maybe i am not an aspie...

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Me too!

I have had people who have known for less than 10 minutes (a staff member at my school) tell me they cannot believe it took them 27 years to figure out I had autism since she has known me for about five minutes and could already tell.

I agree with Fnord - belief =/= reality when it comes to having ASD.

You can believe all you want, but in the end, if you don't actually meet the criteria, then you don't have it.

You may THINK that subjectively, you do meet the criteria, but your viewpoint of your own behaviours and responses are skewered because of a personal bias and agenda. That's why you need an objective perspective regarding your behaviours.

I agree wholeheartedly! This is why when I was self-diagnosed (when I suspected I had it for 8 years prior to finding a psych--I was quiet about it though) I doubted myself over and over again, thinking it was probably all in my head even though it seemed to fit me to a tee. People are often right, are people are just as often (I would guess) incorrect as well. I know someone who was "100% certain". Well, he did not have it, was diagnosed with something else instead, and came to the realization that this real diagnosis fit him much more accurately. Not everyone who says or truly believes they are autistic really are.

Am yet another person who was identifed by someone who barely knew ASDs. Of course she told me not to get a diagnosis and didn't give me nearly enough information...



Of people who've done detailed research and active questioning, I don't think its 50/50 - I'd actually probably guess 90/10, however active questioning is incredibly important.

I'd posted on here a little before I was diagnosed, but minimally, and only in a situation where I really really needed help.

Unless someone provided me a link to a good, reliable scientific study that agreed with this statistic, I do not accept that. I am HIGHLY doubtful that 90% of all self-dx are correct. HIGHLY DOUBTFUL. Even if it is not 50/50, I'd only probably go as high as 60/40--MAYBE 70/30, but I think even that would be REALLY pushing it.

A lot of people have common co-morbidities (ie. depression and anxiety) that produce autistic-like symptoms in adulthood that simply did not exist at all in childhood. Those people are not autistic. Many others have conditions that have somewhat similar symptoms on the surface such as ADHD or schizotypal. Since many people who are self-dx do not get a professional diagnosis, I do not believe you can come up with an accurate statistic. I know a lot of self-dx people who were correct (ie. me...and others as well). I know about as many, or SLIGHTLY less who were self-dx and were incorrect.

I can't actually, it was a complete guess based off of so many people saying 99% of people who self diagnose are correct and me feeling like that is completely wrong (at the very least it is far from true in the people I've interacted with IRL). However you cut out the first half of my statement.



I'd say that at least a third of the cases on this board that I've seen, I've not seen enough detailed research in active question to qualify them in that. I don't think that 90% of self-diagnoses are correct, I think 90% of self-diagnoses where the people actually put the required effort in to making that diagnosis might be correct. Unfortunately, putting the required effort in is something that I'd say is probably done at most 60% of the time, most likely noticeably less.

Overall I'd probably guess 60/40 - but again, this is a guess only from comparing people who are diagnosed to those who are self-diagnosed in a limited population.



I'd think if someone put enough research in that I'd trust their self-diagnosis they'd have also been purposefully looking at their childhood, and such. Looking at yourself now isn't enough to self-diagnose any more than it is enough to get a diagnosis from a professional.

However, this is definitely true. Depression and Anxiety causing ASD-mirroring traits is actually something I've had major issues with, 'cause I was personally affected by someone who tried to call her self autistic when she had only developed depression, anxiety, and symptoms similar because of bullying.



I'd actually be really interested to see what percentage of people self-diagnosed before professional diagnosis, and what percentage of people who attempted to get professional diagnoses which they were not given because of a false self-diagnosis. It wouldn't be enough to get the required data, because of so many people self-diagnosing and never getting an official diagnosis (and often those on the more mild edge of the spectrum where there is question of if they have AS/PDD-NOS or BAP), but it'd still be interesting statistics.

I feel like I'm in the same shoes--before you received your diagnosis that is. Right now I'm not sure if I have Asperger's Syndrome or not. After reading Rudy Simone's "Aspergirls" I felt understood for the first time in my life (with exception to the savant skills). Unfortunately, my eldest sibling tried to convince my parents I was bipolar--even though I've never experienced a manic episode in my life and all of my depressions were trigger based (i.e., change in plans).

I'm currently neither a student nor employed so I don't have access to free evaluations, coverage from insurance, or enough funds to pay for testing (I hear most take a year to get diagnosed to rule out other disorders). In addition, after reading how opinionated people are about "self-diagnosis," I don't think I'll be telling anyone about my suspicions.

