Can you tell whether a Member is an Aspie, or not?

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This brings up something that's been bugging me to death since I came here and have made myself keep quiet about. I read a lot of posts by people who say something in their post about "I've never been to a doctor about it," or "I've never had a formal diagnosis," or something along those lines, and then I look at their profile and it says "Have Asperger's - Diagnosed." It really drives me batty.

It has nothing to do with the fact that I thing being diagnosed is better than not being diagnosed or anything like that, it's just the fact that it's a lie. I have no tolerance for people lying. When I catch someone in a lie, it makes me never want to speak to them again, because how do I know if anything that comes out of their mouth is the truth or not? And if they could be lying at any time, I can't possibly gain any useful information from an interaction with them since I never know what's true and what's not.

The same goes for the posts of people who say they have no diagnosis in a post, and then put "Diagnosed" in their profile. I feel like I should ignore everything they post since it might be a lie and therefore not worth my time.

I'm rather new, but I thought I'd pitch in my 2 cents regardless.

First off, while I agree people shouldn't lie in their profile about their diagnosis, I personally don't think an actual professional diagnosis means jack. I've moved a lot, and even when in the same place I would visit several different psychiatrists. Though I've never been declared NT, I have been diagnosed with PDDNOS, Autism, Asperger's, etc. In my opinion, as the professionals don't seem to have a clue what AS is about, I don't really care how they define me, nor how they define anyone else.

For example, I have the following characteristics (far from complete):

- I talked late, and didn't respond well even when I did learn to talk. Until about 13 or 14 I also had a robotic-sounding tone of voice.
- I throw a fit if my comb is missing.
- Grease is so painful to me I can't even stand the oil on my own face.
- I can't wear jeans because they hurt too much. My parents always forced me into jeans when I was little because they thought it looked cute, but I'd just cry almost constantly and refuse to walk in them. Eventually, they put me in sweat pants because they couldn't stand it anymore. I wore those until about 14 when I discovered kakis.
- I've never had a friend that didn't try to avoid me. This doesn't necessarily mean they don't like me, but it's disturbing nonetheless.
- Every wet dream I've ever had has been a nightmare.
- I scored an 87 on my first IQ test, and a 90 on my second one, yet nearly everyone I've met in person has commented either behind my back or to my face how "smart" they think I am.
- I had a huge amount of trouble understanding pseudocode in programming class, but could understand real code perfectly, including in languages I couldn't yet write in. I even corrected a friend's PHP syntax error without knowing a char of PHP - and that was before the programming class...

I know enough to know that something is "wrong" with me. If any shrink told me I was an NT, I wouldn't believe them, so why even listen?

As far as NTs being here, I cannot fathom a problem with it. In my opinion, if we start a little witch hunt against NTs, we're no better than the nasty people out there who make our lives hell. I don't think this board loses its purpose by having NTs, and I think they'd be able to help us with a lot of our problems. So as long as no one starts flinging the same crap at us we get elsewhere, I don't see a problem. I think it's a little silly to pretend to be an aspie, however, simply because there's no point - particularly in a community full of people who've been on the wrong end of the sword of conformance for ages.

Hm, but you live in America, you could have done that, couldn't you?

Great, now I’m going to be paranoid about people thinking I don’t really have AS. Especially since I said that thing about how I don’t think NTs are really “typical” at all, in the what we love about NTs thread.

Many of us don’t talk about social dilemmas because we just plane don’t like talking about ourselves (at least that’s how I am anyway, can’t speak for everyone who doesn’t talk about themselves of cores). And some people don’t talk about obsessions because not all people with AS are as strongly affected by them.

The time I would have gone on a shooting rampage was at ages 12-13; we didn't have guns in the house but if I had obtained some and had been male, I'm pretty sure I'd be dead or in jail right now.

My BIL owns 22 guns so yes, the gun laws are very lax here.

But I'm not sure how, as a 12 year old girl, I would have obtained my arsenal!

