aspergers re-confirmed

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today i had my aspergers re-confirmed

in june i was hospitalized for constant suicidal thoughts, a therapist said that she didnt think i had aspergers because "i knew i was different". knowing aspergers was the actual diagnoses i got a non-verbal learning disability test done in september and now i finally have the results, and by no ones surprise i can announce: I DO NOT HAVE A NON-VERBAL LEARNING DISABILITY. i also got a series of IQ tests with again, no surprises but im happy that its finally confirmed i have a below-average IQ in both Verbal and Information Processing. which i knew i always had trouble with in school after telling teachers often that "its harder to learn when your always talking and your moving too fast" which always seemed to translate into "i am lazy and do not want to do so much work" but now it is confirmed that i do not have a learning disability and i more than likely am on the autism spectrum.

Jeez-Louise, remarks like that make me want to slap people upside the head.

If you don't know you're different, then you're hardly HIGH FUNCTIONING, are you? How do these people become licensed professionals?

Anyone with any rational intelligence cannot live the lives we live and not know they are different. All your life everyone around you TELLS you that you're different - and insults and berates you for it. I "knew I was different" for 45 years before I knew my condition had a name.

Williard, I suspected autism for YEARS before my therapist, out of the blue, brought it up. Being told what the therapist said, my doctor looked like a light had just turned on. "Good catch" the doctor said.

Sadly, I got evaluated by some guy working out of the trunk of his car. He ended up telling me autistics view other people as inanimate objects and don't recognize others have feelings. He said I couldn't be autistic because I can interact and have a sense of humor.

My therapist says the guy's nuts. My doctor questioned his whole approach, and said the test I'd been given sounded like nothing but an IQ test, not a test for autism. People here at WP said I'd got a quack. The local Asperger's association asked for his name because they want to either flag or delete him if he's in their database.

Because of him I'm left hanging, and will have to wait maybe another four months to try again, this time at a local hospital that has a huge department that specializes in autism. (The insurance people likely wouldn't have been happy for me to be evaluated again a short time later, so I'm not trying until a YEAR after "the nightmare".)

It's definitely possible to not be aware you are different. If you want to define that as not high functioning, go ahead and do so, functioning labels are meaningless anyways.

But, someone can be not aware they're different, and be in college living independently. Someone can be not aware they're different and succeeding in school without any accommodations. Someone can be bullied and not know why because they don't know that they're different.

We're not all the same, and our skills aren't all we have them all or we don't", and aren't in some order. We have impairments in our own set of impairments, with people impaired in their own ways.

I don't know how old I'd have been when I realized I was different if it wasn't with outside help; I realized some when I was 13 with outside help. I literally thought as a teenager that other people had the same interests as me and pretended to have other interests to fit into a group where none of them actually enjoyed the thing that the group "liked", it was just the "cool thing", so it was what they did. They all actually liked what I liked, but they didn't want to show this because they wanted to fit in. The only difference between me and them was that I didn't care about fitting in.

Now, at 24, I'll forget, I'll actually get to the point where I'll forget that other people don't know things I've not told them, and get upset that they've not reacted to things I've never said.

If you want to call me not high functioning. Go ahead. I don't care. I hate functioning labels and think they shouldn't exist. Because we have abilities, not labels.

I can do things, and not others. And knowing how I differ from others. That's not a thing I have. I learn that from other people. I learn that from reading and reading and reading and reading and reading and reading. I can teach people about sensory processing disorder enough that I confuse people in the field that I'm just a patient, and yet I still don't know everything about my own symptoms, because I don't know how I differ, even when I know that I differ; which took until I was in my 20s and someone telling me about it when I was getting migraines from it.

Yet I went to college, got a double major, and graduated early without accommodations.

Knowing if you're different or not?
That's just yet another trait you might or might not have.

Tuttle-

Would you agree, tho', that for a psychologist/psychiatrist/shrink/whatever to say that no autistic person would know they're different is proof the "expert" is lacking in understanding of the autistic spectrum and the variations possible with people who are ON the spectrum?

Some people will be able to tell they are different, others won't. For a psychologist, or any other professional to think anything in particular about someone other than that fact, is silly. For any professional to say someone is on the autistic spectrum or not for either direction, is silly. For a professional to say they are higher or lower functioning is silly. It's just another thing.

So, those professionals who are saying "no you can't be on the spectrum because you know you're different", they have no clue what they're talking about.