My shrink quit me!

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My guess is, since he has been seeing mental health professionals, that he already has one.

I hope he isn't holding back applying just because he doesn't have the one he wants.

Part of the reason why therapists refer their patients out to other people is because of personal bias. For example, a therapist may not feel comfortable working with a client who has borderline personality disorder (BPD)*. In order for them to remain nice and professional, they'll refer the BPD client out to a different therapist - preferably one who works with personality disorders. It's possible that your therapist had a bias against autism, and that's why they're sending you to a different therapist.

* The reason why I used BPD is because it has a lot of stigma, even among mental health professionals.

I have no formal training whatsoever and I can Pavlov myself too! The only trouble is that when I get Pavlovian, it starts with Freudianism...

If there is a pattern of psychs quitting you, then you might be coming across in a way that makes multiple psychs want to quit you, but I don't know what way that could be.

Mainly what I come up with is that they can't diagnose me with anything. I have never gotten any sort of diagnosis. And I tell them I don't want to take pills. I am thinking about going to a homeopathic doctor. I told my doctor I wanted some sort of cognitive-behavioral therapy because I had gotten off my pills and felt fantastic. I just need to learn some communication skills and how to interact in the world. Psychiatrists are in the business of writing prescriptions. Psychologists don't know what to do with me because they can't pin me with anything. I think they are a little taken aback by my self-awareness & knowledge of psychology in general. Trust me, after years and years of going to these people, they don't like to have patients other than mindless drones. And I am a jovial person. I laugh a lot and make jokes. I loose my temper some, but I am not depressed. I think they are only used to seeing depressed people.

From my understanding, at least in the states, docs will usually diagnose at least depression or anxiety. You can apply for disability with either condition.

You might want to ask for the exact diagnosis. Also, if you plan to apply for disability, that is something you should discuss with your doc.

That is backwards. Math is abstract; language (as practiced, not studied) is more concrete.

What was your other major? And with which test did you earn that 140 IQ?

LMFAO! You started a thread in which you stated that you suspected yourself to be autistic and asked if you seemed to be on the spectrum JUST YESTERDAY.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=286272

Have you made up your mind so soon???

Also, these essay-long posts in this thread? I am dying.

I find it worrying

queensnicklefritz, CryosHypnoAeon and Niko_Oeyes all agree with each other and seem to get each other

However, none of them are diagnosed autistic.

But because they all agree they think "we fit in here" and therefore queen and Cryos think "we are autistic" (not sure if Niko has said it, but I know queen and cryos have from their other posts as well as here). It leads to them all becoming sure of their self diagnosis so much they start speaking as though they are sure they are autistic.

I hated to burst their bubble earlier, but now you've started it I might as well.

I honestly think you are NT hypochondriacs. They keep rejecting you for a reason; they see no problem. They help people with problems.

Ahhh... to be ostracized by ostriches.

Call it gate keeping, octracizing whatever. Your self diagnosis with such little basis doesn't mean you are autistic. Only a professional can decide that. You are not autistic until then. And if they don't see it in you you need to learn to take their word for it. No, you don't know more than them. They have trained in that field and have seen plenty of people with autism enough to be able to recognise it.

ILikeTrees, the reason why there are a lot of self-dxing adults in the autism community is because getting a dx as an adult is extremely, extremely difficult.

I didn't know that the OP was self-diagnosed.

That's a rather imprecise way to put it. The difficulty of obtaining an adult diagnosis has no inherent connection to self-diagnosis, so it's not really the motivation for self-diagnosis.

As self-diagnosis provides exactly zero of the external benefits of professional diagnosis, the only other purpose it can serve is internal: People self-diagnose because their personalities compel them to do so.

You are either autistic or you are not. Outsiders have nothing to do with it. The level of understanding of adult autism among professions and self-dx’s varies greatly. Professionals are less likely to be clueless but that does mean they unlikely to be clueless. There are definitely some self dx’rs on WP that are more knowlegable about adult autism then some professionals. Why did the OP have trouble keeping psychs? Has to be either some things he or she is doing or which could include picking a string of bad psychs. Most people have streaks where they do everything right and the result is horrible. As for the OP I don’t know why.


From what I have read it is either personality, inherent difficulty of obtaining professional diagnosis, and difficulty or need to receiving external benefits even with professional diagnoses or some combination of the previous. I do know it is inherently difficult to know motivation based on an internet thread.

Personality is ALWAYS the reason because self-diagnosis is fundamentally nothing more than a state of mind. There is literally NOTHING external to the self that can compel one to self-diagnose because there is nothing external to the self that can compel one to adopt any particular state of mind. External circumstances may provide a context for the decision, but they are never the core reason. Barring severe brain damage and the like, the individual retains control over her state of mind no matter what happens to or around her; she, not her circumstances, is therefore the ultimate arbiter of whether or not to self-diagnose.

I know there is no perfect comparison to this whole diagnostic drama. The closest thing I can think of is if someone said, I'm Christian, or I'm Hindu, or whatever, and people told them, "No you're not! You don't act exactly like us!" Or, more accurate for the comparison, "Nuh uh! The minister doesn't think you are so you're not!"

Which works well enough just because how often things like that legitimately happen. Tons of believers of one faith or another attack the members of their own congregation. There is so much judgment among people who should be comforting and supporting each other.

I remember once the minister of my old church told me that in his eyes most of the kids that attended service weren't real Christians. Just because their lifestyles didn't perfectly match his vision of how they should be. In the religious sense, he'd probably be considered an expert, but experts can be biased and flat out wrong.

Look, we all do it now and then. Maybe someone handles things better socially, or they don't have a lot of negative side affects, and we doubt them being autistic. Just like how Christians judge each other based on stuff like how often they go to church and other nonsense.

The thing that we should do is recognize that it is in fact nonsense. I mean, what's the worst case scenario? That someone has enough symptoms that they're convinced they're autistic? That their life is similar to the point that they relate to us, but they're brain is technically NT?

Oh, how terrible! We should kick them out of our club! They need to be cast out!

They'll be fine. Surely they're not lonely and in need of someone like us to give them company. It's not like they came to us because talking to NTs still left a void that maybe we could fill.

And clearly we'd never benefit from them. Sure, they relate to us and are kind, but like... we'd never be good friends. It just wouldn't work out. For reasons I can't explain, but trust me, they exist, because I said so.