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A Route to Diagnosis - an experience

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tern
Snowy Owl
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05 Nov 2013, 12:03 pm

Can't you stop defining as having a mental health problem, now that you have shown in practice no part of the mental system wants to deal with it as one? You clearly don't want the treatment they offer either, which is good.

Anxiety is reasonably classed as caused by AS, can't you now simply define it as part of the AS and its associated problems? What do the Viewfield Terrace folks say about that?



Niall
Deinonychus
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05 Nov 2013, 12:17 pm

tern wrote:
Can't you stop defining as having a mental health problem, now that you have shown in practice no part of the mental system wants to deal with it as one? You clearly don't want the treatment they offer either, which is good.

Anxiety is reasonably classed as caused by AS, can't you now simply define it as part of the AS and its associated problems? What do the Viewfield Terrace folks say about that?


That's a couple of very good questions. As I'm sure you know, mood problems are endemic among Aspies and, were it just a "simple" question of social anxiety, I'd probably agree with you. The trouble is, it's not. It's way more complicated than that.

I am wondering, however, if you disentangle Aspie characteristics, and unpick the depression and anxiety, just what you're left with. That's more complicated, and I don't have simple answers to that.

So far, the people at Viewfield Terrace haven't said anything, because they only know about the problem in brief overview. I'm thinking about trying to engage with their limited groups simply to show that there is a demand for more services, because at the moment the place is little more than a joke - it's there to show that there is something there, not to actually do much good on a day-to-day basis.



Niall
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14 Jan 2014, 1:15 pm

LucySnowe wrote:
I agree with you to a point--having the diagnosis for me has served as a jumping-off place for understanding myself better, but it hasn't significantly improved my relationships with other people, nor has it necessarily made them understand me more. Despite knowing myself better, I find sometimes that I wallow in my diagnosis--I allow it to become me, if that makes sense.


I've been re-reading this thread for the purposes of making some constructive suggestions for someone who is in a similar position now to the one I was in when I started the conversation.

I have a thought on this. I think on many ways, it is me. I do not "have Asperger syndrome" in the sense of "having the flu", as something that is separate from me and that will or might go away, or that I contracted separately from being me. It is part of who I am - I am an Aspie, or I am autistic, depending on your definitions.

What that does do, and which can be positive, is enable me to self-advocate (when I'm not locked up in my den in fear of the allistics or curled up in a ball hating myself and the rest of the damned universe...).