Self Diagnosis.

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I'll plead guilty to that sin, although I think "romanticizing" might be a little strong of a word. I realy do believe AS can be as much of a blessing as a curse. If I can see myself as an Einstein or Newton, and use that hope to make me do better, what's the harm. I don't see it as any different than a black kid on the south side of Chicago seeing him self as growing up to be like Barrak Obama, and using that hope to motivate him to do well in school, instead of not being able to see any future for himself beyond drug dealer, or gang member. Hope is a very important motivator.

Im not trying to be mean, I just really want to know what qualifies you to make this "diagnosis" and what tools or tests you used to classify yourself against the DSM. I feel that people who label themselves aspergers or autistic without finding out if they truly are minimize the true diagnosis and make a mockery of a true condition. The "self diagnosed" are romaticizing this disorder in my opinion and until you get a diagnosis shold not claim you have this just to explain why you are socially awkward and self absorbed.

I also find it hard to believe that adults cannot teach themselves social skills using the internet yet they can self diagnose a psychological disorder using it.

I think the "self diagnosed" are full of it and do not deserve to scream they have a disorder to get special treatment when in fact you have not been identified by anyone except yoursel.

I too, made that connection, however I perceived it from the perspective of an NT over protective mother. When I pulled Aspieconfirmed's profile and saw he was DXed and male, I was less clear on the topic. I suspect your viewpoints on child rearing and mine are quite similar, as evidenced by a post I made last night on another thread, however you've BTDT and I have not.

I also had a very over protective mother who I felt viewed me as an object rather than as a person. It was not until I was into my thirties and near suicide that she was able to reach out and actualy listen to what I had to say. We had not talked for two years prior to that event. She was able to feel what I felt because she had been BTDT with my father. It was my position of weakness and her position of strength that allowed her to feel maternal for the first time in our experience. Our relationship today, although not spiffy, is far better than I would have ever immagined.

With regard to Aspieconfirmed, although I can well sympathise with your perspective, I found your comments directed at him to be harsh and belittling. Is not beating up a bully essentially being a bully one's self? Perhaps this is what NTs see in us. Maybe the self satisfaction you seemed to derive from trashing this poster has the same root cause that makes NTs want to trash us. Our superior intelect makes them feel small and insignificant. It would seem natural for them to derive pleasure from making us pay for the pain they feel. If Aspieconfirmed is in fact AS, he is probably in the same boat as the rest of us, in the words of a song; sharing a drink they call lonlieness. I don't mean to defend the offensive nature of his posts, I merely feel that of all people we should be more understanding, if not, how in the hell can we ever resonably expect those who can't even understand our perspective to do so.

I'm autistic, and I can speak for myself. I think Aspieconfirmed has that same right, however society does have it's rules, and AS, DXed or not, is a poor excuse for bad behavior.

Romanticizing, and thinking positively are two different things.

Well, as I am one of those self DXed, I will again recite my life history and leave it open to the readers speculation.

When I was in kindergarten the school administration wanted to hold me back for another year by virtue of the fact that I was unable to skip. My parents went to the school and successfuly pleaded that I be advanced. Durring the following year, (1968) was the presedential election between Nixon and Humphrey. For some reason it was vitaly important to me that Nixon won. I stayed up all that November night as Walter Cronkite reported the precinct returns as they came in. At about 6:00 AM my parents woke up and wondered wtf I was still doing up watching TV. After I gave the rundown on the status of the election, they must have thought: wow we have a strange six year old.

Durring the summer between first and second grade, my parents moved from the midwest to Texas. That year in school we watced a PBS book review on Walter Farley's "The Black Stallion". I was captivated, and requested my parents get that book for me for Christmas. My parents discussed this with my teacher, a kindly woman in her fifties with many years of teaching under her belt, and it was recomended that they not give me that book, as it was beyond my reading level and would cause me to get discouraged or disinterested in reading. None the less, my parents relented and I received that book for Christmas. By the end of the school year I had devowered the entire Black Stalion series. That same teacher, although not a clinician, asertained during that year that I was learning disabled, and should be placed in special education. Consequently, I was sent to a pediatric shrink, who after administering a battery of tests including a "Wisconson" IQ test which I scored 165, determined that I was "gifted" and recomended placement in advanced classes, a concept that was relatively new at the time. My parents felt that I already had an arrogant attitude, and that placing me in a class for "gifted" kids would merely serve to exacerbate that self image, thus demured. Therefore I remained in standard and ultimately remedial classes throughout my public school years.

