What is it about AS that makes people hunger for a diagnosis

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You said it! It is not the hunt for an excuse for being different. I know, - we are all different, - but when you see yourself losing jobs despite your best efforts, when you can´t manage as much input at work as others, despite that you are proven intelligent, and you see others doing so much better in life, and you suffer from anxiety and seems socially clumsy, and you are so frustrated with life and still doesn´t know wtf is wrong, - then it is a relief to get a diagnose and see that there is some explanation to all that.
Not a diagnose as in "illness", but as an explanation as to why there are some "ordinary" criteria in worklife, that you can´t meet, - and in the other end, why there are some tasks you can do better than most.
It is a long process to re-view ones life and it is so much easier to get past and finding your strengths, when you have an explanation to some of your troubles.

(Said from the perspective of one, who was dx´ed just before 60th birthday).

(I´m sure, that a less noisy and socially less demanding workculture would eliminate much for the majority of us, but reality isn´t like that. When you fall outside the "norm" = don´t match todays typical demands, - you have a "disorder". That is probably why more and more people are dx`ed.)

Adoption is an interesting analogy I had not thought of. Have to digest that one a bit.

I really agree with the last paragraph. Social media, more team work, open workplaces and classrooms, rise of networking and multitasking, being on call 24/7 no downtime to recharge. What was "eccentric" is now "disordered" in many cases. I believe it is an important reason why diagnosis have skyrocketed.

open workplaces that sends a chills down my spine that disturbing trend occurred when I entered the work force in the 90's, than came the "chill out room" for gawds sake this is a place to work not a after rave room early morning business .

It's even taken hold at libraries I miss the dark and danky old school types

I think that the problem is that people don't take 'self-diagnosis' very seriously. Before I knew I had AS, people thought I was rude, selfish and inconsiderate. My husband has AS as well, and by the time we met, I already knew about my (suspected) AS, and he attributed my antics to the AS, but my parents seemingly accepted it as well, but they still attributed my behaviour to my suspected rudeness/selfishness/inconsiderateness.

I needed an official diagnosis to make the world take my AS seriously.

I went to my doctor this evening - she told me "We don't diagnose autism in adults," and that it wouldn't make a difference to my treatment if I got a dx or not.
It makes a huge difference to me; I've spent most of my life in tremendous emotional pain, hating myself for messing up my career and...well, hating myself for just about everything. And my mom, too. I blamed her for messing me up.
I need to tie all my bizarre traits and behaviors together and put a name to them. It won't make a difference to my treatment, but at least I will stop beating myself up for being a miserable failure. That will help my children, too. It hurts them to know how I feel about myself.

Well said. I spent the better part of my life (I turned 50 earlier this year) trying to understand these differences. For me, the best part of a diagnosis is that this particular search is over.

It is seen as fashionably quirky, anyone who is mildly AS is portrayed as a tortured artist in films and TV. Aspergers is so widely embraced in society, why not have the label??
No saying aaaaaalllllll self diagnosed adults are like that, but that's why it's so easy to accept.

Precisely where, though?
This is easy to repeat ad nauseum, but I haven't come across a single individual this quirky-bandwagon accusation actually, concretely applies to.

There's one still that type round me - useless place though now, since it's filled with people with their music cranked up just to make sure everyone in the building can hear it

why would they do that even in these "new age" ones have a dull roar policy for gawds sake they even have Xboxes here WTF ?

This post perfectly expresses how I feel as someone who managed to fake having a functional life until age 28 and then finding out the AS diagnosis at age 29. Suddenly I feel like I am not a lost cause anymore. And, more importantly, I am not alone!

Adult diagnosis is difficult in the UK, so would probably be impossible for me now. I don't need any help and support, so I have never pursued it.

That said, since posting on here I have been surprised and delighted to find other people who are "like me".

It also helps my wife to understand why I act the way I do sometimes. I would welcome a diagnosis as it would give me some legitimacy.

Ditto

You have articulated it pretty well……there is a lot of books and discussion and forums out there for AS individuals and the sense of self awareness and understanding is of benefit to the constant fumbling of normalising your experiences based on that of non-AS people.

What you are discovering is that AS behaviour is normal for you and not normal for them, this is the first step to self awareness then comes self confidence and self respect……to use the analogy of making something bigger than the sum of its parts , again the use of analogy to describe synergism and or emergent properties of systems is pretty accurate…….the scale and complexity of the connections made between the pre-diagnosis moment and the "aaah haaa " post diagnosis and acceptance moment is an emergent property that is bigger than the sum of the parts of the system. Look up emergence on Google it is a property of systems that you have described.


enjoy the discovery and the emergent properties of your journey…..

This is a real phenomena called Reappropriation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation

My husband felt the same way as you I think. He was diagnosed (in the UK) five years back when he was 32. It really had so many positive effects in the beginning, for both of us. I understand how your wife will gain from the knowledge as well, it really opened our eyes to why we had so many 'ridiculous' misunderstandings and they truly got less and less as time went on.

However, all the insight we've gathered has come from our own reading around the subject and to be honest I personally think the actual diagnosis will cause him more harm than actual good in the long term.

Good luck in whatever happens. It's a bugger of a condition however you go about it!