the OP to be saying that you're not real unless you have a dx. No need t be snarky. We're just discussing.

_________________
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain.

Fern
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 May 2011
Age: 38
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,340

28 Dec 2011, 12:30 am

I'm worried that if I get an official diagnosis, it will close more doors than it will open for me.

Who_Am_I
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 27 Aug 2005
Age: 41
Gender: Female
Posts: 12,632
Location: Australia

28 Dec 2011, 12:31 am

unduki wrote:

SylviaLynn wrote:

I hope you aren't taking the OP to be saying that you're not real unless you have a dx. No need t be snarky. We're just discussing.

That's not what the point of the OP was, actually. It was to give the self-diagnosed an opportunity to speak in their own thread before the "zomg not real aspies!" brigade came along and started shouting.
I self-diagnosed a while before I was officially diagnosed, and I had to deal with the same BS that those without an official diagnosis are going through now.

_________________
Music Theory 101: Cadences.
Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I ! !! !
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I

pensieve
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 18 Nov 2008
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,204
Location: Sydney, Australia

28 Dec 2011, 12:34 am

puff wrote:

This seems to be a hot topic on this forum. Maybe someone can help me:

If I'm an adult and don't need or want any help, why is it good to get a professional diagnosis?

I guess my answer is: I don't see the point.

I agree. I don't mind if you self diagnose. It's good to know why there are some things different about you, isn't it?

I wanted to get diagnosed so fast because I could never get a job and I was just realising I was way different from other people. I paid maybe $400 even if the diagnosis wasn't official and the official one ended up costing $0. Now I'm on disability but I've been on it for so long I've been thinking about getting some kind of job.

_________________
My band photography blog - http://lostthroughthelens.wordpress.com/
My personal blog - http://helptheywantmetosocialise.wordpress.com/

AbqAsP
Tufted Titmouse

Joined: 25 Dec 2011
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 41

28 Dec 2011, 12:54 am

This may be useful only to those that are seeing a therapist demanding to follow a current official diagnosis..

A therapist that will be performing interventions and correcting behaviour with a patient that has AS but does not recognize it may choose courses of therapy that are counterproductive. A typical patient with social phobia would receive some type of desensitization therapy and/or other CBT interventions, where if the patient has AS, it is considered social anxiety, not phobia. Course of therapy for a patient with AS would be more along the lines of developing coping techniques.

Many therapists like to follow Becks Cognitive Model, pretty much verbatim but in their own style, and with the denial of AS, will start filling out Axis I and II incorrectly at the least - and immediately therapy has gone the wrong road and the model is 'relatively' worthless.

Just my opinion for those that are unsure whether a diagnosis is worth it for ANY reason - I say if you're therapist only goes by official diagnosis, and is a factor in your therapy, then yes.

_________________
I tried teaching myself slap bass, but the best I can do is flap bass.
Your Aspie score: 158 of 200, neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 44 of 200
You are very likely a Doggy

kfisherx
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 3 Nov 2010
Age: 61
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,192

28 Dec 2011, 1:37 am

Verdandi wrote:

Nexus wrote:

Well it's kind of pointless saying you're AS, branding yourself a label if it's not troubling you enough to require services. Hell I usually don't let people know I'm Autistic unless I'm legally obliged or needed to say so because labels tarnish you. I don't get why people even want to self-diagnose unless they're seeking for assistance.

A lot of people who made it to adulthood without a diagnosis find themselves staring down a lifetime of problems they can't explain and do not understand. Having a label - even a self-applied label - makes it easier to understand these problems and cope with them when they come up again. I think this is an experience that people who had diagnoses and support as children find difficult to relate to because they knew all along. It doesn't mean getting diagnosed in childhood is automatically always better, but it does create a gap in experience. I've run into the same thing from people with ADHD, who also can't understand why a label is so important to undiagnosed adults when they've had it all their lives.

This was the tangible benefit of my self-dx a year ago: My major depression went into remission. I went from planning suicide to finally having enough evidence to confirm my suspicions and explain my life. With that explanation, the foundation for my depression was undermined.

So, was my self-dx worth it? I would say yes.

^^^THIS x 1000%. As you know, I never heard of ASD until I started grief therapy because of my autistic symptoms causing my world to crash. But once I accquired this label, it really helped me a lot. I am now getting past all manners of little issues that I could never explain before simply by advocating for myself as a person with ASD.

This is not saying that I think every MUST have a DX to be official or any of that crap. Heck, I never even once showed anyone at my job any papers and I imagine others would not need to either if they felt they could use accommodations. And YES, if there are people who genuinely do not need accomodations they are also not really qualified to be labeled. That said, they could well be BAP and are always welcomed on this forum of course. This place is a shared space.

bergie
Toucan
Toucan

Joined: 18 Mar 2011
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 290
Location: Phoenix, AZ

28 Dec 2011, 2:05 am

Quote:

- Money, lack of, needed to pay highly competent, trained, professional

I spent around $2500 on diagnostic appointments and therapy with an autism specialist.

Quote:

- Executive functioning issues getting in the way of actually making an appointment

- Communication difficulties getting in the way of actually making an appointment

These were difficult to overcome. I have never been a real believer in psychology.

Quote:

- The highly competent, trained, professional's constant misattribution of AS symptoms as being caused by anxiety rather than being the cause of anxiety

This a little bit as I had trouble really opening up to the psychologist I saw. I have always been much better at writing out how I feel than expressing it. I probably said less than 150 words about my childhood during my 3 hour diagnosis session but then wrote a 20 page synopsis afterwards and emailed it to her because I didn't feel I was able to properly express myself.

