Finally received my evaluation report.

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I was diagnosed a few months ago. Finally, a few days ago, I was able to talk to psychologist, who was member of my diagnostic team, to share my concerns about my diagnosis.

We talked more freely about my life and about autism in general. I told him that my main concern was tests (AQ test and reading emotion in faces), which could be affected by Med Student Syndrome due to the fact that I learned so much about AS. However, according to the test, I can read emotions only a little worse than control group. I told him that I might score better, but he just acknowledged and ignored it. My mother told me to stop paying too much of attention to this small part of my evaluation.

I was also quite surprised about my speech. Despite the fact that I developed my speech in early stages of my life, they found my speech development very typical for Aspie, which was also included in the report.

Should I still have concerns about my diagnosis anymore? I said "Med Student Syndrome" a few times in conversation, I told that I gained huge amount of knowledge about ASD, but nothing happened. Psychologist just told me that I was born with AS. My mother fully accepted the report, but I still have constant feeling of imperfection. What to do with this?

When I get a new diagnosis I go through something similar to the grief process and go through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' 5 stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I don't think I do the bargaining thing though, but definitely the other 4. I think you are going through a similar process.

I forgot to mention that I started the whole thing by myself. It was my initiative. Thus, the process of acceptance might be different.

You have asperger's, you need to get over it. You can even know more about asperger's than your psychiatrist, that still doesn't miraculously cure you of asperger's, there is no cure. One aspect of asperger's is learning to cope with our social disability. The more coping skills you attain the harder it will be for people to notice your asperger's, but you will always have it.

First, I'm glad you have your dx now. I think your concerns are valid. I, too, had concerns about knowing too much about ASDs during the evaluation. However, they've probably taken this into account. Besides, test results of face/emotion recognition tell very little about how well you do in real life situations. Limitations of attention division and processing speed also have an effect.

I still haven't reached acceptance. I'd say I'm halfway to it, and probably will stay at it for eternity. That is, I agree with the psychs who evaluated me that I'm on the spectrum (I have an ASD), but I strongly disagree that the most appropriate dx to me was PDD-NOS. Their argument included "political" aspects, too. I strongly despise such an approach, no matter how well-meant it is.

Oh, and I did bargain, actually (if I understand well). Besides questioning the dx more than once I asked them to state in the explanation/description part of my dx that I have a kind of "HFA". At least it is a label, unlike PDD-NOS, which is an ugly and widely disregarded dx. Basically, almost anyone with a form of HFA is dx'd with AS by professionals, at least in the States (or so it appears).

They obviously took it into account, because I told them everything about my concerns and nothing happened. I'm aspergish to them. Mildly, but still aspergish.

Thanks for your replies!

This was a big concern for me too, as a psych-student, but if anything it made me almost not get diagnosed since I knew what was AS traits and when in doubt always choose the NT answer.