Dumb things Mental Health Professionals say

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Well, there ya go!

You have Aspergers but it is due to Schizoid Personality Disorder instead of anything on the Autism spectrum

Wow

I once had a psychiatrist say that I may have been autistic as a child but I no longer am because I'm not like his preteen or teenage son who supposedly had Asperger's. I doubted said kid even existed. When I got offended because he called autism a disease, he said I had bipolar and needed to go on Abilify. When I said I wanted to research it before taking it, he threatened to have me put in a mental hospital. I wasn't sucidial or homicidal at the time and called his bluff and left. He basically had an adult tempter tantrum.

That's f#cked up. People with autism can better learn to adapt & compensate for things but autism can NOT be cured or treated the way diseases can. Women with autism often present differently than guys with autism do. Autism is diagnosed 4x more in guys probabley due to stigma that the guys are much more likely to be on the spectrum than women are so it's kind of a cycle. Women with autism are much more likely to get missed cuz people belive that autism is mostley a male condition & continuing to miss women with autism at much higher rates causes that incorrect belief to get passed down to the newer,younger generation which causes them to miss autistic women more & then that belief gets passed down again. Also the gender roles & sterotypes for men & women is also a factor for autistic women being missed.

My GP diagnosed me with bipolar & the psychiatrist he refered me to changed it to Aspergers along with Borderline Personality Disorder. I was going through a psychotic depression that was partley related to my Aspergers. I was on Abilify a lot for 5 years but I was on other meds during that time as well. Abilify is officially approved for certain autism systems but it will NOT cure or take away autism.

(me trying to explain my social deficits to my first psychiatrist over a decade before my diagnosis of autism)

Psychiatrist: "Well we're not a dating agency!"(spoken in a snarky bitchy voice)

I once had a therapist tell me "most people who are truly happy are in a romantic relationship". Total BS, as most marriages end in divorce. I'm happy, and not in a relationship.
I also had one tell me, and tell my son, to deal with our anger by just "telling ourselves we aren't going to get angry". News flash. It doesn't work.

That's complete BS and saying these to a client would be against even the two semester psychology course I received in college

So many therapists are not even vaguely up to date with the research or modern best practice. One that's been bugging me for ages is how they blithely talk about the threat response as "fight or flight." More recent literature recognises it as "fight, flight, freeze or fawn"- that's double the number of possible reactions, yet most CBT practicioners try to explain everything as just the first two.

Both of these therapists were elderly gentlemen, and though their intentions seemed good, they were likely way behind the times.

1. "You will never get taken seriously by authorities because you don't look autistic or act handicapped enough".
2. I asked for very mild anxiety meds as I don't like meds and I don't need anything heavy. The doctor promised me mild stuff and said I dont need more and then he prescribed me a high dose of anti-depressants... I refused to take them especially after doing some research and asking around for peoples - overall negative as I found - experiences. My doctors response was that no one has EVER had negative experiences with this medication. EVER! Then when I asked for one I would rather try he removed the prescription, didnt contact me and told my therapist to tell me he's done with me and won't have anything more to do with me unless I take the medication that he prefers to prescribe. After having met me once his whole life and he had no good reason, just that he prefers to prescribe that one.

And I have many bad things said from health professionals in general. I'm pretty new to meeting mental health professionals. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

The same therapist I mentioned above also said that I couldn't be autistic because I "understand the concept of give and take in a conversation". Again, this psychologist was elderly and probably not up to date with autism research, or familiar with autistic adults in general. I don't think he understood that high-functioning autistics often learn to "mask" their symptoms, and that although I've learned how to act when others are speaking, It doesn't mean I'm good at conversation. Just that I've learned how to fake it somewhat.

I had a speech therapist tell me and my wife that it was our fault for not diagnosing our daughter earlier and even got emotional as if we had somehow caused our daughter's autism by our negligence . My daughter was 5 at the time.

None of the professionals I have dealt with have shown a capacity to be empathetic which stems from the fact none of them have experienced having a child on the spectrum. They are cold and objective (that's their training).

I have had much better experience from teachers some of whom have been remarkably caring and supportive. But many of these teachers also had children with disabilities themselves so again can relate better.

Interesting experiences above.

Had shrinks in a range of competence and incompetence.

Probably the dumbest thing for me is what my parents told me shrinks said to them about me when I was a little kid.

When they met with the shrinks to talk about me when my child self wasnt there they honestly described things I woud do including my then favorite hobby of taking crayons and paper and drawing crude comic strips of characters I invented having adventures, and illustrating adventure stores with a series of drawings like in the funny papers.

And each installment of the stories I called "episodes", just like how the word is used on TV.

The shrinks would get angry at my parents, and really intimidate them and accuse them of aggrandizing me. And say "NO child would use a word like 'episode'! You must be lying, and making your son out to be smarter than he is".

Shrinks and sociologist DO use the word "episode" as part of their trade lingo. Dysfunctional families have "episodes".

But really...couldnt these shrinks have taken their heads out of their asses long enough to watch children's TV? Or even grown up prime time of that era? The TV announcers would always talk about "this episode" of Rocky and Bullwinkle, or "next week's episode" of Huckleberry Hound, or "this episode" of Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners". What would stop any typical eight year old kid in 1963 America from imitating TV and use the word "episode"?

I paid a psychologist $200/hr for her to get my daughter to do exactly what you described as a form of CBT. Needless to say it was not money well spent.

Paid them to get your daughter to do...what I just did naturally(ie to use imagination and to 'draw stories' as I called it then)? Thats interesting. Dont mean to pry, but...

Whose idea was it to get her to do that? Apparently it didnt work.