Is HFA misdiagnosed as Asperger's?

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Why did the same psychiatrists who diagnosed me insist that going to school with teachers who treated me like an idiot and others who had no theory of mind and were extremely low functioning, possibly even HFA not AS, compared to me would do me good?

An asperger diagnosis is a dangerous thing.

I know that I am a cluster B personality, by the way. I know a lot of my social problems has more to do with that than with any AS. The doctors however raped me with an AS diagnosis and traumatizing, crude, clumsy and in every way worthless AS therapy. This is why I feel incomplete, like I never got an answer. Even if I know myself, kind of, what's wrong with me, not having it confirmed but instead having been labeled and maltreatead makes me wonder how useful an AS diagnosis really is.

To me being lumped together with others who had AS diagnosed just made me hate AS people in general.

These doctors who diagnosed me with AS could have created a psycho killer by doing so. Only my strong sense of awareness and self, and my deep down pacifist nature, has kept me from degenerating into one of all those narcissistic madmen.

Wow, not sure where you got that.

When I said it is "flat out wrong," I meant that it is flat out wrong to stereotype people with AS as lacking in empathy. While it may be true for some, I think a significant number of us have more trouble expressing it than feeling it. Or perhaps we feel it in different ways. That's very different from saying "all people with AS can't feel empathy."

Empathy is a complex subject. Just do a search on "empathy" here on WP and you'll see what I mean.

I just wanted to add that I believe it to be dangerous to make this stereotype because it lends itself to dehumanization... i.e. if you can pass a group of people off as not having what is perceived to be a basic human condition, dehumanization is far too easy. And once you dehumanize, all sorts of bad things happen.

I get along well with people with ADHD aswell. Research has shown that neurological scans between those with ADHD and aspergers are very simmilar. I've gotten along with some Aspies very well too, i think alot of people with HFA are misdiagnosed though.

I think a neurological scan should be part of the diagnostic process for aspergers, that way they could see if it is Aspergers or HFA as people with HFA don't tend to share the similarities with ADHD that we do.

Human behavior can be a special interest.

There are active and passive people.

We form a group about as well as all people with green eyes.

Human behaviour is no interest to me, it's just a talent. You're trying to assimilate me, again. Why do aspies always do that? I'm obviously not like you just because we have various degrees of abnormalities in our brains in common.

The standard assimilation arguments used are "all your talents and all your personality might be because of a SPECIAL INTEREST!" implying that AS basically determines who you are in every way. These zealots are people I would never help if they were in need, I would never defend them if I noticed them being the target of neurotypical aggression etc. I just don't want to associate myself with them in any way.

I am who I am and the majority of my talents, intelligence, personality etc is NOT asperger related. Even my social difficulties are more because of cluster B type rather than AS.

And i still say you're thinking is dangerous.

Fifty years ago you only had to be jewish, homosexual or black to qualify as being "less than human". Black people painting themselves white and trying to dissociate themselves from the black community didn't change people's racist attitudes. The very thought that someone who lacks empathy would be considered as less of a human than others is the issue here and it disgusts me. You don't fight stereotypes by backing down, or trying to break people's associations with certain groups. You fight stereotypes with education, we'll fight stereotypes by showing that humans can be compassionate wether they lack empathy or not.



You know i can appreciate what you are saying here. Despite all my problems i was never taken out of "normal" school and i never had special education. I epically failed at integrating, being normal and i was utterly miserable. But if i had been forced to goto special education? i would have been more miserable, and i'd fail even more so at integrating. People don't learn by being wrapped up in cotton wool. We're no less human than anyone else, and we should be treated as such.

Me too.


I never meant to imply that course of action.


Of course. And part of that education is teaching that empathy is a complex issue. There are many here (not all, but many) that take issue with being labeled unempathetic simply because they have AS.

I'm just curious, Zoonic...
If you feel you've been 'raped' by the AS diagnosis, and you hate Aspies, why are you here???

If you feel that AS is such a minor part of your make-up and you detest our company, what do you hope to get out of hanging out with us?

Why is it always "us" "us "us"? Identifying as a group, trying to assimilate people. Aren't there also a lot of individuals here who do not identify with AS people as a group?

Regardless of who I am, the diagnosis keeps me prisoner.

