I got Diagnosed

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Well, I finally got diagnosed, and she said I had Aspergers Syndrome and ADD after interviewing me for around 1 hour and 40 minutes. I was relieved and I feel as if a burden has been relinquished. I am very paranoid though, and still I feel like I am questioning myself over things and have slight distressing moments, but I am doing fine. I know my differences to other people has resulted in them being hesitant to me, and this has also resulted in hardly any friendships. There is something wrong I guess. I can socialize fine, but I prefer to be behind my computer, because socializing is limited in ways I guess.

well done Patrick, I hope this knowledge helps you to move forward in your life

Can you tell me how the interview went ?
I met with a neurpsychologist in March, the interview was about seventy minutes long, and she told me that I surely have Asperger's and ADHD, but that I would need to take additional testing and that it would take about five or six hours. So I will go again this fall to be diagnosed.

It's hard to diagnose Aspergers. My condition is subtle, and because it's a PDD, she diagnosed me as Aspergers. I have become even more paranoid though, seeing as I don't have all of the traits, yet I have the complacent ones. The interview was okay, she asked me the necessary questions and said I had 2-3 neurobiological conditions.

I had a similar feeling after I was diagnosed. I was told that quite a few people who are diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome are surprised that they do not have all the traits. The thing that helps me is knowing that the diagnosis is the only thing that explains the problems that I have had in my life. Since being diagnosed things have started to make more sense.

Interesting... I brought up my suspicions about AS to my therapist last Friday; I'd been seeing her for at least a couple of years for depression/anxiety/meds. I'd stopped seeing her for several months this year, because I couldn't afford it anymore, and I was no longer interested in continuing with any of the meds when they've consistently proven to be of no benefit to me.

At any rate, she roundly dismissed any notion that I might have AS, because apparently, communication/social problems are so profound in people with AS that they can't possibly function remotely "normally" - ever. Excuse me?! Having gotten to "know" some of the members of WP over the past couple of months, I can attest to the utter inaccuracy of that notion! Every bit of "evidence" I provided, from my childhood through to today, was "debunked" as though she were a skeptical scientist trying to disprove a person's claim that his or her house was haunted, by explaining away each factor entirely (dunno if that analogy will make any sense, but that's what it felt like to me). I felt that she was amused by my earnestness; what really upset me was that she was so insistent that my lifelong problems could be neatly explained as stemming merely from a lack of self-esteem due to being teased as a child. Sure, I agree that that, in and of itself, can cause depression and exacerbate a pre-existing anxiety disorder. But sorry, Doctor, in my opinion it fails to sufficiently explain WHY a 5-year-old is routinely shunned by classmates and written off as a "weirdo" and an "oddball". Regardless, I'll probably never know the ultimate cause (including whether or not I have AS), because I really can't afford to get a second opinion. Alas.

Im sorry to hear that Sinsister, your therapist does not seem to understand AS very well. I think only professionals who are trained to work with people with AS can say if you have it or not. I was also told that it was "unlikely" that I had AS, but those who said that to me were not properly qualified to say that. Based on the fact that I was able to get through school without getting diagnosed until the age of 21 and still get some fairly decent marks there is a lot of things that I can do normally.

For those people who have been successfully diagnosed (either way) by a psych who clearly had a good understanding about what Asperger's was, did you find it helpful to call/e-mail an Aspie support group and have them recommend a psych who's experienced & can give good diagnosis?

I'm starting to think I need to see a shrink either way, so it'd be helpful to find one who knows their stuff.