From a 40+ viewpoint - be officially diagnosed? or not?

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I personally was using the term "detrimental" only because I kept forgetting the term "clinically impaired". Clinically impaired and clinically significant are mostly interchangeable. By example, a person can be on a diet, but not be considered anorexic, because they are not clinically impaired in their decision making process according to the professional assessment of a certified psychologist. When people say they are self-diagnosed, they are saying they think they are clinically impaired without having had a certified psychologist tell them that they are clinically impaired.

I for one have what I have for many, many years referred to as functional-OCD. It's not bad enough that I need to see a psychologist or take medicines to keep me from scrubbing my hands until they bleed or anything, but hook me up to a machine and move a smaller paperclip from it's container into the container with the larger paperclips and watch my heart rate and perspiration change - that's a clinically significant indicator.

In pure statistical terms, it represents +/- a certain number of standard deviations from the norm, and a (typical) predictive value of 5% or greater, meaning the results are unlikely to have occurred by chance (the lower the predictive value, the less conclusively the cause-effect relationship can be established). The symptoms list for AS are clinical indicators, and the degree of severity of each, as determined during testing by the psychologist, determine if they are clinically significant enough for a diagnosis.

I'm not 40+, although I'm getting close.

Honestly, if you can find a specialist you trust, talk it over with them and make the decision.

I can't tell you "do" or "don't."

I can only tell you I wish I hadn't.

It's mostly resulted in me being judged and stereotyped, because people who are high-functioning enough to live a mostly normal life just aren't in the statistics or the books or anything else. We've been under the radar and silly people (there are a lot of them) don't want to acknowledge that we exist because it flies in the face of what they've been taught.

It CAN help-- if you can find someone who is knowledegable enough to help you deal with the issues you face (as opposed to the issues someone with a "textbook" case faces). Or if you are knowledgeable enough (and tough/stubborn/patient enough) to make knowledgeable individuals out of ignorant people who think they know everything.

For me, diagnosis and disclosure have mostly resulted in what I can only refer to as losing my personhood. I am often treated as ret*d, unable to speak for myself, as if any successes I've had in life have been due to others' efforts or just a fluke.

I've come to believe it-- or at least to believe that I can't fight the fact that that's the way others are going to see it-- and to accept that having the diagnosis means I'm basically my husband's property for life.

It hasn't been good for me.

Unless you think that high-functioning autistics giving up and resigning themselves to living as permanently disabled is a good thing.

Which it might be.

I think I'm going away soon. I love this place but I am beat down and don't want to take everyone else down with me if I'm wrong.

I'm fighting the same things with certain people that I now regret I told anything to. It's making me have to fight that much harder to be able to stand up for myself and tell certain individuals to stop talking down to me like a child just because I messed up on something. The thing is, I'm not completely sure how much of that is because of them knowing about me, or how much of that is me starting to see a lot more of how they've been treating me. I think they've been treating me that way all along, and I've just been taking it, but now I'm starting to grow a backbone to deal with it. Being in a self-defense class for the past year has been helping me and my mindset in that respect. I worry that I'll overdo it at the moment, but I feel confident that I'll start to gain more control over my own self-confidence and not push people away when I tell them to stop pushing me around.

It's a work in progress.

It's good that you're developing a back bone! Sadly some pathetic people gain self esteem by bashing others. You have to stand up to shallow bigoted people (even if they're members of your family); just don't go too far! Sometimes a hard look is all it takes to shut people up; just pointing out that you didn't realize they were such a shallow person usually works.

If that happens in the workplace, school, etc then it's covered under harassment and discrimination rules. I have to tell certain people that just because their way of thinking happens to be in the majority it doesn't make them more right (ie: racism, discrimination against women, and despicable child labor practices were once accepted by the majority). Self-defense classes also taught me discipline (thank god!).

I agree we're all a work in progress

I hope you don't go away from WP, I can only speak for myself, but I don't mind if you come across as negative.
To address the op, I am choosing not to go for a diagnosis. As BuyerBeware wrote, I have often been treated as, " ret*d, unable to speak for myself, as if any successes I've had in life have been due to others' efforts or just a fluke."
I think, though I don't know for sure, that a diagnosis would deepen the reactions of many people.
I wrote some about recent house hunting in the dino-ex-cafe; these interactions with realtors & others only proved to me again that a label, at my age of early fifties, might prove useless or detrimental. A counselor who I trust confirmed my suspicions, but it was not an official diagnosis at all.
I am an artist, so folks in general probably classify me as fitting into their idea of even-stranger-than-usual-artist.

