Autism symptoms exaggerating when anxious

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jenisautistic
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13 May 2015, 8:59 pm

When you're anxious do your symptoms exaggerate? this happens to me a lot. It's almost like my brain is subconsciously trying to test the waters to see if I'll be excepted. For who I am. And then when I feel more comfortable my symptoms them stop being exaggerated. But I still have autism, which I am diagnosed by my psychiatrist at level two and my therapist as high functioning autism or Aspergers if it was still in the dsm. In my score of the ados 2 the autism rating scale was a 77/ highly elevated.

The problem is this happened on my Ados 2 and evaluator thought I was exaggerating are faking now I don't know what to do. it means that I can't get into programs for people like me who are autistic. Then The evaluator Wrote my psychiatric symptoms were more than my autistic symptoms
it says although there are many symptoms that point to autism spectrum disorder diagnoses it is highly likely that these behaviors are explainable by her most recent psychiatric symptoms Jennifer appears to have suffered for my psychotic break over the past year but a subjective out of either a serious mood disorder or possibly development of schizophrenia. As such much of Jennifers prior behavior and symptoms were likely pre-mortal symptoms related to psychosis.

Now I know is I really wasn't exactly exadurateing or faking but I was in a way because I was anxious although I was not faking and I don't think I was doing it intentionally. What happened was I asked about the test before I took it and I got too much research on it as well as being anxious. My autism ended up exadurateing on the test. When I asked about it I didnt know that people would tell me everything about it and really they didn't but they did tell me a little bit to moderately about it and I screwed myself up from my curiosity you know the phrase curiosity killed the cat well that's me.

I don't know what to do? I really did not get that much information on the test Before however it was enough to screw it up I think. when my therapist said they were going to test me with the ados2 I should've left it alone and never looked it up and waited till I was less anxious and better psychiatrically.

I know longer really hear voices anymore so I do not believe I am schizophrenic and Im most certainly not bipolar and even if I were it would be comorbid. I really screwed up on the evaluation, so my evaluator will never know.


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alex
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13 May 2015, 9:02 pm

Yes. They most definitely do.


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alex
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13 May 2015, 9:43 pm

The more anxious I get, the more obvious the symptoms are. It's also more obvious when I'm overtired.


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Waterfalls
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13 May 2015, 10:17 pm

Yes.

I don't trust the ados. It's still a subjective test because the psychologist interprets what they see as far as what it means.

The psychologist who tried to do The ados on my daughter said no ASD, which planted confusion in my head that still bothers me even after she was diagnosed. I've never had an ados done and I would be afraid to trust one to describe me.

You seem very real to me. Not fake. People applying weird labels to me sometimes makes me doubt myself and wonder what I'm exaggerating. I don't think though that trying to conform by going along with other people's disbelief who I am does anything good, so I try not to....it is hard because usually, I'm trying to conform.



FireyInspiration
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13 May 2015, 10:25 pm

I'm this way as well. I can mask myself pretty good normally, but when I get any stress, my symptoms begin to bleed through.



League_Girl
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14 May 2015, 12:28 am

I think it's normal for autistics. It happens to me too.


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jimmyboy76453
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14 May 2015, 6:14 am

This seems to be one of the ways that ASD works. When I'm tired or anxious or angry or frustrated about something, I get really bad. When I'm feeling ok, I can almost, ALMOST pass as normal. So much so that people who have only seen me that way don't believe me when I say I'm autistic. But when my brain is especially taxed or overloaded with emotion, I degenerate into someone who resembles a low-functioning autistic person.


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cavernio
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14 May 2015, 6:23 am

Stress/anxiety is the only time I really notice overt autism symptoms in myself. Tiredness is a stressor.


I am sorry that someone thought you were faking it. I don't know why but I seem to get a lot of stuff like that too. Honestly I think it's because you're a young female. They like to suspect borderline personality disorder in any woman who is under 50 and doesn't look like a hobo. OF course, borderline personality disorder is also misinterpreted as people acting out for attention when it isn't at all, but if you had that non-existent diagnosis it would explain why you exaggerated your symptoms. Given that emotional volatility is part of that diagnosis and that is involved with autism too, and is the main thing with borderline personality disorder, I can at least see the connection, but it is disgusting and infuriating the lack of trust. It makes me righteously angry that things like that happen. I swear my current family doctor thinks I might be lying about my celiac disease because I haven't done the paperwork for him to get official records yet (or the office just didn't send them over, I thought I had filled out the forms but my memory is bad for things like that.)

And why on earth do they keep looking for 'proof' anyways? You've had like a million evaluations it seems. It is so apparent the lack of reliability and therefore validity of measures of autism, 3 different evaluations shouldn't mean 3 different results. How is anyone supposed to work with that, you or them???

I cannot help you with anything, but I will tell you that perhaps you don't want to rule out the possibility that they were actually right about a psychotic episode. You ARE the right age for the development of schizophrenia, and there's nothing I've found that says you can't both be autistic and have schizophrenia.


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Andrejake
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14 May 2015, 7:35 am

Yes, the difference between what I'm capable of when I'm calm/relaxed and when I'm too anxious/nervous is huge.