Is self-diagnosis reliable?

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Definitely.

I'd rather be misdiagnosed with something, than actually have it and have no one understand.

Is it the blind man's fault if nobody tells him vision exists? If you don't know somebody is deaf and think they are ignoring you, is it their fault for not noticing you or your fault for not realizing they have no ability to hear what you have said? Or is it not a matter of fault and rather a misunderstanding of circumstances. People are pattern recognition engines directing the responses of a sensory detection meat bag. When the sensory stimulus that came before has left them recognizing a pattern that is not true, they require more stimulus to be able to recognize the more correct pattern. Fault? There is no fault. We are responsible for how we react to stimulus, no more no less. That is all we have control over, our own actions and reactions. Mistakes are to be expected, we will grow from them, understand them and move forward to make newer, bigger and better mistakes.

What use laying blame? The question is never "Who's fault is this?" it is always "What actions can I take that will reduce the negative impact of something?" We have no basis by which to judge any actions but our own. To believe otherwise is simple arrogance.

So,if i need a qualified doctor to verify my own
diagnosis - does that mean I need a qualified
historian to verify my own history ?

I cannot agree. Being diagnosed with a disorder that you don't have is no better than not being diagnosed with one that you do.

People seem to overlook the fact that the autism/AS label can be very damaging to both self-confidence and how others perceive you, especially when you are a child. Some people might say, "Well, just get over it and be yourself." Frankly, that becomes a heck of a lot harder when you are recognized to be officially disordered in some way.

I honestly, truly believe that my extreme self-confidence was borne out of not knowing or suspecting anything about being on the spectrum. I realize it's not going to be the same for everyone, and that denying services for people who need it is a tragedy. But applying a diagnosis to people who don't is an equal tragedy.

The label does not do the damage, people prejudging and reacting to the stereotype of a label does. Somebody hears a diagnosis and assumes they know what that means and how that must impact you. It simply does not work that way. ASD simply refers to the outer edge of neurotypicality, there is a spectrum that goes across NT and on the edge of that NT spectrum we identify a specific range as the autistic spectrum in specific comparison, but you can no more assume something about one ASD individual based on the spectrum labeling then you can about an NT individual. You can make general statements in an attempt to understand what the meaning of the division is, but the number of these statements that will hold true across every individual contained in one spectrum or another remains minimal.

Did you really read my post?

People, even those who are disabled, are usually capable of recognizing those who aren't like them. Not all are able to, mind you, but most. Even if you can't put a name to it, you can still usually see it. And in that, if you wish to know someone, you figure out how to do it. If I want to get to know someone normal, I try to communicate with them in a way that they understand and are comfortable. If they're not normal, I try to figure out how and how to communicate with them. It's a matter of building a bridge halfway. No one can build it completely by themselves, but someone has to start. And the person who is interested has to build that bridge halfway to begin with, not just do one step and give up.

It's not a matter of blame; it's not necessarily a bad thing that it fails, so there's not even always a negative impact. Fault does not mean blame.

Yes, but that's the world for you. So in effect being labeled causes these problems, especially when you are growing up and trying to figure yourself out a whole lot.


I agree. That doesn't mean that most people know this. I am speaking from the pragmatist's viewpoint. If the world were wholly accepting and knowledgable about ASD, I agree that it wouldn't be a problem.

The diagnosis should be applied only to those who are struggling and could benefit from it. Otherwise it isn't really a disorder if you're doing okay.

RainSong: They are, quite literally, synonymous. To blame means to find fault with. The fault of a party means that party bears responsibility and blame for something. People are assuming that we are just jerks because everybody else "gets it" except jerks, so if we don't get it we are jerks and not worth bothering with. Take a look at the anti-aspie propaganda. They will explicitly say "Well some people may have a problem, but these ones are just using a label as an excuse to be a jerk." They don't even realize when they are doing things you have no capacity to understand because you don't understand you are not understanding it, and everybody else just understands unconsciously, so you must be a jerk. It is your fault. You say it their fault. I say it is a circumstance we should change, stop bickering about who should have been the one to change.

fiddlerpianist: In neither affect nor effect does the label cause the problem, abuse of a label resulted in a problematic situation. Identify and treat underlying causes, not symptoms. The abuse of the label is a symptom of inadequate public awareness and education. The entire human species bears the responsibility of growing beyond such issues in our societies in our pursuit of a better future for all.

If you hold strictly to a behavioral diagnosis and only identify those who are struggling, how do you figure out why some people with the same underlying physiological differences are not struggling? How do we hope to further our undertsanding and find new solutions if we are afraid to continue performing proper research? Don't let the symptoms of issues blind you to the pursuit of greater understanding of root causes. Don't stop at okay, be better than okay.

Yeah I can understand that. I think we both have a point, not knowing what is wrong sucks, but so does being labelled as defective.

I would err on the side of the former, though.

I would have liked to have been diagnosed aged 15/16, instead of wondering why only my special interests seemed real to me, and having everyone wonder why I was so 'self absorbed' and drove all my friends away.

I knew politics was going to pop up; it was one of the reasons I stopped posting around here. This place hasn't changed much. And as a result, I won't either; I gave up trying to explain details in the English language long ago, and I'm not going to start again now.

I'm talking one specific case, with one person, not the whole wide world. My views aren't meant to be applied to the world at large. If they were, I wouldn't have brought it up here.

Beyond that, I never called anyone a jerk. If you look, you'll even see that I said that sometimes that lack of communication can be a good thing.

