Diagnosed with Psychosis NOS

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It is official apparently I am psychotic =/

Or at least is the only diagnosis pinned to me. I didnt bring the aspie subject again yesterday because I was nerveous and ticking constantly. My stomach muscles where spasming greatly and lately i have gotten this weird habbit of pealing my lips (they get dry and chapped so i start peeling the skin off). She upped my Abilify by 5 miligrams and said something along the lines that she wasnt going to change my diagnosis.

Mind you is not that I am not open to the fact that I may not be an aspie, but I am pretty sure that if you are one, you kinda know. The symptoms are there IMO.

Any helpful hints as to how to be more open and descriptive on how things are so she can get a better picture? I dont think she is getting it.

When I try to tell people what is going on, I always forget things.

What I have started doing is writing everything down. I use a word processing program and make organized lists. Make 2 copies, one to give to the doctor and one to look off of yourself to make sure you don't forget anything. Make sure that you go over your lists together. Give yourself about a week to just think of things and toss them into your list when you think of them.

I even copied "common symptoms" down in one color and how I think this relates and how it does not for the things no symptoms are evident in a contrasting color font.

I also take a manila folder to keep everything together in that i am taking or that they may give me as I am leaving. Put anything that doesn't really belong on the "list" but might be an off topic question about medications or anything else on another sheet in your folder.

very helpful, now to make myself do it. I gotta work on procrastination. if it doesnt have to do wiht my current obsession i have a great deal of trouble remembering it.

Is this professional's mind open to getting it? If their mind is closed like a steel trap maybe a second opinion is in order (esp. someone with experience evaluating autistic adults).

Authority figures so commonly seem to get their egos intertwined with their authority-status... (IOW, have to deny anything they didn't think of themselves.) Hmm...

Maybe also look up the diagnostic features (i.e.DSM) -- whether or not those seem most important from your POV -- and try to structure your notes around those.

Well at least if you tell people you're psychotic it sounds a lot cooler than "aspie" or "ass burgers".

the same thing always happens to me. i wanted to make sure i got my point across to the psychologist i started seeing so i wrote everything down and brought it in.

Ok this is kind of unrelated...but before I was diagnosed with AS I was diagnosed with Psychosis-NOS. I wasn't at all psychotic, but some of my AS traits back then (and my weird obsession with serial killers and cannibalism) made the doctors think I was.

Anyway what i'm trying to say is...
Sometimes AS traits can be mistaken for psychotic symptoms (people with psychosis also have what is described as "stereotypic movements", can appear socially awkward...but not for the same reasons as AS...but because of being out of touch with reality, socially isolate themselves, have "meltdowns", in some way unusual way of speaking). Sound like AS? I think it does in a few ways. (apart from the psychotic symptoms of hallucinating and being delusional).

Not saying that you do or don't have psychosis-NOS...but it's just a possibility that others might be mistaken for having psychosis when they really have AS and vice-versa.

Psychotic Disorders are bound by losing touch with reality via delusional thinking, and/or hallucinations, i.e., difficulty in recognizing that what you're thinking, seeing and/or hearing is real or not; Asperger's is losing touch of people from birth, i.e., difficulty in recognizing the existence of others.

Which one do you sound like?

It depends on the field manual the therapist have... if he had de DSM IV maybe you are AS... maybe he had the DSM III and you are psychotic... you know... Van gogh could be held in the asylum nowadays... or Saint Francis of Assis, the saint of all saints... he would be held for sure!

I don't know what to think atm, just trying not to stress about it.

I wouldn't be all that stressed if I were you. They're not going straight for schizophrenia, so it's pretty obvious they think that whatever you've got is mild. (Incidentally, did you tell them you had any psychotic symptoms?--like hearing/feeling/seeing/believing things most other people don't? Do you, for example, hold any beliefs that nobody or almost nobody else does?)

You'd think that with the repetitive movements, they'd be more likely to diagnose Tourette's, really. Repetitive movements are a bit reminiscent of a sort of catatonia; but they don't mesh with your communicating so clearly and unambiguously; and that alone would simply be repetitive movement disorder.

yeah and if you are on the spectrum and others think you are psychotic, those people will leave you alone!

Writing everything down especially with how nervous you were will help you get everything out. Just write down everything, hand it to the person.

seems to be the most popular vote is to write everything down. I got another session in july so I will start writing down lil bits and pieces for then.

I agree. Write it down. Hand in the sheet of symptoms and quirks that you think mean you are on the spectrum.

I only ever brought up the possibility of being autistic with my counselor once: when we were discussing my daughter with an official diagnosis of HFA, and I mentioned that I don't think that like my daughter, my nature can be medicated away, who I am, my psych said "The apple does not fall far from the tree and I would guess you are also autistic."