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wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 5:11 am

I went to my GP today and I may aswell stayed at home. I took a lsit of the symptoms of Autism and Intentive AHDH I have and that I may have these conditions. He didn't even spend that time ont he lsit on even finished it. He said it sounds like I have depression (which yes I do) and that I look stressed. Instead of seeing it of being stressed and having depression because of my symptoms he twisted it around and that because of depression and stress I had those symptoms. Which is absolutely bollocks. If he had taken time to read my list I ahd put examples from my childhood and now. He wanted to put my on medication but I refused to so he gave me two choices

1) a online CBT
2) medication

Thats it. What kind doctor decides to give medicaiton for depression in 1 minute flat is beyound me. I have been offered medication before by a psychologist for depression but that was a hour AFTER talking. My GP never even asked why I could have depression. I asked that I want to get tested for autism to make sure and he said there are no tests for autism. 8O Even on the NHS website it states tests that can be done.

I felt horrible and cried going home. Now I'm going to contact the National Autistic Society to see if I get get a assessment.



NSF
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19 May 2011, 6:04 am

Contacting NAS, is probably your best thing if your GP doesn't help by referring you for an Autism diagnosis. Most GP Practices have several GPs and another may happily refer you to a Clinical Psychologist to help diagnose an autistic spectrum disorder if you have one.

There may be a centre near you which diagnoses and provides support for autistic people on the NHS, possibly by self-referral.

If you wanted to send me a list of the symptoms you experienced, as someone with autism could tell you whether they were those commonly experienced
by individuals on the autistic spectrum.

Just now, try minimise unnecessary stress, keep a diary and put all the current events in your life in it [eg deadlines, things you need to do]. Make a note of everything you have to do and prioritise, and put a tick next to it once you have completed it.

Also be aware that if you do have or think you have an Autistic Spectrum Disorder you need to identify areas where you could improve in your communication skills and work on them, since you're still 19 you have the ability to work to resolve any issues you have early on and life a happy succesful life.

GPs have tight budgets, I had the test for autism on the NHS [think it was called Diagnostic Interview for Social Communication [DISC]. Depression is something which commonly affects individuals on the autistic spectrum, but can be overcome without much problem if you think positively and try your best to succeed.

Question is, what would you gain from having a diagnosis of Autism - thats one question I ask myself, its good to know at times that you need to put some more effort into somethings and understand why you have some problems you do.



Sheldrake
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19 May 2011, 6:10 am

I had a similar experience, except I saw a psychiatrist and not a doctor. I asked to be refereed to a psychiatrist after seeing the doctor as a doctor is not really that qualified in mental health. The psychiatrist told me that they have strict protocol and when someone is depressed (regardless of the cause) then they need to treat that before testing for asperges.

The doctor should have at least explained his actions a lot better as well as listened to you and be patient. Maybe you could ask to see a psychiatrist? What medication did they give you? People with aspergers are often prone to getting depressions as well as anxiety. Are you sure you are not depressed right now? Have you been having chest pain or feeling hopeless etc?



Last edited by Sheldrake on 19 May 2011, 6:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 6:14 am

I rang NAS and they said to book another appointment with another GP and try again and this time to take along some online test results to back my case up and to get refered to a service near which I have the contact details. If that doesn't help then they said to make a complaint.

I want to know if I have because it would help me put away so much anger I have towards education. To get some help to overcome some problems I have getting and maintiang a job and also to put away years of thinking of being felt like I was crazy. I feel it will allow me to start all over again with my life. I do feel better though disoverign what Autism was since I have a clearer picture of myself.

I get stressed so easily that just finding a website I opened on my tabs will stress me out.



wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 6:18 am

Sheldrake wrote:
I had a similar experience, except I saw a psychiatrist and not a doctor. They told me that they have strict protocol and when someone is depressed (regardless of the cause) then they need to treat that before testing for asperges.

The doctor should have at least explained his actions a lot better.


From the way he was I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't believe in asperges.



Sheldrake
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19 May 2011, 6:26 am

Yeah, I got a similar impression from my psychatrist. He was saying things like "everyone is a bit aspergers" and kept on blaming just about everything on depression. I hope I'm wrong and I do often get the wrong impression. He said he would test later on.

Anyway, you're right about wanting to know if you have it or not. It will certainly help to let go of the past. Once diagnosed, people can focus on curing or managing their illness. Even though it's just a label, the label serves an important purpose.



