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Sora
Love all, trust a few
Joined: Sep 16, 2006
Age: 20
Posts: 2900
Location: Europe
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 Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 9:56 am Post subject: |
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I was very sure I was AS/HFA/PDD-NOS before I was diagnosed. I just fit about everything, with a few exceptions that said I fit classical more. I don't fit any other criteria in the ICD/DSM either that could mimic autism.
I had the hope I wasn't autistic at the same time. It still sometimes peeks up. (Seeing how autism doesn't go 'better' or 'lesser'. Though mine did, so I hope it's going to continue like that.)
The first diagnostician I was at didn't consider AS and threw out BPD at me despite the evidence. But since I have met a couple of people with suspected and diagnosed BPD and didn't fit the criteria at all, I knew that wasn't it. Also, the whole thing went along the lines 'the patient Sora lies'.
I learnt that professionals can be utmost unprofessional.
I agree with Orwell on everything else:
| Orwell wrote: |
Some of them yes, some of them no. And some diagnosed Aspies do not have Asperger's. |
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett |
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anbuend
Oak-Type Autie
Joined: Jul 06, 2004
Posts: 3311
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:10 am Post subject: |
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| BrixBrix wrote: | | LadyMacbeth wrote: | | He's a psychiatrist. Last time I checked, autism was not a psychiatric disorder. |
My teacher's 14-yr-old son who is autistic (has classical autism) goes to a psychiatrist for his autism. |
I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist. I mean, I was seen by two neurologists, a neuropsychologist, and a psychiatrist, but it's a psychiatrist who finalized the diagnosis in his notes, and the same psychiatrist who first voiced the suspicions to my parents. He was a child psychiatrist who specialized in childhood-onset neurological conditions like ADD and autism etc. He himself had ADD so he was very understanding about it.
Unfortunately, it's psychiatry that invented autism, and autism suffers from some of the same problems that epilepsy used to as a result of epilepsy having come under the domain of psychiatry for awhile. These problems include a lot of really shoddy research, and anyone who has a crackpot theory about it can get published, and all that sort of thing. But because it falls under that weird category of childhood neurological conditions that are covered in the DSM, psychiatrists learn about it as much as any other specialist does, if not more.
That's provided they're psychiatrists who take the time to know about it. Many don't. If you go to a psychiatrist who doesn't know a lot about it, they will diagnose individual parts of autism as separate things, or even diagnose it as some wholly different thing with superficially similar traits listed, possibly concentrating on and amplifying their interest in some other aspect of you in the process, while ignoring or explaining away a lot of things that have to do with autism. Some are so un-knowledgeable about it that all they remember from class is some crap from the Bettelheim era, or the outdated idea that autistic people are people who cannot communicate with anyone and have no attachment to anyone (both of which are shown in research to be untrue for the vast majority of autistic people). One person a friend of mine (already diagnosed with autism) saw at a pain clinic told her that autistic people don't live to adulthood -- she really believed that, so she refused to listen to any of the research papers my friend carried in about autistic people's unusual response to pain.
So there's variety, but yes it can be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. Mine was up on all the latest research when I was first diagnosed, and had even met and spoken with Temple Grandin and other autistic adults. He also had decades of experience with autistic children, including autistic children who had learned to use language and such, and talked to them about why and how they learned it. (I was diagnosed at 14 and he picked up on some receptive and expressive communication problems I had that very few people were able to pick up on because I masked them pretty well. I'm pretty sure it's because he knew other autistic people very well and nobody expected to see them in someone "intelligent" so they just ignored them or turned them into meaning something else in their heads. He also recognized me immediately as autistic just from my mother's developmental history before he even met me, but went to the trouble of a lot of testing and observation before he formalized it. He was not as useful at actually helping me with various aspects of it, but he was more astute than anyone else I've seen as a professional until professionals have started getting better training since then.)
He was even, in fact, astute enough that when an autistic college student who was in the terminology of the time (this would have probably been the seventies or eighties, before he knew me in the nineties) said to have "recovered" from autism, came to him asking him questions about autism for a research paper, he could tell she was autistic by subtle differences in body language and voice tone, and asked her about it.
