Nonverbal Learning Disorder- dx confusion

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Hi all and thanks for welcoming me to your forum. I'm a 21 y/o male college student. I was diagnosed with ADHD, Executive Functions Disorder, and Nonverbal Learning Disorder when I was 14. I got re-evaluated in Jan. and the psychologist dropped my NLD dx, but I'm not fully convinced because of the huge gap in my scores and my behaviors...

Verbal Comprehension: 134
Similarities-18
Vocab-13
Information-16
Comprehension-16 (supplemental)
She ran more tests and found that I had a huge problem with Word Finding (2nd percentile) and that was why my vocabulary was a lot weaker than my reasoning skills.

Working Memory: 119
Digit Span-14
Arithmetic-13
No specifics on my Forwards-Backwards digit span but I remember doing a lot worse on the Backwards.

Processing Speed: 94
Coding-8
Symbol Search-10
Not surprising given my ADHD and depression

Perceptual Reasoning: 100
Block Design-7
Matrix Reasoning-16
Visual Puzzles-7
Figure Weights-16 (supplemental)

This is where I'm confused. Not only is this 34 pts lower than my VCI but it's a 3-Standard Deviation gap between the general reasoning tests and the more strictly visual-spatial tasks. I took more cognitive tests and did very poorly on a Perceptual Organization test, multiple attention tests, and strategy-formation tests...one of them I did average but I didn't recognize the efficient strategy even when cued. She wrote in her report that she didn't think I had NLD because I could understand idioms and metaphors well and that the huge gaps were probably from a Production Disorder, like I think and reason at a higher level than my skills show because I can't focus or organize my thoughts effectively.

I'm still not convinced. I've always been socially awkward, poor eye contact and had trouble expressing my emotions. I also have narrow and intense interests and love to memorize facts. Academically I've never had a big problem except Geometry (which I still managed to pass), but sometimes I don't perform well because I always zone out in class and forget to study and do work on time. My depth perception is a bit off, I don't think visually, and I constantly lose stuff. I can do math REASONING very well but I tend to use unconventional methods and get confused sometimes when I have to do graphs and rotate objects. I've studied NLD and ASD's extensively and feel that NLD describes me the best in terms of visual and social skills issues, although ADHD/EFD may be more severe. Any opinions?

You sound a lot like me, especially in terms of academic skills, social skills, and your verbal/perceptual split (mine was 39 points). I also am dx'ed NLD, and I can understand metaphors just fine. Had trouble when I was a kid, but not anymore. We can LEARN you know, especially when we have high verbal skills generally. Was that diagnostician not very experienced in working with adults?

She was actually very experienced and seemed to know a lot about NLD...but I guess it's hard to make psychological dx's because there's so many confounding variables and you can't really learn someone's life story in six hours. I feel like I definitely have severe ADHD like both psychologists said, but I either have Executive Functions Disorder and a visual weakness, or I have NLD that manifests itself mostly in executive functions.

I totally agree with you about the learning thing. Adolescence was a huge turn-around for me and I learned a lot of ways to reason through confusing situations and learn how to "function"...people with high verbal IQ's can learn just as quickly as other gifted people, as long as it's explained in a way that plays into our gifts. I never really got a follow-up interview but she basically said she didn't think the dx was appropriate for me anymore so maybe she was implied that I "outgrew" enough of the symptoms to not fit the criteria, but I don't think you can really outgrow something as pervasive as NLD- you just learn to adjust and figure ways around it, it's just learning in a different way