Twirlip
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19 May 2011, 6:28 am

For what little it's worth, you have my sympathy. I can imagine how upset you were, I can vividly picture you crying like that, and I identify with you. Many is the time I have been in the same predicament (but without even the informal self-diagnosis of autism to take with me into the consulting room, just my despair and confusion).

The mangled, ritualistic thought processes of NHS GPs, and their insane and degrading mental projections onto their unfortunate patients, are a phenomenon which itself deserves psychiatric study and diagnosis: "General Practitioner Syndrome"?

(Ironically, one of its defining traits is a lack of empathy! But it is a trained lack of empathy, not the failure or absence of a brain circuit.)

I try to avoid these dangerous creatures as much as possible. Unfortunately, it isn't always possible. When I absolutely have to deal with them, I take forensic precautions in my mind. I prepare myself for what will almost certainly be an irrational, frustrating, demoralising and nonsensical exercise in non-communication.

I steel myself to endure their continual rude interruptions of every sentence I try to speak. (I don't always ramble, either!)

I do my best to discount in advance their patronising assumption that I am just some contemptible, uneducated, self-deluding, irrational idiot whose only purpose in life is to waste the valuable time of doctors, who have been expensively trained for many years in medical school, and resent the waste of their expensive, high-status scientific education on having to deal with people's messed-up personal lives - yet who still jealously guard the delusion that that same irrelevant medical training somehow magically makes them expert in the very task which they so much resent doing, and which they are so very bad at.

I discipline myself to expect little, and not to become openly upset when even the very little, the absolute minimum of respectful communication in plain English, about real problems - the modicum of sheer basic sanity - which I expect from them is not forthcoming.

I train myself to resist when they perform their invariable mindless reflex action of reaching for the prescription pad (nowadays, the computer), because, in their insulting mental projection onto the intellectually and morally inferior patient, that is the simplistic response which they imagine I want, and it will get rid of me as quickly as possible.

I regard them as an exceptionally dangerous alien species, even among human beings in general, whom I already regard as incomprehensible and unpredictably dangerous aliens.

Very occasionally I can manage to be amused by their weird antics: their affected ways of speaking, their predictable messing-up of what should be simple factual communication, their inability to listen, their impatience and arrogance, their delusion that their behaviour makes sense just because their personalities are hidden inside the impregnable mystique of the high-status, "scientifically" accredited role of "Doctor".

(I have news for you, "Doctor": I am watching you, with far greater "scientific" objectivity than you are watching me. ... Exterminate! ... Excuse me, I don't know what came over me there!) :alien:

For a good few years, I was lucky, and was able to avoid the dreaded NHS GP almost completely, because, at a time of severe crisis, I was assigned a social worker, who referred me to an NHS consultant psychiatrist, and for years I have had appointments with consultant psychiatrists rather than GPs. (That's over now - probably because of budget cuts - and I am quaking in terror at the thought of having to speak to a GP about "mental health" matters again.)

Psychiatrists are not perfect, of course, and they have also never been able to help me, but at least they have (or most of them have) a genuine interest in the field of "mental health" for its own sake, and they are less in thrall to the "medical model of mental illness" than GPs are (and the general public is), simply because they know more about what they are doing, and what kinds of people they are dealing with as patients.

I don't know how one goes about it (as I said, I was lucky - "lucky", hah! - but that's another story), but if you can get to see a psychiatrist for an assessment, you will probably (at least if my experience is anything to go by) face fewer obstacles in trying to get your thoughts, feelings, and experiences across in a rational manner.

I'm sure there are some good GPs around, but most of them are hopeless. (Some of them are complete bastards, but again, that's another story!)

Another possibility, perhaps, is getting a referral directly to a clinical psychologist. Unfortunately, I also have no idea how to go about that. Nor do I know what rights, enshrined in legislation, one has to demand such a referral. There's also the problem of how difficult it can be to demand anything, and I've never been able to do that. Also I have never had any even halfway-decent experience of dealing with a clinical psychologist. The only one I know I've seen was a patronising control freak and CBT nut. That was in 2007, it was the very final straw, and since then I have made no effort at all to get any actual help from the NHS. However, my experience is weird and untypical, and you might have much better luck.