Mine didn't take a year. I had an appointment in June (two appointments), and was diagnosed in July. I was given the standardized ADIR and ADOS tests which are designed to show whether someone is autistic or not. Had it came back negative, we would have kept searching for something else. Unfortunately it is expensive though. Mine was 1200$.

When it comes to sharing a self-diagnosis, personally, I was fairly quiet about it. I only told a very select handful of people in the 8 years I was self-diagnosed. What I am opinionated about is people saying they are autistic when they are not diagnosed. I don't think there is anything wrong with people saying they feel they have many autistic characteristics and SUSPECT they MIGHT be on the spectrum.

Two months only? Wow, that's much better than an entire year. Although, for the price you almost hope to come out with something in the end. I would be very weary about the ADIR & ADOS as currently I'm estranged from my family and don't see them supporting any ideas of having another child with a mental disability (I have two older twin siblings both diagnosed with autism when they were younger).

I guess those are the key words I need to remind myself: suspect and might.

I think Tuttle is correct about self-diagnoses. I also don't mind people saying they are autistic if they're self-diagnosed, although it should be clear that they are self-diagnosed. I stopped saying "I think I have it" and started saying "I have it" probably 2-3 months before I was actually diagnosed, but to be entirely truthful I first self-diagnosed nearly four years ago and didn't say anything about it until last Winter. I did doubt it off and on, and still occasionally doubt it since my diagnosis, but as more becomes apparent to me, it gets harder for me to think that.

I believe Tony Attwood says that a majority of people who self-diagnose are likely correct. I don't know that he has any research for this, but he does have a logical explanation. It is a risk, of course, that self-dx turns out wrong, but I have seen at least as many professionally diagnosed Aspies saying problematic things that can cause problems if someone is listening as I have self-dxed Aspies.

The one thing I hear over and over again that is a problem with self-dxed Aspies is something I have never seen: Which is people trolling and flaming and then trying to claim they have AS as an excuse for their rudeness. What I have seen a lot of is autistic people asking a question, getting flamed for asking that question, being accused of asking a different question they didn't actually ask, being told what they said meant something entirely different, being accused of flaming, and when they say they're autistic to explain the communication problems that flared up, it's taken as an excuse. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't take the idea of impairment seriously and think that a diagnosis simply means you can shift your thinking, attitudes, and behavior to account for it with minimal effort.

As far as it goes, I think in SammichEater's lineup of five people, I would most likely stand out as autistic. My therapist noticed it fairly early on and she didn't even realize stimming was a part of the profile. I spend most of every appointment stimming right in front of her. In the notes for my diagnosis, my description mentions finger flicking, animatedly flapping my hands, making minimal eye contact, and showing very little emotional affect. More recently, my therapist said outright that she has a lot of trouble reading me because I very rarely have facial expressions, and I don't really use my hands much (although I do use them aside from the stimming).

Even my disability attorney spotted it.

When I tell people who know me, no one says "Oh, that's not possible." They say "Oh, that makes sense" or "I always thought you might be." My mother told me that a family friend suggested I was autistic when I was 10 or 11.

I have learned some ways to pretend normal, but a lot of things I wasn't even aware of as unusual, so I never really tried to filter them out or stop doing them. I put most of my effort into learning how to talk to people without constantly going back to my interests, and I can only do that for so long. I can only stop stimming for any serious length of time if I consciously try to stop. Once I stop thinking about not stimming it starts right up again. I have a couple of party favor bracelets that I use to focus my stimming and when I saw my attorney I fiddled with my sunglasses to keep things under control enough to not distract him.

And I just wanted to say, that I keep getting bits and pieces of how other people see me, and all I can say is "I had no idea this is how I look" until the past several months.

Without a family history you can still get DXed for AS or PDD-NOS. The history allows for information that would decide whether you qualify for the "autism" diagnosis.

Yes, the required effort is the key. Which is why I can't tell if someone has ASD if they just regurgitate the vague and sometimes erroneous diagnostic criteria and talk about themselves like a collection of traits instead of a person experiencing those traits. If they've thoroughly researched ASD, from the criteria to the traits and behaviors beyond the criteria to the experiences beyond the traits and behaviors, then they would not talk about themselves like a collection of traits. They would have linked the traits to their own experiences and would describe the actual experiences instead, including why they do the things they do, not just the fact that they do them. At that point, I would think that they were correct in their self-diagnosis. Otherwise, the person may still be autistic, but much more effort is required before self-diagnosing.

