Asperger's vs. childhood abuse

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ypur diagnosis is going to be extremely difficult but like te ever so wise Michjo pointed out therapists know how to read people to the T and I think michjo could be right someright because yo said previously you had anger issues often assosiated with bi polar, depression, manic depression even schitzophrenia a therapist is not to diagnose but to help with emtional issues and to pin point them but if somethng serious crops up ten they will transfer you and that will most ikely take a while

a hope the best to yo but I feel your barking at the wrong area

I'm in the same boat, GreenTea. More or less.
I wrote two pages worth of rants about this thread, then got disgusted and chucked it all.

Ah, the memories. I still say that all the old ladies from WP should move in together.
Then we could drive each other crazy and forget how screwed up the rest of the world is.


Anyway, you guys all seem full of opinions.
Why not come over to my place and opine to your heart's content?

Therapy Referral Service
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt104573.html

The main question is:
What do you want to know about a shrink BEFORE the first appointment?

Stevee: You'll have to prove with formal quotes that I said those things, because otherwise you're a liar. You can't just go into a thread and tell posters that they said things they never said, without proof. Especially, as you write here, serious stuff like

. That's libel. Be careful, there's only so much you can bend the rules to provoke everyone on here.

Last edited by Greentea on 02 Aug 2009, 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tahitii, I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, lately many of the "old bunch" have fled WP, for even more unfortunate reasons. I miss them dearly. But say, what do the specialists tell you that you have instead of AS?

Me?
They won't say that I have anything.
They just want to sell drugs.
And more appointments.

One thing I don't understand is why some people/therapists believe in clinical OCD, and many accuse people like us of having OCD, but then they think AS/HFA is a myth? There are things like bipolar disorder, but not AS/HFA???

If you have a root canal, do you say, "I don't think I want the label, so I'm not going to get any help for this."

Some say that everyone has Asperger's. So my thoughts, if it gets to the point where it's clinical, then there's a problem. When it's impairing normal functioning in those DSM areas, then something should be done; not to mention that less are diagnosed with AS than OCD.

Most won't deny that Down Syndrome is real. There are tests to measure social perception, and I found it interesting that there are some experiments which found Down Syndrome children out doing those with AS/HFA in social perception, even if the AS/HFA slammed dunked over them when it came to the cause-effect tests. I thought that was interesting.

Many therapists are just unfamiliar with AS/HFA; it wasn't covered in the courses they took, for example. Others adhere to the old-school psychotherapeutic models; whether your problem is related to autism or OCD, they will use some kind of trauma model in your treatment, usually blaming parents.

AS/HFA is also not a mental illness, so most therapists don't know how to deal with it using their models.



With AS/HFA, most people look like everyone else so the disability becomes invisible and its behaviours attributed to things like character flaws or mental illness.

I wouldnt call her poor, she was verbally abusive, and if the said therapists and such blame her for your AS, you have a channal to seek compensation and redress in civil court for the abuse and NT's will fall over themselves to see to it that she suffers for the way she treated you.

It may sound harsh...Im just speaking from the perspective of someone who will be entering the legal profession as of after next year.

So much of the recent research on the neurological model of autism has been about children and identifying it in children so they can get into an Early Intervention program. I was reading your post wondering what your therapist's problem is. Autism was spotted easily enough in my daughter and all her problems and communication difficulties were quickly attributed to it. Then it hit me. My daughter is a child. You are an adult. And maybe that's what your therapist's problem is. It seems that the people who are geting really experienced in picking up subtle neurological signs and who are reading the most recent neurological papers are all working with children. People who work with adults are out of the loop. It must be really frustrating to work with somebody who is looking at this from the wrong perspective.

I have seen this in action in my daughter's special ed program. The kids with Downs Syndrome just intuitively "get it". They are using a part of their brain not accounted for on IQ tests that tells them exactly what to say and when to say it and how to interact in a positve way with other people. What I've seen with my daughter that I think is a very good thing and ultimately helpful for her is that they initiate social interaction in a very non-threatening, non-bullying way. They are intuitively good at it without any hint of "you're weird and different so we don't like you". Seeing this made me appreciate how much important brain function there is that IQ tests just don't pick up.


(Sorry for the Off Topic, Greentea. I had to comment on this because I've noticed this and marvel at it. They have the social skills minus the urge to pick on the outsider.)

That was interesting about Down Syndrome and social interaction.

Regarding diagnosis of AS in children: that's precisely what I asked today on the thread Catatonic - how come children don't have to go through an ordeal and beg for an AS diagnosis for years and pay specialists fortunes and kiss ass. Dx is free for children (at least here) and there's no need to convince, persuade, nudge and cajole therapists to diagnose it. How come they don't tell kids that they have childhood trauma, an unconscious need to hurt others to avenge their childhoods, as they all tell me. How come when I ignore someone or something because I can't focus on 2 things at the same time, they treat me for a need to be aggressive and hurtful instead of diagnosing me with AS. I guess it's a glitch in the system, I guess it's all so new that there's no well organized structure. I don't know.

