Is HFA misdiagnosed as Asperger's?

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Yes, that's why they didn't diagnose me. However already at 7 a psychologist said I might have borderline but that trail was never dug up again after the AS psychiatrist took over when I was 12.

I don't think the Psych should have suggested you have a personality disorder at that age because, supposedly, the personality is part of overall development and takes longer to fully form than seven years.
You might have been NT with a few behaviours that needed changing but it doesn't sound like AS because you were able to compensate and wanted to be with friends and could figure out ways to keep them despite how you acted. AS is about not being able to do those things.

I am starting to suspect that zoonic shouldn't be taken seriously and possibly just trying to be a wrong planet villan.

Well, you're wrong. People call me troll and I've been banned from countless forums over the years but this is how I am. I'm actually a lot nicer here than on NT forums.

I don't identify with AS as a group. I identify with a lot of the traits people here describe and I find it easier to interact in this forum than others. There's less inane banter and more intelligent discussion as a whole if you dig past the redundant topics.

I have enough empathy to see that you're completely fixated on fears of being "defective". You don't want to identify with people you see as "defective" or "inferior". Not all people who have speech disfluency / monotone-voice or lack proper facial-gestures / eye-gaze are "low functioning" or "ret*d". I know someone like that with an IQ of 160. I don't have any of those problems but some people here probably do and they'll resent your labeling them and your fear of association. I'm not personally offended or anything but you're probably treading thin ice with some people here.

So, I should just have accepted the humiliation of being placed in what others refered to as "CP-class" alongside slow-minded people with zero theory of mind? I should have gone along with it and consider that kind of treatment and labeling to be fine, I should accept having my social life ripped to shreds by an AS diagnosis just so some autists can be happy? I should just accept being raped for their sake? After all I'm the "bad guy" when saying "mean things" and they are the "innocent little lambs". How can it ever be wrong to be like them even if you aren't like them, have nothing in common with them and can't identify or relate to them in any way?

No. It's just that that's in the past. It doesn't have to be relevant to what you are today. I'm not saying you're bad, just that your stereotyping can hurt people.

Last edited by marshall on 19 May 2009, 11:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The funny thing is that we were in agreement all along.

When I was in middle school and high school I wanted to be with students who sat quietly at their desks and doodled. Instead I always ended up in the classes with the loud ones who laughed like hyenas or something. Their laughing used to get on my nerves.

Haha, yeah I know the "hyena laugh", it's actually quite annoying.

Where I live it's mostly immigrants who do that, they have a sort of NT group mentality which is based on fake laughing at jokes just to bond. I'm disgusted when I see someone hyena laughing to a poor joke so much that he almost rolls over. It's so insecure. People who want to pretend that they are cool and macho with the group but deep down are really scared of what others think use the hyena laugh to build strength. Some people laugh until they have tears in their eyes but I can tell a real, spontaneous laugh from a fake one anyday. A warm spontaneous laugh doesn't get on my nerves at all, even if it's an NT laughing with other NT's and I'm not part of it. Only the fake, insecure hyena laughs annoy me, I hate them.

I can totally understand where your coming from Zonic.

i am aspie, yet i can read body language and i am hypersensitive and very empahetic to the point it can be very painful to be around people. Sometimes i dont know where i stop and other begin. i feel equally at thome with NT, ADHD and aspie people, though i feel most comfortable around people with all traits like me.

i think i learned it all manually and i just got better and better at it. i am much better at reading people then my NT friends. i dont have the boundarys like they do though or the strong natuaral self indentity. i guess it comes from mimicary, i mimic people so well i cna guess exactly what theyre feeling. if i stay the whole day with soemone, i copy the they move and communicate without realising!

fake smiling and fake laughing is horrible to observe...

~

Perhaps we should return to the DSM-III system, where, alongside "adult" personality disorders, there was a kind of "childhood personality disorders", who could develop into "adult" version or simply disappear with the time?

