It's almost official: I don't have Asperger's Syndrome

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no

Last edited by Mw99 on 07 Apr 2008, 5:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Wow. Personality disorder nos? Isn't that kinda... rare?

But it doesn't mean you're 'awkward', it means that the professional has decided that you exhibit... for example obsession-compulsion, paranoia, confusion, mood disorder. You don't meet the criteria for only one or two specific pds, but only 50% of each of four or 7 or one or so. It can mean everything.

Was that your first visit to a professional? If yes: get another. Two are always better. No matter if you agree or disagree with a diagnosis. Because you can always be right or wrong as does the professional.

Like, I have a 2:2 situation. Two saying I'm autistic (got diagnosed) and two saying I'm not. Certainly different opinions there. Who to trust? Who knows! I got the diagnosis, autism therapy and awesome improvement.

If the professional just may be right, oh well, just as bad as AS. A friend has a severe bpd, she's awesome.





So this means I am not the only one who noticed! I thought it was weird that a direct question most likely resulted into a 'don't know' or 'like always' answer. When at other times, unprompted lots of stories about the most insignificant details are told by family.

I don't know. But I was hoping anbuend or daniel (both seem well-versed in psychology) threw their 50 cents in.



The evaluation was partly based on my answers to a multiple choice questionnaire (like the many you'll find online), so I could have answered anything I wanted.



What excuse did the ones who said you are not autistic give?

One: denied the possibility outright; then based on an amnesic background analysis only the professional was certain I had a case of of borderline personality disorder.

I filled out a questionnaire too... lucky for me, I don't have the extremely common co-morbidities associated with AS. Most of my answers said 'no' to questions such as 'do you know XY?'.

Two: was very sceptic. I don't know what the professional had in mind. It was just a conversation on whether I'd be allowed to see the (autism) diagnostician of the clinic fortunately. I about passed, yeah.

My diagnosis was difficult because I didn't remember my childhood because I also have cognitive problems. luckily my parents were able to to fill in. The said I was seen by someone from age two but that was too early to tell , then I saw various shrink/doctors 4-5 and 7 still with no diagnosis. Funny because they never really mentioned this to me until I started to peruse diagnosis, I guess they thought I would grow out of it.. I thought the first shrink I saw was at 23. Back when I was a kid there was no diagnosis to be sought, especially not as I was in different foreign countries.

And who calibrates these professionals?

Just by going into the field of abnormal behavior, they exibit a natural attraction for it.

Online tests are at least impersonal. Tests have shown some use in sorting humans,

but humans always show human traits, they see it their way.

I have heard a range here, from a series of tests and personal interviews, gathering family history, school records, a broad and in depth study, a metric that seeks to define from many factors, to a half hour office visit, with someone who somehow got a degree in something.

Is everything in this range professional?

When public support is involved, such as a Dx that would cost a school district money, no one has anything expensive, for those funds can support football, if not wasted on education for ret*ds.

So it becomes political, economic, and those who write a ticket for some to get state and local funding, stop getting state and local referals.

There are some good methods, with proven results, but in most cases they are replaced by one person in a half hour visit, which is intended to block the potential expense.

Those who do their own research, are persistant, shop for someone who has dealt with the condition, spends lots of time and money, shows that they could not have the condition because they are capable of doing research, exibiting persistance, and in fact shopped for a Dx.

By the most systematic study, I could not have anything, for my grammer school burned, taking school records with it. None of my medical records say anything, for they were from fifty years ago, and there is no way to trace them, for I do not know the names of doctors I saw as a child.

My youngest teachers would be ninety now.

Can some under thirty understand anything about someone twice their age, without thinking of their parents, teachers, and other people they would like to get even with? Beyond the degree, they are the worlds leading expert in necrophilia, and beastiality, and their life has been devoted to proving that what they were caught doing with a dead dog is perfectly normal.

Humans are defective apes.

First we need to agree on terms and methods, then replace the human element. A computer program could sort and help people, much better than the current system.

The Psycho Religion is a way to make fast bucks from telling lies. It has no Science.

I agree with the statments posted by danielismyname, but see them as the NT view, loaded with, we are better than someone, spin.

I have another view based on living. All of education, news, politics, TV, movies, are pitched to normal people, 100 IQ, mentally thirteen, with an effective education of Eigth Grade, at a C- level.

This is the kind of person the professionals seek to produce through a cure.

We are all within the normal range of human behavior, proven by our existance. We are a long way from the human norm, IQ 100 functional middle school education, and the mind of a teen.

We are defined by normal social values and political goals. We are not good at being defective apes.

I will continue to self define.