Before I move on chronologicly, I'd like to note that I was playing chess at the age of four, I have many memories from what would seem impossable ages. I clearly remember when Kennedy was shot, although not with any meaning or context, just the event and the effect it had on my family. I was thirteen months old at the time. From grade school on through high school I would regail my Dads friends with economic theory, opinions on foreign relations, the latest developments in science, etc. His friends, amazed that this kid was talking way over their heads, would ask "where does he get this stuff from?". My Dad's stock answer was "I get my 'U.S. News & World Report' a week late, after he's done with them".

Another perhaps unusual patern of behavior I exhibited when young was; as an only child, and already shunned by most of my peers, I was very into G.I. Joes. I had a huge collection and would devise these huge adventures using every accessory in my collection. My collection was so large that it was impossable to complete the adventure in one day, so therefore I would start over again the next day. I also had a peculiar affinity for certain clothes. I would routinely wear a matching sweat shirt and Sears toughskin long pants in 100 degree plus Farenheight weather in Texas. I was often refered to as "having a memory like an elephant".

The next chapter is middle school. By this point my oddities had become strikingly apparrent to my peers. This was in no way helped by the fact that my mother did, indeed, dress me funny. I was not even aware of this fact untill nineth grade, while in a try out for a play, a tenth grade girl who I had the hots for, announced that I looked like I stepped out of the Sears catalog. These years were particularly brutal for me. I was beat up on a regular basis, and to add insult to injury, I was ALWAYS made out to be the villian. Not only did I get beat up, I got in trouble for getting beat up! If I fought back, I got in worse trouble. It had to be my fault I was told, people don't just beat people up for no reason. It was my attitude I was told. I asked what that meant, but of course no one could give me an answer. My parents even threatened me with military school. I, recognising that the structure and rigid discipline, (not to mention horseback riding and other extracuricular activities), was exactly what I needed was extatic. Unfortunately, my parents decided that the cost of military school was beyond their means so I remained to whither within the public prison, er..school system. Throughout much of middle school I did without lunch because it was much easier to give up my lunch money to the bully than to have to put up with the double humiliation of getting beat up physicaly by my peers and then getting beat up verbally by the adults.

I had been a very emotional child. Durring these years I began a lifelong habit of supressing my emotions as a survival tactic. I had to, the cry baby gets beat up all the more and then laughed at because of it. I began to quash my emotions as a means of maintaining self dignity. My assessment was emotion=pain and bad, logic=reason and good.

For a bit of lightness among this sordid tale, in the five part Youtube series on Kim Peek the real rainman, thre is a scene in which his father is dressing him for an event. Kim, at one point, is lying rigid on the bed while his father puts his socks on him. My mother did this very thing with me well into middle school. In all fairness however, I did sleep like the dead up untill well into my thirties, and it was the only way she could get me ready for school.

High school is where I came into my own. I had joined the drama club and found a eccentric clicque that was more or less accepting of my oddities, at least more so than I had experienced at the time. I rapidly learned that I had no particular gift for acting, so I became obsessed with stage craft. Lighting in particular was of great interest to me. I spent most of four years in one way or another devoting every waking moment to stage craft. I volenteered at every theatrical venue in town. I eventually worked at every theatre in the town to include gigs with the stage hands local. I knew I had found my nitch in life. Unfortunately, other things in my life were not faring too well at the time. I had started drinking regularly in nineth grade, and soon was known as the school drunk in a school of 4000 kids. Prety much everybody else was a pothead at the time, so it wasn't realy that big of a deal. This was the seventies. Also, my parents were having marital problems by this time, so I was largely free to do as I pleased. My school performance suffered greatly! I would routinely score close to 100% on tests, but daily work seemed to be such a waste of time. I reasoned that I was clearly meeting the intent of school, that is to learn, but the fact that I was still flunking proved that the system was stupid. During my second time in the eleventh grade, I was caught for the second time drunk on campus and caught for the second time with illegal copys of the keys to the school district. I was given the option of dropping out or expulsion. Well, I CAN take a hint. I dropped out, got drunk, and went to see the Navy recruiter. Yes, that day, and yes drunk.

