Extra, extra! Greentea going for diagnosis! (of all people!)

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That's precisely what I was thinking when I woke up now. I'm not sure I asked him why he thinks I don't have it, but if I did, again his answer was either none at all or something vague that has no logic, like all his other answers. In general, the impression I get is that if he could explain something I said with a Psychological reason, he'd dismiss AS as a possibility. That he was looking for something that couldn't be explained as Psychological in order to diagnose AS. Maybe the fact that I didn't mention sensory integration problems made him discard AS.

So you guys are Aspies with nonverbal and motor skill neurological differences, I'm a depressed witch with 2 left hands.

The biggest pointer to AS is how you appear in regards to manner; sensory integration problems aren't specific to AS, and they themselves are a poor pointer to such.

The big ones for a diagnostician to look for are (these all must be there. I'm not giving anything away, as it's not explaining how they manifest):

The lack of appropriate to and fro of social and mechanical conversation
The lack of exhibiting and appreciating nonverbal cues
The specific area of interest
Developmental history which says these things above have always been there
A clinical level of impairment, i.e., no friends and social isolation for much of your life, no job and/or failure at academia or a failure to meet your cognitive ability in academia

I have the last one, but he attributed it to aggressivity. And when I said I was never fired or dumped by friends for aggressivity, he pretended not to hear.

I also have the other two, but not in basic, simple tasks. So he may not have seen them.

But I did feel all the time that he discarded the possibility of AS because I looked civilized and corteous. And I know I give great first impressions, that's why I'm constantly hired for prestigious, sophisticated, big world, flashy, international jobs and soon fired. And for the rest of the jobs they reject me as overqualified.

Greentea, I don't see you as aggressive. I don't think most people on here see you as aggressive.

Did they give you a reason for firing you at these jobs?

I'm not exactly shocked that a "mental health professional" told you that all you need to do is pay infinite amounts of money to a "mental health professional" for doing absolutely nothing.

It's what they call "professional ethics."

Jung wasn't too bad. He said, "A cure is achieved when the patient runs out of money."

Most people think they're perceptive, so they judge other people by the impressions they get from the person's nonverbal communication. "Mental health professionals" are no different, except they get paid to do the same thing.

Aspies in person generate the impression that they're stupid, which sometimes gets upgraded to "not exactly stupid, but..." Whatever it is that generates respect, aspies ain't got it, so a "mental health professional" isn't going to seriously consider the idea that anything we say might be worth considering, regardless of the facts.

I hope I never have to deal with one of these stupid unscrupulous a**holes again, but if I do, I think I'll say:

"Somebody at the women's center told me they think I have asperger's..."

This creates an authoritative source no "mental health professional" would dare to question or contradict.

"...But I don't think I do." This gives the "mental health professional" the opportunity to confirm their perception that what you say has no value.

Presto! Instant diagnosis.

You can appear "aggressive" at times and still have AS. I get what could be called "aggressive" for me when I am overloaded. When I was trying to live what for others is a normal life, I was overloaded constantly, the negative sides of my traits somewhat apparant. I would tyrade against people, verbally, I talked to myself a lot. As soon as I began isolating myself, strangely enough, the negative traits all lessened and went away and I became something like a buddha in demeanor. Very calm most of the time without experiencing the monologue-like tyrades, the obsessing over things people said, obsessing over whether or not they liked me.
When I was in school not only did I do all the above mentioned, my symptoms were worse because I had what some call "meltdowns" on a nightly basis. Hours of crying and carrying on until I started to hyperventilate and then go to sleep. I lived with my mom and I would tell her about my unhappiness all the time and that got her nerves but I couldn't stop complaining about it. It was an obsessive pattern.

I would say aggression isn't my normal state and I might not even be "really" aggressive by NT standards. When I am overloaded I am more aggressive than I am when I am not. I try to keep this constant tranquility going as much as possible.

Kaleido, I fit the NLD symptoms to a T. But there's no social benefits for it, so an NLDer has to be diagnosed as Asperger's, which shares with NLD only the social impairment, but in my case it's so pronounced that I'm hoping it'll grant me an AS diagnosis.

Anyway, explaining away each symptom separately as depression, aggressivity or frequent human nature, and leaving some of the symptoms unexplained, is not a serious diagnosis.

CanyonWind, that was funny as usual, and so very true. And I'll be sure to do what you say next time. I'll say that my therapist of 10 years has been nudging me to see an AS specialist because it's obvious to her that I have AS and that I only started believing her now after being fired without a concrete reason for the upteenth time.

Cube, the reason I was given this time for firing me was that I make too many mistakes. The part they didn't explain is why others in our staff, whose work is one whole mistake weren't fired along with me or before me or instead of me. They didn't have an explanation to why they were firing me later when I proved that doing the work of 3 people it was obvious I had to balance not meeting deadlines with insufficient research and therefore mistakes. But it doesn't matter; I always get fired for reasons that don't hold water, and anyway how come I was never warned before about those things or given more training, etc. They suddenly come up with some excuse that they never told me before was a problem. I'm used to it.

To explain in more detail, I don't believe in classifications. I don't believe I'm NLD or AS. I believe there are many more modalities of autism than are classified today. The shrink said yesterday, by the end of the session, that he does realize I have a problem but he doesn't think it's AS. I agree with him. The problem is that he HAS TO see AS for me to get benefits. Without me asking for it, he said he'll write a letter to Social Security that'll get me the most chances of getting the money, but he can't write "Asperger's" on it, because it doesn't seem to be what I have and of course he can't lie. This is why the law says "anyone on the autistic spectrum" - to cover for classifications that we don't have yet. My father doesn't fit AS or NLD and doesn't have a similar autism to mine, however he is autistic and my mother even knew it decades ago when Autism was hardly heard of.

I believe that if I go back to him for a second session, he'll write "on the autistic spectrum", which will be enough for benefits, because by the end of the session he already realized that things weren't as simple and Psychological as he had thought (in the last minute I mentioned that my father and grandmother were autistic too).

Before I go back to him, though, I'm going to try to get an AS diagnosis from one of the 2 considered the best in diagnosing AS in adults. Maybe I won't need to get back to him.

I agree. There's not enough catagories. Billions of possible allele combinations involving multiple genes can mean many different traits at different levels of severity. They haven't yet covered all the bases in the DSM.
They should also make it possible for people who once appeared to have an ASD but, for whatever reason, live totally like NTs to become permenantly undiagnosed if that's what they choose.