Aspies For Freedom

I'm 25, and throughout my education (to degree level) the fact I may have Asperger's has been suggested but never officially diagnosed. I am academically gifted (especially in the areas of Physics, Mathematics, English, Art and Music) yet socially inept, very clumsy, incapable of dealing with any changes in my life and I display a variety of odd repetitive movements. I also dislike physical contact with anyone except people I really trust, I cannot make eye contact with people and I find it very difficult to put names to faces.

In recent years I pretty much forgot the fact that I may have Asperger's and over the years I  learned to assimilate relatively 'normal' social behaviour.

I have been refered to many psychiatrists over the years and have been diagnosed with a variety of mental illnesses including depression, bipolar disorder (manic depression), social phobia, generalised anxiety disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder (manifesting itself as emotional immaturity, rapid and extreme mood swings and self-absorbtion). The medications I have been prescribed for these problems over the years have only made the symptoms worse.

It has only recently occured to me that maybe I've been misdiagnosed and really do have Asperger's instead. Every online Asperger's test I have taken rates me as 'likely to have Asperger's'.

Do I mention this to my psychiatrist? Surely if I do have Asperger's he'd have realised by now? What do I do? Help! Please!

Sorry this post got so long. I tend to waffle on about myself...

Online Asperger's tests make it look like everyone who is shy and quirky has Asperger's. I think if you want to be sure of your diagnosis you should ask a professional about it or do some SERIOUS research- and do keep in mind that people tend to want to be special; it's all too easy to convince yourself that you have something like Asperger's.

Over the last few days I've been reading through these forums and it seems like the general consensus here is not just that having Asperger's is *okay* but that, in fact, it is somehow *superior*- which is a disturbing concept, and could easily contribute to a person's desire to have Asperger's.

So, be careful. If Asperger's was nothing but a big bowl of fun and sunshine, it wouldn't make as many people as miserable and confused as it does.

Believe me, I don't want to have Asperger's. I don't want to have anything wrong/different about me but there quite obviously is whether it's Asperger's or not.

I just feel Asperger's could be the closest match to the problems I have. For the last 10 years I have been confusing mental health professionals by being a 'complex case' and never quite fitting into any diagnosis I have been given. Whenever I am given a new diagnosis they refer to my symptoms as 'atypical'.

Asperger's could explain a lot of my behaviours that confuse the psychiatrists - I rub/clap my hands when I am excited, I rock and jerk my head when I am anxious, I have to take my security blanket everywhere with me, I rock myself to sleep at night, I hate being hugged, I have limited facial expression and can't recognise facial expression in others, I cannot separate voices from background noise, I am scared of loud noises, I lack empathy, I hate interacting with anyone I don't know and trust, I have panic attacks when I hear people arguing or crying, I talk to myself, I have no physical co-ordination....

Well anyway, you get the idea.

All I want is a professional to say 'this is why you behave differently to everyone else', which so far no psychiatrist has been able to do. They just tell me I'm baffling and change my diagnosis every few months. I suppose I just want a definite diagnosis, whether that's Asperger's, Bipolar or BPD I don't mind.

Oh, and I've been off all the medication for two months because the mood levellers I was taking weren't having any positive effects and were giving me very bad side effects.
I do feel better without the drugs, but my unusual behaviour and thought patterns still mean that I am unable to lead a 'normal' life.

Oh, and I have cognitive behavioural therapy once a week and see a social worker regularly. Neither of these really help because they both say they don't understand me and I am very 'complex' and hard to read.

I think the problem is that practically all the patients on a mental health ward rock to to themselves/bounce their legs and most of them talk to themselves too.
The thing is that the other patients do it because they are hearing voices or whatever, I do it because it's just what I've always done, and it makes me feel better.

I'm definitely going to mention it to my psychologist next week (because she listens to me more than my social worker or psychiatrist) and see what she thinks about possible Asperger's.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I have just talked to my mum about Asperger's and apparently people have been suggesting to her that I'm Asperger's for years, she just never connected it to my depression and anxiety. One of her friends has a son my age who is an Aspie and they often comment about how alike our behaviours are.

