Going to get a diagnosis, but I wonder if it matters...

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lol Thanks...I guess?

I looked up that scale, and with the majority of the list, it's like I'm reading something written about me! I'm definitely going to have some people take it.

Reading this thread I realise how shaky the foundations of this whole testing business are.

I have a similar issue at the moment. I was interviewed for one hour by the deputy head of an autism intervention and support centre, a person trained to work with children and adults on the autism spectrum and with years of daily experience in the field. However he is not an academic psychologist or a medical doctor, so his "diagnosis" is an unofficial evaluation and based only on my detailed life history and his talkng to me. He said he was 100% sure I have Aspergers and that any psychologist would agree. However I still feel "undiagnosed" because to get an official diagnosis I need to go to a doctor or a psychologist. Reading this thread makes me wonder about the validity of doing that. The person I just mentioned said that many people were disappointed by the way the diagnosis was done by psychologists and doctors. If someone is just going to look at the DSM criteria and ask me questions to see if I match them, or give me a questionnaire, that doesn't seem a better way of diagnosing than what I've already had. There's also a waiting list of over a year.

Yeah, I contacted the woman I am supposed to see, and she stated that she doesn't use any testing other than the DSM and if I want other testing, I have to go somewhere else. Any other places I've contacted that offer testing have at least a month waiting period, but it worries me that she's just wanting to solely use the DSM criteria, when I know how difficult it is to perfectly fit in that box of symptoms. So, I guess I have until Monday to decide...

I suppose any test is useful and you'll learn something by going, so if i were you I'd definitely have it. You can decide afterwards if you think it was rigorous enough. It seems wierd that we all seem to be left evaluating the validity of our own diagnoses. Sometimes I wonder why we are so keen to hand this power over to other people. No gay person would go to a specialist to find out if they're gay. As soon as they find out what being gay is they know if they are gay or not. Or am I missing something?

If she has a significant amount of experience with Asperger I'd say go for it, but if not go see someone else. The reason is that many doctors (even psychologists) have only seen or heard of low-functioning cases. My first psychological had seen Aspies before but she only saw the very low-functioning ones and she falsely thought that I had Anxiety Disorder and Social Phobia.

Haha. Well said. I guess you're right, no one knows us better than ourselves.

Thanks!

Okay, thanks! I just have to think on it for a while before I talk to her again. I don't want to come across as though I'm questioning her expertise or attacking her in some way. I seem to have an issue with that lately.

You get a boner looking at guy and imagine dating him = you're gay (or bisexual)
And then if you finally date a guy and it works you have your true confirmation.

With Asperger, it's a lot more hard to be sure. There is always something in the back of you're mind making you doubt. Don't forget that many people around you will always tell you that you are just special but that you aren't aspie and this makes you doubt a lot (In my case my father, my family and most of my friends would tell me this). With a diagnostic you're finally 100% confident that you have it and unbelievers can go to hell. You can also show (only if you want to) your diagnostic to your employer/advisor/ect in the possibility that you end up in a meltdown/shutdown and you need to explain yourself.

haha, I understand, I'd be the same. I would also wait a bit until asking her another question.

I definitely think the pros outweigh the cons in getting a diagnosis, especially since if I get a diagnosis, I don't have to keep going day in and day out wondering if I have AS or if there's something just innately wrong with me.

Wouldn't most normal people and medical practitioners too think that having AS is to have something innately wrong with you? It's supposed to be genetic and in terms of the wider society and our functioning in it there IS something wrong with it .

Yes, sorry for the confusion. I just meant something other than AS. I would like to know if it's AS or something else, is all I meant.

I know what you mean. At first (ie for the first few decades of my existence) I just thought I had some uniquely wierd traits and lots of incomprehensible bad luck in social situations. It was a relief to have a name for it.

This business of having to/wanting to question the name all the time simply because someone else has to stick the label on one has got me down. I like to be in control of things and independent and handing that sort of power over to someone else is unpleasant, especially if they then turn round and say they can see me in 13 months time to decide.

It just feels really disempowering.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Hopefully we both find answers. And soon!

I hope so too.

Certain schizophrenia spectrum disorders, social anxiety/avoidant disorders...though they aren't really similar, some people have difficulty telling the difference between AS, ADHD, ADD, ODD, and so on. A lot of women with AS get misdiagnoised with bi-polar disorder though they aren't similar.....that is just perceptual gender bias at work.

Some people acquire social problems later in life and think they have AS, but social problems associated with AS becomes apparent from a very young age, not because they develop, but because children without AS continue to develop socially while children with AS do not.

And then there are just people who were not treated well growing up or who did not fit in with the available social circle, or maybe are admittedly quirky, but don't actually have AS....some of them might have PDD-NOS or HFA though.

Last there is NVLD, non-verbal learning disorder. The distinction between this and AS is not clear, or agreed on. Most of Hans Aspergers subjects seem to meet the criteria for NVLD and early learning assessments on those with AS typically produce an NVLD scatter pattern. However NVLD entails motor coordination issues, which though observed by Hans Asperger, was not included as part of the diagnostic criteria for AS in the DSM-IV.

This caused a shift in the learning profiles of those being diagnosed with AS over time, and so now while most people with NVLD probably have AS, and many people with AS have NVLD, not all people with AS have NVLD.