Bear in mind that this was near the end of the Carter administration, post Vietnam, all volenteer service, and the military was not too popular at the time. Recruiters were finding it impossable to meet their quotas, pretty much anyone who could fog a mirror was fair game. I had scored a 97 out of a possable 99 on the ASVAB and was told that if I would get a GED I would be eligible for any program in the Navy except nuclear power. I easily passed the GED exams with high marks and was pressed into the advanced electronics field. I felt this would be useful in my carreer goal of stage lighting. I went through my schools with consistantly high marks although not with out disciplinary problems caused in large part by my drinking. I became a submarine missile technician working on the C-4 Trident ICBM. I went to five captains masts, all for minor infractions like ten minutes late. It was certainly not to my advantage that I had pissed off my captain by kicking him out of the missile compartment for jogging in a high radiation area. It was my job to do so, it just wasn't the politicly correct or smartest thing to do.

When I got out of the service, I was not exactly a sterling candidate for a professional position. Although I tried, I was routinely dismissed from those interviews I got with claims that they were looking for someone with experience on their particular equipment. By default, I ended up working as an electrician. I could easily fill a single spaced page with a list of jobs I have held in my life. I even lived in a labor hall for three months as a "rent a drunk".

Through my twentys and thirties, at approxamitly seven year intervals, my repressed emotions would well up and I would go through periods that I can only describe as psycotic. It was during one of these episodes when I was twentyfive that I met the lady who would become my wife. That she and I remained together for the fifteen years prior to marriage I can only attribute to Divine intervention.

I largely quit drinking at about the age of thirty and thus began the long ardous process of growing up. Today I earn a good, (although spotty), income, have been very hapily married for seven years come January, and should completely own my own very modest home within a few years, even though we only bought it six years ago. If you were to drive by my house, the only thing that would at all mitigate the assumption of poor white trash would be the two relatively new Hondas in the driveway. I have untold partialy completed projects all over. My house could well be declared a disaster area. I have no friends, or more acuratly, I don't know if I have any friends. No one outside of family calls, and I don't bother to call anyone either. I just don't know if the gesture would be wanted. When anyone tells me that I'm liked I'm generaly incredulous. I am told I have "space" problems. I have a strong tendency toward pacing and chain smoking. I find eye contact difficult and always have. I must have a procedure for everything, right down to taking a shower and yes, boiling water. I am inclined to count in my head. I can waste an entire day trying to decide what to have for breakfeast. I have two cats. I have webbed toes. Most of the "You might be an aspie if" statements ring true. On the aspie quiz I scored AS=126 of 200; NT=80 of 200; You are very likely an Aspie. People always misread what I say. I've been wrongfuly accused of all manor of misdeeds. I could go on and on and on.

I had never even heard of Aspergers syndrome untill about four years ago when my wife saw something on tv about it and said thats my husband. I poo pooed it as pop psycology untill about two years ago when I was having troubles at work with one of the nicest people I know. The things he accused me of are so ridiculous I was absolutely bewildered. It was then I started looking for wtf is wrong with me. When I came upon AS it was like I was hit with a ton of bricks. I kept reading my life story in someone elses words, people who do weird stuff that I thought only I did. When I thought of autisim, I thought of some moron screaming kid. I'm sorry, but that is what I thought. I would never have associated it with myself.

I see a shrink every two years for an unrelated reason. The clinician routinely notes my "good eye contact". What that person doesn't know is how much effort is required on my part to pull off that ruse. If I wanted a DX I'm quite sure I am intelligent enough to get one, or conversely to evade one.

I can tell you one thing I am definately not looking for is pity! I would be nice though, if every now and then I might get a little respect for what little success I have achieved and having come this far without eating a bullet. That someone might actually listen to what I have to say, and consider my opinion as having value would be wonderful.

Well, there it is dear reader. You may evaluate as you see fit. You are entiteled to your opinion as am I mine. As for as I am concerned I have AS.

Get real. Get over it. Get a diagnosis or stop calling yourself Autistic to make excuses for your failiures in life.

Dear aspieconfirmed,

Anyone can find a professional that will tell them they have Asperger's Syndrome.
Anyone can find a professional that will tell them they have ADD.

A diagnosis is not the end all be all.

Heck, they may have told you your child has autism just to get you out of their office quicker...

Yay for this post!

Anyone can find a professional that will tell them they have Asperger's Syndrome.
Anyone can find a professional that will tell them they have ADD.

A diagnosis is not the end all be all.