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"We may seem in the gutter from up there where you are but maybe you don't know we still see the same stars." -Donna Williams |
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equinn
Phoenix
Joined: Apr 20, 2007
Posts: 652
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:37 am Post subject: |
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My son does not have a social phobia. He thinks he is just fine with people and approaches anyone. I think the "social phobia" is inaccurate. It is a social impairment due to awkardness and inabilty to intuit the proper cues.
There is no such thing as self-diagnosed "aspie". Leave it to the professionals. It is a mockery to the kids/adults who truly suffer from the particulars of autism and had to be diagnosed. There are strengths but the weaknesses, sometimes, outweigh the strengths. The weaknesses are remembered. Someone who simply suffers from anxiety or socially doesn't fit in, or bites their nails or shirts or spins or rocks is not an aspie. It is so much more that. I've experienced this through my son's daily challenges. I was forced to get him evaluated because he had to attend school and couldn't "go with the flow". My older boys might have had some features of aspergers, but they could attend school and functioned fine. So, obviously, they didn't need any diagnosis. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
I've included, if you don't need it for an IEP, the doctors are right, it's best to NOT have a diagnosis and the stigma that comes with it. It's best to just function in society minus the label. Believe me, you are ostracized. You are viewed differently once people understand you have some form of autism. Your strengths are suddenly overshadowed by your deficiences. I've witnessed it. You are rejected more than you would have been without the diagnosis. Unless you dwell among only aspies, you will be discriminated against and rejected like the rest of the minorities in our society.
It is always best to compensate, to view yourself holistically with amazing talents and, maybe, some weak areas. Why would anyone want to self-diagnose themselves? This world here, wrong planet, is a small piece of a larger world that, in all honesty, barely accepts anyone who has a diagnosis. We have analyzed each particular of Aspergers. Your average person knows little about autism or Aspergers. The diagnosed are less than perfect, defective, odd, someone to avoid. This is reality. Wrong Planet is alluring. It draws the disillusioned into its web, making them believe it's cool to be "uniquely wired" and possibly "brilliant" like Einstein.
In reality, it does take a village to raise a child. We are all interconnected. We are all social creatures, dependent on each other for survival. This has been the maxim since the beginning of time. To believe that it's okay to be a misfit, to not fit in, is antithetical to our existence. Even if you feel this way, it is wrong to accept it. Your mission or speical interest should be to do for others, the larger whole, not yourself. No one operates in a vaccuum or desires isolation unless you're depressed and suffering.
My son, since he was very small, has always been drawn to people. He says hello to anyone. He told me once, "I like to make people smile."
On a more positive note, if you do believe an "aspie" is positive, a person with uncanny talents and gifts, created to do great things, then society has to be part of the picture. If you think about it, besides Temple Gradain (sp?), some of the greatest inventors and thinkers of our time, did for others, changed the world in positive ways and never professed to have a diagnosis.
equinn |
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sonny1471
Sea Gull
Joined: Sep 20, 2007
Age: 37
Posts: 243
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:58 am Post subject: |
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Why do people insist on bringing this topic up every few weeks? It's a subtle form of discrimination against people who self diagnose. Many people who self diagnose (myself included) later go on to get an "official" diagnosis from a psychologist. Like many who self diagnose, I knew myself better than a doctor would.
My partner for years said that he thought he had testicular cancer and his doctors all told him it was in his head and that it was due to other problems. He FINALLY found the right doctor and was correctly diagnosed. Thankfully, it was in time and the cancer hadn't spread elsewhere.
I tell that story because many people can't get to the right doctor who has enough knowledge about AS or can't afford to get an official diagnosis. That's why there are self diagnosed. Also, there are others who don't need the diagnosis of a doctor to know who they are.
What difference does it make to anyone here who is "officially" diagnosed or not? Why does it bother so many people? |
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CanyonWind
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 12, 2006
Posts: 1390
Location: West of the Great Divide
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:30 am Post subject: |
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"Diagnosing" a condition of the mind isn't like sending a urine sample to the lab to find out how somebody's kidney's are working.
