Got my diagnosis... finally.

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I'd had my suspicions of having Asperger's for almost a year. From first hearing the term used in an episode of 'Sherlock', Asperger's and the Autism Spectrum quickly became an intense special interest and gradually drifted into territories of obsession. I had to know if I truly met the criteria and couldn't shake the feeling that I perhaps wanted the diagnosis too much to help explain away my idiosyncrasies and the feeling that, no matter how much time I spent with people and deepened my understanding of social cues, I'd still always feel somewhat alien.

Regardless, after a series of appointments with a senior psychologist at an ADHD and Asperger's clinic in my area, yesterday I was finally diagnosed. I'm still somewhat in shock about it. After twenty years of having no term for my life perceptions, thought patterns and sensory difficulties and very nearly being convinced that it was all in my head, I've got my diagnosis. Boom!

I'm still a little in shock about it. For those of you with adolescent/adulthood diagnoses, I have a couple of questions!

How was the experience for you? Positive? Negative?
Was there a delay period for the time it took to sink in?

Any miscellaneous comments would be greatly appreciated also. So, with no further ado, hello hello, my fellow Aspies!

welcome!

I was diagnosed 2 years ago ...being 20 years old...it was mainly positive experience since I was always bullied and called weirdo and never knew why people react that way to me...I'm still getting to terms of it since country I live in is not really fund of any differences...but it gets better...you find out who your real friends are...the ones who accept you just as they did before official diagnosis...thats the best I can say to help :/

Lecter - my answer will explain to you my name 'MrGrumpy'...

I am delighted that you have had your 'Eureka' moment. But what have you learned that you didn't already know? What would you have done or felt if the Senior Psychologist had told you that your self-diagnosis was wrong? I have never known anybody to come onto an Aspie forum in order to say that they have been diagnosed as Neuro-Typical.

My own sense of euphoria was short-lived. It was soon replaced by anger that my condition had not been recognised sooner. The only good thing that came out of it was that my ex-partner shared the Eureka experience, and has 'been there' for me ever since.

One of the characteristics of ASD is the need for a positive diagnosis - but the medical profession is conditioned to prefer a non-diagnosis and their patients are usually highly delighted to walk away free of a diagnosis. It's only us Aspies who prefer the bad news to the good news!

Congrats on the diagnosis. For me (diagnosed at age 34) I had a huge sigh of relief - it was proof that I wasn't crazy. It was also pretty heavy at the same time. I started putting my entire life up until that point under a microscope. It gave me a great deal of understanding of a lot of the choices I made (both consciously and subconsciously). And I found a lot of relief as to why certain areas of my life didn't really work out.

My diagnosis also relieved a lot of stress for me as well. I don't feel guilty for shutting down after being around too many people. It was if I was able to give in to my guilty pleasure of just wanting to be alone. And people can't make me feel bad for it anymore.

And I have started to put some really healthy boundaries in place that allows me to be a bit more balanced in terms of social engagement.

Hi and congrats.
I felt a relief too that I didn´t have those personality disorders, I was "given". Honestly, I also thought, I had a brain damage.

So, Mr Grumpy as ever , - AS can be good news, if you think, or are made to think, that something far worse is the matter.

Freddie - you prove my point. Where else in the world would you congratulate somebody on being diagnosed as not normal?

More than a decade ago, I tried to engage the UK National Health Service in a discussion about the possibility of my being Asperger's/ADHD. They simply refused. And, from recent posts on this forum, I don't think that their position has changed.

But there were people on the internet who offered private consultations at a price of several hundred pounds. I was given a positive diagnosis of ADHD and a prescription for Ritalin. The guy was not interested in discussing Asperger's.

When I went back to my GP, he made it clear that most adults who are prescribed Ritalin are suspected of being street dealers.

People with, say, suspected cancer would happily pay for a non-diagnosis, but Aspies would feel cheated - it makes no sense.

By the time a self-diagnosed Aspie is prepared to pay money, or spend months wading through the NHS bureacracy, in search of a 'diagnosis', the job is already done. A diagnosis from somebody wearing a white coat is no more useful than the self-diagnosis which already exists.

For me, the professional diagnosis was very gratifying. Plus it really helped when we requested that our son be evaluated by his school. They took us much more seriously due to my diagnosis.

I don't tell everyone that I meet that I am an aspie. But I love knowing that I am. It is my secret. And a secret that I entrust to a handful of other people. If I were to be asked, I wouldn't lie about it either.

It is a lot like my tattoo. I don't want everyone I meet to know about it. But if they were to ask me, I would proudly show it. And while I am showing it to them, I can explain about it.

I also understand the frustration that comes along with seeking a diagnosis. I am pretty sure that a majority of people on this site have very similar stories - filled with frustration, loneliness, and a loss of hope. And I am not scared to admit that I would have been heartbroken if I had been told that I wasn't on the spectrum - because it would have meant (to me) that I was just a lonely jerk that nobody wanted to be around...and it was all my fault.