I think the benefits of a professional diagnosis are two-fold:

(1) Rule in ASD. Traits must be present from childhood. A lot of people say that they or their parents can't recall their childhoods. The thing is that autistic traits are weird enough that autistic people are usually known for their weirdness within their families. There is no need to struggle to recall anything. The weirdness would have been memorable, and there might have been unofficial terminology for it. For example, while growing up, I was nicknamed all of the following by my parents: "Little Robot" (referring to lack of affect and social-emotional reciprocity), "The Hard Drive/The Computer" (referring to memory and learning processes), "Little Tyrant" (referring to rigidity and consequences of breaking such), "Eagle Eye" (referring to attention to detail), "Food Saver/Camel" (referring to hunger/thirst alexithymia), "Party of One" (referring to autistic aloneness), "Bookworm" (referring to hyperlexia), "Parrot" (referring to echolalia and musical mimicry), and many more - a nickname for every trait and all nicknames applied at the same time. During diagnosis, nothing needed to be recalled from the mists of time, as all this lifelong weirdness defined ME to my parents. The only thing that had been missing was the link between the traits and ASD. Back in the '80s, there was little knowledge and understanding of autism, especially HFA.

(2) Rule out other conditions. I really wanted to make sure that I had ASD and not something else that caused autistic behaviors. My psych was most useful for this. While I could have diagnosed myself easily and accurately based on my childhood history and adulthood profile, I don't think that I could have ruled out other conditions myself. I just haven't seen any or enough people with all kinds of other conditions to judge whether I am similar to them or whether my mind works like theirs. Unlike with ASD, I don't understand the ADHD or OCD or social anxiety experience, so those conditions are just collections of vague terms to me. The professionals have seen the people and do understand the conditions that I don't have much better than I do, and that's the biggest difference between me and them when it comes to making a diagnosis of anything.

BTW, I had a personal name for my personal condition that I thought was unique to me before I had ever heard of ASD. I called the full set of traits making up my totally unique and personal condition "Arrested Development Disorder".

The criteria by themselves actually didn't make a lot of sense to me. Hearing what they were from other autistic people did make sense. Being able to understand what the traits were and link them to my experiences made all the difference to me.

One weird thing to me is that even though I was aware of the autistic things I did I didn't really know I was all that different from other people in that particular way. I needed to have these things explicitly described as unusual. I was aware I had more trouble than other people, but I didn't have any explanation as to why I had more trouble - mostly I thought other people just coped with everything better than I did, or that I was failing to do something I should try harder to do in order to cope better (that is, just lazy instead of having actual neurological difficulties).

Once it was a real and obvious possibility to me I spent all my time reading and talking about it, though. I've read several books, read accounts by several other autistic people (many here, many bloggers, some books), talked about the things I do and why I do them, and finding others have similar experiences. It was a lot of work to come to that point.

I have never really seen this before. I have seen people claim they have it when they be in an argument but I never took it as them using it as an excuse. I had started to wonder when people say they have AS, people just assume they are using it as an excuse to be a jerk or whatever. So I posted in the social rule book never mention your autism if people get offended by what you posted. It will make it look like you are using it as an excuse.

I've seen people say this happens but I've never seen it - only what you said.

I saw a somewhat strange exchange on a blog not too long ago in which an autistic man asked a question and multiple people got mad at him for saying some other thing that he did not actually say - and when he said he didn't say that they kept saying that those were the exact words he used. They also said that they said exactly what they meant, which was strange to me because what they wrote did not match what they were saying what they wrote meant.

It's strangely fraught to say "I do not understand what this means, could you explain it in more detail?" in some places too. I remember asking that on a mailing list and someone told me "It means exactly what it says," which was the problem - what it (another blog post) said was pretty confusing to read.

And you think that the "professionals" don't have any bias or agenda? To give one example, I know of a senior psychiatrist in my area who happens to specialise in personality and mood disorders; to him every patient has acquired a personality disorder due to trauma or childhood circumstances. In his world view there is no room for innate neurological disorders.

On a different note I think it is hilarious that some people here are speculating on the percentage of self-diagnosed being accurate. It is absurd that they speak with apparent confidence that it must be 50 or 60 or 70 percent. There is nothing worse than armchair academics.