What would happen if...

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...you found out you were diagnosed with Asperger's, and it explained so much, but years later you find out that you were misdiagnosed and you really don't have anything at all? I feel like I'd be a bit lost in that situation. I mean, now that I've joined a community, who would I turn to now for understanding?

It could happen. And with the uncertainty and some internal contradictions in dx, plus in all likelyhood a large number of professionals who do not really know what is an aspie. .
. . .I will bet it hashappened many times.

A person could wrap their life around a fouled dx. I don't know how they would deal with it later.

I wouldn't know what to say if it happened to me!

How could that really happen though? I mean, AS is just a set of symptoms. Doesn't a person fit the label if he fits the symptoms, even if an individual doctor happens to think that a certain patient doesn't have it? At the very least, the person would probably struggle with the same issues as an officially diagnosed Aspie, so he'd fit right in.

Thats what I was thinking if they had enough criteria to get a misstaken diagnosis they likely are infact on the autism spectrum anyway.

So what makes the second diagnoses anymore valid than the first?

It would depend, mainly on how it was determined to be a misdx. I mean, I'm too much of a tenacious, incorrigible Aspie to accept people at their word. I don't necessarily believe or trust someone just because they are in a position of authority. I need logic, eason, justification, due cause, because ultimately I will make up my own mind rather than just resign to what I'm being told. This would be doubly so, because the first dx made sense and appeared justified. So I would be extremely suspicious if I was told later on that it was supoosedly wrong.

you would be laughed at

Exactly!

Amen!

It has happened to me I got diagnosed when I was very young with AS but when I was 15 I got diagnosed again and they said I haven't got anything then I got diagnosed when I was 18 and they said I did have AS and now I am completely confused!! !! !! !! !!

I think I would be bummed out. I'd think I was just a someone who is crazy who has a messed up mind and I will be misunderstood for the rest of my life and not be able to explain anything to my future partner or people I meet that meet my interests. I'd be back where I was when I was in elementary school, wondering why I am so different and what is wrong with me.

I think this will happen to many of us, we mustn't believe blindly in diagnosis.
Anyway many people will "feel all the symptoms" of any diagnosis.

Worry less about the diagnosis, and more about the symptoms. Nobody should have a goal of getting a diagnosis. A diagnosis is little more than a starting point for treatment, or at least it should be. If the symptoms are close enough, go with the diagnosis. If it helps, it helps, end of story, even if the original DX turns out to be wrong years down the line.

What does it matter? I mean, really, what DOES it matter? To my knowledge any psychological diagnosis is essentially opinion. It's not like being tested for an actual disease by blood test or MRI. It all boils down to opinion, no more and no less. And the weight of that opinion depends upon the qualification and intuition of the person making diagnosis.

I think it's what you feel atuned to. I feel atuned to this. I feel like I've found that part of me that always questioned, but no answer was forthcoming.

I don't think I would care very much. It just wouldn't really change anything, you still have the same problems, you would just call them something else.