It's more like reading tea leaves or astrology charts. Like astrology charts it gets incredibly complicated, and the people doing it are about as capable of clear and critical thinking as astrologers.
More than likely, it's just some moron who got a degree in "women's studies" for chanting, "Duh, I hate men, unless they're traitors."
If they sat in the front row and chanted loudest, they got an honors degree.
But since they take money from suckers, they're "professionals."
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Thou out of heaven's benediction comest
To the warm sun.
Approach, thou beacon to this under globe.
Nothing almost sees miracles but misery.
- from King Lear |
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MartyMoose
Phoenix
Joined: Apr 01, 2008
Age: 20
Posts: 725
Location: Chicago
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:35 am Post subject: |
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| I was told by a psycholigist I have it for sure but I chose not to be diagnosed for insurance reasons. |
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t0
Phoenix
Joined: Mar 24, 2008
Posts: 523
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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| equinn wrote: | | There is no such thing as self-diagnosed "aspie". Leave it to the professionals. It is a mockery to the kids/adults who truly suffer from the particulars of autism and had to be diagnosed. |
The problem is that the "professionals" have only been around for 14 years, whereas many of us have been around for longer than that. Since AS seems to be most accurately diagnosed in children, there's little incentive for adults (especially in the US) to seek a diagnosis even if they're suffering from the particulars of whatever it is that makes them non-NT.
I was originally diagnosed by my wife. She's not a qualified professional, but she's the only person that I've opened up to in the last 20 years. Then I found out that I have a younger relative that was professionally diagnosed so I went and read the DSM. I'm definately not as affected as him, and I'm borderline with respect to a couple of elements in the DSM. Am I borderline because I've adapted? Or was I that way all along? I can't remember and conversations with my parents make it clear that they don't remember either. All I have are notes from educators listing me as smart, a loner, aloof, unique, etc.
So what does that make me? I am on the spectrum somewhere. I am 1 in 150. I don't really care about the particular label but AS seems to be the most accurate one. |
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quirky
Deinonychus
Joined: Sep 24, 2007
Posts: 348
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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| I think the best diagnosis can be the person themselves. There are things that go on in my mind that I can't fully express in words, but when I hear others write about it, I recognize it in myself. Some people are just hypochondriacs grasping for anything wrong, but I know myself extremely well. I can tell in myself whether my excitement is normal or odd, or whether my stress or aversions are just typical problems or something serious. I'm also very good at getting myself past things without outside help - learning to overcome anxieties etc. I think it's very hard to diagnosis disorders like this because you never know what actually is happening in the person's brain. AS is just a name for a bunch of weird symptoms put together. I know for sure I have some of the symptoms very strongly, some mildly, and some not at all - so I might not be within the diagnosis of AS, but I suffer from some traits of it that I want to get help for. It's all a spectrum of things that are abnormal with the human mind, and mine has more of those things going on than the average person's. A psychologist might not see that because I have good control, but I know it's happening. |
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DeaconBlues
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide - call me...
Joined: Apr 22, 2007
Posts: 1623
Location: Earth, mostly
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:58 pm Post subject: |
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I believe part of the problem with the occasional bias against the self-diagnosed is basically a lack of feel for history. Most of the comments I see revolve around questions like, "Why weren't you diagnosed as a child? That's when it's supposed to happen!" It seems these comments usually come from people who were diagnosed in childhood, and who are generally under 20 years old.
The kicker here, of course, is that no one could be diagnosed with AS until 1991 at the earliest. That was the year that the ICD-10, with the earliest set of diagnostic criteria for AS, was published. It was followed in 1994 by the DSM-IV. That's less than 17 years, folks - and that's even assuming that the professional you went to (if any) had kept up on the literature. If you were managing to make your way through the world, however poorly, no one at the time saw any reason why you needed to be referred to anyone. After all, "everybody knew" that autistics were those poor kids who spent their entire lives huddled in a corner, flailing at anyone who came near and never talking - if you could speak, you couldn't be autistic, right?
