I still can't figure myself out... or should I even try

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I've posted her a lot off and on. Not everyone agrees if I'm on the spectrum or not, but I do have obsessive interests and I'm obsessed with if I'm on the spectrum or not, lol. But I feel this is internally destroying me. Wanting to know.

My mental health professionals focus on my mood disorder/mental illness. They even attribute my lack of social skills to it, or at least my psychiatrist does, my therapist thinks I do have AS and ADHD.

But I can read facial expressions and look people in the eye. As my therapist says, I can read lost of social cues, but I don't respond right. As a kid, I was Severely Emotionally Impaired.

Empathy... I can't figure out if I have it or not, I don't understand still what it is exactly.

Some people I have encountered have said I have AS, they can tell, others say I can't possibly have it.

AQ and RDOS are right on the dividing line between AS and just higher than normal traits.

But I wonder, should I even care, or should I just go on with my life. I just got SSI, partially for bad social skills. I don't know if I will ever work again, but I need to figure out what I can do to not care as much........ I am an adult woman, hard to diagnose.

http://www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/
http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-5/auditory.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateraliza ... n_function

People have suggested that before, but I can understand auditory info correctly, I even had a job before where I had ti distinguish between many different bird songs.

Edit: Maybe that dyspraxia thing though

Here's a question I can't seem to find via Google or know how to search for, are there any disorders where you recognize faces and other things, but you can't respond to them correctly?

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What do you mean by can't respond to them correctly? Can you give one or two very short examples?

Stuff like being able to tell how someone feels, but not responding correctly to the situation... umm, like someone winking at me, I will intellectually say "that guy must like me" but it ends right there and I do nothing about it.

Or I think I can tell that someone doesn't want me to talk to them, but what I have to say I have to get out so badly that I talk to them anyway.

The example my therapist gave was that if I hear someone say something negative about me, instead of asking why, I go to my room and cry about it, but to me that sounds more immature.

Like you, I could tell how other people felt all my life. I couldn't respond to it "appropriately", however, because I didn't think it was right to respond as people wanted me to. Unfortunately, I didn't really understand how to disregard other people's claims that they had certain feelings, even when I knew these were fake. I found it preferable to just force myself to ignore them, which made unwanted social interactions feel physically painful.

I learned a lot about how to change my emotions in the meantime, and I never went to a therapist (except for 1/3 of a session that demonstrated malice on the therapist's part). If you want to tallk about this, you're welcome to PM me.

Can I ask why a psychiatrist considered you schizoaffective?

Schizoaffective is schizophrenia with mood disorder. I for sure have a mood disorder (I'm on bipolar meds) and in fact if my moods are way out of control, I can have delusions and hallucinate, which is psychosis. But the problem is schizoaffective requires psychosis outside mood episode. Psychiatrist thinks I have that, by once having a spell outside mood episode where I wondered if people could read my mind. I've also had two different nurses tell me they assumed I was labeled schizo because I appeared to have possibly mental illness related social skills problems, no joke. But maybe there are other reasons why I am labeled that.

I am also labeled OCD because I said to the psychiatrist I was obsessive about the birds. Ummm.... sometimes I think my psychiatrist is screwy. My therapist thinks he's wrong about that.

Anyway, someone asking about me and asperger's last night asked if I was "seen or heard" as a kid. I said heard because I had tantrums... the person repeated the question and I said "heard, because I screamed" but apparently it's a saying because they said it meant something about parent's or something I don't remember... I don't do that often, but I probably made that person wonder even more

I don't know if you're on the spectrum or not... I think it likely. Women are harder to diagnose than men, and are more likely to have learned social cues to a certain extent. Comorbid diagnoses like schizo affective or bipolar also make it harder to diagnose. I hope you can get a diagnoses soon that helps you. In the end it's all labels, but the labels help explain things about yourself, and I hope that gives you peace.

Well... people have also said that it's not important I get diagnosed. I got social skills help in the past as a kid extensively, and as an adult I'm still getting some help. My other dx helps me out with public assistance and government benefits already. So I dunno.

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Winking - You do nothing about it/no response vs perhaps asking the guy "What are you trying to say/getting at?"

Someone doesn't want to talk to you now - Mild impulsivity? You choose at the moment not to be silent but say something anyway.

Someone badmouths you - You decide to go to your room / avoid perhaps an escalation?

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Words

Hearing
Comprehension
Speech
Thinking on one's feet vs Going to a desk in a quiet room to think with pencil and paper

http://www.asha.org/

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/

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Human behavior partially explained by Carnegie

http://www.dalecarnegie.com/

This is the kind of stuff that gets to me, my therapist yet again calls my behavior "aspergian" but he can't diagnose... I mean, he doesn't know I have a complex, but maybe I should let him know.