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AQ: 37/50; Aspie Quiz: 110/200 for Aspie, 82/200 for NT
Almost certainly not Aspie, but certainly something like it


wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 6:38 am

The "General Practitioner Syndrome" made me laugh. Yes they do comes across like the paitent must be crazy. I am a transexual and its taken me 4 years to end up getting a psycholoigst appointment in a few months ago and I have another one next month. Its a game for them I think. Unless you determined and willing to kick down some doors then nothing gets done. The irony of it is this GP I had to use to get a referral to a gender pscyhologist because my previous GP had no clue.

The trouble is a end up mumbling and going dead slient when I am trying to explain myself. He look like at me like I was talking in another langauge. There is no way I am giving up because even if I don't have it , it could possibly help someone else in my postion in the future.



Twirlip
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19 May 2011, 6:58 am

wonderboy wrote:
The "General Practitioner Syndrome" made me laugh. Yes they do comes across like the paitent must be crazy. I am a transexual and its taken me 4 years to end up getting a psycholoigst appointment in a few months ago and I have another one next month. Its a game for them I think. Unless you determined and willing to kick down some doors then nothing gets done. The irony of it is this GP I had to use to get a referral to a gender pscyhologist because my previous GP had no clue.

The trouble is a end up mumbling and going dead slient when I am trying to explain myself. He look like at me like I was talking in another langauge. There is no way I am giving up because even if I don't have it , it could possibly help someone else in my postion in the future.

My palms started to sweat when I read parts of this.

I still haven't written my introductory post in the "Getting to know each other" forum, even though I've posted more than 150 times in the 3 weeks or so since I joined. That's because I had a sort of general mental collapse when I was about the age you are now, in 1971, and have had 40 years of unremitting hell since. Yet I have always been convinced that I could have been helped, and moreover helped quite easily, if I had got an even halfway-sane and humane response at the time - or even years earlier, because many things were very noticeably amiss with me from at least around the age of about 12 (I don't remember much from before that at all), but were just ignored - that is when I wasn't just being punished (e.g. being beaten for wetting the bed). Sorry, long, LONG story! Anyway, so it's like living an a dystopian alternative timeline, and desperately trying to send a message back to my 19-year-old self to get help and not give up. It does my head in to see that you're 19, with autistic traits, transsexual, tongue-tied and mumbling, and getting dumb and inhumane treatment from NHS GPs! It's like some kind of flashback. Excuse me! Back in 1971, there was no recognition of HFA/AS or anything like it (I still don't know of any category into which I fit exactly), and no recogniition of gender dysphoria (again, I'm close to being transsexual, but I don't fit exactly). But there were ignorant GPs only too willing to fill your brain with harmful chemicals.

So, yes, do try to help others in your position in the future, even if I can't help my own self in the same position in the past.

It probably is really too late for me. What 40 years of non-recognition can do to a person is beyond words. (And I realise that where you are is already beyond words.) It is as bad as you can imagine, and worse. So: avoid it!


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Almost certainly not Aspie, but certainly something like it


wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 7:04 am

I am sorry to hear you got beaten. I also got beaten for stuff as well and well basicly I have stopped spekaing to my dad and I don't fele clsoe to my mum at all. I'm actually scared of my mum like I have a twisted since of not wanting to dissapoint her. I don;t know how I have come this far to be honest. I suppose there is a little part of me thats pushes me through all the rubbish to get to the things I want.

It isn't too late for you. As long as you reach to a point where your happy then you have made it. I make happiness my goal nothing else.



Twirlip
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19 May 2011, 7:09 am

Quote:
Sybil: You seem very jolly.

Basil: Jolly?

Sybil: Yes, jolly. Sort of happy.

Basil: Oh, 'happy'. Yes, I remember that.


Fawlty Towers (Quotes)


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AQ: 37/50; Aspie Quiz: 110/200 for Aspie, 82/200 for NT
Almost certainly not Aspie, but certainly something like it


wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 7:14 am

Twirlip wrote:
Quote:
Sybil: You seem very jolly.

Basil: Jolly?

Sybil: Yes, jolly. Sort of happy.

Basil: Oh, 'happy'. Yes, I remember that.


Fawlty Towers (Quotes)



I don't think I have ever felt happiness.



Twirlip
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19 May 2011, 7:52 am

wonderboy wrote:
Twirlip wrote:
Quote:
Sybil: You seem very jolly.

