Self-Diagnosis

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I would LOVE to be professionally diagnosed but for the time being, I cannot afford it. I have done several online self-assessments and while I was taking them, I kept remembering times in the past where I did the exact behaviors they were asking about. While I cannot be certain I have AS until I see a professional, it seems likely enough I do that I'm willing to say so.

Wow, yet another self-dx topic. Don't know how many of these I've commented on. Anyway, here's how I see self-diagnosis: I don't care if someone self-diagnoses themselves as having an ASD. Whether other members are officially diagnosed with an ASD or not is none of my business. What matters to me is that we can all find ways to relate to one another, to help each other not feel alone in this world. What's an official diagnosis but a couple thousand dollars, ICD/DSM code, and illegible signature? In the end, we're still ourselves.

Oh, live long enough and the people around you will have spent enough time pointing out your social deficits that you are likely to figure it out.

Most people with Aspergers are smart. Even when given no information at all they do tend to figure out that they are not like everyone else. My diagnosed Aspergers son knew he was different by the time he was 6. His theories were off as to why, but he was definitely aware.

Oh dear. Just remember just because some people might not be aware that they appear different (I was like that until the age of 22) doesn't mean everyone else with an ASD will be. And doctors will diagnose whether they are aware or not. I was diagnosed by talking about my experience with the symptoms. And it was me that brought it up after a few people suggested it. I researched autism like crazy and it all seemed to fit.

I've been diagnosed officially for a couple of years now and I have learnt so much about autism and myself. It helps to know because you can try to correct your behaviour but you still make mistakes. I think my social skills are 70% better apart from the fact I still don't know how to have conversations with people. I know social etiquette a bit better now.
I still have many issues with my symptoms especially adjusting to change. If I could fix that by just being aware of it I would be 100 times happier. I'm a pretty damn happy person too. I have to be really in control of myself just to be probably organised because that's the only way I can get things done. But it's a struggle each day and sometimes I want to kick people that don't have to work as hard as me.

Think of autism as a disorder with an undeveloped social brain. It doesn't naturally come to us and even if aware we have to teach ourselves the rules as though we have to learn the custom of another culture.

I agree with you on this. I was self-diagnosed for awhile. I went to a psychologist who suggested that I have mild Asperger's. But now I just consider myself as someone with autistic traits, good and bad. I don't make it an issue anymore. But like other people have mentioned, I started out thinking that I have Asperger's because I've had social problems all my life. No one told me I was autistic, but comments people have made about my behavior add up. I stumbled across AS by accident, I was just curious about autism in general. But then I started crying when I realized it related to me so much.

I think it's annoying when people act as if it's some elite privilege to be aspie.

Last edited by lovecholie on 03 Oct 2011, 6:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I knew from a young age I was different but I didn't know why. I didn't know what I was missing or why I was different. I just thought I had to try harder and if everyone treated me like everyone else and not discriminate me, I'd be normal.

No, no, no. You're oversimplifying.

Firstly, you can be aware that you have a social problem without knowing what you're doing to contribute to it. If you have no friends, you're bullied, you're constantly told how weird you are, you fail at job interviews despite being perfectly qualified for the job, and other such things, it's not a huge leap of logic to assume that there may be a problem with your people skills.

Also on the subject of simple observation, it's quite easy to watch people and go "Ok, they can do x, y, and z and do it very easily; I have no idea how to do x, y and z and I'm completely confused as to the purpose, correct context etc. of such."

Even if you do pick up x, y and z and their purpose and context, the bulk of communication between neurotypical humans involves nonverbal signals that are, for the most part, sent and received intuitively. As people with ASDs, we can pick some of them up intellectually, but it's a huge, exhausting effort, and we'll never get all of them, so we'll still seem somewhat "off" even if we do say all the right things, and the effects of that will be observeable.

Related to that is that if you're picking up socialisation intellectually rather than intuitively; and yes, it is possible to notice the difference between oneself and others on that point, that's a huge red flag that something in your brain is really not working normally.

It is also possible to know what you're doing wrong but not have the processing power or speed to be able to put that knowledge into practice in social situations. AS can also come with impulsiveness that means that you do the wrong thing socially before you can stop yourself. Additionally, it is possible to learn social rules by rote but not understand why breaking them is rude, and to make further mistakes because you've not been able to generalise the learned rules. If you've been told that what you're doing is rude, and if you've changed that and still keep getting called rude, that's another big red flag.

Even if you do know what you're doing wrong and how to change most of it, many people with AS simply don't understand why they should- and this is a lack of social understanding, not a symptom of a personality disorder.

