Wrongly diagnosed?

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Here is how it goes: I was given a diagnosis of pdd when I was 5, but only due to a speech delay.(no testing or psychiatric analysis was given at that time,only evaluation and interviews and this was in 1995). So after going through all of my memories ever since I was 3 years old up until now ( I am currently 21), there has always been considerable room for doubt. I was always very social until I started getting bullied and laughed at, and it caused alot of grief and depression, and I also started getting really paranoid and shy because I was afraid that the other kids were going to start teasing me again. But the major turning point was in my sophomore year in high school. There was an incident where I was "Accused" of stalking a girl. The reason was because she had broken up with me after a week, I thought that was totally unfair and that she didn't give a fair shot, not to mention I had never dated prior to that( I was always girl-shy). So I thought that if i called her house alot and wrote an insane amount of notes, that i could "pressure" her into wanting to date me again. (very mean on my part) I knew it was wrong at the time, but i just didn't seem to care. ( I have told her that I was sorry many times, but doesn't want anything to do with me because she was told I had Aspergers/PDD) She was just sympathetic, but never accepted me after that. ( Thats when the anxiety and paranoid thinking got out of control, and I got sent to a special education school) I also got really depressed and they put me on abilify, which caused a major social withdrawal and increased paranoia) I was given neuro-psych testing but I remember not giving the testing a fair shot because I had alot of anxiety and stress and just didn't want anything to do with my "disability", So I don't think the testing was completed accurately and further acknowledges the possibility of doubt. I just want an honest opinion because I was always a people person until I got bullied, and I know meds screwed me up too. I am trying to get an accurate test done in the near future, and I want to know the truth-so please help!!

How do you know it was only regarding a speech delay? Even if they didn't do neuropsych testing, by meeting you in person the examiner could have noticed whether you made eye contact, whether you stimmed, if you tried to compensate for your speech delay with nonverbal communication & gestures, etc. They may not have mentioned all the autistic traits they noticed.



Some autistics are less sociable. Others are sociable but unskilled at social interaction. Lorna Wing described three subtypes of autistic social interaction - aloof, passive, and active-but-odd. Active-but-odd subtype are plenty sociable, but they don't get how to relate to others. They're also the most likely to be bullied, because the passive and aloof kids don't react as much to attempts to bully them and are therefore less fun to torment. (Plus they're more likely to be readily recognized as disabled, and it's considered unacceptable to bully a disabled kid.)



It sounds like you did stalk her. Stalking can be an issue for autistic people, because of obsessiveness and poor social skills (don't know what's crossing boundaries).



Try taking some of the online tests of AS. There's a stickied thread of official tests for AS online. Any one of them can be wrong, but if most of them suggest you're on the spectrum, you probably are.

And remember - being autistic does not mean the bullying you've experienced was in any way justified. The bullying was due to the bullies' psychological problems, such as intolerance of difference, conduct disorder, etc.