Keep getting told I am not a aspie.

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Hello.
I was told tonight by a girl who says that she has worked as a mental health professional that she knows people who are aspies and does not think that I am one...this is what I get for mildly attempting to bring up the subject.
Then also my boyfriend says "You are not an aspie, sweetie"..and he doesn't really have any interest in it one way or the other...he is also one of those people who says ADD does not exist...

I never say that I am one..I say that identify with them and have alot of symptoms...
I was really happy to find this forum and find people that I can relate to...If I didn't have something in common with aspiesm then I would not spend so much time on this board.
um...

I have grown up with developmental problems...It can be a very lonely feeling..it would be lonlier if I didn't have a place where i could vent...I was told that I was "wallowing" and that I didn't need a lable for who I was as a person...and that I should be proud of myself just because I can play a stinking ukulele and hula hoop at the same time...
but that is not very reassuring...

no matter that I am 31 with the emotional maturity of a 14 year old..or that I will never drive a car...or that general social interractions completely exhaust me...

So maybe I am upset because the notion that I have been using the "Aspie" thing as a crutch has been shoved in my face...and that my best option is to abandon the idea that I might possibly have it and stop dwelling on it..and stop spending so much stinking time on this message board etc..etc..etc..

It is nice to feel like there is a reason I am the way that I am. For a long time I was on ADD boards...and I thought I could relate to alot of stuff over here...

bah.....

I dunnow...

I feel dumb for dwelling so much on something...I spend too much time on the computer anyway...

Have you ever thought about going in for a diagnoses. My boyfriend has told me I am not AS and he is right. I don't quite meet the criteria but yet diagnosed with it so what am I? Border aspie NT. I feel my diagnoses is just a hoax and now how do I explain to people why I am different. "I've been diagnosed as being an aspie but I don't really have it." I'd like to get it removed but I'm afraid it would effect me being on SSI so I'm going to do it when I don't need them anymore. I'd just like to see that i don't have it and I am PDD-NOS for sure or maybe I am just an NT who has aspie traits or maybe I am just crazy or my mind is all messed up because I had hearing loss in my baby hood.

This girl who has worked as a MH profesional, she a psychologist then? You know yourself better than anyone else, and given your age then its un-likely that you would have been DX'd as a child unless your problems were so severe that they interfered with your developement/day to day life.
I was not DX'd until recently, - I'm 37. Even now people who 'know' me say they wouldn't have guessed that I'm AS. Yes they refer to me as a 'bit wierd' or 'mildy eccentric'. But then they as anyone else only get to see as much of me as I let them see, and I put so much effort into being 'normal' around people.
There is probably a preconception that if you have AS you will be similar to 'Rain man' or savant in some area. Rememberther is no pass or fail test. If you can honestly appraise yourself, scrutanise your behaviours without bias, you yourself kow then whether you are on the Autistic Spectrum or not. It doesn't matter what others opinion is on the matter then, because they are just that, opinions.

As you know, I could and can relate to your "symptom" video...and I'm one of those mythical "Auties" who aren't supposed to type.... I've had heaps of people say that I'm not autistic because I "look" and "present" myself differently to their standards of what "autistic" is and what it looks like, which was said by supposed "intelligent" individuals..., A GP too.

You wouldn't know there's anything wrong with me if you were a friend.

I'm probably "worst" than a lot of "Social Walkers" on this board...but I still noticed a lot of you in me when I saw that video....

exactly, this is it. while NT's just don't see that. they think they are trying to HELP you by trying to convince you that you don't have an AS. one friend of mine told me that i just got used to the lonely life and therefore i have problems to socialize. although, that would explain a little, but hardly all the other things this friend tended to overlook.

Sometimes good intentioned but ultimately ignorant folks will attempt to "console" you by downplaying or being in denial about your symptoms. It is best to thank them for their concern and forget what they've said.

edit: I swear I posted this before I read tomamil's post ^_~

As someone who went nearly 40 years without any
idea that there was any condition which fit much of
that which separates me from the majority of humanity,
I'm not sure whether it matters one way or another.
It's not as though there seems to be any serious
'help' for aspies. You are what you are, and some
label doesn't really matter.

