Which Conditions did you consider before AS?

Post Reply New Topic

I always been extremely quiet and labeled as shy by my teachers and classmates. It wasn't till I was about my senior year that my mom suggested anxiety which fit but did nothing to really help me. She took me to the doctors told him she thought I had anxiety and laughed about it which the doctor didn't take seriously because she made a joke of it. At 25 I begged her to get me an appointment and from there on I was diagnosed with Anxiety and depression. I spent years searching the net and even looked at Asperger's before and talked myself out of it. I even thought maybe Bipolar and Schizophrenic. I eventually researched Asperger's again and it hit me and realized this is it just a few days ago at age 32. When I came to this forum and seen the stuff that was written by members I wanted to cry because this is the same way I felt about a lot of things. I never felt like I belonged anywhere at all and have just one friend who lives out of state now who I knew from High School.

None. I've never had any previous diagnosis in place of Asperger's.

I do have Post-traumatic Stress Disorder which I acquired in a war zone. That diagnosis was made a couple of years ago, and I've been seeing a psychiatrist frequently at the hospital ever since.

My psychiatrist is a switched-on person. I like him. He began to suspect something else may also be wrong, because certain of my symptoms such as solitude and meltdowns, pre-date my PTSD. Some symptoms aren't part of PTSD.

In the near future, he's going to meet with my parents to ask them about my childhood, which was spent in obsessive learning and driving people crazy with my obsessions. At one point, I spent two years playing scales and arpeggios on a guitar, to the sound of a metronome, every waking hour of every single day. I didn't stop for 730 days and that was the second time I'd done that. I play five instruments well. I'm an artist. I used to program computers professionally. I have no friends. I used to have friends who shared my interests, but I have none now. Not one.

Sociopath. Used to call NT's the Sheep People.
Just got diagnosed Monday.

I went from depression to bipolar disorder. Only Aspergers has made sense to me. Interestingly, I also called NTs "sheep". I still do. I find it really amusing that the people in my church like to refer to themselves as sheep and flocks.

As a child I was diagnosed with MBD (minimal brain dysfunction). It's a condition that was fairly popular in Scandinavia in the 1980s, but isn't used anymore. It's a very vague diagnosis ie. "something is wrong with the brain but we don't know what". As an adult I got diagnosed with Asperger's and add.

A few years ago I suspected that I may have been bipolar due to mood swings and difficulty controlling my emotions.

I was diagnosed as a 8 year old as having Epilepsy petit mal.
I wa diagnosed as a 17 year old as having clinical depression.
None of it really made too much sense to me though. As an adult I was seeing a mental health specialist and asked if it could be something causing me to be depressed as opposed to it being clinical depression. She asked me why I thought this and I said it was down to the fact that I had never felt part of society or felt normal. Her response was "what is normal?"
I stopped seeing her after that as I didnt feel my concerns were being taken seriously.
I then started to look into diagnosing myself following the line of the depression being a secondary problem.
I had a friend that had taken one of the online Aspergers and suggested I give it a try. I did and the score was very likely to be Aspergers. I have since started the ball rolling to get a formal diagnosis and thats where I am today.

Phil.

I was a "gifted" student, but was always a social outcast. I've been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bipolar 2, ADHD/ADD - lots of treatment with no success.

I hadn't even heard of Aspergers until a few years ago when my son started having problems at school. I read about it, realized I fit the mold very well. Learning about the symptoms and reigning them in myself has been more beneficial than any professional help I've had.

I'm able to function too well to get a psychiatrist's diagnosis, but I still have social limitations. I think my depression and anxiety are both symptoms of the Aspergers, or at least, as exacerbated by the associated social failure.

In some semblance of order
Lazy
too smart for your own good
Alcoholic
Druggie

"What is wrong with you?" was a mantra when growing up and later too..

The alcoholic became true as I self medicated
fortunately figured that one out before it killed me
then sober 24 years
at 63 finally figured out the underlying condition.

Is that wrong?

I knew I was unable to focus but I was not hyper like a lot of kids they would medicate. My school counselor was secretly calling my parents. I think my coming to his office after wandering the halls and monologuing to him weirded him out.

I'll give it a shot. As a young child, I did not receive a diagnosis. At the time, Autism and Aspergers were relatively unknown. Furthermore, at the time, I thought everyone experienced the world in the same way. It wasn't until the transition into adolescence that the differences became readily apparent. Anyway, I digress...

1) OCD - Did not fit. I do not experience intrusive thoughts that provoke symptoms of anxiety followed by compulsive behaviours to relieve these symptoms. However, to the outsider, it may appear that I have OCD since I tend to be very rigid with routines. However, I follow routines because I enjoy patterns not to avoid some intrusive thought.

2) ADHD - I do not struggle with attention or concentration. I also do not struggle with hyperactivity. In fact, I tend to become far to focused.

