Question for the self-diagnosed.

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social anxiety is a common feature of AS but can stand alone.

If you are not on the spectrum you can develop SAD over time or through trauma. It's the root cause of the anxiety that tells the difference and how the person responds. With SAD the cause will be experiential, environmental or chemical, with ASCs it is neurological in the first instance then influenced by environment, experience and chemical (note- this could be medication, drug abuse or chemical imbalance within the brain for some naturally occurring reason). Also with SAD you will not have most of the other features of ASCs.

I suspect going into just which type of ASC it might be at this point is a bit premature - your diagnosis, if you get one, will be based on your history of development and although there are differences between the diagnostic criteria there are many overlaps and subtleties that only a professional working with you can really judge. All people on the spectrum have features of SPLD if they are verbal but again it can stand alone as a diagnosis. The differences between HFA, Kanner's (classic) autism and AS are largely subjective; the only diagnostic difference is whether or not you had speech delay (which you didn't). And just to confuse things even further, if you set out on the diagnostic path now you will likely not get diagnosed till next year in which case you will not get an AS diagnosis at all under DSMV because it won't exist - the condition will be called autism with a severity level. This is because it is now recognised that AS and autism have the same neurological root, the same pattern of a-typical brain development but with a range of presentations due to factors such as how sensitive your sensory system is and which bits of it are most affected and in what ways. It is not unknown for children diagnosed with autism to be rediagnosed when they become verbal with AS - this could not happen if there was not a common root. It is, however, extremely rare for an AS diagnosis to be reconsidered as autism (although my son is an example as the nature of his condition fits the subjective view of HFA better than it fits AS even though he was verbally precocious).

Donna Williams (very good autistic writer and speaker) describes her autism as a fruit salad of sensory and processing differences and tells us that the more we understand our sensory functioning the better we will understand the resultant behaviours and how to deal with them - for example, if you are tactile defensive (don't like being touched), it is likely that you have a hyper-sensitivity to touch which means that, especially light touch, can make you physically uncomfortable or even cause pain. A person experiencing this may not see that they avoid touch because of the sensory issue but will develop strategies such as trying never to sit too close to someone or always having to sit in a place where they face others so they can predict whether or not they may be touched or reduce the chances of unexpected touch (sitting against a wall rather than in the aisle in a restaurant for example). Alternatively you may have hypo-sensitivity in this area - there are people on the spectrum who crave touch and make inappropriate approaches to people for physical contact which can get them into serious trouble.

The inability to access or process emotions, both our own and others, fast enough to oil the social wheels is the root of social anxiety in ASCs usually. If you can't read expression and body language effectively (my son is prosopagnosic and can't even process the face at all so what hope has he of telling someone's intentions or feelings from their face?) and rely, as most AS people do, on analysing behaviour and verbal interaction on the fly to get the gist of what's going on it makes social interaction extremely hard work and often a person can only manage it for a short time before feeling exhausted. The better your strategies, the less AS you appear but the mask comes at a cost and you need that downtime afterwards to recuperate before the next onslaught. Also analysis is not nearly as effective a processing tool as instinct in social terms so we make mistakes, social faux pas, inappropriate comments, get confused by how to respond to a gift or compliment.......... that's emotionally exhausting if you are aware of it and constantly on guard against it.

You're born with AS and symptoms begin to show by 6 years old, or even earlier. Best way to know for sure is separate your symptoms. If you've got bad anxiety or depression deal with them first. If your AS symptoms are still there then you may have it. That sort of happened with me. I've got anxiety again though.

I was diagnosed four years ago so I just know. I'm like the most stereotypical aspie who actually has HFA. Whatever, I just go by autism now.

I break my autistic symptoms down to these:
severe dislike of change, need for routine, motor skills issues, literal thinking, pedantic speech, intense special interests, attention to detail, severe sensory processing issues, and poor social skills or lack of social desire.

There's not much anxiety in that. I'm more general anxiety these days than social anxiety. I worry about most things except when it comes to talking to people. I've got one friend and don't try to make more. I have a big family and prefer hanging out with my nephews and nieces, the oldest whom is six. Also, my medication just makes me talk more and over the years I've learnt a lot of social etiquette. I still hit the brick wall from time to time. I get surprised by find out that I still have much to learn, then I just give up and watch some sci-fi.

And all my attention, motivation and impulse issues are down to the A to the D to the H to the D.

Well I don't really KNOW whether I have it or not. But I did self-diagnose. I read tons of articles and things that described symptoms of AS and people with AS. I started to see all these striking similarities that I really couldn't ignore.

