Self-Diagnosis

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History lesson: The first mention of the word "autism" in any edition of the DSM came with the DSM-II, in 1967, which identified "autistic withdrawal" as one of the symptoms of Childhood Schizophrenia. There was no such thing as an official Autism diagnosis until DSM-III, in 1980, which laid forth criteria for what we now call LFA. Other forms of autism, and Asperger's Syndrome as a name, had to wait until the publication of DSM-IV, in 1994, seventeen years ago.

I was born in 1963. Since I obviously wasn't schizophrenic, I was just a weird kid. My younger sister was diagnosed with Childhood Schizophrenia., It may be worth noting that she exhibited none of the symptoms of what we now call Schizoaffective Disorder until after she was medicated for her "schizophrenia".

As for AS meds, my medication of choice is a minimum of three chapters of a Niven and Pournelle novel (currently on my umpteenth rereading of The Mote In God's Eye), or at least half an hour of playing my current online fixation, Champions Online (I'm hoping to get Happifun Security System X-4 up to level 25 before my Gold-level subscription runs out in a few days). Truly severe bouts seem to be best dealt with by lying in bed, jacking earphones into my computer, and listening to Orbital until I feel better.

Not THIS again!

I was self-diagnosed for quite a while before I was diagnosed by a psychologist a little over a year ago. AS explains a lot of problems I have had in the area of interpersonal relationships over a lifetime. MY self-diagnosis was *perfectly* legitimate, as it was confirmed (not to mention I am trained in neuroscience!!) I prefer to give self-diagnosed people the benefit of the doubt and not tell them they're not "legitimate" as you do here.

I don't think you'll find too many people here who say they have no functional impairment. Otherwise they probably wouldn't BE here. Why seek support for something that's causing you no problems? My impairments are not in the academic or professional arena---they're all in the social and relationship area. That doesn't make them "less" than someone else's, or "more". I should point out that YOU are telling all self-diagnosed people they DON'T have it, which is blatantly false, as I was self-diagnosed before I was officially so, and I know others here who have had the same experience.

~Kate

Yes, my "flatness of affect" was noted by the psychologist who approved my discharge from the USAF in 1989 for "mental condition unsuited to military service, not otherwise specified" (he wanted to call it Schizotypal, but I didn't quite fit the criteria for that).

Difference here: Mycoplasma and/or fungal infections can be cured. AS cannot. For me, AS explained a whole lot of issues I have had since childhood and allowed me not to self-medicate, but rather to understand why things happened the way they did and why I reacted the way I did. If someone else accomplishes that through self-diagnosis, then who are other people to tell them they need a professional diagnosis before they can proceed?

I only got a professional diagnosis when I saw a psychologist for other reasons (depression, relationship problems). She sees a lot of people with ASD's and understands that they may look different in adults who have had years to develop compensating mechanisms. I was lucky, compared to some other people on here who report off-the-wall misdiagnoses and all sorts of bogus reasons why they "can't" have AS.

~Kate

I cannot understand how any person can be 'self diagnosed' aspie particularly since its require requires you to be unaware of your social deficits. That just does not make sense.

Well,

1) No, it doesn't require that.

2) There's more to being autistic than social deficits. I was definitely oblivious to mine, and that was really the last part I worked out after a lot of other stuff (sensory, cognition, stimming, routines, etc.) when I had self-diagnosed. My self-dx was confirmed professionally four months later.

Yes it does as if you are aware of your social deficits you should be able to regulate your behaviour. If you are aware of your social deficits and continue to behave in such away knowing this, its a sign of or maladaptive behaviour (which may be indicative of a personality disorder).

Autism may not be purely social deficits but it is definately a characteristic feature which makes part of it.

It's a little tricky to regulate your behaviour when you don't posses the requisite mental hardware or what you do have is rather feeble. That is is why AS is a disability. If we where all able to fix our social deficits as soon as we were aware of them then there would be little activity at WP would there not?

I was acutely aware of my deficits for four decades yet I thought it was because I was either stupid or wasn't trying hard enough. I thought maybe I was some kind of very late bloomer and if I just waited a bit longer and tried a little harder then all the "secrets" that seem to be known to others would eventually come my way. Of course it never happened and it's easy to see why now.

This.

It took me a long time to realize that other people really are different. Things I find easy they find difficult. Things I find difficult they find easy. Things they hate I love. Things they love I hate. I thought I would be like them eventually. I thought they would be like me if I got to know them.

But after a few decades, Occam's Razor kicks in. We are different, best accept it and work with it rather that keep hitting your head against a brick wall.

Last edited by trappedinhell on 02 Oct 2011, 7:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

BTW to the OP-syndrome by definition means a collection of symptoms.

No, it doesn't. Sorry, but there is nothing anywhere I have found related to diagnostic practice that says autistic people must be unaware of their social deficits in order to be diagnosable. Nor have I seen any indication that "continuing to behave in such a way knowing this" is maladaptive behavior, let alone being indicative of a personality disorder.

Also, why would you conclude that being aware of social deficits means you can regulate your behavior? You make it sound like you can just "stop doing it" once you know that you do it. You can stop stimming, stop taking people literally, stop failing to read facial expressions and body language, stop...doing all those things. It's not that simple. Yes, some autistic people try with some success to pretend to be normal but even that has limits.

