I'm officially diagnosed - NOT Aspie.

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Met the psych today and was interviewed for about an hour. After listening to me and observing me, he is under the impression that I'm not an Aspie. He did, however, conclude that I have a rather large social anxiety disorder, and that I should seek additional treatment that would include increasing my anti-depressant and counseling. He also gave me leads to pursue should I want a second opinion, but honestly after listening to him ask me "the right questions" and pondering on my responses, I'm pretty sure he pegged me well.

Interesting to note though - he encouraged me continuing to come to Wrong Planet to learn and discuss what's going on in my head. Although he wasn't familiar with the site beyond the name, when I described it to him and he believed it was a good resource for me.

I'm going to take a few weeks to digest it all to decide my next plan of action, beyond going back to my GP with his recommendations. In the meantime, please share your thoughts - opinions and other insights always valued.

Acting, right now I'm reading up on something called postmodernism. One of the fundamental tenets of postmodernism is questioning the meaning of meaning. While the postmodernists are a bit too nihilistic and skeptical for my tastes, they do have something of a point.

What I'm getting at is that whether or not you have AS (a truth proposition) isn't as important as whether or not what is on offer here is of use and value to you. So, if you really want to know if you have AS, I can guess you're disappointed. If you find people and advice here you can relate to, and have a salutary effect on you, I think that is far more important than some kind of official diagnosis. At least it is for me.

The only real disappointment I feel is in not knowing myself as well as I thought I did. It's hard to really be disappointed with discovering that aspects of my personality that I dislike CAN change with some training and work. Not everyone reading this has that option, so I am grateful.

good for you

Hm, your aspie score is higher than mine and your NZt score is lower than mine, yet I'm officially diagnosed. I wonder what that means?

Acting, I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea that you've known yourself all your life and think you're an Aspie but a guy who has known you an hour says you're not and we go with his opinion. Granted, he has a Ph.D., but he is relying on your answers to his questions and a very limited observation of you to make his DX. An hour meeting with a new psych is not a natural situation and if you're like me, you might not exhibit some of the same traits in that environment that you would elsewhere or with someone you were more comfortable with. Actually, I have social anxiety so you are probably like me! My psych diagnosed me as an Aspie after a year of talk therapy for depression. I grew comfortable with her and she was able to DX me based on my behavior and things I related to her. I never had even considered AS because I didn't know about it.

So, your psych might be right, but he might also change his opinion some day.

ITDE, I understand and to a degree, I'm right there with you. However, I'm only at the very beginning my journey on this really - only really been researching AS for about 6 months. To disregard a learned professional's POV simply because it doesn't agree with my own isn't something I'm prepared to do yet.

Fortunately, he did give me resources to chase a 2nd opinion that I didn't have access to before that I may ultimately use, but right now I think I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn't look closer at social anxiety and it's treatment first. If I'm AS, I'll always be AS, so no hurry.

Acting, I get that. My social anxiety is more pronounced than my AS, which is mild, and was debilitating before treatment. So it's good that you've identified that and hopefully can get some relief. Parts of my personality that I didn't even know existed came out once the social anxiety was treated. It truly is a journey of self-discovery!

From what I heard, it is very common for professionals to misdiagnose people on the AS, especially adults. Did you say he only spoke to you for one hour?

My diagnosis took two days of testing, and a 20-page report. So I would not weigh that psych's diagnosis that heavily.

The assessment seemed very short, OP. But if the psych's explanations make sense to you, then it's good to get this diagnosis to work on the social anxiety. If the therapies turn out to make no sense or are completely ineffective, then you could always reconsider the ASD and seek a second opinion.