So, as you can see, it is very possible for someone to be aware that they have a social problem and not be able to change their behaviour.
Besides which, social problems aren't the only criteria for an ASD; you can't even be diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome or Autistic Disorder if you have only social problems. I'm not sure about PDD-NOS in that regard.
The point is that there are more clues to having an ASD than just social problems.
Mine, when I identified AS in myself at the age of 21 prior to being diagnosed were:
"Well, despite being 21, I still have problems initiating a conversation, and I have no idea what to say past "hello". I feel as much for most people as I do for the furniture. I have very little interest in socialising, and I have noticed that I can spend far more time alone than most people would be able to without getting lonely. In fact, most socialising is irritating, boring and confusing to me. I've spent my entire life being bullied, called weird, and told that I look like a robot and like I "have a pole up my arse". I've been told that I can't take jokes and about how gullible I am. People seem to have this irresistible urge to either bully me or mother me. I have noticed that they don't do this to each other. There seems to be some fundamental connectedness between people that I lack. I think I am missing some brain circuits here.
I notice that I tend to become more interested in things than the people I see around me, and that I can become completely absorbed in a topic to the point where it's all I think about. I also notice that this absorption can cause me to neglect other things that I should be doing. I notice that people tell me to stop talking about the same things over and over. I also notice that I have a number of repetitive body motions that other people don't seem to have. These are mostly "background noise", but they do increase when I'm stressed or excited.
I notice that I hate it when things deviate from how I expected them to be, and when things change, and that I do things the same way all the time, and that I seem much less able than most people to cope with change and unexpectedness.
I remember that as a child, I often didn't play with toys properly; for example, spinning the wheels on a toy car rather than using it as a car, or taking my Barbie apart rather than dressing her up.
I notice that 10-year olds are more organised and less forgetful than me. I also notice that they are better at making and executing their plans. This forgetfulness puzzles me, since I have a prodigious rote memory and remember everything about subjects that I'm interested in: in fact, I've spent my life being called "Calculator" "Dictionary" and "Walking Encyclopedia", and, because of the forgetfulness "Professor Rachel".
I notice that my senses seem to be more sensitive than those of others, and that many things that are normal to others are painful to me. Most people don't cover their ears at the sounds of hand-dryers, balloons popping and certain voices, among other things. Most people don't have certain things that they can't swallow because of the texture. Most people don't feel clothing tags as a form of itchy, burning torture, or at least they don't seem to, because they don't cut the tags out of all their clothing. Most people don't experience light touch as making their skin crawl at best, or as a burning sensation at worst. Most people don't get an electric sensation from unexpectedly being touched. If they do, then why do they insist on casually touching each other like that?
I've been like this all my life, and it's causing problems."

All that finding out about Asperger's did was to put a name to problems and differences that I'd known about since preschool.
I did a lot of reading and research before I was certain, including possible alternatives and allowing for compensation bias- and, as it turned out, I was correct: it is Asperger's.

^^^^^^ Well put, Who Am I! I couldn't have put it any better myself.

im now thinking i maybe both aspergers and schizoaffective-dual diagnosis

Self diagnosis? i dont think thats right. its not like, I have a sneeze, so i must have a cold. Im anti social, so i must have some aspergers.. it makes me feel that some people just want somewhere to fit in, not that thats bad.
i have aspergers, i have no idea what i do half the time thats aspergers cause im not always with it, i dont realize what my difficulties are, but things are just really hard, or my obsessions etc etc. people have to point them out to me for me to stop and realize at the time what im doing. i just get really mad and severely depressed because i cant communicate in certain ways or be very aware of what im doing. so i just dont see how you can self diagnose yourself .

but then again.....its a spectrum and you can know youve been different all your life and asperger just fitted for you, and the more you understood it the more you realised you really are aspergers. but then you get the cases where people make themselves believe they have the symptons of aspergers when its not. its all realyl hard to get a head around, its compliciated
i dont know, my head hurts.
but this is just my own opinion, whether it be good or bad,im not a bad person in any way, so please dont attack me for what i think over this self diagnosis.

This is not a very empirical process. Instead of trying to imagine how someone can diagnose themself, look at how many people on this forum have self-diagnosed and then had that diagnosis confirmed. There are also practical reasons that many choose not to get an official diagnosis when they are otherwise certain that they have something. These reasons range from inaccessibility to anyone who can or will diagnose them to not wanting to have the diagnosis on record and thus likely to impact their insurance coverage.

