Ever or Never Bring Up AS To Therapists?
I read Burn's book, and that was pretty much what I felt after reading it.
Personally, I have a lot of trouble with any form of purely behavioral psychology. Even before I really knew about AS, I had a strong suspicion that there was something fundamentally different about me, and behavioral psychology can't deal with that.
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"Like lonely ghosts, at a roadside cross, we stay, because we don't know where else to go." -- Orenda Fink
Yes, I think of behavioral psychology as an "outside in" approach. I feel like I think differently from the "inside out".
Well, this is my experience with bringing up AS with mental health professionals:
I unfortunately learned of AS when I started having problems with mood disorder and psychosis. So that is what the docs focused on and still focus on, and I agree, because it impacts my life the most.
I had horrible problems as a child and was diagnosed ADHD, and Emotionally Impaired, but that was before the time of AS.
But anyway, my first therapist, I brought up AS, and he looked at the DSM and he asked me a couple of questions and then just dismissed it. But three years later, he brought up AS when he got feedback about my behavior from my relatives. But my psychiatrist didn't agree, saying that I had good eye contact, a warm personality, and AS is overdiagnosed. My first therapist also wasn't sure I should seek a diagnosis because my other problems were impacting my life more.
Then I moved. I mentioned to my second therapist briefly that my first therapist thought I had AS. A couple of sessions later she told me even before I said anything she was getting an AS vibe from me. I haven't talked to my new psychiatrist about it and I am not sure if I'm going to bring it up or not. For a couple of university studies, my diagnosis was reviewed, one of them I know confirmed schiz in me, and that kind of diagnosis kind of wipes out AS anyway.
I think I could have gotten a dx as a kid when I had daily meltdowns, obsessions, no social skills and other symptoms. I have school psych reports that sound so much like AS, but well it's hard when the kid in the reports has grown up.
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FINALLY diagnosed with ASD 2/6/2020