You want my view, beyond just one case? It's about building a bridge halfway to communicate, and the person interested in that communication needs to build that first. It goes both ways - if the disabled person wants to get to know someone else, they have to build that half first. If the normal person wants to get to know someone else, they have to build half a bridge first.

You can look anywhere, at any subject, and find ignorant people who insist upon expressing their views anyway. You're never going to be able to change everyone's mind. It's a noble gesture, but it's also futile.

Agree whole heartedly.

I agree that it is an equal tragedy that someone get wrongly diagnosed and treated a certain way that is not beneficial to them. And that someone go undiagnosed and suffer the expectations of "typical" when they are not so and the hardship of not understanding and not being understood.

From a personal standpoint i know intimately the later. However, i go back and forth between which would have been more beneficial for me as a child, perhaps what i did suffer taught me to function albeit in my own unusual way, in the world as it is. But perhaps if i had been understood better as a child i would have reached my potential and been able to function in a less dependent way (that's difficult to explain and i am trying REALLY hard not to go off on a life story monologue) but then again, perhaps i would have been treated as disabled and not given the opportunities i deserved had i had "the label"
As a matter of curiosity and understanding myself better than i do and just confirmation and validity, i would LOVE to get a professional diagnosis but it just is not possible for me at this point in my life and i don't trust Dr's all that much to know ME and make decisions about who i am.
Now for people on the internet who are NOT qualified, to sit around and try to completely invalidate what the person who knows me better than anyone (me) believes about myself, is extremely disheartening and adds to the feeling of being very much not belonging and not being understood by other humans. I do understand where this idea comes from, completely, and i don't even disagree with it because i know especially here in america, these labels are well abused, but i don't believe it is fair to dismiss it in one giant sweep of the hand when you do not know each individual person and how they came to the conclusion they did. Once again, many of us have not taken a facebook quiz and come to this conclusion and it's extremely insulting to my intelligence to suggest that of me (because that's what you are doing when you say "self diagnosed" you are talking about me personally)

Then as a parent i struggle with, am i doing the right thing by exposing my very special girl to "the system" will this do more harm than good? Is it really necessary? Is her behavior/sensitivities/etc. really that disruptive to normal life that i need to expose her to the system which i don't have much trust or faith in? Can we deal with it on our own? Will this affect her negatively or positively in the long run or would she just grow out of it? But i've been asking these questions for about a year now, she is only 4, but i've had reason to ask these things since she was very small, before age 1 i noticed differences in her that made me wonder, but i brushed them off as normal toddler wierdness until she was older and should have outgrown these things and hadn't. I decided about 6 months ago to figure out ways to help her cope on our own at home, we made some progress with it but it gets better and worse and ultimately worse. Then she swallowed a screw and found a shard of glass and put it in her mouth one day, that could have killed her or at least caused serious damage had i not seen her do it and she swallowed it, a 4 year old knows better than that and i decided our approach was not helping and i asked the Dr for the referral. The dr was reluctant and i find it VERY hard to insist and be forward and speak up and even moreso to explain things and WHY i feel what i do and WHAT exactly it is that makes me feel this way etc. and so there is a major communication block somewhere there with Dr's. Anyway, i insisted and we are awaiting our appt.
I still struggle on a daily basis with whether or not i'm doing the right thing for her.

I can understand it, too. I was misdiagnosed with several things from about the age of 15 to 18. That's when I just gave up, and quit going to see any psychologists. The therapy that I endured through some of it was horrible. I'd just hate to see anyone else have to suffer through what I did just because others think that they're following the latest diagnosis fad.

Crassus, RainSong (appreciate the kind words, Heather);

Somewhat moot to post paragraphs if it's exclusively concerning my experience (cool if it's a debate on who and what should be privy to "blame"; I agree that all people should meet halfway, as RainSong states; if halfway is writing a note to someone with an ASD and explaining the social and emotional context and starting via that medium, then that's fair for both parties); all of said females were morons, and I wouldn't have reciprocated anything even if I could have.

You are talking around my point. They already built a perfectly good half of a bridge that works perfectly well for most people. They exist within a paradigm where if you are not meeting them at the endpoint of that bridge, it is on you. They don't understand that your bridge ends at a slightly uneven spot from their bridge. They need to build some additional supporting reinforcements and create a by-way to access your bridge at the point where your by-way comes from your bridge.

I never argued that it did. I clarified this in my previous post. You obviously read it, but did you comprehend it?


So we should treat the brain to prevent it from behaving autistically?


This is just spouting rhetoric. While I agree, you're dreaming if you think that this is just going to happen by immediately "outing" everyone on the spectrum. I'm talking about what is best for the individual in the here and now. I will ask this again: what's the point of getting a clinical diagnosis when you don't need help?


At whose expense? Let the person grow up first and find their identity and get comfortable with who they are. If they can't do this, then I would suggest that they need help... in which case they should seek a diagnosis. If autism really is a spectrum that butts into being neurotypical, why study that which is normal?


More rhetoric. What does this have to do with anything?

b9,

I'm in this mythical land of awesome autistic detection known as Oz, and I've been retroactively diagnosed with the manly man's Infantile Autism from the DSM-III [and IV] at the age of 25. I'm 27 now.

I have and had every symptom barring mental retardation (I'm verbal now, but I was nonverbal). No one picked anything up no matter how "autistic" I was and am, for as long as I scored over a certain number on an IQ test (which I was given), I had nothing but defiant behaviour.

I was actually given "gifted" by the person who saw me, with perhaps a specific problem with semantics (which was fixed with speech therapy and time). Ha, if that ain't irony, I don't know what is.

The point of this post is, no one is infallible, and autism detection sucked 25+ years ago in my part of the land.