Getting Diagnosed At 40 - Having problems -Advice please!! !

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He could tell ON THE PHONE?! Maybe he could tell that you didn't have some sort of severely limiting form of autism but Asperger's?

NEXT!

Very interesting. I'm kind of in the same boat and mentioned this to my mother, she said 'I don't know if I should tell you this but...' She said I didn't talk about people when I was a kid, I wouldn't come home from school and talk about what Sally did or whatever but I'd have questions about 'things' like how does this work, like stuff I'd been contemplating and intellectual puzzles, while not paying attention to the people around me. About the bird outside the window or the clouds rolling by. I could relate to a lot in that Temple Grandin movie, like where she's staring at the wallpaper noticing how the patterns don't match or gazing at the chandelier during a lesson. Temple's whole approach to things by solving problems in completely innovative ways, ignoring the normal way a gate works and visualizing relationships in 3D. I learned to draw in 3 point perspective in high school; it's perfectly natural to me. In grade school I invented a concept for a magnetic frictionless monorail. Other things too like a video on youtube of an autistic child counting backwards from 100; sheesh, I used to do that!

I still have an awful time with names. Even though I know someone, I'll blank out on their name. I'm bad with scheduling too, I just don't have a good sense of how long it'll take to do something and will forget important appointments in very embarrassing ways.

I feel compelled to be inappropriately frank with people and can be gullible in situations NT's see right through. I sometimes say very embarrassing inappropriate things.

I just cannot do something that I don't agree with and doesn't make sense to me, even though most people would just go along not to make waves, it's unthinkable for me to pretend to go along. I always re-think things in a way that makes sense to me, ignoring the standard solution.

But I don't appear to be an aspie, other than eye contact. I have a good speaking voice, fine on the phone, I don't have meltdowns or freak out about sounds, etc though I do have a rough time trying to converse with the radio on, picky about foods, itchy clothes.

Sorry, I'm off on a tangent...



Also very interesting. I googled that topic and found some info similar to gluten and other dietary restrictions for autism; some of it a bit sketchy but seems worth checking with a doc. I don't appear to be autistic but I've definitely had problems my whole life. So many things don't fit... wrong planet syndrome for sure.

Someone else posted a link to this article in a different topic, and I found it immensely helpful. I'm not an adult just receiving a diagnosis (was diagnosed at 12), but it covers a LOT of the issues people with Autism/AS experience as adults.

http://www.autistics.org/library/more-autistic.html

My psychologist took the lead to have the psychiatrist in the same clinic test me. It wasn't my idea and the diagnosis blindsided me. I don't think you'll get cooperation if you walk into a clinic and say you want to be tested for Asperger's Syndrome. It needs more finesse and, even then, you may not get what you actually need. You might have to settle for an official diagnosis of symptomatic behavior: Social Anxiety, Depression, Anxiety, ADD, etc.. Just make sure you're not prescribed a stimulant.

Adult diagnoses are more difficult to obtain than child diagnoses because there's no set process like there is for kids. Adults have spent years gaining functioning skills and secondary behaviors to compensate, whereas children are still pretty raw. We get told stupid things like, "You love your kids so you can't have Aspergers" or "You seem to be able to talk fine." This is because children would exhibit difficulty but adults have spent umpteen years faking it or learning social behaviors like skills.

Good luck to you. My only advice is to try not to get frustrated by the process. I'm dealing with a difficult clinic right now because I had to switch from my old one due to insurance changes. I'm trying to work with them again for the sake of having a proper medication that ought to help but we'll see. I figured giving them another chance is better than doing nothing. So just keep trying until you find a therapist you're comfortable with who knows what they're doing. Don't be ashamed to switch if you need to.

I wouldn't let it get to me. The only thing I would suggest is, learn much as you can about it and then, go on. I know when I found out every thing started to make sense as to why I was acting the way I am.


JC.

The problem with diagnosing adults is too much emphasis on self reporting of behavior which is very subjective as opposed to the naturalistic observation of young children who haven't been trying to "fake it" for 10 years.

I don't care too much for the AQ test because it requires too much self knowledge to answer correctly.

I much prefer this online test; http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php
It still requires subjective self evaluation but the questions are more concrete than on the AQ test.