I might not have AS?!

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Well apparently the partial hospitalization program i am in thinks i might not have aspergers. They think i might have been misdiagnosed. I dont know. they need to "observe me" longer to know for sure.

I learned social skills after high school to fit in. but i still feel i am not like everyone else.
Maybe i learned so well i am cured?... i often feel unsure in social situations. i feel i am acting an not truly being me. and socializing is hard and i feel i dont quite know whats going on, though i know how to respond so i look normal.

I dont know. but i figured you all should be updated.

but if i am not as, or might not be, (there still deciding) why cant i make friends?

and if i have no AS then i wont be able to move to that apartment i am waiting on. I need to be as to qualify.

I suppose i should look at this the glass half full. i may have cured my autism! yay go me.

Congrats!

Nah. OK, if you have AS, maybe you're like me, it takes time for people to realize something is odd about me. Maybe those saying that about you will come around.

I know i definitively had it, even if i dont have it now. I still dont get all the social stuff.

I still consider myself an aspie and until they officially tell me what they have decided i will leave it in my profile that i am diagnosed. because i was, and for now I still am..

Just-me, if you HAD it, you still do. Asperger's doesn't just go away. They may just not agree with with the original DX.

How are they "deciding" whether or not you do? Are they using an evaluation protocol? Or are they simply observing you and deciding based on opinions alone?

You have a right to know exactly how they're making the determination. Any doctor can simply state you don't have it, but simply stating it doesn't make it so. I would get more information if I were you. Contact the doctor who performed the first one, and get your records. This kind of disagreement is common, and often not called for. Some doctors have egos, and allow them to interfere with sound scientific judgment. I can't say whether that's true of the doctors you're seeing now, or the doctor who diagnosed you, but whenever there are differences of opinion, it pays to educate yourself about them, and your condition. Doctors are only human and make mistakes all the time. Don't just blindly accept what they are telling you now.

I was DX by a team with no doc and now my doc thinks I don't have AS... well I said I do think I do, but he said I don't come across it!

Sigh.

He is very resistant to change. He can't even let me choose seat even if both are the same, because one is HIS. He is smart, a speed reader, has practical empathy instead of being emotional, he has no need to be socially above me, he is a pattern thinker, he looks young for his age, he has good memory, he is trusting in himself but can't be conned easily because of recognizing patterns. He understands feelings can be on the inside even if you can only express them with words and look OK.

And yea... he sure has aspie symtoms. Which he seems blind to! So no wonder he cannot see them in me.

This doesn't make sense to me. If you were originally diagnosed, and if you were properly diagnosed, they should have looked at your developmental history. Even if it doesn't seem like you have many of the symptoms now, you must have had them throughout your childhood. They can't just undiagnose you without thoroughly looking at your history. And they have to test you, too. They can't just look at you and say "you don't have AS".

It's possible you were misdiagnosed.

It's also possible you were diagnosed correctly, but have learned to exhibit/not exhibit the specific behaviors that get you diagnosed.

That doesn't matter. I still enjoy having you, here.

Just drop the coping mechanisms. The things that you have to strain ti keep up, the role you play--drop them. Stop watching yourself like a hawk. Let yourself do what's natural. If you're Aspie, the autistic behavior will come right back, because that's what you're wired to do. If you were misdiagnosed, then the new skills won't be something you can just "drop" because they'll have become natural due to your NT wiring.

If they ask, explain that you've stopped pretending. Mild autism can often be covered up by using ridiculous amounts of effort, and if you've been doing that, then you're still autistic. If there's no "ridiculous amounts of effort" to be dropping, then you are probably either non-autistic or have lost your diagnosis (i.e., now only have subclinical traits because you've "grown out of" the impairment).

If you still have a significant impairment, they've got to explain where it comes from. If not autism, then what?

Also: They're running a partial-hospitalization program. I'm going to bet that, like my mom, they usually see people with extreme, severe autism. And what my mom did in reaction was to say that *I* wasn't autistic, though it was painfully obvious to numerous doctors, because I wasn't like the extreme cases she compared me to. Make sure there's not a fallacy like that going on. To say you're no longer diagnosable, they have to be able to not just recognize obvious autism, but tell apart the milder variants from NT.

I disagree with Callista. It's hard, maybe impossible, to know when you're exerting a lot of effort to fake normal. It's hard first of all to tell the difference between different kinds of exertion-- the work you put in to fake normal feels the same as the work you put in to paint a house. And second, if it's all you know, you might not realize how much effort you're expending. And third, you might well be in an environment where it's not obvious-- you say you're in a "partial hospitalization program" and although I don't know what that means, I would be willing to bet that they're telling you what to do a lot of the time. That would mask issues with executive function. And if your days are at all monotonous, that could mask a need for routine.

There's also the possibility that you've learned not to provide for your own needs in such a traumatic way that it's easier to keep suppressing it. The only way I could think of for a long time (my entire life minus the last few days) to satisfy one sensory need was a really bad idea, and I came to build up a mental barrier between myself and anything that could satisfy that need. Especially the first time, it was hard to try something for it, because it was very ingrained in me to do all in my power to sweep it under the rug. If something like that is the case for you, it might actually be easier to act NT, despite having autistic wiring.

And then there's drive for routine. When once I start banging by shin against the couch, I won't stop even once it starts to hurt. I don't even vary the cadence. (Luckily, most repetitive movements I can do don't cause injury in the amounts I do.) If you're like that, well...

Regardless of what happens, you will still be welcome here on WP!

Thank you Tim_Tex!

I talk to the psychiatrist. he thinks i am autistic, just higher functioning then AS he thinks i am pdd-nos.
That means all my hard work all paid off! yay go me! i knew i could be higher functioning if i tried hard enough! YAY GO ME ! !! party whoo!!

He knew me as a child ( i saw him for a few years back them when he was working in a different place) and he can see the improvement i have made. he said back them i seem more robotic and my speech was monotone.