The Diagnosis (and friends) Issue

[total-recoil]

I'm still swatting up on aspergers and diagnosis. I think I need to in great depth as soon I will be sat in front of an analyst and want to know what to expect. From what I gathered so far, there are very many people who have been told they don't have A.S. One individual states the analyst told him he didn't have A.S. as he was making eye-contact. If true, then it seems to me as if the analyst has got it a bit wrong.
Needless to say, a person who believes he (or she) has A.S., only to be informed that is not the case, can become very upset and confused.
Already I can see it's a very very complex issue as the human mind is also incredibly complex. It's so easy for even a trained psychologist to get it wrong. I really do want to be totally prepared for my consultation so I have counter answers ready if the consultant is skeptical. Not to say I'm not 100 per cent open to the concept of my not having aspergers but if that is indeed the case I would want a very strong diagnostic break-down as to why. Then I'd be happy.
I hope I don't cause offence by my tendency to view this subject a bit impersonally. I just find if I can step outside of my personal feelings and look at the whole issue clinically and subjectively, it really does help me to make logical deductions.
By this stage, so far as I'm aware, aspergers is viewed as a kind of autism that inhibits social interaction. I will outline the basic criteria.
(1) A feeling of isolation and being ignored in group situations and just being different than everybody else as if you don't belong.
(2) Being obsessed by one particular interest and often exhibiting extraordinary abilities in that field of interest.
(3) Not reading other people very well and knowing how to say the right thing or act in very subtle ways which most people will do automatically to be accepted by a group.
(4) Motor skills deficiency which makes driving or team ball games unusually difficult.
(5) Not directly engaging with people but sort of talking at them in a subjective way, but intending no offence or disrespect.
(6) Sensitivity to noise which may provoke anger or irritation (with me it's the wind blowing creaky doors or mobile phones going off)
(7) Tantrums and overload.
(8) Friustration and anger when you fail to do something to your own standard and it all goes wrong?
(9) Stimming whereby some people flap their arm or rock.
(10) Literal minded and not quite reading between the lines.
(11) Depression caused by social rejection issues either perceived or real.
(12) Poor, scrawly handwriting.
(13) Visual learning process of the mind and poor audio audio-based learning which makes regular classroom teaching troublesome for many aspies.
(14) Can't bear the touch of some fabrics and feel itchy or stifled by them.
Personally speaking I relate strongly to virtually all of those symptoms, except probably literal interpretation of communication.
And I can now make eye contact but hardly at all in a group context.
Anyone agree with my perception of the basics of aspergers and have I got it more or less right?

 

[eon]

No, I mean this follows some very broad traits that have previously been defined as diagnostic criteria of asperger's. I just find it hard to define people with these kind of descriptions. Being on the spectrum, your aspie identity , it's a lot more complex than these end result descriptions and diagnosis. I'm kind of anti diagnosis. I think it's negative. I recommend the aspie discovery criteria. Need to update my signature for the link because I'm seeing a lot of posts come out around this idea recently

 

[total-recoil]

I think what bugs me is friends and family won't take seriously the notion I'm probably aspie. And that bothers me. It's not so much official diagnosis I seek but mainly the opinion of an expert who is hopefully both sympathetic and knows his (or her) field.
I suppose there could be alternatives to many of the above symptoms. For example, in one old episode of the Incredible Hulk, David Banner (Bill Bixby) meets a girl who was once removed from her family and sent to a think-tank as she had super high I.Q. In the episode she is raised apart from her mother and finally runs away from the institute and then meets Bill Bixby. He then discovers as smart as she is, she knows nothing about basic social interaction because all she ever did at the institute was play piano, do I.T., maths, lit and so on. Anyway the tear jerker somes when she finally meets up with her mother and the mother finally accepts her.
Yes, very very difficult to diagnose aspergers but my hope is there is a basic set of behaviour patterns that roughly cover the people who exhibit it.

 

[eon]

Here's my favorite definition and thought process I was referring to above


I understand exactly how you feel as someone who has spent their whole life misunderstood & unable to participate with people.

 

[rolo]

Hello and welcome Total-recoil You certainly have been doing your research-however, as I experienced at first, it can be both confusing and frustrating-I was misdiagnosed then dual diagnosed with borderline then the borderline was removed-I also have anxiety cyclothimia and Ocd-I went slightly bonkers trying to pre-empt what a specialist/psychiatrist/psycologist would do or say next-my best advise would be to take a little time out and just be honest with yourself-I feel that given the space we generally know what feels right-its very easy to be mislead by misinformation-coming on this site hopefully may relieve some of the anxiety and answer a few questions. one last point-even though some family members have seen my diagnosis they still do not accept it. This is up to them. they will either come round in time or they won't. It's what you do with the knowledge that really matters.

 

[Loomis]

You missed anxiety. Most aspies have anxiety. From what I have read in the scientific literature this is a result of the different anatomy of the amygdala in those of us with ASD. Also we tend to look at details but miss the big picture because our brains are over-wired in local regions but lack inter-connectivity. We have smaller corpus callosums which connect the brain hemispheres. (As a side note, for all you in Australia, marsupials lack a corpus callosum.) I have been scouring the scientific literature myself to try and gain better understanding of ASD. I worked as a scientist for many years so I understand the jargon. One puzzle piece that's fallen into place is that there are some ASD s that are caused by small genetic differences, but ASD s, in general, and especially aspergers are the result of many common genetic variants which in the aggregate result in our condition. I intend to keep reading this literature until I have gained a very solid scientific understanding of the science of autism.

