Should i tell my shrink i am autistic

Post Reply New Topic

My shrink wants to help me to make friends... not sure if she noticed that I am autistic and how much my condition is preventing me from making friends.

Has anybody tried to explain your shrink you are autistic and the specific difficulties you have making any friend? I am reluctant to tell her all those things: that saying hello is difficult, a small chat is difficult, listening to two persons at a time is overwhelming, that I often misunderstand others, etc.

1. I will look stupid (what is a bit true) 2. I don't want to look like complaining and finding excuses 3. I am not sure people are enough aware of autism (shrinks included) in my country 4. If I don't say I have autism, she may not understand or even believe my difficulties

I don't know what to do

Maybe she wonders if she should tell me I am autistic

Also if an NT wanted to explain how to make friends to an autist, it would be like
if an English native speaker wanted to explain how to speak English to a Japanese.

When you know the language since you are born, you just feel it and know it, you can't explain it.

Last edited by LaetiBlabla on 02 May 2018, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would tell her. In case she doesn't know prepare some resources for her to start on.

Did some other shrink diagnose you as autistic, or are you self-diagnosed?

What diagnosis did current shrkink give you?

^^^I think in US, shrinks are used to give diagnosis, here I have gone to several shrinks and never got any diagnosis.

I am self-diagnosed. I have made many tests for various mental problems. I wanted to find out what was wrong with me, wondering if I am clever or disabled for many years.
I only had a significant scores on depression and anxiety tests.

But the day I reluctantly made the test for autism, while doing the test, I already knew it was it before the end because it was precisely spotting out all my dammed particularities. I got more than 40 on the test and always score more than 40.

Last edited by LaetiBlabla on 02 May 2018, 2:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What country do you live in?

Europe, I don't wish to specify here. Autism in my country is associated with visible disability and ret*d.

In Europe they have ICD, in America DSM. The ICD 10 criteria for autism and Asperger is very similar to DSM 4 (the DSM 5 removed Asperger but that would make it harder to get autism spectrom diagnosis not easier). So are they just interpretting the manual differently? Or are they saying that just because you meet a criteria doesn't mean they should diagnose you it only means that they can "if" they wanted to? Or what are they thinking?

First thing shrinks usually ask here is something like: "how do you feel and what do you want to improve in your life"
The approach of the shrinks here is more proactive and demands/suggests the patient to be willing to improve things from the first minute.

I suspect that they consider giving a diagnosis is a more fatalistic and passive approach which would give less good results.

Do you think that is how European *people* think differently than Americans, not just shrinks? If so, do you think I would have been better off in Europe? For example, when American girls reject me and I promise I will change they say "no don't change, you have to be who you are" and thats of course an excuse why they would reject me. Now if I were to have that same conversation with European girls, would they be more willing to give me an opportunity to change?

^^^I think change is good and can be maintained long-term, only if you can change and remain yourself at the same time, so to say reveal and express a part of yourself that was previously silent.

(I don't know more the European's way of thinking than the US way of thinking, they are just all NTs (understand "ETs")

Just tell your shrink that you "strongly suspect" that you are on the autism spectrum. And tell him/her why you think that, and about the self diagnostic test score you get (40) and so on.

I can't imagine NOT telling one's shrink one is autistic, but again, I'm in the USA.

If you tell her, but then things get weird, could you just move on and find another?

I think you should tell them instead of telling to make friends she might help more with socializing. I told mine and right now we are work on my communication skills.

Well, if you're in Europe and they're using ICD-10, it makes sense that they would think that Autism tends to imply a lower functioning end of the spectrum. In DSM-4 and ICD-10, Asperger's is a completely different diagnosis from Autism.

Don't tell that you think you might have Autism; tell her you think you have Asperger's instead. Based on ICD-10, that's probably a more appropriate label for you.

My experience is that a counsellor who does not take autistic traits into account will almost certainly give less good results. Whether or not they are willing or able to do that is a different matter, of course. I have been fortunate enough to have experienced both, and found that working with rather than against my autistic traits made a massive difference to the effectiveness of the counselling.