I'm hoping that my mom will let me get formally diagnosed soon. She thinks the school will put me in a special class that I don't need, but in reality that probably won't happen.

So far I've only looked into Asperger's because that seemed to be the most similar to me.

I also took a few tests and scored mildly for AS. My AS quotient is 36, for example.

Keep in mind that some mental health practitioners refuse to diagnose anyone with Asperger's and others misdiagnose. Before I actually joined WP in '07 I did a lot of thread reading about other people's experiences and this is what I found out from them.
In a nutshell an official diagnoses is not necessarily going to be accurate in all cases.

Diagnosis is really hard to get in the UK and the process is long and stressful for most people - it took 5 years from entering the system to get diagnosis for my son, longer to get his additional diagnosis of prosopagnosia (there weren't any consultants in the medical field diagnosing in Britain at the time so we eventually had to go the optical route). My daughter has been in the system since she was 5 and has a list of diagnoses as long as your arm - more than 10 years on and I know she is AS but getting the system to even look is almost impossible.

Because it is such a tough path and many people settle for a partial diagnosis (the majority of kids get diagnosed with dyspraxia or dyslexia first and often go no further) it is likely in the UK that it is actually under-diagnosed than over-diagnosed - we know for a fact that this is the case for women and girls at the moment. Many practitioners here are very careful too as it is one of the diagnoses that frightens people, especially parents of young children, so it is rarely broached as a possibility unless the consultant is pretty sure that's what they are looking at. It may be that things are different under a private healthcare system like in the States where consultants make their living from labeling people and providing them with "appropriate" therapies at a cost to either the individual or their medical companies. Here therapies and care may be restricted (mostly by funding limiting provision) but what is available is mostly free through education or the NHS.

I wouldn't worry too much about the reliability of professional diagnosis - if you want it and think you'll get it then go for it, if you don't think you really need t, don't bother. Most adults who have got through without support probably don't really need it but most of the people I meet going for diagnosis as adults are doing so because they have hit a crisis and do need help so they've been sent to mental health by their GPs where the clinician has recognised that something more is going on than just anxiety or depression.

This the first time in here, so not really sure if I've managed to post it!
I am going to try and answer the question by telling some of my story about self-diagnosis (I'm not good at communicating in a brief way):
I'm 34. At 9 years old, a teacher said to my parents (I quote) - 'I don't know what it is, but there's something not quite right'. Then I got diagnosed with dyslexia that included a detailed child development (the whole assessment took 3 hours). At age 15, 2 educational psychologists said (I paraphrase) "she is not dyslexic" and asked my parents about testing for something else (on reflection, I did wonder why the psychologists were asking me about break and lunch times, quizzed me about P.E., stuff to do with organization, what I did after school and the nature of my anxiety around being misunderstood). My parents were having none of it!, for many reason including they had only met me for half an hour, which my mum and 2 of my brothers are like me (thus my mum was referring to us all as being dyslexic). Anyway, at 26 I went to work at a residential collage specifically for people with ASD. Some of my students would have AS, so I thought I best read up on it. I was recommended Attwood's book. It frightened the living daylights out of me - I felt so invaded, a book describing me and my brother including our childhoods. How did this person know about us? I was just under the impression that I was a very unusual person - and quite content being so! Loads of stuff has happened since then, but 3 years ago I took an AS young women to see Attwood's "lecture" on women with AS (because she is into girly stuff, I'm not and I thought he would bring these topics up) and again I was completely disturbed but more so than before, because 85% of what he said was me, approx. 30% of the quotes from AS women were the EXACT sentences I have used, the SAME words and analogies for AS women specific life experiences, my profession path, my NT husband's personality and some very personal stuff that I would refer to as my deepest secrets (inc. my sex life). Prior to that I thought I was an unusual ASpie! It felt like someone had been spying on me, had taken notes and then was telling everyone! A load has happened since then. I have a complex system for learning and utilising NT social communication stuff and NT style interactions, and my special interest for the last 8.5 years has been 'why (how + what) NT people behave the way they do'. I grew-up in a house full of people with sensory issues, a mother who could empathize with me, "excessive" curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, the ability to read, well lots of other stuff- all of which has aided me in navigating the world and helping others with ASDs. Most problems I have had, I can work out via symbolic logic and adequate resources based on my intense learning of AS cognitive style. But recently things have got out of hand, my meltdowns have intensified, my sensory issues that affect my vision are beyond my management strategies, and other stuff. I know why its happening but I require professional help/therapies to sort it - I'm skint. So in order to access NHS resources I had to (made to would be closer) go to my GP, give the hard evidence (child development report), point out the relevance of my change in epilepsy profile, reaction to certain medications, coordination (lay term) significance. Then I presented her with my EQ, SQ, AQ and sensory profile. Next I reluctantly handed over the DMS IV criteria with me specific examples (I pretty much fill it all). I also informed her of the difference between NT, AS and AS women/men. At the end of the half hour she said 'It’s been very interesting talking to you. I can see where you're coming from, can I send this [the info] to them [the psychiatrists]?'. I've got the primary appointment. Not looking forward to it, as I would rather sort it out myself and I've had to describe to my AS mother what imaginative play actually is (when achieved she replied 'why would any one do that?') AS child development, behaviours and sensory issues are norm to her. I am a walking tick list and regard myself as on the way to getting the specific piece of paper that says so. I do not regard myself as undiagnosed. If I win the lottery, I shall cancel my appointment and pay for the required therapies myself. My advice to you is read some more books (be warned many profess different opinion and present them as facts), chat to some more people with AS, remember you are likely to have had "issues" relevant for diagnosis but you've not noticed them, remember that people react differently e.g. I was seriously bullied at school but the ONLY thing that bothered me was not knowing the logical process stimulating the situation, if you've got the opportunity go to some conferences, if you meet some AS people you might find people that can relate to you, and remember AS is only obvious to those who really know what they are looking for- DIFFERENCE.