It is very annoying when I read the literature to be constantly bombarded by terms like dysfunctional, aberrant, deficiency etc. It is always described as something you definitely do not want to have. Another annoying thing is that among all of the papers I have read so far, only one bothered to actually ask the aspies how they viewed the world. And this is in spite of the fact that the papers are filled with acknowledgements that aspies have normal to high intelligence.

I approached my diagnosis from exactly the opposite pole as you are coming from. My wife suggested I had aspergers so I read some stuff about it and decided, before my assessment, that while I did have some aspie traits I was missing enough of them that I probably was not on the Autism Spectrum. I really was not invested in the outcome one way or the other. If I did not have it, then fine. On the other hand if I did, then that was OK too. Well it turned out I do have it and I am happy because I was given an accurate diagnosis by someone who I knew to be an expert in the field. And now I know why I have the type of problems I do with people, communication and obsessions.

Good Luck, I hope you get a highly competent examiner who can give you a definitive answer.

 

[total-recoil]

I've been tussling with this diagnostic situation all weekend in between my electronics swatting. I came across the so-called A.Q. test and tested strong positive although believe it's way way too superficial to diagnose aspergers. Problem is some of the questions are a bit vague like if you'd rather go to a museum or theatre. In my case it would be neither but if I had to make a forced choice it would be a museum.
Anyway.......
Actually I'm right back to the drawing board as I've concluded that to accurately diagnose aspergers is very complex and also I think there are wide gaps between asperger personalities. Take Einstein and Hans Christian Anderson: Both were diagnosed post mortem with aspergers but two very different minds. Anderson lived in a highly imagininative world of make believe and fiction while Einstein was totally devoted to physics. Yet both those two individuals had major problems fitting into society.
I decided to go about this by another path. Let me outline what I feel aspergers actually is (and even this is highly debatable and complex).
To my mind, aspergers does have to be considered as a disability but definitely not a condition that requires social programming or social adjustment as if the aspergers person is in any way inadequate. I do use the word "disabilty" because I think the fact I struggle to understand and interpret how other people function puts me at a strong disadvantage in social situations. I have met many highly intelligent people in my time and of these some were aspergers and some were considered more or less normal.
The latter group, therefore, encountered no specific problem understanding social norms despite their well above average intelligence.
One problem is aspies frequently don't realise their enormous potential because I believe they don't usually finction at all well in a rigid, classroom situation dicated by rigid routine and multi-tasking as some academics or scientists do. Aspies perform brilliantly when their more narrow particular interest is found and they're able to approach it in a non rigid manner using visual learning methodology, not audio based or teacher-to-student based system.
Anyway to avoid over rambling, my thoughts are now led to focusing on the autism aspect of my assumed condition. The actual difficulty understanding, reading, interpreting other people as well as acceptance issues in social situations. Add to that the anxiety caused by such a scenario as has been pointed out. And factors such as sluggish movements (very evident as a kid), withdrawel, considered slow and assumed poor aptitude at school.
My best fried had A.S. He was a brilliant rock musician. You should have seen him play lead guitar. Talk about brilliant. Even so, he simply couldn't find acceptance or a sense of acceptance in rock bands and his A.S. was more evident than mine, to the point it was visible. I'd tell him about a problem I had and he just couldn't empathise. I'm told I do that a little but not as bad as he did.

 

[total-recoil]

I'm no longer bothered if a psychologist agrees with me or not. The term doesn't really matter to me. The psychologist could as easily get it wrong as get it right. The only way I can help is to give as specific information as I can.
What's really more important to me is how to function in society without being an oucast because this is what has been happening for decades. My former employer used to get dozens of phone calls by clients complaining. Often these complaints were fiction. provoked by insecurity, maybe jealousy or a knee-jerk reaction to someone who was different. However, this left me as being barely employable. Fortunately at the time my employers needed me more than they could afford to let me go so they tended to just move me around if there were complaints. Now in a time of economic downturn this isn't so easy. I concluded I need to streamline my work more and perhaps work in an area where productivity is going to outweigh popularity if that makes sense. I also need to come to terms with being different so I understand the reasons behind it and can handle it better. If that makes sense.

Hello and welcome Total-recoil You certainly have been doing your research-however, as I experienced at first, it can be both confusing and frustrating-I was misdiagnosed then dual diagnosed with borderline then the borderline was removed-I also have anxiety cyclothimia and Ocd-I went slightly bonkers trying to pre-empt what a specialist/psychiatrist/psycologist would do or say next-my best advise would be to take a little time out and just be honest with yourself-I feel that given the space we generally know what feels right-its very easy to be mislead by misinformation-coming on this site hopefully may relieve some of the anxiety and answer a few questions. one last point-even though some family members have seen my diagnosis they still do not accept it. This is up to them. they will either come round in time or they won't. It's what you do with the knowledge that really matters.