Diagnosis is only really important until you have it, then, after a while it doesn't really matter.

You know exactly what you are before diagnosis and you know eaxctly what you are after diagnosis and you soon get to realise that your own knowledge is far more accurate in determining where your are on the spectrum than that of any so called expert health professional.

In fact professionals in all walks of life are very variable and, at the end of the day, are just people with a job, a certificate and an opinion. Well regardless of whether you have a job or a certificate you are also a person with an opinion and, as the subject under discussion here is you, in this case you are also THE expert.

Thank you folks.
It can frustrating and confusing when people assert their opinion over you when they have only just met you...(i wish i could be a little more articulate than that at the moment...)

Or when they know you so well that they think they know you better than you know yourself

I got a lecture from Flakey.."You may like these people and you have things in common with them, but you are not one of them..what you have is different"

Which is absolutely no help at all.

...then what is it?...

I don't want to need a lable...but it has helped....I am just that small-minded I guess....when (as a teenager) i discovered what ADD was it was like an epiphony..and did something for my self esteem when I learned that there was a name for people who had similar issues to what I had experienced for as long as I could remember...let alone...a group of people who did....i was able to go a bit easier on myself and not feel like such a defective ret*d for once.

and you are right..it does seem more important before diagnosis.

I fought tooth and nail to get help regarding the ADD stuff....i couldn't do it on my own for financial reasons and transportation reasons and the fact that it is very difficult to find anyone around here that would address Adult ADD issues...and the fact that my family is completely skeptical of the medical industry....so I couldn't even talk to them about it without getting a lecture on how evil the whole system is.....(while meanwhile keeping me well stocked on natural remedies that didn't have very obvious effects..which I still take..they don't seem to do anything bad, so they must do something good..)

and once I did get help, my experience with ADD meds was a disaster...it was sort of a sham of a diagnosis and I ended up overmedicated
(i thought the meds would help me do the huge mountain of things I was having trouble keeping up with..and while I did lose weight and my blood pressure went down..I ended up angry all the time..and kinda had a breakdown, and the mountain didn't get any smaller...so I jumped off it and moved to another city for a while...in a bold-but-stupid assertion of personal autonomy

I can't imagine the process of getting to a doctor again being any easier...for all the reasons I listed above....but I would like to see one...for closeure.....

If I truely am not an aspie (or someplace on the spectrum) there should be a support group called "Ok..so you're not an Aspie" for people like myself who have deluded themselves into thinking they were when they weren't.

We're all different
but who's indifferent
the ones closest to you
or those far away who know what you say
they need not have the same label
for them to speak and say
advice that need not be from Babel
nor must it be completely you
pieces can be held by a broken staple
even if only a few pages are pertinent to you
it's better than remaining a fable

I told one of my friends, and she said that she doesn´t believe that I have it because I don´t "act" like how AS is described. It´s just that I´ve learned to fake it so well that I can cover up most of my problems, so it makes me appear as if I am functioning normally when it really takes a tremendous amount of effort to present myself in a "normal" manner. But, I still feel totally different inside then how I present myself. Whatever...like everyone else said, you know yourself better than anyone, and no one can tell another person that what they are feeling is wrong. If there is one thing that we are certain, it has to be how we feel on the inside.

Ditto that. Not all the time, but this is often true of me as well.

I get this sometimes myself. When I mention to someone that I'm an Aspie in many cases they don't believe me. They think I'm normal or just a quiet person. Even the clincian who diagnosed me a few years ago actually said out of the Aspies that they deal with and/or diagnose I'm pretty close to be neurotypical. Some people that I told get suprised also. Many people have admitted that they did see some sort of Aspie trait or two in me.

I don't think it really matters if one is "officially" an aspie. If you know that you are different and you can relate to the idiosyncrasies of a group why not join it? Heck, I was just happy to find a group of people as odd as I am.

PS Poopy, love the sock monkeys!

I can't do better than what everyone else has advised.Poopy,if these ideas makes sense to you and they help you,then be glad for them.I don't know exactly where I am on the spectrum,and that can give me pause to doubt.But at the end of the day I am certain I'm there somewhere,the quizes and evidence say "very likely",and I can relate to more minds here than elsewhere.You're bright,you know what's going on in your own head.