Be wary of self diagnosis

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The Asperger's that I was so convinced I had some time ago when I was recovery from a stress related Psychosis is looking increasingly more and more like Severe Social Anxiety Disorder now that I have been seeking Professional assistance with my problems in the last two months.

When doing things like the Aspie test, I come out as clearly NT every time, although these types of tests are clearly interesting and useful one has to guard against what Psychologists call Confirmation Bias when undertaking them.

Just really posting this to encourage anyone out these whose experiencing real difficulties with functioning or stress not to hesitate to contact a GP or get professional advice.

You have to consider whether the traits you exhibit have been life long or not.

I think that this is a very helpful thread to start. (Thanks!)

I am here because the self assessments I took online revealed things about me I'd never ascribed to anything other than being weird. I concede the possibility exists that I've misdiagnosed myself, but all the evidence I've gathered suggests otherwise and until I can afford to seek professional diagnosis, I am more or less satisfied with the conclusion I've come to.

I am diagnosed with social anxiety but always test as having an ASD in every single online test I have taken. However, I once studied psychology briefly and am aware of things like bias when answering these types of tests. For various reasons I don't take the tests as being definitive, but interesting all the same.

Basically I am still not sure where my issues stem from. I did have testing when I was 13 (as I had the same problems in childhood) and all they concluded was that my intellectual and moral development was developed beyond my years and that I was emotionally immature (asynchronous development), too idealistic and over sensitive. Of course Asperger's did not exist as a diagnosis back then as we are talking over 20 years ago, so I was never tested for that specifically. Also, ASDs were considered to be a male thing more than a female thing back then and I am girly so...

I have had therapy in the past and tend to find it makes things worse rather than better. Medication does not change anything either. They keep trying to change things that feel like they are more a part of my personality than a disorder. I had many of the quirks I have now as a child...even as a very young child, although some of them I have trained myself out of (well at least some of the time lol).

My childhood quirks were as follows:

Tendency not to reply to people when they spoke to me
Tendency not to look at people when they were talking to me
If my scooby doo cartoon was not on in its usual time slot...cue a tantrum from hell (my mothers words).
Instead of playing mummies and daddies with my dolls at 5 years old, i was more interested in collecting bank forms and filling them out.
Early speech and language development but I could not talk to my peers well. I could, however, start and maintain conversations with adults (was nicknamed natterbox as a result).
If I saw something of interest, I would just wander off to go look without telling anyone (always getting told off for that one).
Was clumsy and had bad handwriting (but no obvious learning disability due to my advanced intellectual ability) and was nicknamed 'bumble' due to my tendency to knock things over etc (my general lack of physical grace lol).
I have always rubbed a piece of material I call my tickle from the time I could rub (possible stimming and a habit people find cute until they realise that I will turn a house upside down looking for it if I can't find it and I need to rub it...).
Difficulty making friends, especially with my peers.
Difficulty mixing with people and socialising. As I said to my very first therapist, and everyone since, I cannot mix with people.
Tendency to get attached to specific things, especially those relating to my hobbies.
Tendency to have a meltdown and get upset if I can't pursue my hobbies.
Various sensitivities to things like light, chemicals, textures and so on.
A tendency to talk about the same thing over and over to the point of driving people mad with it.
Intensive interests although they are not always bizarre, they are more intense than anything to the point of people accusing me of being obsessed with them.
Tendency to like sameness in certain ways but am not bothered by change in others (ie moving house does not stress me out at all, as long as I can put my furniture back in the same layout as I had it in the last place when I move!)
A tendency to go into monologues about my favourite subjects and my tendency to not notice when people are bored.
Tendency not to look at people and make eye contact (I force it for drs appointments and interviews, but not when I am casually socialising).
Tendency to prefer playing alone 90% of the time, although I do feel social occasionally and I do desire bonds with people (ie I do want relationships etc, I just like my own company a lot).
Difficulty reading people and some social cues, although I can read some social cues and usually get by by relying on either my intellect to fill in any gaps or shrugging my shoulders and just putting up with the mystery when it comes to figuring out what someone was trying to say to me with their body language lol.

And so on. I have always had many of those traits and many of them persist into adulthood. I don't really identify with Social anxiety as I am not easily embarrassed although I do worry about bullying springing up again because I have been bullied as both a child and an adult (either that or I am socially ostracised because people think I am weird).

Do I have an ASD, I don't know, but if I do, my drs are very unlikely to pick up on it for various reasons, that are partly to do with a tendency to under-diagnose or misdiagnose females, partly because AS can present slightly differently in females and much of the criteria is based predominantly on male presentation and partly because I have learned to appear as normal as I can during short social interactions (I am very good at appearing normal for short periods of time, but I will usually falter at some point during an extended social interaction). I cannot keep up the appearance of normality for an extended period of time and it exhausts me...this is why I mostly tend to avoid socialising.

I can only appear normal for brief periods of time when my social interactions are primarily surface based (ie based on manners I was taught as a child and I stick to learned scripts).

Whatever the cause, socially, I struggle...and that never seems to change! At 36 despite medication and therapy and seeing one psychiatrist after the other, I still have the same problems that I had in early childhood. For that reason I don't rely on my drs to help me...

I usually don't take the results of different Aspie tests very seriously -- but that's mainly because I'm never certain how to quantify my answers. It's very possible some of the answers are exaggerated, or conversely, understated as a result.

I feel frustrated with a lot of the discussion about self-diagnosis, over-diagnosis, mis-diagnosis. I mean, this whole understanding is so new, it is not scientificly quantified - virtually NONE of the psychological diagnosis are. Just look at the mess going on with the DSM 5 revision to see how un-scientific the whole process is for ALL diagnosis.

Meanwhile, people like me and so many others here read about autism and AS and see ourselves and find relief, support and finally like our lives make some kind of sense that we never had before. Isn't this the real point of any diagnosis? To help the person find relief from pain and or confusion and figure out a way to live that makes life easier? Then people - especially "professionals" quibble over the veracity of our new self-understanding like they know what the hell they are talking about!

It drives me nuts.

speaking as someone who was disagnosed by a specialist (although I don't have any memories of the process,) I'm sure some members here have evaluated themselves falsely. However, if I had not been diagnosed as a child, I'm not sure whether or not I would bother getting a formal diagnosis. The autism specialists are intelligent and they know a lot more than most who are self diagnosing themselves, but I wonder if they can ever get inside someones head the way an individual can with themselves. Of course that individual would have to be entirely honest with themselves and do all the research (noticing how others on the spectrum behave.)

If they were honest and informed, then I think they could be even more accurate at diagnosing themselves than a specialist could, who cannot experience their patient's processing problems directly, and don't really know their patient. Maybe that doesn't apply to most people, but I feel like I am pretty bad at lying to myself about who I am. I'll always figure out sooner or later that I was over or underestimating my quirks. Maybe that's because I obsess over them though.

I don't take many online multiple choice tests. Human traits are too complex for the most part to be accurately measured with multiple choice answers.

I don't understand how he decided it was Aspergers if he didn't match the symptoms and wasn't diagnosed.