Diagnosed today

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Today I got my official diagnosis. Not difficult at all (well, I was not in doubt), the psychiatrist was not in doubt. He was skeptic when we started but got convinced after a while.

I think he looked a bit surprised when I answered the question: Do you often feel like making friends with new people (for networking reasons etc.) and I answered something like: Why would I want that? No reason to try and make friends out of people that I do not know! Apparently that is what NT people do.

He categorizes AS in three categories: light, medium, and severe. He placed me in the medium category. Really surprising to go through life without anybody noticing and he finds it relatively easy to recognize.

The best part was when i had described a bit about my ex. husbands behavior and the psychiatrist just said: it sounds as if he is a bit psychopathic! Neat (this is what I have been thinking for a while )

One of us! One of us! One of us!


*Coughs*


Congrats anyway...
And I wouldn't pay much heed to that whole mild / medium / severe nonsense. It ain't just a line. We're whole freakin bouquets of metaphorical flowers... never the same selection twice. Some parts of it we're gonna have strong, and other parts not so much.

I want to be the second to congratulate you!

And I totally agree with the below quote.

Congratulations! WELCOME to WRONG PLANET, my friend! *applauding*

I remember when I was in my last year of college and my mom asked me whether I was making a lot of networking connections with people, and I was so surprised, because I had no concept that people did that.

I have been here for quite a while, but only got the diagnosis yesterday

I do not take the mild, medium, severe score to seriously, but it might be more helpful for me to be labeled "medium" instead of "mild" if I need to interact with the public health system in the future.

While I have previously disagreed with Magnanimous he is right on with this statement. This "mild" thing that gets bandied about is rubbish; you meet the diagnostic criteria or you don't. In at least one case I read about on this forum it seemed as if the label "mild" was being used to prevent somebody from accessing government support. Once a person's diagnosis of an ASD is established the only questions that need asking are: What are their strengths and weaknesses and how can they be helped to deal with them? I think the term mild (or any other such subjective assessment) is extremely unhelpful. The same person who I mentioned who had been labelled as "mild" manifestly finds some things much more difficult than me yet I was given no such label. Conversely there are some things which I get the impression the person in question finds easier than me. ASDs present in different ways in different people and saying that somebody has a "mild" version of a particular ASD based on the fact that they are not severely impaired in every area does no favours to the person in question. Grrr.




Indeed, at least he said medium instead of mild in your case. I think you will still agree it is silly though