Where is cause?

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Hi,

I thought for a long time that the cause of my difficulties was bullying at school and problems in my family, later I started to have doubts about this. Before year i was diagnosed with AS.

If someone didn't learn social skills due to the environment in whitch he grew up, i belive his difficulties will be similar like someone else, who is an Aspie, who didn't learn social skills, because his brain works differently from birth. Consequences can be similar, but this isn't same, when causes are different.

How is possible determine cause? How psychologist can to distinguish between these cases? How can i know that diagnosis was correct? Will be for these two persons a diference in ability to improve social skills as adult?

This information is maybe useless and change nothing, but i want underestand current and past difficulties in my life.

My english isn't good, I am sorry for eventually mistakes.

It's not easy to determine if one is autistic, or if one has some other psychological/neurological condition---especially within the "high-functioning" population.

One psychologist might believe the autism dominates everything else. Another might believe the anxiety causes autistic symptoms, rather than autism causing autistic symptoms.

While it is not perfect, I believe that if you read the ICD-10, or the DSM-V descriptions of autism, and/or of Asperger's Syndrome, that you'll obtain a better idea of whether you're autistic, or whether you might have another condition.

Hello and welcome to Wrong Planet

Before my assessment I had to fill out a questionnaire that included questions about my childhood and my mum had to fill out a huge one about my childhood too. During the assessment a lot of the questions were about childhood too.

When something sounded autistic but had other reasons, I mentioned them because I did not want to be diagnosed as ASD unless I was ASD. If your assessment was like this then I think it would be unlikely to be wrong for the reason you suggest. However, were you assessed by someone experienced in ASD? what kind of assessment did they do?

I agree with kraftiekortie that more reading on autism and Asperger will help you to decide whether the diagnoses was correct. Good luck.

Psychologists will go over the background too like was there any abuse, was there love, how functional the family, do the parents give plenty of attention to their kids, is the child kept isolated. But I think if there is both, then that makes it harder to diagnose autism IMO.

Also if you had problems below the bullying started and your family issues started, then that is also how you can tell. I used to blame my poor social skills on my dad because kids model after their parents. But my brothers would have had poor social skills too if that were true.

I also thought I was singled out and didn't fit in because of the way I talked but plenty of kids at my school had speech problems too and were still normal and treated with respect and liked.

I was rejected by my peers before I was too shy to meet new people and make friends. In fact I used to approach people all the time only to not be liked. Now I think it was just do to my lack of social skills and because I didn't know the rules. I was always surrounded by other people so I have no excuse. I was never kept isolated. I was put in day care and play groups.

I think sometimes we might go through a denial phase so we question our diagnoses and look for other excuses for our symptom. I think deep down we still want to be normal so if it was our environment, there is still hope but autism doesn't mean no hope either.

I think girl in the glass window might be considered "normal" because he reason for her lack of development is due to being kept isolated from the real world and from people. Her diagnoses is environmental autism. Made up by a doctor of course that gave her that diagnoses. But yet she will never be normal because her brain is way past that development where kids learn. She might be a feral child like Genie was. But how someone was raised or brought up in their environment doesn't mean they will ever be "normal."

But I think another reason for questioning it is because we want it to be accurate and we are still trying to define ourselves. To some people it doesn't matter and to some others it does. At the end I just say it's only label because we can't let ourselves get so hung up on it we go crazy over it and get anxiety about rather we are correctly diagnosed or not and worrying about being as fraud and faking it.

I also thought my social difficulties were because of a lack of proper socialisation in childhood. Reading just the list of autistic traits, I could explain a lot of them with my upbringing. But there's other stuff there that doesn't have anything to do with my childhood, like the sensory issues, stimming, obsessive interests, difficulties with change and routine-interruptions. If you have any of those as well, there's a big chance they come from something other than the way you grew up.

Stimming can be explained by stress or boredom and obsessive interests can be explained by depression or because of the fact they made you happy and kept you entertained and gave you comfort due to no friends. If you had hearing loss as a young child, deaf kids also have issues with change so there could be another explanation there. Then you are left with confusion and questioning your diagnoses. Also if your reason for not liking new routes to places was because you thought there was only one way to get there and you didn't think you were going there but once you saw the place, you got over it. Another reason to question it. Routines can be explained by anxiety and dislike of change and wanting familiarity. I still don't understand the difference because they look the same. Still denial. So at the end a doctor might say just take the diagnoses and accept it and move on and you're you, not a label. Plus I am sure each doctor will have their own opinion.

Thanks for your replies. The psychologist didn't have experience in ASD, we spent 6 hours some
various assessments. I think, she had true, I only don't like uncertainty in my life.
I'm booked on assessment focused on ASD, they have long waiting times. I hope, it is possible without my parents. I can ask them, if some informations will be needed, but I don't want inform them about this. They didn't solve my problems, when I was a child, now I don't see any reasons to inform them now about AS.

Is it possible complete the assassment without my parents?

I think it depends. Although many doctors think that parent's statements are important for a correct evaluation, there are many good reasons to get an assessment without them.
I did mine without my parents because they live in another country and don't speak the language.