Basil: Jolly?

Sybil: Yes, jolly. Sort of happy.

Basil: Oh, 'happy'. Yes, I remember that.


Fawlty Towers (Quotes)


I don't think I have ever felt happiness.


I felt happiness sometimes when I was young. I never felt anything like happiness in connection with any other human beings. (I suppose I am human, it just doesn't feel like it.) I also never had any sense of reality in connection with other human beings. Other people meant only constraint, conformity, submission to arbitrary power, senseless rules, crazy ideas, and absurd and meaningless uses of language. It was only at about your age (when I first experienced real sexual desire) that I began even to be able to imagine being able to live in the world with other people and enjoy it. But my life fell apart, at the same time, and as part of the same enormous and sudden change, which was associated with moving out of the hated familial home (I had never wanted anything except to leave that horrible atmosphere) and going to university (to study pure mathematics, probably because it seems like the most inhuman subject there is, and was therefore comforting to me, an escape like dreams or science fiction).

Sorry, I'm rambling (as I almost always do). But if nothing else, my case does show that you can still start to have radically different experiences, including new kinds of happiness, at age 19.


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Almost certainly not Aspie, but certainly something like it


wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 7:55 am

Ramble all you want. No one has talk to me in this depth for a very long time. At the moment how is life?



Twirlip
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19 May 2011, 8:15 am

wonderboy wrote:
Ramble all you want. No one has talk to me in this depth for a very long time.

The most overwhelming thing I remember from when I was about your age was how utterly fascinated I was with the intoxicating possibility of actually really talking to people about things that really mattered.

OK, that dream fell apart in tatters, but it needn't have.
wonderboy wrote:
At the moment how is life?

Oh dear, oh dear, very bad, I'm afraid! Suicide is on my mind a lot (but I'm not making actual plans). I have a daughter, also aged 19, and her hatred of me and contempt for me, in spite of all that we have in common, seems implacable. This has brought home to me, with renewed force, how people have hated me from the moment I was born. That is not a depressive illusion, and I do know when people are being nice to me, and when they see good in me. But the hatred is also real. The real illusion is the denial of the reality of the hatred, and the dogma that it is just some faulty chemistry in my brain, or some misperception or misunderstanding on my part. I have to reckon with the lifelong, persistent, and almost universal hatred, and it's not at all clear how to do that.

But I mustn't try to delve too deeply into that, partly because it's off-topic for the thread (I'm a terrible derailer of perfectly healthy and useful threads!), and partly because it's still fresh in my mind, and writing about it can be a way of trying to escape from it, in search of some facile and temporary reassurance.

You did ask! :D


_________________
Age: 60. Sex: male. Gender: OK I give up, please tell me
AQ: 37/50; Aspie Quiz: 110/200 for Aspie, 82/200 for NT
Almost certainly not Aspie, but certainly something like it


wonderboy
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19 May 2011, 8:20 am

Twirlip wrote:
wonderboy wrote:
Ramble all you want. No one has talk to me in this depth for a very long time.

The most overwhelming thing I remember from when I was about your age was how utterly fascinated I was with the intoxicating possibility of actually really talking to people about things that really mattered.

OK, that dream fell apart in tatters, but it needn't have.
wonderboy wrote:
At the moment how is life?

Oh dear, oh dear, very bad, I'm afraid! Suicide is on my mind a lot (but I'm not making actual plans). I have a daughter, also aged 19, and her hatred of me and contempt for me, in spite of all that we have in common, seems implacable. This has brought home to me, with renewed force, how people have hated me from the moment I was born. That is not a depressive illusion, and I do know when people are being nice to me, and when they see good in me. But the hatred is also real. The real illusion is the denial of the reality of the hatred, and the dogma that it is just some faulty chemistry in my brain, or some misperception or misunderstanding on my part. I have to reckon with the lifelong, persistent, and almost universal hatred, and it's not at all clear how to do that.

But I mustn't try to delve too deeply into that, partly because it's off-topic for the thread (I'm a terrible derailer of perfectly healthy and useful threads!), and partly because it's still fresh in my mind, and writing about it can be a way of trying to escape from it, in search of some facile and temporary reassurance.

You did ask! :D


I don't regret asking. Everyone needs to blow steam off time to time. Have you ever tried meditation to shift through your thoughts?