3) Schizophrenia - I do not experience any symptoms of psychosis.

3) Mood disorders - I do not experience any symptoms of a mood disorder (i.e., Bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder or other mood related disorder). However, I do experience symptoms of anxiety. Having said that, these symptoms of anxiety arise when I don't know what to do in a specific social situation. If I have a protocol or script in mind, I can get through social interactions without any symptoms of anxiety. However, in unstructured situations, I tend to socially withdraw until a conversation arises about an area of interest.

NT's are sheep people. They just are.



Interesting test, thanks for posting a link.

I looked at several but none looked right (bipolar, bordeline and many others) had no idea what was different about me.
I did not look at autism because I had a wrong perception of what autism is.
I thought austitic people were non verbal. I was reading at post grad level in 5th grade.
Years later I was reading a Yahoo Answers question related to asperger's
The answers were of course ridiculous on that site.
But it made me curious I looked up more on sites like Mayo Clinic etc.
The more I read the more it sank in that this was the mystery diagnosis I had been looking for in all those psychology books but just in wrong categories.
A few years later I was tested and had my dx and a second test with another Dr. just to be sure.
Those test revealed a few secondary diagnosis as well.

This is a really interesting thread

I have been treated for anxiety and depression for most of my adult life (I'm now 43). I always felt that there was something wrong with me - that I couldn't be like other people - but I never managed to find out it could be. I have read all sorts of stuff about personality disorders etc, but never found anything that answered my questions. I do consider myself to have significant difficulties with social anxiety, though.

Then I recently attended a one-day workshop about Autism - I work as an Additional Learning Support Tutor in the Adult Learning sector - and I had a lightbulb moment. I recognised myself in the descriptions and realised that I may have AS. I looked into it and did a few online tests etc. Finally I plucked up courage to talk to my GP about it, and he has agreed to refer me for diagnosis.

This IS a very interesting thread.

The fact that several of you have referred to NTs as sheep caught my attention. My ex, an Aspie in denial, used the "sheep" term constantly. He usually used such reference to justify his need to go against the rules.

I found this thread so interresting that I did a statistical analysis.

But first I will add mine to the numbers. I was first called gifted as a child, I were smarter than my siblings and did my homework without asking for help. I have had thoughts of myself being an alien and/or adopted. I've always seen myself as socially ret*d. I've been called lazy alot since I were 10-12 years old. I've been diagnosed with social anxiety and depression. I'm currently seeing a new psychologist, and after doing 15 hours of research into AS / ASD / HFA, I'm 95% sure I am one of you(when I research something, I find it hard to stop, but I wouldn't say its so strong I have ever considered OCD). I'm 32 years old now, and hopefully I can get a label that explains better who I am, cause I suck at it. ..oh, and since I've searched and searched all over to find whats wrong with me, I've considered Hypochondria.

This is a summary of all post up until this one;
26x Depression
17x ADD / ADHD
16x Anxiety
14x Bipolar disorder
11x Schizoid Personality Disorder
10x Social Anxiety
7x OCD
6x Avoidant personality disorder
5x Learning disorder (Dyslexic/Dyscalculia/Dyspraxia)
5x Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
4x Borderline personality disorder
4x Thoughts of adoption
3x Lazy
3x Gifted
3x Hypochondria
2x Agoraphobia
2x Thoughts of brain injury
2x Thoughts of social retardation
Dissociative Personality disorder
Panic disorder
Narcolepsy
Fibromyalgia
Depersonalization disorder
PMDD
Epilepsy petit mal
Manic-Depressive
Multiple Personality Disorder
Minimal brain dysfunction
Eating disorder
Anorexia
Cognitive disorder NOS
Sensory processing disorder
Cyclothymia
Chronic alcoholic
Thoughts of birth defect
Thoughts of mental retardation
Thoughts of alien abduction
########
(I must admit, I have not researched all these diagnoses, so it might be possible to group some more of them up like I did with Learning Disorders)

This thread has been really helpful for me, its nice to not feel so alone when it comes to all the wrong diagnoses. And while reading this thread, I saw someone mention a test, and I would like to relink that test, and I will also go ahead and take it myself after completing this post. similarminds. com/personality_disorder.html

Edit:
Test results
###########
Schizoid 90%
Schizotypal 78%
Paranoid 70%
Dependent 54%
Borderline 46%
Avoidant 46%
-----
Author Note:I don't think Schizoid personality is a valid disorder, some of the smartest people in history were schizoid because they occupied a remote end of the intelligence bell curve. Schizotypal personality can encompass highly original thinkers as well as totally insane people so I think it's a flawed type. I think the remaining eight disorders are generally valid.
###########

Well, that just confused me even more. Should I research Schizotypal- and Paranoid- Personality Disorders for 20 hours each now? Or take it with a grain of salt and put all my money on AS?

Last edited by Blownmind on 20 Feb 2012, 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.