I've just shown my mum the diagnositic criteria and some descriptions of Asperger's and she is amazed at how closely I fit all the criteria.

She's been telling me stuff about when I was a baby and it's disturbing how typically Asperger's my behaviour was and still is. I was her first baby and she said that she though all babies acted like me until she had my sister. It was only then she realised I was very different to 'normal' kids.

Anyway, she's going to support me in trying to get an official Asperger's diagnosis. At least that way we will know for certain what we are dealing with, and psychiatrists will stop trying to put me on inappropriate medication.

I recognize myself as I am seeking diagnoses also. I also match most of your commented symtoms in your first message.

Especially "I have panic attacks when I hear people arguing or crying" I have not read anyone else doing that - I do that and start frantically pacing or doing some sort of physical activity to calm down.
One time when I was 10 or so my mom and a sister where arguing and I ended up obsessively cleaning the entire kitchen - floors, walls, ceiling etc. Mom was concerned but happy with the result!

I am seeking the diagnoses to find something that works instead of drugs for supposed mental disorder. At least it would explain the anxiety, depression etc better than manic-depessive. Like you the online tests all point in that direction
There are several books out there that seem to have hints and tips on how to cope. I would like to try those. - it however seems a waste of time to go through all that with out a outcome goal. I have lots of books on depression, anxiety and bipolar - none of those have really helped. Prozac does help but I cannot take that now because of meds I have for atrial-fibrulation (probably brought on by all the anxiety and stress!)

Now I need to get the courage to ask my doctor in the HMO to refer me. I don't like answering all the personal questions in therapy. I am very shy about talking about my feelings.

Take Care
Don

I mentioned Asperger's to my psychologist and she agrees that it is very likely I am an Aspie, or have a similar developmental disorder. She said that Asperger's fits with everything I have told her over the last four months, and explains why my problems have existed since I was a very young child.

She can't make a diagnosis herself, but she is referring me to a psychiatrist who specialises in developmental disabilities. She thinks that getting an official diagnosis would be good for me because then mental health workers would stop trying to 'fix' me and putting me on inappropriate medications.

Thanks to everyone who suggested I mention Asperger's to my psychologist, I do feel much better now a professional has taken the possiblity of Asperger's seriously.

Just by the way, What does Aspergers has to do with tiptoieng or other traits like that?

they feel good.

Well thats no reason is it? I like titoing walking because its silent , well more silent then other forms of walkin..

I was personally diagnosed with BPD. However, AS seems to me a much better working hypothesis: it explains a superset of the facts that BPD can account for.

LOL at the "meds make my symptoms worse" part.

There's nothing quite like a misdiagnosed case of ADD and a bottle of adderall to get an Aspie's leg twitching and hair twirling.

Yes and more yes to just about everything above.

I am disabled due to anxiety disorders which are quite obviously based in my AS issues. I was even diagnosed with Aspergers back in 1981 by my middle school special-ed teacher, but that wasn't a valid diagnosis in this country at that time and so up to 1998 I was still being classified with various atypical mental illnesses. Every drug I've been given either spins me so fast that I can't even think anymore or drops me so low that I don't have the motivation to do any more than sit around unless someone physically drags me out.

Now that I have some idea as to what might be wrong, I'm reading everything I can find (almost all of it written since I was declared disabled) on Aspergers and ASD. It's hard to communicate how good it feels to finally have evidence that I'm not a one-off that nobody understands, but rather the victim of decades-long misdiagnosis.

The only advice I can give when talking to doctors is to suggest anything and everything. Specialists tend to never look outside their specialty and so when they see even some symptoms of their specialty they stick on that tag. Which the next doctor looks at and respects because it comes from a specialist in the field and so on and so on until the person who just needed some coaching on how to deal with a world so very different from their own is so drugged up and mis-labeled that they really are mentally ill. This is a tragedy that, were it in my power, would never happen to another person.

As for dealing with NTs, I think I'd be okay if they were just more consistent between what they say and what they actually do/feel. Dishonesty sucks.

Donal
Aspergers, Dyslexia and more issues than a newsstand