I am more aware of my social deficits now than I used to be. I know I take people literally, but I don't know how to not take people literally ever. Sometimes I can work out what they mean and sometimes I completely get it wrong. I find it difficult to control my facial expression to display emotions (I barely display emotion) or indicate interest or lack thereof. I sometimes can read some body language or facial expressions, but I often cannot. In a conversation, I may be so focused on the conversation I may forget all about the various things I have difficulties with because holding on to the idea of "I have social deficits" and "I need to talk to and/or listen to this person" at the same time is not generally easy for me. Usually if I try to do both, I lose track of one of them fairly quickly.

Now, I have over the years developed a fairly strict set of rules about communicating with people face to face, usually to avoid giving offense or hurting feelings unnecessarily. But regulating my behavior to mitigate my social deficits? How exactly does that work? What I do during a conversation: Make mistakes. What I do after a conversation? Realize what some of my mistakes were, but not necessarily all. In a future conversation can I guard against those mistakes again? Maybe, but often not.



An overemphasized feature, in my opinion. And this point is completely irrelevant because my point was that I identified the fact that I am autistic on the basis of sensory issues, cognition, stimming, and other things that are not directly social. Which means my self-dx had little to do with my social skills or lack thereof.

All I can say is that if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. Not all of us have the same aptitudes, skills, deficits, needs, etc. And something that may be easy for one may be difficult for others.

As I read another poster stating several months ago about this very topic... Asperger's syndrome isn't exactly a prize. If someone in all seriousness says they have it, then as far as I'm concerned, they do.
I can't speak for the people who supposedly use the label to excuse themselves for regular NT introvertedness. So I'll just ignore them and assume for now that they don't know what they're talking about.
In my case, coming across the disorder explains a lot of things about the way I am, even (and especially) aside of social difficulties, and I post on this forum because I feel like I need the fellowship just that much.

If that were the case then it would be impossible to accurately inform someone that they were autistic, because informing someone that they are autistic would make them not fit that criteria and so would cure them of it.

This is ridiculous. I may be for working on your traits but you can't just stop it like that. It takes time to learn and not do that again. We all learn from our mistakes and experiences. Also someone can know they have social deficits because they were told but that doesn't mean they know what they are having difficulty with or when they are missing the social cue. Sure they may realize it but it's always too late because it sneaks up on them. Like I take things literal and don't even realize it until after wards. They may be aware of cues but have a hard time picking up on them during the situation and by the time they know, it's too late because it's past that situation. Sometimes they realize it after they had kept thinking about it. They may see facial expressions and keep thinking about why that person had that look on their face and speculate but they are just slow at doing it because they don't know right away during the situation until afterward.

Being aware of your social deficits and being able to regulate your behaviors are two totally different things. Here is how it works for me.

Before I was diagnosed and knew/understood what autism was, I was not aware of my social deficits. I sensed that something was wrong, but the something wrong was a large murky blob without any specific wrongs to give it structure and definition. After I was diagnosed and knew/understood that I was autistic, I became much more aware of my social deficits. The label gave structure and definition to the blob. I have only been diagnosed for a few months, so I am still learning about my social deficits. I am sure that I am only aware of a small percentage of them, as perceived by NTs. Reading about other people's social deficits on this forum has made me realize that I have many of the same ones that I had never noticed before. These realizations do not make me feel bad about myself. Instead, it is good to know this information.

Now that I know about my social deficits, I still cannot regulate myself in social interactions. Maybe a little, if I am very careful that day, but for the most part, very little, as perceived by NTs. In social interactions, I would have to maintain three tracks of thought to regulate my behaviors up to the level of NT social behaviors. I would have to talk about the topic that everyone is talking about. This might be smalltalk or something complicated, like a scientific topic. That's Track 1. Track 2 is reading people - observing their non-verbal cues, matching or mismatching those to the stuff coming out of their mouths, and linking all of this information to guess at internal states of mind of others. Track 3 is regulating my own behavior in response to Tracks 1 and 2. I would have to determine which states of mind that I, if I were an NT, would have in response to others' states of mind, and also attempt to project those states of mind through my non-verbal cues and the stuff coming out of my mouth. As I understand it, Tracks 2 and 3 come naturally to NTs. They are pretty much automatic instantaneous brain functions, although the accuracy of reading people and the efficacy of writing oneself probably varies across a spectrum for NTs. Since I do not have these automatic instantaneous brain functions - the so-called social brain or whatever the latest science calls it - I have to maintain three interlacing interweaving complex complex complex tracks of thought in working memory during all of my social interactions in which I wish to "fake NT". This is beyond my capabilities at this time, and most likely beyond my capabilities forever, and perhaps beyond the capabilities of the human brain.

I cannot fake NT just because I know that I am autistic and have a set of specific social deficits that I know about.

Anyone who believes that they can regulate their social behaviors simply by becoming aware of their social behaviors has never experienced autism and is therefore not autistic.

Yeah, and once I become aware that I can't throw a football worth a damn, I can regulate my throwing arm and hit the receiver between the numbers every time just by the power of sheer thought and awareness?

Ummm, not so much.