Now that I am officially diagnosed I feel enabled to express who I am. As I learn more about my authentic self (as opposed to the way I have always "pretended" to be) I find that I am developing more personality rather than a stiff contrived one. A lot of the stuff that comes out of my mouth now is information that I have kept bottled up because I thought NTs would not be interested. Now I speak out more often. I think sometimes I sound like a strident self-absorbed encyclopedia brain. I'm think that maybe this is a phase that will pass as I learn more about how to express my authentic self in relation to people around me.
I am semi-misdiagnosed in America, as I started talking in sentences at 3(normal), but skipped words altogether(abnormal). I was diagnosed with Aspergers anyway.
In a sarcastic way you mean or?
Good question, it did sound a bit patronising to me, the way some psychs are. As in "Oh, you've yet again decided you have a new problem. Of course you have".
I think if you want to get diagnosed, maybe you should first explain your symptoms to your GP, but NOT mention Asperger's, people saying they're Aspie seems quite common in many circles and he may think you just want a diagnosis out of convenience.
I agree, mentioning the main points, for each stage since childhood, should be more accurate and less likely to lead to an "Oh, no another hypochondriac" reaction.
(I'd never even heard of Asperger's til I was diagnosed, seem's I'm an odd one out)
I had heard of AS but had no clue what it was when I was first provisionally diagnosed and referred for a full assessment, so you're not alone 
My apologies, that was me as guest. I'll try not to forget to log in again.
I'm a relic of a bygone age - there was no Asperger's Disorder nor any "spectrum" when I was a child. There was either "Kanner's Autistic Psychopathy," or "Childhood Schizophrenia." Psychiatry was then dominated by Freud (the Viennese novelist!) and explained autism in terms of "Attachment Theory" and "The Frigid Mother." This alchemical mumbo-jumbo made parents feel appalling, and my own mother abandoned me age five rather than accept her (undeserved) feelings of guilt about being the "Frigid Mother" of an "Autistic Psychopath."
This iatrogenic psychosexual parental guilt, and the general social stigma which was worse then than now, made autism into a dark family secret. I expect it still is in many families today, which is why we see the scarcely concealed desire to punish people with ASD with electric shocks and starvation at the sinister Rottenberg institution.
Stella
After studying lobotomies and the history of them a bit, I find that despite it was a more invasive method than ol' Freudy's couch I prefer the idea of it more. Not because it removed small sections of the brains, twisted them around and shoved them back in or went in through the eye socket (ew) but because it did not blame the patient but said everything was due to the brain and malfunctioning.
That's a great point! The methods may be despicable but the theory behind them are more accurate and relate better to what is going on in someone's head
After studying lobotomies and the history of them a bit, I find that despite it was a more invasive method than ol' Freudy's couch I prefer the idea of it more. Not because it removed small sections of the brains, twisted them around and shoved them back in or went in through the eye socket (ew) but because it did not blame the patient but said everything was due to the brain and malfunctioning.
That's a great point! The methods may be despicable but the theory behind them are more accurate and relate better to what is going on in someone's head
It is interesting actually if you read through some of the older theories of desease and medicene how many old ideas were in some ways flawed but also in some ways kind of accurate but inmprecise.
Such as the one scientist (Name I forget) who believe desease was caused by "bad air" we now know that air itself cannot harm you but contominants or virui within it can.
Another maybe would be such as the four humours and the idea that certain substances being imbalanced caused someone to become ill, granted they were wrong about the substances in question and their attempts to fix the balance was often fatal but of course imbalances of substances in the body can cause illnesses, especially illnesses of a psycological nature.
I was pressured into getting an official DX by my boss at work after I told her I probably have AS. I've been working for her for over 10 years so she knew something was different about me. At first she thought I was some kind of genius who could do anything so she put me in my current position. I learned to program in a language I never dealt with before and this impressed everyone. After a few years she and I both realized that my abilities are very narrow. I can do some things extremely well but others seem to be completey out of my grasp. When I watch what my boss and others at work do, I can't even understand it. They just seem like they are talking on the phone all day and in meetings. I have no management abilities at all and wouldn't be able to run a hotdog stand. I know I have executive dysfunction.
At first she thought I was some kind of genius who could do anything so she put me in my current position. I learned to program in a language I never dealt with before and this impressed everyone. After a few years she and I both realized that my abilities are very narrow. I can do some things extremely well but others seem to be completey out of my grasp.
Blimey that's pretty much what it's like for me at work, I've taught myself several programming languages and database management 'on the job; and they seem to think I can do anything, programming-wise, and just keep me happy with new and interesting challenges that nobody else can deal with.
I got this job in 2001, before my diagnosis, due to the head tutor of our year passing on summer jobs to me (and this job called me back inside after I had walked out of the building without saying goodbye on my last day, and offered me a programming job based on my having mentioned a previous summer job in programming at the interview).
I have not told my boss about my diagnosis though (as she is a bit of a gossip - one word to her and seconds later everyone knows it 
), but I have made some of my problems and needs clear (and others they seem to have grasped without my telling them) so after me getting very stressed out over various things over the years, they do not give me jobs that might stress me out because of my sequencing problems (jumbling numbers, columns and so on), they do not have me dealing with phones and I have a nice quiet desk away from the main block of desks.
Losing my current job really scares me because I don't think I could work anywhere else. I couldn't get past the interview.
Same here. The company has had several waves of redunancies over the years, I was lucky because due to being so flexible with regards to programming languages, I got a lot of jobs done that nobody else could or would, so nobody else knows how to work a lot of the software in the company 
It's good that you've sort of entrenched yourself in your job. I was like that but then I started abusing my power. Now at work they have an outside consultant who does most of the programming. I still can however do some things quicker and cheaper and that's why I'm still around. I do all the software upgrades on our main system an IBM i-series (formerly AS/400).
We had a consultant when I started, he'd been there far longer than he had wanted to stay, so I sort of took over from him. Wasn't easy trying to decypher his commenting system :lol:
it sounds perfectly horrid, Fozzie - like Mormons knocking on your door trying to sell you an encyclopaedia
Stella
If one learns compensatory strategies with respect to impairments, is one still autistic?
Help!!!
This is why clinicians are so reluctant to diagnose ASD in adults, and why the life history - the history of development from earliest childhood - is the central plank in the diagnosis of a developemental disorder.
It is quite common for the more obvious florid signs of autism such as hand-flapping, spinning, pronoun confusion, echolalia, and all the rest, to fade as childhood progresses, and adaption and compensation for the missing "empathy" takes over.
Stella
Gillberg has been researching ASD for decades - he has 483 citations in MEDLINE.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2005 Dec 6;:1-13 [Epub ahead of print]
The Adult Asperger Assessment (AAA): A Diagnostic Method.
Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Robinson J, Woodbury-Smith M.
Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
At the present time there are a large number of adults who have suspected Asperger syndrome (AS). In this paper we describe a new instrument, the Adult Asperger Assessment (AAA), developed in our clinic for adults with AS. The need for a new instrument relevant to the diagnosis of AS in adulthood arises because existing instruments are designed for use with children. Properties of the AAA include (1) being electronic, data-based, and computer-scorable; (2) linking with two screening instruments [the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and the Empathy Quotient (EQ)]; and (3) employing a more stringent set of diagnostic criteria than DSM-IV, in order to avoid false positives. The AAA is described, and its use with a series of n = 42 clinic-patients is reported. Thirty-seven of these (88%) met DSM-IV criteria, but only 34 of these (80%) met AAA criteria. The AAA is therefore more conservative than DSM-IV.
PMID: 16331530 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]