(BIL= brother in law)

I'm not diagnosed at present. I'm currently trying to get a referral for a diagnosis because I haven't found any description that fits me better than AS. Symptoms which I *wasn't* looking for and thought were just personal peculiarities of mine have turned out to be associated with AS.

I like this site very much. If other people here wouldn't mind, I'd like to stay even if a doctor told me that in his opinion I didn't meet the criteria, because I'd still feel I have more in common with AS people than anyone else.

I have an official dx but I don't think it really means anything. I'm sure there's other professionals out there who wouldn't diagnose me.

I don't have a diagnosis. And my profile says that.

My mother never took me to a psychologist when I was younger, and now I certainly don't have the money for it. But whenever I read about the signs and traits, I fit almost all of them.

To be honest it doesn't bother me whether members have AS or not - as long as they're not lying. I put myself as 'unsure' because, well, that's what I am. And I'm not too bothered whether I have AS or not - all I know is that the people here are a lot like me, unlike many of the people I know in real life.

That's one good thing about my country. People under 15 can't get punished and people under 18 can't go to jail. But of course the cops can shoot you if you have a gun illegally, no matter your age.

Well, you can have 22 guns in Sweden too, but then you either must have got your license many years ago or be going to shooting games or beeing a very serious collector of guns. You can usually have 6 rifles without a problem. Pistols are much harder to get. In Montana, there actually is no age limit just for the purchase of the gun and ammunition: http://www.nraila.org/GunLaws/StateLaws.aspx?ST=MT



I know!

Sometimes

I just give everybody the benefit of the doubt.

Tim

I don't know whether I have Asperger's or not for sure because I do not have an official diagnosis. In my mind, that goes for anyone who claims they have Asperger's. People without a diagnosis, they could just be hypochondriac (another condition that does need to be addressed) or searching for answers (maybe they have Asperger's, maybe they having something else, maybe they have nothing at all). But sometimes I have hunches, I guess.

That reply seems a bit NTish to me. In fact, a lot of your posts do, for some strange reason. Maybe I'm just paranoid

I don't know whether I "have" AS - I'm "provisionally" self-diagnosed. I've put my thoughts about it to several people I know: some believe me (notably my father - my mother is more sceptical, but not dismissive of the idea either), some don't.

I also am a hypochondriac. I'm well aware of that. Then again, I am a self-diagnosed hypochondriac. I was wondering whether my self-diagnosed hypochondria stemmed from my self-diagnosed AS, and my self-diagnosed AS stemmed from my self-diagnosed hypochondria

Seriously, if there are people who are "pretending" in that they know they're not AS, I can't see why anyone would do that. And I think it's doubtful whether someone can be totally wrong about self-diagnosis. The symptoms and experiences people share are specific enough. I would guess that anyone who can really relate to it must be somewhere on the spectrum.

I was taken to a child psychiatrist when I was younger. Parents were troubled about the fact that, whenever I had a birthday party, I would withdraw to the corner of the room with a book and let the other children play amongst themselves, and similar stuff. The psychiatrist eventually send me back with the statement that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was perfectly happy on my own and that I should by all means read and draw by myself if I wanted... But this was a few years before AS became a widely known diagnosis, I think. In any event, I remember seeing a binder with Rorschach tests on them and being disappointed that I never got to do the Rorschach test. I so much wanted to do the Rorschach test!

Me, too ... But I also think our young friend has been somewhat abused and ignored by an inflexible adult influence at an early age and is still trying to please, that person. I don't know him, but that's the impression I get.

Well I'm officially diagnosed not that that makes much difference. I can't imagine anyone wanting to pretend to be AS so they could join here because most of the time the posts aren't that exciting. Ok I could see people who are not sure about themselves but join because they are looking for answers or are just lonely. Perhaps trolls are Bi-polar, OCD or schizo because I can't seen a NT wanting to waste their time with us. I can't say that I'm happy to be an Aspie; it's not exactly an exciting lifestyle. I would be more concerned about kids lying about their age so they can get into the adult topics though I'm not sure you can ever enforce age limits in online communities. Certainly a lot on here is not suitable for kids, but its their parents responsibility to know what they are reading online.