I am 39 and self diagnosed after 5 long years of soul and literature searching. My second wife (now ex) suggested it a long itme ago and after some initial research started on my path of self-discovery. Having a psych degree helped me be a little more objective with myself because I know the dangers of self-diagnosis. I was happy though when the final pieces clicked in to place and it became clear. At this point though I wouldn't bother with an official diagnosis. I see no benefit in it, not to justify and cost and frustration. Plus I feel I would just be accussed of molding my answers to fit the diagnosis that I wanted.
Much happier personally. It has helped to bring some cohesion to my mental life. I don't tell people about it mainly because I don't think they'd believe me. I put on a good show at work I don't have any friends that I hang out with so I don't have to worry about that. My kids would probably believe me, they are teenagers now. But I don't see the point of telling them either.
Now I am just trying to clean up the mess of the past 39 years and start becoming "myself" instead of a mask.

It's not so much dealing with pathetic or bigoted people, as much as it's just dealing with people that don't understand and are very closed minded toward trying to understand. I am very high functioning, one of the ones that other people might not believe if I told them I'm on the spectrum, so it's always assumed that I'm smart enough that "I should know better," a phrase that really irks me sometimes. Because I make a mistake that "even a child should know was wrong," they use that as justification to then lecture me like a child, and in the past I would grovel trying to make things better, or be very defiant, antagonistic, and, "Nuh-uh," which only added fuel to their view of me as acting childish.

The thing is, getting a diagnosis and waving it in their face is only going to antagonize them even further, and they will STILL say I'm acting childish. Coming up with ANY sort of excuse as to why I have these difficulties is seen as me just trying to excuse my behavior, but it's because they are too closed minded to want to see me half way. It takes effort for them to make an exception in their minds and to be able to sometimes excuse my behavior while I continue working on it.

I could call them pathetic for not being more open and empathetic to my predicament, but I'm not sure that that's any different than them calling me pathetic for how I sometimes make "childish" mistakes. They don't want to hear my excuses for making the mistake - they just want me to stop making them. Is it wrong of them to want me to become the person that no longer makes these kinds of mistakes? (This is sort of the whole disability vs. difference argument in a nutshell, is it not?) I guess you could say I have Tiger Moms as friends. I don't want to stoop to their level and call them pathetic, but I sometimes wish I could get a break from having to always live up to their expectations of me. (Yes, I know, this is ultimately a pressure I put on myself, which is why I'm working on that backbone to figure out how much I'm actually comfortable with taking from them, and where to draw the line. If it stays bad, even after I draw the line, then I will be dropping some certain people as friends.)

Sure, there's a part of me that wants to retaliate, get a diagnosis, wave it in their faces, make them feel sorry for how they've treated me all this time, and make them feel bad for not meeting me half way and not taken the time to listen to me when I tried to explain myself. But listen to the hate and anger that's in that sentence. Look at how vindictive of a person I would become, and quite frankly, I don't want to be that vindictive. Being able to protect myself and stand up for myself is one thing - becoming that which I hate (fighting against dragons too long...) is not what I wish for myself, as I know that path would result in my alienating everyone.

I'm sorry this is a tad off topic, but it's actually quite relevant. The people with whom you keep company and your own level of needs play a big, important role in how much a diagnosis will or will not benefit you. This is just further explanation as to why I don't think that a diagnosis at my age and given my circumstances will benefit me at all. Knowing what I know about myself is helping me understand my reactions and to move forward well enough within the confines of my existence.