In 1991, I was 28 years old, married - and living with my in-laws, having just left a period of living in a tent in the mountains of Washington. The general diagnosis was that I was a loser (although an Air Force psychologist had diagnosed me with schizoid disorder in 1989, after a half-hour interview). Autism didn't enter into anyone's thinking - no one even thought to apply a label to me until the Newsweek article in 2001 about "geek syndrome". Since then, everyone who knows me and has read the DSM-IV entry has told me that my picture should be used to illustrate it.
Point being, sometimes (quite often, I would think) self-diagnosis is not self-delusion - it's recognition of a state that has existed one's entire life, but which was not named until one had already become an adult. And quite often, accusations of self-delusion are made by people who do not yet have an emotional grasp of just how recently this syndrome was even recognized, much less widely accepted.
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If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. - Robert A. Heinlein |
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sonny1471
Sea Gull
Joined: Sep 20, 2007
Age: 37
Posts: 243
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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I agree completely Deacon. I grew up a child of the 70's so getting a diagnosis of AS wasn't at all possible. I went through a litany of tests with doctors, child psychologists, school therapists, etc. and the most I ever really got from any of them at the time was that I was hyper. If you remember correctly, being diagnosed with "hyperactivity" in the 70's was the "in" thing. There just wasn't another good category to put me in at the time.
My nephew was diagnosed about 3 years ago or so and after all of that happened, my mother's light bulb went off in her head about everything that I was as a child. She told me I was nearly an exact copy of my nephew at his age. Pretty telling stuff.
Unfortunately, there are many on this board who don't know of a time when AS wasn't part of the vocabulary so they assume everyone who COULD get a diagnosis DID. It wasn't available for me then and it was difficult for me to get now. There just isn't a lot of information about adult AS and attitudes about self diagnosis certainly don't help those who are on their journey as an adult to get a proper diagnosis. |
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z0rp
Phoenix
Joined: Jan 05, 2008
Age: 15
Posts: 699
Location: New York, USA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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If they get denied by more than one doctor for a diagnoses I say the person who self diagnoses him or herself is most likely wrong.
I'm diagnosed, I've been since I was 7 years old, I also haven't had a doctor since I was 13 however all my earlier doctors agreed I had it. |
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sonny1471
Sea Gull
Joined: Sep 20, 2007
Age: 37
Posts: 243
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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z0rp, you're only proving the points of everyone here above a certain age. You were BORN after I had graduated high school and had three years of military service under my belt. We didn't HAVE the diagnosis when we were children or we most likely would have received it. Through mimicking, study, or just plain luck we've managed to cope over the years so many of the AS traits associated with children don't present themselves in adults. It's quite possible for MANY doctors to give an incorrect diagnosis. Just read the story earlier in this thread about my partner's cancer diagnosis. He went to three different doctors who couldn't get it right until he finally found one who listened.
Most doctors are only familiar with childhood AS because there hasn't been enough research done into adult AS. You'll never know the difficulty of going through life wondering what's wrong with you and having no "label" to put to your issues. Consider yourself lucky that you were born after the diagnosis was available and try to be more understanding of those who weren't. |
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zen_mistress
In Pursuit of a Peaceful Life
Joined: Jun 12, 2007
Age: 31
Posts: 1131
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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| equinn wrote: |
In reality, it does take a village to raise a child. We are all interconnected. We are all social creatures, dependent on each other for survival. This has been the maxim since the beginning of time. To believe that it's okay to be a misfit, to not fit in, is antithetical to our existence. Even if you feel this way, it is wrong to accept it. Your mission or speical interest should be to do for others, the larger whole, not yourself. No one operates in a vaccuum or desires isolation unless you're depressed and suffering. |
I just dont agree with you on this. I dont know whether you are on the spectrum, but clearly you dont understand the pleasure and freedom of the solitude and independence that we like to have in our lives. I dont agree that people on the spectrum need to make other people in society their mission, I instead believe that we have to somehow learn to live with, or alongside society, and at peace with it, and do what makes us happy as long as it doesnt hurt anyone else.
Every society, throughout history, has had outsiders anyway. Outsiders and loners have even been observed in wolf packs and other animal breeds. It is nature, and if nature did not come up with enough genetic variability to produce outsiders, the species would not evolve, and instead stay the same through time.