I was diagnosed about 3-4 years ago at age 22. I didn't even want to go to therapy. My dad managed to convince me into it(I had a horrible relationship with him thanks to my mom lying for years about him) so I could get a job. I was vulnerable, trapped, upset, and I think that hasn't changed that much over the years. A lot came my way though.

I got disability after 3 years or so, was able to move into transistion housing, learned a whole lot about living and taking good care of myself and even got section 8 housing.
I'm on my own now, living off disability and recently went back to college for one class just to test myself. I can talk to people now a whole lot easier. I still have that background of dread but I'm definitely going uphill, however slow I am taking it.

To this day I still see aspergers as a bit of an excuse, even though I've been through lots of therapy and am still going weekly. I think its due to the way my mom raised me. I cut her out of my life after I moved out and she hasn't talked to me since. Good riddance.

She signed me out of classes that were for people with aspergers my dad told me. She smoked weed when I was in the womb and drank, probably thought it was her fault or something. I don't know.
I was always odd and didn't socialize much, but I didn't really think too much about it until the last few years. High school was the worst though, mostly because I felt like I had no worth as a human being due to no friends and the pretty girls snubbing me.

You can congratulate someone for having completed an important step in a journey towards self-discovery and self-understanding.

Congrats! It must be a relief.

Welcome to the board Lecter

I am more like Desurage in that I had to be talked into it by my siblings. What I knew about Aspergers 2 years ago was the stereotypical social aspects, awkward, nerdy, literal, loner etc. While I knew I fit that personality type to me it was no more then a mild curiosity. Getting diagnosed made it a special interest. I was numb to being told by somebody with 30 years experience with this that there was no doubt about my Aspergers diagnosis in the office, but as soon as I hit the street Wow. You watch movies of aliens being born and there are bolts of electricity running through them, that is how it felt. What did I learn that I did not know before?. That there are others like me, it is a whole different way of being, that most things in my life had a partial or completely new explanation. I always knew I was very different but now I realize that I did not even come close to knowing how and thoroughly different I am. There are still on occasion Oh my f*****g God moments.

Coming from an era where HFA/Aspergers was not known there is really no person to blame for not recognizing it so there is no one to get angry at.

The only regret I have is not getting diagnosed 6 or 7 years ago when the whole Aspie identity thing was at it's height, before the DSM 5, The backlash, its all fake, wannabees ideas got really popular. And that is my fault there was enough information out for me. Yes it is disconcerting to get diagnosed and immediately have that diagnosis deleted.

Hopefully with the doubt gone now a true understanding of yourself will emerge.

Congratulations on the diagnosis, and welcome to WP I received my diagnosis two months, two weeks ago today, and it was a tremendous relief for me. I had "known" I had Asperger's for two years prior to getting diagnosed, so there was no surprise or shock. I had been very afraid however, that I would not be diagnosed, because I would thus be forced to start over at the beginning to find out why I was so peculiar, so receiving official confirmation was a very positive experience. It allowed me to feel validated in all my odd quirks and nitpicky sensory behaviour, as well as to know that it was not simply out of laziness or cowardice that I was unable to connect with and communicate with people the way everyone else did.

Welcome again to the forum, we hope you find a community here; most of us are very friendly and don't bite (unless you trigger a meltdown... then we might )

Last edited by StarTrekker on 25 Jun 2014, 1:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

It depends on your definition of "bad news". A person can be feeling terrible and horribly ill or in pain, and they can either receive a medical diagnosis from a doctor, "You have X, this is how we treat it," or they can take all their scans and say, "We don't know what it is, so you have no diagnosis." A lack of diagnosis does not make the pain go away; your experiences are just as real regardless of whether or not they can be confirmed by professionals on the diagnostic level. Mental health diagnoses work the same way; we're not happy we were stuck with a label, we're happy the symptoms we've always experienced have a name and a common understanding, that we're not just random crazy people that even medical professionals don't understand.

This is especially poignant. ^

Also, 'normal' is little more than a societal construct. I feel that differing from the set of a pre-ordained identifiers that defines 'normal neurology', despite the implicit difficulties that those who differ from this 'standard' have to contend with, is nothing to be ashamed of.

Cheers for your warm welcomes and contributions, people!

The experience was overall positive, but very intense. I can recall leaving the medical office with a paper bearing the 299.80 diagnostic code and thinking, so, it is really true. The thing you have felt all your life but did not want to know is finally out in the open. You are really not of a kind with these people.

The other thing was a series of memories that came flooding back-this happened before the diagnosis when I first began to suspect, but it continued very intensely after the diagnosis: people had told me in various ways either that I was different or that I was autistic and I had not been able to take it on board, but I had filed away the messages... and they came flooding back.

And it was weird to think that when they told me I was not normal, they were just being honest and not hostile as I had thought.

And it took about six months for the ideas to really settle in place. I think I have some difficulty recognizing my own emotions and processing anything of consequence like this means going through periods when I am having a lot of feeling, but I can't really tell you what it is.

In any case, congratulations on this moment of clarity, may it serve you well as life goes on.

^^
This, So much this. Yes when they were telling me I thought it was just more bullying.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 26 Jun 2014, 3:23 am, edited 1 time in total.