Why do people here assume all ASD diagnoses are correct?

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Self diagnosis is pretty accurate starting at around the seventh level of khef. The more you progress outside yourself, they more likely you can make an accurate assessment of yourself based on research sources from the outside. Once you can watch your body become a dried up husk of dehydrated human matter, you can be relied upon to diagnose your own psychology and psychiatry... wait, f***, real life rules, right... I got nothing, wrong skillset equipped today. IGNORE ME!

the labels only have meaning and existance due to diagnosis from a qualified professional though,however anyone can say they have x/y/z traits/difficulties and no one has a right to say they dont have them as they arent in their body to say they dont experience it.

In that study, the most common reason for not meeting DSM-5 was lack of deficits in non-verbal communication for social interaction. 86% with ASD+ID met criteria, while 72% of ASD without ID met criteria. 85% diagnosed by psychologist met criteria, while 70% diagnosed by eudcational/medical professional met criteria. The children were 8 years old. In my opinion, 8-year-old autistic children who don't have significant deficits in non-verbal communication for social interaction probably don't have autism. In the future, the DSM-IV era will probably be considered a period of overdiagnosis for ASD. We can say now that the DSM-III era was a period of underdiagnosis of ASD due to lack of understanding of HFA. The DSM-5 might balance things out.

This is very true... however, the "doctor" (specialist, authority) is in the same predicament. Many psychiatrists, psychologists, MSWs, see their speciality everywhere they look. Plus, most people in these professions want patients that keep coming back with followups and checkups. If they are licensed to prescribe meds, then if you come in thinking you have a problem, chances are you do according to helping professionals everywhere. "Try these pills, and come back in a month, and let's see how you are doing."

Last edited by tall-p on 29 Jan 2014, 9:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is also a predicament in any area in which a judgment is required, but it is not the same as the predicament that I am talking about, the one in which the person evaluating themself is missing the largest part of the data to match to the evaluation criteria. What other people tell me about myself is a source of outside data, but it is not as outside as it needs to be, if I am also the person evaluating myself based on this data. It is outside enough if the same information is provided to the professional for the professional to evaluate the information about me outside of my head.

I think what people are missing, though it has been mentioned, is how key is the subjective element. For instance if you accept a professional diagnosis, choose or reject this or that therapist by deciding this or that therapist knows more or less than another therapist or knows more or less than yourself about yourself, this is all based on ones own subjective evaluation, and all kinds of motives and misconceptions can and probably always do enter into this from both ends. I do agree with Btbnnyr that someone outside can in some instances see things about oneself that oneself cannot see, but such a person can also set a person on the wrong track.

And the problem with being placed on a spectrum is that all kinds of things about oneself that one needs to work on in order to change oneself can be missed by making too broad generalizations, and yes, everybody needs to change, grow, have insight about themselves in interaction and so develop. You cannot just expect the world to adjust to you, so I think the OP makes a good point. A person can use a diagnosis, just as anything, to not see certain things about himself, or it can help him to see certain things about himself.

One thing that deeply disturbs me is that I hear many people who are autistic implying or even outright saying they are born with personality problems, so it is okay to not work on themselves. There may be some truth in some instances to the idea of being born with limitations, but I think it is often a false idea, though a person can be born a certain way and because of this have and develop all kinds of problems. This I do believe, as I have an autistic child with high language skills (though I do not know if this is genetic or the way I worked with her, as having been trained as a preschool teacher I gave her a lot of extremely specialized learning tools) who was observably different when she was born, bizarrely intense---she did not even look like a baby but like a little man, very stiff and could not cuddle etc.). I had never seen anything like it and was shocked--the way the parent responds to this will surely amplify certain tendencies, and it can happen very early on, especially if the parent doesn't have the skill to deal with such a unique situation.

Anyway, in autistic encapsulation, the tendency is to go from left brain fine tuning to right brain generalization. This is just how the brain works, in that a person omits extraneous information in order to frame an action. This is normal brain function, or actually all brain function, but a person can take refuge in right brain generalization and make a fortress out of it. Let's say they do it because of emotional pain and physical discomfort from being thwarted. If it happens at a certain age, a child who has already developed language skills may begin to regress. This is a pretty common story. Or, because a child has some kind of brain damage as a fetus or some kind of genetic condition, a certain kind of brain, he may not be able to make certain connections, but if there is facilitation at an early age, this could make a big difference, as he will be able to build upon the new connections he is being helped to make.

The big problem I have with being diagnosed on a spectrum, is that thinking about oneself in this way this encourages over-generalized thinking and makes a kind of tendency to not hone in on specific issues and to use thinking of oneself as being on this spectrum as a protective device..

Now the example the OP gave is kind of interesting in that it seems she was describing a dysfunctional family that was leaving things out and reinforcing a dynamic around being autistic. Of course, OP, because of your own naivete or whatever, you got sucked into it, but it hopefully was a learning experience. However you do sound kind of angry with these people. In a way I don't blame you as you were probably looking for some kind of a relationship, and you got conned, and when you realized it you probably had to give up the ideal of having a relationship with that person, which is sad. These people were stuck in a dysfunctional bubble, as I think many people are.

There is this saying: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer..

Now the key out of autistic encapsulation, of being stuck in that little protective globe, is using the principle of encapsulation consciously. I do see see some people in this world as having a possibility of doing that. Others are set in their own functioning. They are bonded and clinging to themselves and maybe to some others who are supporting their illusions. So it is possible to use being a part of a community to work on freeing oneself from being locked inside oneself in a small protective circle of way over-generalized data processing or to use being in such a community to not come out of this shell. So how big is the community? Is it just people on WP (who agree with oneself?:-) or is it all people on WP or all people anywhere and everywhere?