Also, autism is not typically characterized by anti-social behavior, but by asocial behavior. I have also rarely seen people explain that "I am not very social, and I think autism is the explanation. Usually there are many other things going on. In my case, my social skills and activity was the last thing I was concerned about (and in a lot of ways still is).

Were you diagnosed in childhood?



"The cases?" What do you mean "the cases where people make themselves believe they have [Asperger's symptoms] when it's not?" This is a risk just as a professional diagnosis can be wrong (no matter how much some people may appeal to their assumed infallibility and omniscience, the reality is not that ideal).

I sort of agree with both sides of this, actually.

I think some people want to fit into some sort of autistic subculture for social reasons - like they may never have had friends or they're bullied or they just want to feel better about not being liked or not understanding things. They might have Asperger's, they might not.

But as for myself, I've 'self-diagnosed' myself with several autistic traits not for those reasons at all. I had no idea what Asperger's was until I read about it when I was 22. In a fair world I should have been diagnosed as a child, but the DSM diagnosis was slightly after the point where I should have been diagnosed, add that to the fact that I was an extremely intelligent child who didn't appear to have 'problems' in school - I went to a gifted school and I was actually POPULAR for being an eccentric little know-it-all. I used to bring my pet toads to school and carry them around in my pockets at recess. And pedantically correct my teachers if they made mistakes. Yes, I was THAT kid. I skipped a grade after transferring to a new school, had terrible social problems and was bullied, and everyone - teachers and parents - knew it. However, they attributed it to the fact that I was a new kid, tiny, smart, and socially 'behind' my peers. Not that I had any kind of social disability.

After that I literally shut down for about two years. I could not speak in school, no matter how hard I tried. My parents saw none of this, because I was my usual self at home. I've always struggled with social skills, connecting to people - I never feel connected, no matter how hard I try - and this has only been brought to my attention and worked on since I've read about Asperger's. Little did I know that my father and grandmother were exactly the same way until I studied this.

I've never *wanted* to have Asperger's. It simply explains things. Most people think I'm extremely pretty; I'm confident, have high self-esteem bordering on cockiness sometimes, I'm good at what I do, I'm creative and I'm going to a great grad school next year. No one would EVER guess that I have issues like this just going off my looks, if nothing else. But when they get to know me, it's like they see the cracks in what appeared to be a perfectly put together surface from further away. I have no natural social instinct. I've driven myself crazy by trying to intellectually analyze social situations to death, and even after 24 years of that, my social skills are extremely 'underdeveloped', as a good friend put it.

I have extreme trouble making friends, reading people, interpreting facial expressions, and just knowing what to say when people ask me questions like 'how are you?'. It freezes my brain. And I am NOT a shy person. I don't feel self-conscious around people; I've never felt socially awkward in my life because I'm just not that aware. But I've confused a lot of people and been very hurt by friendships falling apart because I didn't understand the rules of social reciprocity. Combine that with the fact that I've had obsessions/special interests since I was a toddler, I can be blunt to the point of rudeness without realizing where I went wrong, and having panic attacks and meltdowns when my 'routines' are disturbed...yeah.

In addition to all that, I actually do have a degree in psychology. You'd be amazed by how little most psychologists know about higher-functioning autism, especially in women. This is a very, very new topic in the psychological realm, so in a lot of cases the self-diagnosed will know more about the topic than the psychologists studying them. Of course they won't always be right, but in my case, I have obvious autistic traits, as do several members of my family, and it would honestly be stranger if someone told me I DIDN'T have it. My mom's good friend, a psychologist, agrees that I have Asperger's, but she encouraged me not to get a diagnosis unless I feel it's necessary. She said I'm different in the sense that I compulsively overanalyze everything, and though it drives me crazy, I've figured out a lot on my own. Her son has Asperger's, so she sees a lot of similarity in me.

sorry i dont know how to reply to what youve said, what youve said is interesting, what is asocial? did you mean to ask me was i diagnosed in childhood, if you were, i was diagnosed in late adolescence .

Asocial means not wanting to be social. Anti-social is more like being violent and mean. I am asocial, but not anti-social.

And yes, I was curious if you were diagnosed in childhood. What I mean by asking is I've found sometimes people who were diagnosed at a younger age (not just with autistic diagnoses) seem to sometimes find it more difficult to relate to people who found out as adults. I don't mean that as a bad thing, more a point of comparison. For my part, I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to know why everything was so hard since childhood or adolescence. I don't know that it would be better than finding out when I did, just different.

After looking at 8 pages, I think the OP was simply trolling....