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Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches’ wings.
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins
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poopylungstuffing
"Ultimate Creative Oddball"
Joined: Mar 09, 2007
Age: 33
Posts: 4282
Location: not otherwise specified
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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edit: my apologies to the people who posted while I was writing this long and rambly self centered semi-irrelevant post.....The points that people have been making are fascinating and I would respond to them maybe in another post later
I avoid saying I am a self-diagnosed aspie. I say I have alot of symptoms that have affected me my entire life, and i also have family members who have exhibited moderate to severe symptoms, non of whom are formally diagnosed (except perhaps for my distant cousin who seems very LFA and therefore must have been diagnosed with something)
Often I use the term AS-ish....and I usually mean "Autistic Spectrum-ish"
I have it set in my mind that I am not supposed to call myself an aspie because I am not diagnosed.
I am sometimes frustrated with the term "Aspie", and sorta like more to think of the "autistic spectrum"...If I am not a "stereotypical" aspie, I do believe I must be some place on the autistic spectrum.
I have alot of different traits, but there are alot of traits I don't have...or there are traits I have exhibited in the past that I don't anymore..it is funny the way a person subtly evolves even though their emotional maturity never really goes beyond a certain level...and a big trait for me is that I am very childlike....and continue to stay that way.
I try to dismiss certain things and analyse some psychological or other reason for certain traits..and sometimes, when I am having a particularly good day I might think..gee..maybe I am not on the spectrum after all...but that is when I have been heavily taking my supplements and having positive interractions.
Sometimes I have thought I must not be an aspie because I am too socially dynamic....but I am socially dynamic mainly among other socially akward people, and in a socially akward sort of way...and for many years I was oblivious as to why I was so off-putting to so many people...or put off by so many people...and simply failed to understand the group think that seemed to happen all around me and whatnot....
Anywhooo......ramble ramble ramble.......
The reason I am not diagnosed with anything (but ADD for which I sought and received a diagnosis as an adult)):
I am also a child of the 70's/80's...AS was unheard of ADD was unheard of...I went to really awful public schools where they simply herded you through...There had been some sort of talk about autism regarding me that I sort of picked up on preipherally at an early age. My (Very AS-ish) engineer paternal grandfather was always very concerned about the ways in which I was developing....but my parents were either very protective of me, in denial, or oblivious to the difficulties I was having despite my emotional problems and low grades and the reports from my teachers and whatnot..(they were more apt to blame the system)..and historicly, they have always had difficulties of their own......which made it hard for them....
Anywhoo....
um....sorry...losing train of thought....missed sight of my point.....
some of my symptoms are
toe-walking
funny voice
emotional immaturity
mild face blindness
"masculine" finger digit ratio
central auditory processing difficulties
there are certain specific things I obsessively collect
a tendancy to develop all consuming obsessions
a long history of social oblivion
various and sundry sensory issues that have come and gone
social anxiety
I don't drive a car
my mind goes around and around and around on things in circles
troubles with motor coordination
troubles with executive function
i dunnow...I could keep going....here are ways in which I am not ASish
my learning style when I was young was more like that of the "little professor" stereotype....but I outgrew it as I got older...
i have had rigid routines in the past, but am currently not in a lifestyle condusive to that
I have no trpubles getting into relationships...though most of the people I have dated have had issues of their own
um....
gah....must stop....have made my point...maybe I am trying to be overly self-validating in this post......
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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
Phoenix
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Joined: Jun 19, 2008
Posts: 1911
Location: US, midmap
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| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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I am not sure if self diagnosis is such a good idea. The way I see it is why self diagnose? Is there a point to being self diagnosed?
If whatever you have is keeping you from functioning socially or occupationally the medical professionals suggest seeing a doctor about it, no matter what it is, right?
The doctor, in turn, determines what is causing the lack of functioning.
Some people might be attracted to the Asperger's diagnosis because of the supposed intellectualism it conveys. I think if someone is having a difficult time with work or life the doctors can help regardless of what causes it. So you should go get diagnosed with something so the doctors can benefit you. |
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