post diagnosis, have 'professionals' refuted your diagnosis?

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Ashariel
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20 Feb 2014, 5:39 pm

Paper, I'm sorry this happened to you. What scares me is that it could happen to any of us.

I wasn't diagnosed until 40, which means that my full range of symptoms are not glaringly obvious to the casual observer. So I worry that regular doctors or therapists who are not experts in autism will take one glance at me, and decide that I was misdiagnosed (or worse, that I'm lying).

I thought that getting a professional diagnosis from an autism expert would count for something, and that future doctors would believe me when I say I have it. But I realize now that they might not. :?



Waterfalls
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20 Feb 2014, 7:43 pm

The expression if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail applies here. And unfortunately there isn't anything about having ASD that would protect against depression, or personality disorder, or PTSD, or feeling suicidal, there just isn't. So a person can have those, too.

I think professionals may see what they are familiar with which maybe won't always include the ASD, if that's not something they're knowledgeable about, and doesn't mean they're entirely wrong, it just doesn't mean that the ASD doesn't exist, either.

So OP my advice is recovering from a meltdown over not having things go as expected requires acknowledging that this threw you, but was in no way intended to. Take away these people's ability to make you someone you are not by acknowledging they don't get it, yes it would be better if they hadn't disappointed so much, but they did and you're the one suffering, find what you can get and focus on this, not on their mistakes, that will jst keep you feeling agitated which since you mentioned feeling suicidal before this started, you don't need to be worrying about, in my opinion.



Apple_in_my_Eye
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20 Sep 2015, 11:01 pm

If you have to argue as to which diagnosis is more valid, then you could point out the greater number of hours spent performing specific tests in the former case, as opposed to being "undiagnosed" in 15 minutes (or whatever it was) with zero tests of any kind.

It sounds like the latter doctors did the usual "eyeballing"/"gut feeling" thing that normal humans are so prone to doing rather than following the actual criteria. (Good thing there's tests for cancer, or else they'd be trying to eyeball that too.)