Good point. Something I thought of while reading your post Inventor. Verification of parents, siblings, teachers and other adults about childhood is not needed for a diagnosis. Very much advised, certainly, but not a need that cannot be undergone.

If you can explain yourself well enough.

It can lead to a successful or horrible process and outcome depending on the individual in question who explains themselves.



On a side note. Humankind is a lot like the race of apes. Apes are studied by scientists - I study humankind. There is a distinct connection going on between these two mammals.

But then, I very much like and enjoy humanity. It's like A brilliant construction in terms of fascination, complication and appeal. Like Russian roulette. You can be drawn in, if you feel like a wolf, or at least a little like a wolf - hungry.
Coming to this realisation without wolfish tendencies or having eaten to much, you probably get sick of it? I don't know, I imagine it would make anyone sick.

Sorry I didn't read the whole thread before replying.

PD-NOS is really kind of suspect as a diagnosis.

What it means, as far as psychologists are concerned, is that you have a number of fixed personal traits that they consider disordered, that are stable over time, and that occurred by some time in early adulthood.

If a person had all the traits of Asperger's (or enough to be otherwise diagnosed with Asperger's) beginning in adulthood, it is pretty likely it'd be labeled a personality disorder, because it's fixed traits, that shrinks consider disordered, but that don't always meet the criteria for any specific personality disorder.

I've known a couple other autistic people who got this diagnosis.

Another thing to be aware of is that the psychiatric profession in general, especially adult psychiatrists, isn't that familiar with autism in adults. They find it easier to look for personality disorders, mood disorders, or psychotic disorders (look up "simple schizophrenia" sometime, it's indistinguishable from AS in some ways and requires no actual "psychotic" symptoms in the usual sense, there are other forms of schizophrenia that likewise don't require "positive symptoms", or the autistic person can be induced to regard certain things as "positive symptoms" that aren't), because that's what most psychiatrists are trained to look for in adults, rather than developmental conditions.

One thing that I've had my suspicions about as well, is this:

It's known already that about a third of autistic people "get worse" in adolescence, and that half of those continue to "stay worse" as adults (while the other half recover those skills they lost).

What happens to someone who'd normally be considered in the "Broader Autism Phenotype" or whatever you want to call it (autistic traits, but not enough for diagnosis) who might also experience a seeming intensifying of autistic traits as they get older?

My mother is an example of someone who'd be considered a "BAP". Her brother would be diagnosable with AS, although he never has been, as well as several of her uncles. She herself grew up shy and introverted and a bit geeky, teased and so forth at school, but not enough traits to quite be diagnosable with anything. By adulthood she could completely pass as "normal" in that regard. But what would have happened if, like me, she'd experienced an intensification of autistic traits in adolescence? Would she, by adulthood, have a number and intensity of traits enough to be diagnosable with AS, when prior to that she wouldn't quite have been?

Basically, are there people who are merely in the "borderlands" of autism as children, who by adulthood would be in more than the "borderlands"?

I don't know the answer, but it's possible.

I also know, though, that most people I've met who can't remember having the traits in childhood, it turns out to be something like I've described, where they were simply unaware of those traits in childhood and their parents were in denial or had selectively "positive" memories, or had just plain forgotten or mixed them up with their siblings or something.

One friend I have got diagnosed with PDD-NOS, not because she didn't have enough traits for another diagnosis, but because she didn't have any reliable enough historians in her family to pin down whether she had a speech delay or not. Others I know have been denied any diagnosis altogether because of such things.

Either way, if you identify with autistic people then the autistic community can be useful to you, that's why terms like "cousin" evolved, I know lots of people who have diagnoses of ADD or learning disabilities or brain injury or Tourette or hydrocephalus or post-encephalitis or even things like bipolar, who find the autistic community useful because they have similar traits to autistic people in some areas. I've never been too fond of the whole "only auties need apply" (or worse, "only one kind of auties") thing for the community as a whole, I think we're too separated from the rest of the disability community as it is without adding even more separation.

This board, at the very least, allows people without any labels to post here, and even has an entire category for "not sure if I have it or not," so this place ought to be pretty friendly to a wide range of neurotypes. (I say "ought to" because there are elitists in every community. There are even people in the autistic community who think that the later someone's diagnosis occurred, the less they ought to be accepted. I think that's crap, but the attitude's out there.)

That is odd because surely the more life you have had, the more time you have had to show the traits time and time again. In some ways, that sounds like more proof of something to me.

I also used to think I didn't act autistic when younger. Then I started thinking about it, and I remembered that when I played with cars, a lot of the time (especially when younger) I would play with them by spinning their wheels, and I remembered how it took me longer to learn things like getting dressed and washing hair and cleaning up after using the restroom. Once when I visited my fourth grade teacher recently she mentioned how when we would do essays, that I would sit and stare at the wall for about an hour trying to think of how to ask for a pencil, because I'd lost mine again. Then she finally would come to my desk and ask why I wasn't writing anything, and I would stammer that I didn't have a pencil, and then she'd give me one, and I'd write my essay.

