Just Diagnosed, yet somewhat Skeptical (Long)

Post Reply New Topic

Hello again. This is my second post to WP. Earlier this week, I was diagnosed with Aspergers.

I am not certain if this is a normal reaction, but I am somewhat skeptical of the process. Let me give you some background.

I first learned about Aspergers in mid-December 2012 and then spent the past 4 months reading everything I could about the “condition”. I became interested not only in Aspergers, but also other “conditions” (i.e. certain Personality Disorders) that could be “confused” with Aspergers. I spent many, many hours each week reading Wrong Planet (and other online forums) as well as more than a dozen books (about both Aspergers and Personality Disorders).

To help the diagnosis process, I began documenting areas I felt could help with the evaluation, including: online test scores (AQ=41; EQ=20; SQ=44; RDOS=126), therapy history, list of anxieties, list of ocd traits, list of social interaction difficulties, list of sensory difficulties, list of motor difficulties, list of work difficulties, list of special interests, stimming, rituals/routines. Just about everything I could remember, beginning from when I was around 3. The entire document was > 30 pages.

I also identified a list of "conditions" that I "could" be "diagnosed" and provided to the Psychologist (including: Aspergers, Extreme Introversion, Shyness, Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Social Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety, Avoidant Personality, Schizoid).

The in-person diagnosis (performed by a Psychologist) consisted of the following:
- WAIS IQ Test
- Memory Test (additional tests targeted at testing short-term working memory – manipulating both simple and complex information)
- Social Skills Test (where I listened to recordings of expressions with various voice intonations and matched them to pictures of faces)
- Executive Functioning Test (similar to Wisconsin Card Sorting Test)
- Rorschach Test (this was primarily to determine if I had a personality disorder)

I also completed a myriad of questionnaires including:
- AQ
- EQ
- Multidimensional Anxiety Questionnaire (MAQ)
- Y-BOCS Symptom Checklist (Y-BOCS)
- Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF-A)
- Brown Attention-Deficit Disorder Scales (Brown ADD Scales)
- Western Psychological Services (WPS)

Interestingly, I thought the social skills test was rather “easy”. The Psychologist showed me a list of faces and I was supposed to guess which emotion was ‘pinned’ to each expression. Then, the Psychologist played some audio recordings of people saying things (with various voice intonations). And, I was supposed to match the expression with a face. From my perspective, it’s pretty easy to guess most emotions by looking at the mouth (which is where I usually look, when speaking to people): corners of mouth up (happy), corners of mouth down (sad), mouth open (surprise). The voice intonations were fairly exaggerated (I just needed to close my eyes and listen carefully).

Based upon everything (including the 30+ page document I provided the Psychologist), I was diagnosed with Aspergers. There were a couple of anomalies. The Psychologist indicated that my Verbal Index and Perceptual Reasoning Index were both on the higher end, which was unusual for Aspergers (she indicated that Verbal Index is typically high, but not the Perceptual Reasoning Index). She also indicated that the Social Skills Testing was about average. The Psychologist indicated I had difficulty with Executive Functioning and Multi-Tasking, with particularly issues with complex memory.

So…I am quite skeptical by nature. I am wondering:
1. How these tests prove I have Aspergers?
2. Whether I “influenced” the diagnosis by providing this write-up (i.e. was this a self-fulfilling prophecy)?
3. The validity of these questionnaires (which is influenced by how I felt at the time when I completed them, as opposed to 10 or 20 or 40 years ago)

I am just curious if anyone out there (who was previously diagnosed) ever feels skeptical about what appears to be a non-perfect science.

It sounds like your approach to the situation was aspie in nature. Seeking any and all information on the subject and related. But it sounds like you are correct to be skeptical of the dx if your social skills are normal and your perception scores are high.

So what characterisitics do you have that make you think you have aspergers...? Or some kind of personality disorder....?

Could have written this myself. I was diagnosed a couple of months ago, very late in life and did the reading round etc. Even worse when I read the report, full of inaccuracies but actually these were not relevant and I know really that it is correct. Usually I would have written back to correct the details, then I realised this would just reinforce the diagnosis! Hope we both come to terms with AS and use the knowledge to move on.

You hit the nail on the head. I didn't document all the online test results but I did go into my evaluation with a multi-page printout of all my symptoms/recollections/history.

While I can't tell you one way or the other if you're an Aspie, I can say that many Aspies have previously looked at the Meyer-Briggs, and they also found something "missing".

The tests sound quite thorough, but it seems strange that there is nothing about childhood development as far as I can see.

It is often hard to accept the diagnosis at first. But these test are usually very accurate at weeding out us broken people.