The "gold standard" tests said I was autistic, the specialist psychologist said I was most likely autistic. The main reason I have a "semi-official diagnosis" instead of an official diagnosis is that I have a decent job, I live on my own, and I don't want it to affect my future health insurance situation.

169Kitty
Sea Gull

Joined: 24 Dec 2011
Age: 46
Gender: Female
Posts: 214
Location: Minnesota

28 Dec 2011, 2:08 am

Who_Am_I wrote:

...an official diagnosis?

Just an opportunity to explain without people jumping up and down and yelling about Wikipedia.

I am professionally diagnosed, but when I wasn't, my main problems were

- Money, lack of, needed to pay highly competent, trained, professional

- Executive functioning issues getting in the way of actually making an appointment

- Communication difficulties getting in the way of actually making an appointment

- The highly competent, trained, professional's constant misattribution of AS symptoms as being caused by anxiety rather than being the cause of anxiety

My answer is E, all of the above, but not necessarily all at the same time. I recently switched psychiatrists. I went from one who attributed almost everything to anxiety to one who is an expert in anxiety disorders and knows how to tease things apart better. Just this past Thursday I finally was able to call my psych. to discuss things. I am waiting for a return phone call from his nurse to set up the appointment to discuss neuropsych testing. Knowing that I finally have a more receptive doctor did make the phone call easier. With my old doc. I wasn't willing to put so much effort into a conversation because there risk to reward ratio was much too high.

FalsettoTesla
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 30 Oct 2011
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 536
Location: North of North

28 Dec 2011, 2:38 am

I hadn't heard of Autism until I was sixteen. Even then it didn't really click, because all I heard about was the non-verbal severely autistic end of the spectrum. I didn't think that was me because, I'm verbal. Although teachers at my nursery school did tell my mother they thought I was deaf/had some kind of hearing problem because I used to sit down and put my hands over my ears whenever there was a lot of noise. I've always done that though, apparently and my mum didn't really think anything of it. I think mostly my 'oddness' and social awkwardness was put down to the fact that I had a troubled home life, and my attendance at school was always less than 50%, so my teachers didn't really see me enough to notice anything. xD

I want a diagnosis, I think it'll be really helpful. Particularly with college, as I overload quite easily - particularly with noise - and start twitching really badly etc. etc.

I tried to get a diagnosis of... well anything to explain the way I am when I turned sixteen, but my GP didn't refer me to CAMHS, they referred me to an isolated mental health clinic. So when I got the number to phone up and make an appointment, which was ridiculously challenging, they told me to go back to my doctors and ask them to refer me to the correct place. That was... two years ago?

I just can't get myself enough to manage it at the moment. I hope when I get to uni I can arrange for one via there.

So. Mostly, procrastination.

_________________
Your Aspie score: 180 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 13 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie.

169Kitty
Sea Gull

Joined: 24 Dec 2011
Age: 46
Gender: Female
Posts: 214
Location: Minnesota

28 Dec 2011, 2:58 am

Apple_in_my_Eye wrote:

To stir even more paranoia (there's commies here, I know it...) assessments are not standardized. Therefore, you can't know if someone's diagnosis means that they had a 30 minute chat with their university health counselor, or 3 days' worth of neuropsych testing and interviews of 3 relatives involving polygraphs.

So, everyone would have to submit a detailed description of their assessment, or perhaps video of it. And then their shrink would have to be waterboarded to make sure that he's didn't fake the whole thing. Because, you never know.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!!

Ambivalence
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 8 Nov 2008
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,613
Location: Peterlee (for Industry)

28 Dec 2011, 10:42 am

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GaSs06SfIQ[/youtube]

_________________
No one has gone missing or died.

The year is still young.

SylviaLynn
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 9 Feb 2008
Age: 67
Gender: Female
Posts: 534
Location: Albuquerque, NM

28 Dec 2011, 10:51 am

I apologize if I was unnecessarily snarky or confused this particular thread with another. I appreciate it when it's pointed out. Seriously. :oops:

_________________
Aspie 176/200 NT 34/200 Very likely an Aspie
AQ 41
Not diagnosed, but the shoe fits
10 yo dd on the spectrum

ArthurDent
Snowy Owl

Joined: 22 Nov 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 169
Location: The Starship Heart of Gold

28 Dec 2011, 1:59 pm

I'm terrified of being diagnosed as neurotypical. :cry:

missmarigold
Hummingbird

Joined: 26 Dec 2011
Age: 50
Gender: Female
Posts: 20
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, Earth, Milky Way

28 Dec 2011, 2:20 pm

I guess my son's diagnosis is enough for me right now, though reading this thread makes me want to be tested.

where is this quiz that so many of you have scores for in your signatures?

I'll try to search on "quiz" and find it.

SylviaLynn
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 9 Feb 2008
Age: 67
Gender: Female
Posts: 534
Location: Albuquerque, NM

28 Dec 2011, 2:24 pm

In a sticky at the top of the forum.

_________________
Aspie 176/200 NT 34/200 Very likely an Aspie
AQ 41
Not diagnosed, but the shoe fits
10 yo dd on the spectrum

Page 5 of 7 [ 111 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Next

Jump to:

Self-diagnosed people: why have you not obtained... Post Reply New Topic

Self-diagnosed people: why have you not obtained...