I had exactly the same opinion until I had an issue at work; otherwise I probably wouldn't have gotten the diagnosis. Now that I have it I'm glad I did it. Having it confirmed made me feel a bit less 'weird' because there are a lot of people with Aspergers and ADHD and I'm doing pretty well in life despite the learning (I couldn't pay attention in class) and social issues I've always had. It helped in my marriage a bit too since it made it 100% obvious that some things I've repeatedly said weren't intentional (such as not reacting how normal people would to things) have a reason that doesn't have an 'intent' attached.
I don't think it's retaliation to have a diagnosis you can point to and state simply that you're just wired differently than they are and that regardless of how they feel it is inappropriate to treat you like that. Treating people that are different abusively is wrong no matter how they're different; I don't think there is much they can debate you on that point but I'm sure they'll find a reason to save face. Yes they'll say "they're joking" and that you're being overly sensitive (maybe that is true) but it only takes turning around that joking once or twice to make the point that it's still mean even if they don't think it's abusive.
I don't think you have to be vindictive - I'm not. You just have to reject abusive BS from other people because by not rejecting it you just enable it more. I try to never get angry if I can help it and only address this kind of thing calmly.
Your last point is 100% on target - it's the people you surround yourself with that matters most. If you can remove those shallow people from your circle of influence then do it. Knowing yourself and trying to understand others does help a lot. Keep in mind that even if you do get a formal diagnosis; you don't have to disclose it to anyone as far as I know.
I don't really see the Aspergers/ADHD that I have at this point as a disability because I've developed work arounds to help me be productive and to deal with the world as well or better than most people. It wasn't always that way though; I've spent a long time working on myself so that I could be self sufficient... I'm still a work in progress. As long as I keep learning new things and get better over time I'm happy with it all.

I've been reading everyone's posts here with rapt attention. Aot of good experiences of all kinds to draw from.

I guess part of my issue has been the workplace. I've wondered if having an official insurance-submitted/public diagnosis would help protect me. For example, part of my character is (duh) to speak up when something is done incorrectly. When I was young I did so with inappropriate verve, but I've now matured my responses and can simply put the info forward and only when the error is affecting output. It's one of the things I've spent decades teaching myself - to only speak up when it's more important and when I can do so neutrally.

However, in my current workplace is a person who now accuses me of creating a "hostile" work environment for her because I've simply asked questions about why she's pointing our work in certain directions. The real answer is she does what she does because it makes her queen-bee and because she's lazy. Again, who cares? - except the problem is she often puts other's work in jeopardy by doing so.

So, would I have additional protection from her ego-based, union-backed false claim that I'm being "hostile" by seeing and telling the truth about what she's doing? Meaning if I could point out I'm simply being the aspergian I am? Would my job be more secure under federal/other accommodation laws?

I guess after reading the above posts in some basic ways it could be more secure. They couldn't fire me outright. However, suddenly having everything I do or say ascribed to me being "disabled"/"ret*d"/etc would give those who want me to shut up and stop pushing for our company to live according to its own best interests fuel and reason to dismiss me even more.

I'm guessing now that since management has seen the truth (and in meetings tells me they totally agree with me), and even says its fixing all this (but really isn't), and even though a real fix would be quite simple (make her stop), the real solution is not to see if accommodation laws might protect me (when in fact that could backfire terribly), but to simply stop giving a damn (even if I have to seek another job to do so). And hopefully by shutting up she will stop focusing on me as a "hostile" person she can attack through channels (and if not I will still have to seek another job, but hopefully next time know to keep my mouth shut no matter what, though that's still hard for me to do).

It's a crazy world - and not in a good way.

GumbyLives,

Here's a story:

In my previous job, a co-worker was responsible for processing financial assistance applications, and I was responsible for entering them into a database. I had previously been the one to process them, so I knew everything that was required for them to be processed correctly, but my work load had grown so huge and it wasn't just my department that used the assistance, that a year prior that job duty was given to the co-worker since she had so much extra time on her hands. My attention to detail and need for things to be perfect (like families' applications for government assistance, of all things), meant I was catching all of her errors. I brought it up to her boss. I brought it up to the next boss. I started writing out the errors so that they could see exactly how often errors were being made (almost 75% of the time, by the time I reached this point). Their solution? Rather than disciplining the co-worker for constantly spending her day on MySpace (at the time) and texting on her cell phone and chatting around with other people instead of doing her work correctly, they, who were also chatty-cathy people that hung out with her regularly, took the work load of processing the invoices away from her and gave it to me. This was a small, 8-person office, and I was the nose-to-the-grindstone outcast amongst people that did the bare minimum work to get by and allow them to socialize more instead.

