Asperger's vs. childhood abuse

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my (completely) unsolicited advice, Greentea? (when would that be something new on my part. but at any rate): fire her. move on. the need for validation---which will most likely never be forthcoming---can become a vicious cycle.

(i stayed for a year with a terribly abusive therapist in the hopes that she might one day realize i wasn't actually crazy. it ended in an extremely severe depression; would have attempted suicide had i had more energy.)

you're really not bound to stay there. you're just not.

You guys still haven't visited my thread, "Therapy Referral Service."
Opinionated people are actually wanted!
I want some comments before I seriously propose it to a group who can really run with it.

I put it in my new siggy, just to make it easier.

I had the same problem. Except that therapist didn't even take my insurance. She actually expected me to continue to pay $120 for the so-called 50-minute session (but she was usually late anyways) during which she'd misinterpret everything I said, repeating over and over her same mistakes, so that the majority of the session was spent explaining to her the difference between saying that I'm worthless and saying that I'm doing something to prove that I'm not worthless, or trying to sort out why she interpreted my saying that I'd signed a release form for the office to talk to my mother specifically for payment as saying that I wanted her to talk to my mother about me.



That is an extremely good way to put it. I think I've been trying to say that..

I also have to agree that not every therapist is completely accurate about every person. It depends on the therapist's training, how they interpret behaviour and the conclusions they draw, and also some individuals just don't 'click'. There's a huge variation.

It has been mentioned that sometimes female aspies don't get diagnosed because ASD is (or is perceived as) more prevalent in males, and there can be differences in the way ASD is expressed.

And I have to say I have seen a couple with hammers looking frantically for nails.

This is particularly true when it comes to women with eating disorders, I think. There was an article I found awhile back that linked AS with eating disorders-- but since eating disorder therapists work almost exclusively with women, they wouldn't know an ASD if it bit them in the butt.
This gave me some really huge problems, starting with the fact that I got in trouble for not making friends in treatment. I didn't know how. Being tossed into an eating disorder treatment center also taught me how to relate to other people on that basis. I'm not completely sure I even had one when I was admitted-- I was a 15-year-old going crazy from years of constant torment. So my first interactions with other people people were on the basis of eating disorders. It also gave me this feeling that I'd be more liked if I were more eating disordered. (Which actually worked to some extent. In high school, popular girls don't make fun of a girl with an eating disorder very much. It was like they'd "figured me out." I didn't have friends, but they weren't so mean once I looked like I was about to die of starvation.) I remember one point at which there was an affirmations thing going around, we had to write positive things about each other.. I wrote to one girl something about her being the first person I'd really talked to there.. and when she read it, she looked at someone else; I guess in her mind, we hadn't "really talked." I kept getting in a lot of trouble for not knowing how to make friends, not knowing how to relate to people, not knowing what people meant by things.. they always seemed to think I was being dishonest, too-- probably because of eye contact issues and the stimming/fidgeting.

I hate being told "you're likely depressed." ...when I'm CLEARLY frustrated.

....they'd be frustrated too if the sound of someone blowing their nose made them cringe!

I truly believe that we are stranger than they CAN know.

lol. sometimes i sincerely hope so.

sorry. didn't mean to shut down the thread. am just a little tired of the definitions of "normal." am also tired of being considered a "pervasive developmental disorder." i have grave doubts about the the DSM-IV. i would rather not be smiled at by an expert. i wish the euphemisms would go away.

(i'm also way too opinionated.)




(please don't refer to me as "client" or "consumer" when what you really mean is "patient."

You're not the only one. Might want to check out the book Making Us Crazy by Herb Kutchins. It rips the DSM a new one.

great! will do. (it definitely needs a new one.)

thanks

And exhausted, don't worry, it takes a lot to be a thread killer, you don't qualify!

just a quick apology, Green Tea---by chance i happened on your other thread and realized i'd misunderstood the situation completely. (and thus went off on my own set of rants.) now i understand it's not about still having to see that therapist--it's about having the diagnosis team consult with her (when she's completely in denial about AS.)

oops. never mind.

You're very right about this. Even though I stopped therapy with her many years before I even heard about AS, I still went to her for support (I couldn't afford better counselors than her). For the longest time I fantasized that I might persuade her one day, that one day she might be willing to look into what Asperger's is, that she might give me the validation for my forever-called "evil" acts as being caused by symptoms of AS. Life pushed me to seek a diagnosis (I never thought of seeking one) for social benefits. Being in touch with a different professional after 10 years with the same one freed me of the need for that therapist's validation. I discovered that other professionals, unlike her, have evolved with the times, they're computer-literate (she always refused totally to become even the slightest bit computer-literate, the internet doesn't exist as far as she's concerned - as she tells me always). I've only now realized she's incredibly old-fashioned and rigid in her refusal to evolve with the new discoveries in every discipline. She only advocates what was written by the researchers she was made to study 15 years ago. I had never thought this of her - I didn't know other therapists did use the internet and email. My diagnoser emails me and I email her, we both refer to internet articles and tools. This is totally new and fascinating to me, someone I can actually tell about the internet without her looking at me as if I was talking about life on Mars. Nowadays I see that therapist as an old grandma of mine who cares for me but is too disconnected from reality to be very helpful. She'll probably very soon be out of business, what with new generations of therapists graduating all the time who have heard about AS, HFA, nonverbal difficulties, the internet, online communities, online relationships and interactions, etc. It was my cluelessness that didn't let me see that someone who refuses to get access to a computer and to the internet is not someone I can have any meaningful conversation with. I mean, the Bedouins in the desert here where I live, with their grazing goats and ancient manufacture style of goat cheeses, their veiled women, their donkeys and camels, are all connected to the internet, for God's sake!!

I did the same thing to her.. (I mean, with thinking that it was a current therapist, not with being a bad therapist. )