Your experience is not so unusual - especially the part about parents being on the spectrum and therefore not seeing anything unusual in their child. Given that there is a strong genetic component to ASCs it is likely that many parents of AS people are themselves on the spectrum - Asperger himself noted that there was something "different" about the mothers of the children he studied (he didn't say the same of fathers but it is likely that he didn't even meet most of them as children were the sole responsibility of the woman and the father would be out working).

I had a very similar experience when reading Attwood's latest book. I already knew my children were on the spectrum and was fairly certain both myself and my partner were too, I was already a specialist in primary school and Attwood's first book was the first one I had read when I started to study the subject. But I had never considered looking at my parents.

My relationship with my father has always been difficult; he cannot see other people's needs and is one of those people who is never wrong in an aggressive, almost abusive, way. I considered myself to have been abused by him as a child, more specifically as a teenager, and he had never, ever given me a word of praise or encouragement without qualifying it with something negative no matter how hard I worked to please him.

The week Attwood's new book was due to come out I went into the local bookshop and there it was staring at me a day before it should have been on the shelf - so I obviously had to buy it, especially as I'd heard there was a bit more about women and girls in this one.

As usual I had read half of it by the time I got home. The house was empty so I put the kettle on and sat down to finish it - it was excellent; so much more developed than his first book and I devoured it.......

.......till I got to the couple of pages about living with a parent on the spectrum.

I was completely stunned - there was my father and there was my relationship with him in black and white. I read it again and he was still there in that book. I put the book open on the windowsill and paced around, made my tea which I'd forgotten, and finally went back and read it again - and he was still there!

At the time I was seeing a psychologist so I photocopied the pages (bad girl!) and took them to my next session. At first he refused to read them but I think I was fairly insistent and he gave in.

His reaction was almost equally stunning. His first question was "when did you read this?" "Last week - the book only came out last week "- "but this is word for word how you described your father to me 3 weeks ago, even your phrasing was the same!"

AS people are said to have poor social imagination, most people I would say have poor autistic imagination, Attwood is one of the few who seems to understand autism intuitively and can express his understanding as a professional in a way that clicks into place. Most of the writers who can do that are autistic themselves - I do wonder if Attwood is on the spectrum too.

I really wish I could have one of those epiphanies like a lot of you seem to have had. I find this very difficult, which makes me feel worse. I guess the best thing I can do is to keep researching AS and other things, read Aspergirls (which I ordered yesterday), queue for getting assessed and in the meantime see someone about my anxiety or whatever it is. What do you think?

you need to think and dream, you need to assimilate everything and then move forward. I never had an epiphany about me, only about my dad and that was enough of a shock, most people don't, but you will learn about yourself and what you learn will confirm, over time, who you are, whether or not that is someone on the spectrum. Keep talking and keep reading and, if you can, go to a conference or talk by someone on the spectrum - you will almost certainly meet others on the spectrum at those events.