However, I think that the rule "you have to be 18 or older to be diagnosed with a personality disorder" only fully applies to Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

They don't like to diagnos personality disorders in youth. Maybe there's a good reason why we don't have "childhood personality disorders" in the DSM-IV. It was doing more harm than good? It was redundancy, maybe? We cannot let ourselves become consumed with diagnosis and labels. Sometimes it's better to address specific problems and issues and forget the label attached.


The other day I went out to eat early and I thought there wouldn't be a ton of people there and no waiting to be seated (I went early for this very reason) but I was so mistaken. There were already several large groups of people who needed to be seated. Usually this kind of a scenario puts me in a bad mood and I deal by sitting with my arms crossed. Sometimes I complain to whomever I am with because this kind of scenario is one of my caveats...and it's the kind of situation I go out of my way to avoid most of the time. However, on this day, I wasn't successful, so I waited in an area that seemed even smaller and more claustrophobic because it was filled with twenty or thirty people all waiting to be seated. There were two groups with eight each in them and BOTH groups were laughing in the loudest most obnoxious way...one was waiting across from where I sat, one beside. The ones across from me were laughing extremely loudly because someone got a shamoo cleaning cloth for a gift. They were all laughing like mad just over that and all I could do was roll my eyes and cringe at the loud, booming, startling sound of them.

Translated into very simple language, AS requires you to have 2 of the following:

- obvious (you have problems with this and others notice) problems to read body language
- you fail to make or keep friends
- fail to show 'getting' social stuff, failing to spot when people feel happy/sad/other and/or reacting inappropriate to it
- you do not share good news and stuff, fail to be interested in others (e.g. you do not ask others about what they like)

1 of the following four too:

- a special interest
- stims such as rocking, hand flapping, head shaking, spinning, swaying and others
- routines - most of your day must be in a certain way for you, happen at a certain time/you eat the same everyday
- you just can't sop switching lights on and off, you fancy fans, you like to open and close windows and so on

You also have to fit all of these:

- spoke single works at or before 24 month and said communicative phrases (hello, good-bye) before age 3
- were toilet-trained at a normal age and such
- you have age-appropriate adaptive skills
- must have a normal IQ (IQ of 71+)
- you reacted to your environment normally as a toddler
- you do not fit criteria of another PDD (PDD-NOS, classical autism, Rett's CDC)
- you have noticeable problems you cannot solve yourself or in a normal way in social, occupational or other areas of live

If you don't fit this to a T, you do not have AS by modern definition. You could ave by others definitions as well as the original real definition... that's where it gets complicated.

I for example am definitely totally AS by Asperger's (the guy, not the disorder) own definition, confirmed and all, but by DSM definition I'm do not have AS.

You could also still be on the spectrum in some way if you seem milder than that. You'd then have these symptoms at a sub-clinical level, meaning you cannot be diagnosed or officially recognised but you're a bit more AS than the average person.

I think AS is often misdiagnosed, as people too mild or even those who're just not AS are included because as kids they might have been oppositional, aggressive, behaved badly, weren't taught common manners or because they acted like this because of emotionally issues and disturbances.

You can - of course - have marked impairments and not know. That's typical for humans.

Some truly genius people think because they get along good they are not impaired. They don't have that bit of self-awareness or they just never ran into problems massive enough for them to recognise that beyond their copying mechanisms they actually have a huge deficit. They could have become very hf, almost not to tell apart from normal people despite that their AS is moderate or severe.

Yes they have a reason actually.

Because supposedly "personality is not yet fully developed in children".

PDs however are based on the idea that personality traits are stable and that a PD is life-long.

Last edited by Sora on 20 May 2009, 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, I realize it isn't fully developed in children which is why I think responsible psychs and psychologists should refrain from diagnosing them in those under 18.

btw, Sora, I don't see anything in the DSM-IV that says Asperger's are independent and need no special allowances. It says that we must be significantly impaired socially, occupationally or functionally.

Yes, you're right, I phrased that badly by trying to dumb it down.

The diagnosis requires age-appropriate adaptive skills, not saying other traits cannot get in the way and cause significant impairment.