ASD/NVLD and personality disorder

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Can they be missed due to a personality disorder diagnosis being given instead?

I ask because I am diagnosed with paranoid PD. Diagnostic manuals and online articles describe such people as contentious and confrontational but I would say my paranoia stems from fearfulness rather than contentiousness. A major trigger for my paranoia and social anxiety was negative peer reactions as a teenager to my physical and social awkwardness.

Would welcome feedback/opinions.

Sorry! I didn't see this highly interesting topic!

Keep in mind that I am a sociologist who studies autistic adults. I am not a psychologist. I've only had the few required psychology classes here and there that everyone else has had in college. So I can only answer from a sociology perspective.

So yes. Especially for people who are...I'd say in their late thirties and over. I think you would be more likely to be misdiagnosed with anything the older you are.

Certain diagnoses were in style over certain periods of time, so it's sometimes helpful to look at what you were diagnosed with and WHEN that was. If you were diagnosed with ADHD in the early 2000s for example, maybe that should be re-examined. Something more "colorful" like a personality disorder or OCD would be a more stylish diagnosis in the 80s and 90s respectively.

The reason why I question these things is because some behaviors are natural for A) people on the autism spectrum and B) minorities. People on the autism spectrum are neurological and social minorities and are treated as such. So being careful to the point of paranoia is not uncommon. Ritualistic behaviors, like needing your food to be a certain way, or needing to follow a certain routine before you feel "ready" for the day are also completely normal, but can be misunderstood for OCD. I can go on and on (this is a very interesting topic for me).

If you'd like to learn more about the history of how autism has been diagnosed and misdiagnosed, I recommend The Autism Matrix.

My school years were from 1961-1975 long before the veritable wave of knowledge about developmental and learning difficulties that we now have. I guess there are a lot of people from my generation who were either misdiagnosed or additional comorbid problems were overlooked/missed.

I think due to the lack of a truly holistic approach to mental health it's very hard for mental health professionals to look beyond the categories and symptoms of the various diagnostic manuals. Such a myopic approach does a great disservice to many of us especially those of us who are over 40.
Once you get a dx of bipolar,schizophrenia,personality disorder etc it's very difficult to get mental health professionals to look beyond that. This can and does result in inadequate treatment with some/many professionals then choosing to hold it against you for not recovering sufficiently.

Oh, absolutely. A very long time ago I worked for an asthma and allergy doctor. He would sometimes have to take off a serious misdiagnosis, like asthma. He explained to me once that many people carry incorrect, outdated, but serious diagnoses because no doctor wants to be the person responsible for saying the person doesn't have that. What if they're wrong? In his case, what if the person isn't taking asthma medication anymore, or goes to play professional sports, and dies from an asthma attack? The doctor could be sued for malpractice, and would also feel forever like they killed that person.

And yes, you can't very well recover from something you didn't have the in the first place.

I recommend reading up on autism and then also different psychological conditions yourself. I would imagine the first step would be to be able to definitively say where you belong and then also be able to say I know I don't have XYZ because of this and that.

I definitely think so. I think that I was misdiagnosed with a PD when I went for ASD evaluations. Once a person gets that PD diagnosis, other shrinks will be very hesitant to re-consider it, so going for a second opinion will make it even more likely that ASD/NVLD will be misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.