I've run into people with mood/personality disorders before online. They all obsessively psychoanalyzed people and thought they had some kind of ESP super ability - but if you went by NT standards, in all honesty, their 'theory of mind' was a bit on the faulty side. They projected their feelings onto everything and made all kinds of paranoid accusations making themselves targets for trolling and derision.

My only encounter with someone like this in person happened in middle school. Me and this kid were sitting across from each other on the bus on the way to a school field trip. There were also kids with autism, ADHD, and other learning disabilities on the bus. Anyways, the kid across from me came up to me to talk. He appeared honest and genuinely friendly to me but I was apprehensive because I often saw him acting like a bully towards the other kids, some with AS/autism and others with learning disabilities. He must have taken my rejection personally.

Later on I was looking out the window just thinking by myself. I thought about a joke I'd heard earlier in the day and chuckled slightly. Afterwards I caught a glance of him glaring at me with a really ugly look in his eyes. I immediately looked away but he continued muttering incoherently and cursing under his breath the rest of the ride. Later on when we were both getting off the bus he looked directly at me and accused me of laughing at the autistic kid. He also threatened to fight me (this kid was like 6 inches shorter than me BTW). His behavior was just surreal and took me completely by surprise. It was so illogical I couldn't comprehend it. I couldn't believe that he actually believed what he was accusing me of. I initially thought he was bullying me because I was shy. I thought maybe it was a game. He had this bizarre act of simultaneously bullying some kids and trying to 'protect' others in an unintentionally insulting/patronizing way, mostly the lower functioning autistic kids.

Anyways, that's been my experience with personality/mood disorders. I don't know if the kid on the bus had AS or not, he seemed more learning disabled than AS. I don't think any of the people with those types of problems I've encountered IRL were as intelligent as you though, Zoonic. My biggest insight is that people with AS shouldn't be put together with people with personality/mood disorders. It's is a toxic mix that's detrimental for both. I don't know what should've been done to better help someone like yourself with the possibility of both conditions at once.

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As a side note I'm not sure if you were correctly diagnosed but understanding body language doesn't automatically disqualify you from being on the spectrum. There was a recent study that tested mirror neuron (neurons responsible for reading emotion in the face) activity in autistic children with and without alexathemia. It turns out that faulty mirror neuron functioning was more correlated to alexathemia than autism, it's just that there's an 80% overlap between the two. I'm also quite certain I can 'read' people as well as most NT's, at least I know I have the tools to do so. I'm just self-absorbed a lot of the time and hyper-focus on my own feelings over the feelings of others.

If you behaved like that toward teachers and kids and still had friends, no offense, but you sound a lot like an NT, lol. That's what NT's do, isn't it? Act like that and can still manage friendships and fitting in? Maybe you were misdiagnosed? Sounds like you had people figured out and could get along with them.

Glad to have cleared that up

Zoonic, you didn't answer the question...
Why are you here?

I think it's important that parents and medical expertise become more aware of personality disorders in children and don't just jump on the aspie train because it feels more humane to label a child AS than label him sociopath/narcissist/borderline... In my experience the only people who really get "diagnosed" (it's not a real diagnosis afaik but anyway) with borderline are girls who abuse drugs, have sex early on and need to be held down with force while screaming and crying. People don't realize that boys, and aspie boys too, can have these kinds of disorders.

The first psychologist who tested me said I might have borderline, but he also said you don't diagnose kids that young with personality disorders. I was 7-8 at the time. At 12 I got the AS diagnosis, from a new specialized psychiatrist, and my real hell started along with the feeling of having my identity stolen from me.

I sometimes feel I understand so much about co-morbids in AS and I have also reached the conclusion that cluster B and cluster A children under no circumstances should be placed together with aspies, even if they might have asperger themselves. To be honest I don't think the general knowledge among psychiatrists, teachers or specialists is good enough to see this. They probably need another 20 years to figure things out, if even then.

Treating me like an aspie and treating me for AS, while being unaware of my cluster B personality beneath was like adding fuel to the fire. It was actually like rape. No one can understand how a borderline/narcissistic kid with developed perception and theory of mind, who's locked up in psychiatric ward repeatedly and treated for "asperger", as a response to his borderline tantrums, feels like if they haven't experienced it themselves. I know I use that word a lot but I feel utterly raped, in the soul. I live with this constant anger even when I'm happy.

Last edited by Zoonic on 19 May 2009, 7:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Zoonic, you have to be 18 or older to be diagnosed with a personality disorder.