In elementary school, I rarely spoke, for although I have the ability to speak, it is difficult, and especially in a stressful environment like school, I was not often compelled. I remember having great difficulty with clothing tags at a young age. I also was extremely intrigued with how things work and are put together, which is a common thing. When I had just started third grade walking home with my dad that day he asked me why I wasn't looking at him when he was talking to me. I replied that I didn't want to be rude. So apparently I didn't make much eye contact.

I was a quiet baby who didn't cry much. I banged my head a lot more when younger than now, and I remember being in a public bathroom once with my mom and two sisters. I was flapping my hands a lot, and my mom told me to stop it. So I twisted my fingers instead. I also used to rock a fair amount, though I learned to suppress this when I got made fun of in school. I distinctly remember having a table of boys laughing and shaking my desk when I would cover my ears in the loud classroom.

So there were a lot of things I didn't immediately remember. It took me a few years to remember a lot of this, and much of it was stuff others remembered about me. I don't know what age you are but I started remembering this stuff between ages 15 and 18.

There is a bright side to finding out you have a personality disorder and not AS. At least, you can always find the bright side in a situation if you are an optimist, and it can't hurt to be an optimist. The bright side for this, I suppose, is that being diagnosed with a personality disorder may not be so bad as having Asperger's in that, with a personality disorder, the disorder itself can be treated with medication. Whereas, with AS, the disorders associated with the AS can be treated, but not the AS itself. (At least that is how I view the general nature of how AS is treated.)

A person with a certain personality disorder that features unusual social behavior partially meets the criteria for AS, but only in terms of the social behavior. Unusual social behavior are common between a) several kinds of personality disorders, including avoidant personality disorder and b) Asperger's Syndrome. I guess if you have just the personality disorder you just would also not have the added obsessiveness about certain subjects and other criteria that all add up to AS. An AS diagnosis might encompass the factors of a particular personality disorder diagnosis; I don't know whether it does--you'd have to check the DSM-IV manual for diagnosis if you want to find out.

Can it? I thought that personality disorders were considered largely untreatable, and if there was any treatment possible it was with therapy.

In response to hyperbolic's comments: Personality disorders generally are not treated with medication. Treatment for PDs is practically non-existent. I mistrust most diagnoses involving the letters "NOS." Professionals have tried to tag me with "Anxiety NOS" and "Bipolar NOS" before, but I find that a rather broad descriptor. "PD-NOS" is basically psychiatry's way of saying "we think there's something wrong with you, but don't really have a word for it so we'll just say you have a non-specified personality disorder."

cas, ssriv345: The SSRI antidepressant Zoloft has been shown to be effective in improving symptoms in patients with personality disorders. ( See the link at this bookmark on the Zoloft wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoloft#cit ... 9817625-99 ). In addition, I guess that antipsychotics would be very effective in the personality disorders that have psychotic and/or paranoid features, although I do not know for sure whether they are used for them or not. Finally, I suppose that obsessive personality disorder might benefit from the same SSRI treatments that are used to help people with obsessive compulsive disorder.

Personality disorders are treatable in a way that autism and AS are not. I do think that the negative aspects of AS like anxiety and ADD can be improved with medication and learning social skills, but the underlying causes for the AS are not changed by taking medication or learning social skills. Personality disorders have been linked to serotonin, but it is possible to look a them as nothing more than disorders of the personality. The personality is something that is probably much easier to change than the underlying causes of autism and AS. The underlying causes of autism spectrum disorders are probably biological in their manifestations as opposed to being aspects of the personality that, as in a personality disorder, can be improved with work and some help from medication. The fact that "therapy" is a treatment that is used for people with personality disorders shows that with personality disorders some patients can just talk through their problems. For someone with AS who does not necessarily have a personality disorder, talking through problems is not going to change the underlying biological cause in the DNA, endocrine system, brain structure, etc.

at first glance, given the first two quotes, i assumed
we were about to be linguistically zenned, mistress

however, one appended generically bilingual observation:
translated literally from dutch, i have very recently been diagnosed with:

axis I: serious suspicion of AS
axis II: personality disorder nos, with schizotypical, narcissistic & adhd traits

how remarkably has the pervasive aspect disappeared from the AII-label &
how remarkably has developmental turned into personality

this is straight from the professional horse's mouth

i suppose you mean 'behavioural therapy'
as opposed to medicinal therapy=treatment?