I think it is a glitch in the system. Professionals from different specialties just don't talk to each other or read each other's research papers. All the latest research is about how to pick up subtle neurological signs in kids and how to best educate kids. Adults are really gettig pushed to the side because of all the emphasis on kids. So the people who really "get it" are working with kids, not adults. I think this will slowly change as these kids turn into adults and wind up in the offices of therapists for adults with a long-standing diagnosis of AS that they've had since childhood. It is the path of least resistance for therapists to accept whatever is in a patient's medical record already. The majority of them will accept the childhood AS diagnosis and a model of what it can look like in adults will emerge for therapists who work with adults. Unfortunately, this principle is working against you right now. Once an incorrect diagnosis has gone into your medical record- and it apparently has in yours- it is very hard to get a therapist to STOP accepting it. Not helpful, I know. I hope there is somebody out there in your area that has experience with AS adults. Unfortunately they are outnumbered by the people who have experience with AS children and that imbalance will continue until this group of freshly-diagnosed children grows into adults. Aggravating for you, I'm sad to say.

I see the only solution is reincarnation...

I don't have a diagnosis, and I don't have a file. I only ever went privately to all these things, they don't keep files. My current diagnoser is primarily a Child Psychiatrist.

Maybe my problem is that Í don't have any outwardly signs of AS - if you see me, you see a very extrovert, warm, articulate, gesticulating, interesting, attractive, intelligent, witty, sociable, funny, sophisticated woman.

So they're left with the question: why would a brilliant woman like her be an outcast, socially and professionally, if she doesn't have AS? The only reason left (in the case of a woman) is that I must be inconsiderate of others' feelings, selfish, aggressive. And why? Well, childhood trauma and an unconscious desire to avenge it is the only explanation left.

Maybe I'm being discriminated on not as an adult but as a woman...

No, really they do not.

I found every single session with a psychiatrist and her social/community worker excruciatingly distressing, discomforting, humiliating and I was left physically in pain after each and every_one. At the first session, both these people rejected my view that I was nervous and anxious, insisting instead that I was hypo-manic.

After over a dozen of these meetings, I told them that I found the meetings uncomfortable and felt I had to “walk on eggshells” around the two of them. Keep in mind I had felt this way persistently from the outset. They were both astonished and disbelieving, quite convinced that I actually enjoyed these sessions and was perfectly at ease with them.

Contrastingly, the ASD specialist I saw readily identified that giggling edging into hysterical laughter does not always indicate an elevated mood and can be an indicator of distress, discomfort and anxiety levels. These other clowns did not have a clue and were quite convinced that if it smiles it is happy, if it laughs it is relaxed and amused, and it laughs more than is contextually appropriate, then it is hypo/hyper-manic. They could not have been more oblivious or more inept in their ability to “read" me.

Keep in mind I was not trying to hide how I felt from these two and had been verbally explicit about how uncomfortable and nervous I was during these occasions. Apparently they assumed that I was mistaken about being anxious and nervous because they “knew” that I was having a great time based on how I looked to them.

no, sadly, they really don't. Oh, I think they know their own kind, alright, but you got to be an autism specialist to not just fall for the body language and facial expressions of a neurotypical. Also know that they take a lot of energy to attract a clientele, and much less energy to maintain their clients. Sometimes you just go and they fill up the time with social chit chat and they take your co-pay and make your next appointment.

Personally, I don't have time for that.

they don't know how to read people to a T (imo.) it's like the old saying goes: if all you've got is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. for some who specialize in things like child abuse, every "quirk" looks like a symptom of child abuse.

i've struggled with the two extremes, in terms of therapists. the first failed to acknowledge that any kind of abuse had taken place--in any form, anywhere. my ptsd symptoms were written off.

another was willing to work with the ptsd/abuse issues. but when i started to have a few possible questions about my "wiring" (at the time i thought i was probably ADHD with some odd kind of dyslexia no one had discovered yet)---everything was seen under the label of "PTSD." it might have been pretty frustrating if i'd stayed long enough. my low ability to make eye contact was seen as "low self esteem." (true enough, but no am't. of work on that would have improved my eye contact.) my variable attention span--hyperfocus, difficulty in focusing on many things at once, terrible short term memory---were seen as a symptom of fight-or-flight overall.

i just wrote (twice, actually) to one center essentially begging them to educate themselves on AS issues. misdiagnosis of AS adults is still pretty common (schizoid pd, schizotypal pd, etc.) it's frustrating.

have heard no response back.

now i rant instead.