I guarantee you, even if I had a diagnosis at the time, it would have done not one bit of good against their ways of operating, sticking up for one another, and getting me off their backs to make them do their jobs correctly (the co-worker to do the paperwork correctly, and the bosses to their job of disciplining). If I did have a diagnosis and tried to use it for that purpose, it WOULD have backfired in one way or another. As it is, even without a diagnosis, there is no easy way to get around people that would rather chose to save face with certain staff than to buckle up and do the right thing in their jobs. It's a sad truth, that speaking up is a good thing ONLY TO A POINT, at which point this world sees our stickler-for-rules behavior as more of a nuisance to be rid of than to be abided by. As long as you've told the management, then you've done what's necessary, and you can chose to push beyond that for some kind of reaction, but you may not like the reaction you get. Honestly, a diagnosis for the sake of your specific situation is probably not a good idea.

I've enjoyed reading this thread.

I only have an unofficial diagnosis from a health professional who works with people with Aspergers and autism. I would like to get a more reliable unofficial diagnosis from a really high-powered professional in the field. That would be enough for me. Why would it need to be "official"? It just needs to be accurate. Maybe if anyone here wants a diagnosis for their own peace of mind but fears the insurance/employment consequences they could try to get a high-quality unofficial diagnosis. As far as telling people about having AS that seems a mistake to me. I think one is just setting oneself up to be discriminated against and not taken seriously any more.

That is exactly the kind of thing that I've been dealing with. I had a particular individual that had a position of leadership who was fear driven and was promoted beyond his competence level. People in management often don't really think through their decisions and when you start pointing at the periphery of issues that the decision will cause they take offense, as a challenge to 'their authority', and in many cases play positional politics about it to save face.
One of this person's method of operation was to request application modifications without any written documentation. I just couldn't stand meeting with this guy that I didn't trust and often the meeting didn't resolve anything because he refused to provide any real information.

Later my manager mentioned 'customer service issues' in my employee review and in my response I mentioned that I while I have Aspergers Syndrome and may sometimes come across as being abrasive my intentions were in line with the goals of the organization. I was honest but tried to remove my anger from the response that essentially painted the management structure negatively and demanded basic project management procedures such as providing a written specification for any modification requests. It wen t up the chain of command and then came down to 'do you have an official diagnosis?'. I didn't. So I found a provider and 4 hours later it was official. In addition to what I already knew -Aspergers- they diagnosed me with ADHD also.
It took a month or so to get the written diagnosis and as a result I requested a 'concession' that specifications be in writing (they SHOULD be anyway).


I really make an effort not to be abrasive (Toastmasters for 8 years so far has helped) and tend to put such things in writing now where it can't be twisted by those same gatekeeper, kingdom builder, control freak people; and it prompts a response. I don't always get a response from them though but it puts is on record. My diagnosis doesn't give me free license to be a jerk but it does offer some protection from people that just can't handle the truth

39, and unless I need to, I don't think I will seek a diagnosis. Self or otherwise. I know I'm not NT, I've researched Asperger's, and though it provides some answers, it doesn't quite fit. Looked into a few other things, and I see the same: nothing is quite right. To me, that's the problem with labels, its a square peg in a round hole, because individuals are individuals. I look to it for insight, and I suppose if I was in some sort of crisis and it might provide some tangible benefit, I might consider it. But only as a last resort.

Also, I see with many of the young people here, they're defining themselves by it and using it as a crutch to a degree. I think, having the label is in some cases harming them and preventing them from trying to overcome difficulties they face. If anything they need to try harder than NTs, not less. And even at my age I think I'm not immune from doing that, I could easily see myself becoming more apathetic about my problems with a label. Crutches have done me enough damage for one lifetime, I think.

I came across a poem today that is relevant to the above discussion about dealing with work issues.

Again, it's a sad state of affairs, but it affects anyone who doesn't fit with the work-place clique, AS or NT. The best bet, ultimately, is to find a place in which you fit nicely and the people aren't backstabbing pricks. I know, as well as anyone, how difficult that may be, though.

Workplace Interpersonal Skills by Kate Gladstone

I very much agree. A "label" should define where we grow from, not the limits of what we can achieve. In some ways younger aspies have it easier because they know what's up with them (unlike someone my age who was just bullied and punished for being "weird" with no thought that I'm just wired differently. On the other hand, I had to learn to deal with my differences, to grow strong with and in spite of them. I didn't have any headshrinkers to teach me how to look people in the eye and understand their chit chat, but I also didn't have any headshrinkers to define my existence within their shallow theory-of-the-day. Overall, I think older aspies got the better deal. I wouldn't trade for a second.

It really is difficult. The vast majority of people are ethically worthless, at best. I'm still trying to imagine the workplace I fit in - I don't think it exists anywhere in reality.