Now I don't know what to think about me....

Post Reply New Topic

Okay, so I started seeing a new therapist a couple months ago. She told me today she could tell I was on the autism spectrum, she said she has seen clients with similar symptom profiles as me in the past. She specializes in bipolar however, but she says she sees bipolar/ASD quite a bit.

She thought I should bring it up with the psychiatrist I am seeing for my mental illness problems. But before I moved here, my last therapist thought I was on the autism spectrum and he brought it up to my old psychiatrist and he didn't agree. Also a lady I just met here works with people on the autism spectrum and she says no, I don't seem to have it.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH! So far people that said I have it or not looks like this:

Have it:
2 LMSW therapists
an uncle of mine
my best friend
a guy with an ASD
Random lady that shouted it out at a bipolar support group

Don't have it:
Last psychiatrist
Workers in a mental hospital
Manager of where I and the guy with an ASD used to work
Lady I met a couple months ago that works with ASD kids

Just when I started to accept I probably wasn't aspie.

Anyone else get similar treatment?

Advice?

Of course, I know too little about you to give you a definite answer to your question. But I know that I picked up a lot of social scripts over the years. I can maintain eye-contact, I can keep a conversation going (even in a small group), I can do smalltalk and white lies. So if anyone looked at me and was just searching for the fairly obvious outward symptoms of AS, they'd probably think that I'm not on the spectrum, because by now my behaviour around others looks more or less NT.

I am fairly certain that I have AS however, because there is a lot of less obvious symptoms that I know are still around. I get anxious in certain situations that wouldn't unsettle an NT in the least and I'm constantly on the lookout to spot anything that might develop into something OCD-like and working against that (obsessive washing of my hands whenever I have touched food comes to my mind right now, but that's something I can live with). I also think that my emotional life is not what it is for most people.

Thus, I consider myself a well-adapted Aspie, even though I may look like a somewhat shy NT to most people.

Something similar might be happening in your case. Maybe some people are only looking for certain symptoms and thus they overlook what others consider your main symptoms of AS. In that support group and with some of your therapists you might have felt more at ease and started talking about your emotions and other inward things that are troubling you and thus they were able to spot something that others -to whom you did not open up so much- missed.

Whether or not this is the case with you, I think the important thing is that you work out which aspects of yourself you think you ought to work on or would like to get some professional help for. Once you can name a problem (e.g. "I have problems handling my aggressions once I become upset"), you should find it much easier to work out what to do about it. If a form of therapy that was originally intended for people on the spectrum sounds like it could help you, I'd say don't worry whether it really is AS in your case or something else; get that help and do what you can to make yourself feel better about your own personality,

Maybe you could also ask those people who think you are on the spectrum what exactly makes them think that. Do they pinpoint you by outward symptoms (behaviour) or by something you told them about your inward symptoms (emotions, sensory overload)? If they turn out to have noticed your inward symptoms, it is quite a safe guess to say that the people who think you don't have AS went for outward symptoms only, I'd say.

Ummmm... perhaps this is stating the obvious but not 1 of the people on your list is a Adult ASD diagnotition right? I mean if I asked 20 random people in my life, I might get 20 different answers too. Heck even with 2 or more qualified people testing you, it may be different answers given the complexity and subjectivity of dx in adults.

I lost a good friend over her not seeing that I have AS, even though she had known me for years. It crushed me that she couldn't/wouldn't recognize me as having AS. She had a very weird idea in her head about what AS was like based on a couple older men with AS. What was even weirder is she had asked me if I had thought those two older men had AS and Ii was like "Yes, definitely." She confirmed later I was right, but despite my confirmed ability to recognize AS in those two men, she couldn't accept that I had AS myself, and she thought I was just kidding myself in saying I had it. She seemed to think I was doing it out of vanity or denial of something I didn't want to face, and it just destroyed my confidence and trust in her.

Anyhow, people are subjective and they are biased. Besides I wouldn't take the word of "workers" in a mental hospital very seriously. My mom's a RN, a psych nurse for 35+ years, and she doesn't accept my AS dx, nor does she see how insanely ADD she herself is. After working in psych hospital all these years, she is very cynical about such dx's and just thinks a lot people are just whiny.

From what I've read, it's just really hard to definitively diagnose it in adults. A lot of us are in that boat with you. I've told several people. My mother is withholding judgment until she reads more on it. My brother is skeptical because he knew people in college with AS and he considered them way more odd than me, although he admits that the possibility I have it had occurred to him before I said anything. My father doesn't believe in psychology. My therapist doesn't know enough about it to form an opinion either way, but she seemed open-minded to the possibility. My psychiatrist, who I go to on Monday, will probably tell me I'm imagining things, ask if I'm still taking my meds (I am), and tell me to exercise more (this seems to be her answer to everything).

I have no idea if I could get an official diagnosis or not. It's way too expensive for me at this time to even get the testing done, and even if I got it, I'm intelligent enough to know none of the tests will be terribly definitive anyway. Just spending thirty minutes with a doctor would mean nothing because my social skills are far too well practiced for the shortcomings to become evident with a formal one on one interaction over that period of time. I score very highly Aspie on all the free tests I've taken, and between that and my recollection of my childhood, I have enough evidence to self-diagnose. I don't see the point in spending a lot of money for someone to tell me what I already know. If and when there's a genetic test I'll have that done, provided it's not ridiculously expensive.

I agree with the last post, look back on your childhood and teenage years to see what criteria you may have fitted then. Many of us have adapted enough for others not to notice. I personally have told several therapists what my childhood and teenage year were like for me but none have even hinted at AS in the slightest as they only see what is sitting in front of them today.

I think the older you get the more you can self-diagnose but perhaps the less likely you are to get a professional diagnosis. Most therapists seem to think there are other reasons for you for example not going out to make friends and convince themselves of that but wouldn't again relate it to AS, my own experience at least.

You may have to just deal with each issues one at a time, perhaps try to find a local group to join as you will meet others that have had similar experiences and can be of support.

Yeah, I get caught up in the label.

I was talking to one of my aunts today, and she agreed I had social skills problems and I needed help. And I can tell I have problems. She is going to talk to my therapist with me or will write her a letter, because I can't always pick out what socialization problems I am having, I just know I am having problems in general.