PDD-NOS? BPD? ADHD? HPD? ODD? ASPD? Schizophrenia? Bipolar?

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At what point do we just spin a damned wheel?

I am having an incredibly difficult time acquiring a diagnosis, or indeed acknowledgment that I may have something wrong with me that a little more moral fortitude couldn't fix.

I have also noticed a profound tendency for doctors, once they decide on one trendy diagnosis or another, to suddenly start funneling all their observations towards confirmation of that diagnosis, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Attempts to correct this process lead to further diagnosis, either as antisocial personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or a similar "you are a very naughty boy"-style disorder.

I would be perfectly willing to accept any one set of these diagnoses, but often the claims made of my behavior are so outlandish and so obviously verifiably false, that I am forced to either believe that I am utterly delusional, or the doctor-in-question is desperate to get a handle on something that baffles and frightens him/her.

I may very well be Aspergers, or I may not - many of my experiences and behaviors don't easily fit into the autistic spectrum, as I am quite good at understanding, modeling and legitimately caring about others' internal emotional states - or at least, I think I am.

I may very well be schizophrenic, but this is a very difficult hypothesis to work with - if my sensory inputs are suspect, then any evidence that my sensory inputs are suspect is itself suspect, coming as it does from my sensory inputs themselves. But other people frequently contradict themselves when attempting to demonstrate defects in my sensory experience - or at least, I observe them to, with my admittedly-potentially-suspect senses.

I may very well be sociopathic, but if so, then I have managed to delude myself into believing that I care about others, and have managed to delude myself into believing that I have performed acts of sacrifice on others' behalf - but if those are just defense mechanisms to keep me from realizing that I'm actually a self-serving animal, how would I know?

I am having a very difficult time controlling my own narrative, or indeed controlling my own self-image in the face of constant bombardment. Of course, the sensation that my self-image is under constant bombardment may itself be a figment of whatever disorder I may or may not have - but how could I tell?

Does anyone else ever feel like this?

FWIW, the articles mentioned in this old post may be of some interest:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt166298.html

Hi Ialdabaoth,

An "Ante-Bellum" set of test scores before they are "cooked" might offer the best pointers. With all the super-sticky labels glued onto people by psych workers, taking the test yourself, or at least anonymously (which is meat for the wolves itself), offers strong hints with great protection from the obsessed professional labelers.

The strongest and broadest Psych test is still the "Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory" (MMPI), a somewhat misleading name. The copyright on the MMPI is still strictly enforced, and concise content is usually quickly removed from the internet by legal action, but one book with a more recent set of complete test questions is "Development and Use of the MMPI-2 Content Scales" by Butcher, Graham, Williams, & Ben-Porath (1990), at about $30.00 at amazon-dot-com. A book with an appendix of the "Scoring Keys and Norms for MMPI-2 Scales and Critical Items" is "Psychological Assessment with the MMPI-2" by Friedman, Lewak, Nichols, & Webb (2001), at about $70.00.

The test is long (the full test has 567 True-False questions), but that is one factor in why it has the higher validity and objectivity than other psychometric tests. There are also tons of "cookbooks" on how to further process the scores to particular interests and psych philosophies, but this is more of a matter of style and taste than of anything near a true hard science. IMO, the name of the Scales with the tables on the scoring key gives strong results weighted to population means and standard deviations, even without any additional statistical scale corrections. The test is suppose to be nearly "fake proof", but the current "Fake Bad Scale" has experienced many legal challanges: http://www.internationalbrain.org/?q=node/110

Using the Scale tables, particular weighting questions can be cherry-picked for easy and quick hints, but that wrecks the validity and objectivity, which may not be a genuine concern in many instances.

Tadzio

I understand completely where you're coming from (see my post about Borderline Personality Disorder in this same sub-forum). I too have experienced professionals 'forcing' behavioural traits into certain diagnoses, regardless of the actual value of the behaviour itself. When I was depressed (severely, I might add), and I was having a not-so-bad day, my psychologist would tell me I was denying my depression and was provoked into all sorts of negative emotions to 'get back to reality'. When I was feeling horrible, I fit into the little snug cavern of my diagnosis and was treated kindly. When I stopped telling her how I felt because I felt belittled and insulted, I was repressing my feelings and transferred to another psychologist. It was hellish, and confusing to boot (I hadn't been diagnosed with PDD-NOS yet at that point).

The only advice I can give you is to arm yourself. Ask your psychologist what methods and tests they use to diagnose you. Ask them if they're basing their diagnosis on diagnostic manuals, such as the DSM-TR-IV or the ICD-10. Look up the symptoms of the disorders you're being labelled with on Wikipedia - the ones used by the diagnostic manuals mentioned above are nearly always listed there. Use those as your guidelines while discussing the test results. Ask, ask, ask. They might be the professionals, but professionals can be wrong, biased and lazy. If my experience with psychologists and psychiatrists is anything to go by, they are often especially testy about their professionalism being questioned. Unfortunately, they are also in the position to brush aside critique as 'part of your problem', leading to a vicuous circle. Good luck, and don't submit to something you feel is completely wrong. You wouldn't let a surgeon cut off your leg if you had broken a toe, so refuse to be shoehorned into a diagnosis just to make life easier for whoever is treating you.

One Russian(?) site is still(?) operating with the test, but the site is also identified with "reverse lookup services", and while it represents to rate the test sorta, reverse services with being anonymous rile my paranoia legal scale numbers too much to actually take the test online with using the the link on the forum at:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt154233.html

A book with a quick lecture on validity and a brief example with the MMPI often has preview (at amazon-dot-com) of relevant pages about "rational deceptions" involved with different types of validity. "Research Methods for Social Work" by Rubin & Babbie (2011, 2008), search "MMPI", then around page 200, for brief example with questions numbered 110, 315, then 81 directly on the MMPI-2 (as of 1993 at least).