Therapy without a diagnosis

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You triple posted ^^^

That makes sense a bit more now.

If you have have to go to the next nearest city that can give you a diagnosis, then maybe it is worth considering, so at least then you know and are absolutely sure what you're dealing with. If it's affecting you this much and you need to talk to someone about it, both of you need the correct frame of reference, which in this case is the correct diagnosis.

If I were you, I would start looking at the nearest city to find someone who can diagnose you and in the meantime keep seeing your current therapist. You should be able to arrange everything over the phone, although it may take some time and research to find someone who is suitable. Then all you have to worry about is making the trips for the actual appointments.

I know it sounds like a lot, but it might be worth it in the end, especially for your current headspace right now.

I'm pretty new to the forums (been lurking and reading for a week or two) and just saw this thread. I am in a somewhat similar situation. I'm 56 and self-diagnosed after stumbling on some info about Asperger's in children and realizing how much it described how I was as a young child, based on my very clear memories and experiences, and then reading on about Asperger's in adults and feeling like I'd just been finally handed the map that explains so much of my whole life and how I am now. I took every test I could find online and scored well into the Aspie range on all of them. I know this is not meant to be conclusive, but it all feels so right that I can't really doubt it much.

I have been previously diagnosed with major depression, anxiety, PTSD from childhood trauma, and a dissociative disorder, during nearly fifteen years of traditional talk therapy with a clinical psychologist. I don't believe any of those diagnoses was "wrong"--I have had all of those issues, certainly, but in the end they didn't explain a lot of things, and I finally left therapy a couple of years ago feeling pretty much a failure at it, as if somehow I just didn't "get" it and hadn't managed to understand myself that much better in the end. Talk therapy was agonizingly difficult for me, and in retrospect I don't know why I hung in with it so long, except that I had developed what might have been an unhealthy dependence on my therapist, who was really my sole support system since I was very socially isolated and couldn't bear to be with people much.

Finding out about the Asperger's has felt like a huge light coming on and illuminating so many things about myself and my life that I've never understood clearly before.

But I want to be sure; I feel like I want the validation of a formal diagnosis. So, I went back to my old therapist for one session, with the new information to see what she thought. I half-expected her to tell me I was wrong, but she completely agreed with me, said it did explain a lot of things about issues I'd had in therapy and in my life, and she even apologized for having missed it, saying that since she doesn't work with children at all it simply wasn't something that came across her radar much. She seemed to feel that most adults with Asperger's don't go for the kind of therapy she does, which makes sense to me given how much difficulty I had with it.

I asked her if I could then consider myself "diagnosed" since she agreed with me, and she said yes, I had convinced her and there was no point in my spending a lot of money to take tests I'd already taken.

But I'm in a bit of a quandary, because, as she admitted, she doesn't know much about Asperger's--it was pretty much her taking my word for it and being convinced by the evidence I presented.

Part of me thinks I should just accept that as good enough and be fine with my own certainty; but part of me wants the validation of an expert. I'm not expecting to get anything from a more formal diagnosis except my own satisfaction and the affirmation of knowing. And I expect it will be expensive to get formally assessed by an expert, so I'm trying to decide if it's worth it.

I've also read that family interviews are insisted upon, and in my case that isn't going to be possible. There is only one member of my immediate family still alive and he is elderly, very ill, has memory problems, and lives very far away. There is really no one else. So the assessment would have to be made on the basis of my own childhood memories and the testimony of what my life has been like and how it is now.

I have found a local support group and am going to meetings, and I plan to continue that for a while. Anyway, thanks for listening, just wanted to get myself to finally post, and this thread resonated with me as similar to my own current situation.

Thanks for the welcome.

I have very mixed feelings right now about all those years of therapy. You're right, the support was something I desperately needed, and she gave me that, and I know that she did help me to process a lot of the dysfunction and trauma from my childhood (emotional and sexual abuse, and suicide of a parent, etc.), despite the fact that therapy was difficult for me.

I can't help feeling now though that if the Asperger's had come up much, much earlier it might have made a tremendous difference both in therapy and in other aspects of my life--I might have known to, and been able to, look for somewhat different kinds of help that I didn't even know were available, in terms of employment, approach to therapy, and just general support, not to mention my self-acceptance. I might have been able to be much kinder to myself much sooner, knowing that some of the things that have always felt "wrong" about me aren't my fault, and aren't necessarily "fixable" if I only try harder, whether in therapy or in life.

But those years are gone now, and all I can do is go on from this point, armed with the knowledge I now have. I suppose at some point I'll decide whether to seek a more formal assessment, or just go with what I've got. A lot depends on how expensive it will be, and whether anyone is willing to do it without the availability of family. But I'd guess there are a fair number of older folks for whom the family thing would be a problem for various reasons.

Anyway, I'm getting a lot out of reading here at WP and feeling much less alone, knowing I'm far from being the only one in this position of late discovery.