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Diagonised 5 years back but now I am doubting it.

Tonberry

Hello everyone. 

I came here because recently I've been going through some testing for ADD. to further add to my Diagnosis with ASP.. 
It is something that has come up during sessions of talking and was suggested to my doctor for possible further evaluation for ADD. It is not something I knew about or thought if myself.


This whole thing has made me brush up my knowledge in the field of psychology in general.
And like always when I get into something I dive down deep, I listen to audio books about psychology and read some on the internet and start watching youtube with people who has ADD and also ASP
I happen to watch a series on netflix called  "Atypical"  and just all the combination of information about ASP has made me doubt the original diagnosis. 


There are so many points I feel doesn't fit with me and honestly I felt that way when I first received my diagnosis.. I did mention it at the time,  that I felt it was slightly off.
Not completely but for sure some things just did not fit in with me I said. 

Their anwser was something like Autism spectrum disorder is a very very broad one and can show up different in different people. That it's not necessary to show all the traits and so on. 
I found that to be a sound argument, and it did made sense at the time so I just went with the flow. 
I had struggles and ASP did explain many of them.

But now after five years and I see myself with more fresh eyes I can't help but feeling like a fraud. It's making me freak out to think that I might have this diagnosis when I shouldn't have and my experience with medical health is that unless you have some serious problem they kind of shrug their shoulders and ask for the next patient. 

My fear is they will not take me serious ever again if it indeed does turn out if I do a Redo an evaluation for ASP and they find out I don't have it. Maybe they second guess my recently Diagnosis of ADD as well as they explained it usually is connected. 

Im just going to start taking medicine for ADD and I am looking forward to see if it improves my life but I am kind of terrified that it's all a misunderstanding, both the ASP and ADD!

I just want to say one final thing that did indeed trigger this, The psychologist who interviewed me for ADD looked at my past tests for ASP and said she was surprised it wasn't more done, that normally you do quite a lot before receiving a diagnosis.
I remember I got quite defensive about it and asked her if she  thinks I might not have it. After wards I feel I might have sounded a bit defensive and I am sure I scared her off the idea.
But now it bugs me to an extent I can't describe.  

Should I ask for an appointment with the psychologist who interviewed me for ADD and ask her more about my diagnosis of ASP and have a general talk about it to really get it out there?
I mean I have been going to talk sessions for more than 3 out of the 5 years (on and off with long pauses of course).And talked about my life and how to improve it.
So in one way they should have been able to spot if I didn't have it in my opinion, but who know's?
Maybe they are to proud to admit they we're wrong and unless I say something feels wrong they won't say anything else? 

I would like to hear peoples opinion about this. Should I lift up my concern and try to ask to remove my diagnosis or does that just cause me harm in a way that they think me untrustworthy in the future?

  • Have you ever attended a social or support group with other autistic people? You might find it eases some of your doubts about being an imposter, if you find you have things in common with them and see what differences there can be in people on the spectrum.

    I would certainly not take the representation of ASD in 'Atypical' as any sort of measure! Personally I don't relate to much at all in that, because it's kind of like they've squashed all of the stereotypical examples of the diagnostic criteria into one person. I know there are people who can relate to the main character in that, who maybe do fit the 'stereotypical' view of what someone with ASD is like, but the majority people show traits in all sorts of different ways and have quite different mixtures of different traits. I have recently been attending a post-diagnosis group with other people recently diagnosed with ASD as adults; we have lots of things in common, sometimes we have spookily similar experiences, but also some things we have in common but experience quite differently (for example, we all agreed we had executive functioning difficulties but struggled with different parts of that), some things we don't have in common so much e.g. we discussed talking about how you feel with people and the other people in the group agreed they were able to be straight forward and blunt about their feelings and gravitated towards other people who were too-but that is not me, at all, I have great difficulty expressing my thoughts and feelings, I felt quite left out of the discussion at that point and very out of place. At one point or another, I think all of us have been the one that's had the contrasting experience regarding one thing or another though (e.g. we were talking about food sensitivities and the prevailing experience was liking strong flavours, whilst just one person preferred bland food) which I think goes to show that whilst we share a lot (it's been really nice realising other people experience much of the same things) we're all still very much individuals. I think the adage 'if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person' is defintely a true one.