Diagnosed by Accident

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Hi all,

when I was first diagnosed with Asperger's, I was originally seeing the psychiatrist for depression and he picked up the Asperger's in me.

Did any of you get "discovered" by accident, and if so, what was your initial reaction? Mine was one of disbelief and anger despite the fact that I knew nothing about Asperger's apart from the fact that it was a form of autism.

Yes, a similar thing happened to me.

At first they thought I had that other thing that people on here sometimes talk about.

I can't remember the name of it now.

I was lost in Seattle at a Starbucks and had a psychiatrist come up to me. and that when I found out I had AS. Before that, I would have never guess or had a clue what I was dealing with.

They discovered that I needed glasses when I got my eyes tested for fun. I wasn't too happy about that.

I was discovered but then left alone when I was being counseled / told off with 3 of my friends (at the time) because I had been violent and was misbehaving and then the counselor thought for a second and asked:

"Excuse me. Do you have autism?"

I really wanted to punch her for saying this in front of my autistic friend and my other friend.
The other friend forgot but the autistic one did not.
And the third is a horrible person now (and he was then).
I still hate her (the counselor).
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(edited bit)
Because she said this, to draw attention away from myself I had to feed her one of my secrets to make her leave me alone.
Now she occasionally disturbs my happiness when I am walking around school.

A lot of times for adults with children the child being diagnosed is a trigger for professionals to think about diagnosis for the parent.

Neither I nor anyone else that I know of thought of Aspergers or autism for me until it was evident in my child. People would sometimes tell me I was strange, though. And even though I did not feel I fit in, being told I seemed odd always surprised me. Because I thought I was doing a good job trying to act right according to what I thought people wanted.

I went into a psychosis intervention program and came out with ocd diagnosis and they strongly suggested I get evaluated for autism, I refused. I was in denial about autism at the time and it took years to fully understand and accept it.

The school system, which had already classified me as a child with a specific learning disorder and knew I had lots of other problems, referred my mum to a psychiatrist specializing in anxiety disorders. That doctor said there was something very different about me from the other kids she saw with anxiety (this right away at the beginning of the session) and asked my mum if she thought it could be "something developmental". She then referred my mum to a psychiatrist who specialized in PDDs like Asperger's and I got my diagnosis from him.

* To answer the second question:my mum thought it made so much sense and was happy about it but I was angry about being given the diagnosis. I hated the idea of being diagnosed with a form of autism. It took me a long time to accept it.

I think it was the schizotypal one.

I've just looked it up on the Wikipedia.

Thanks everyone.