Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi
Has anyone else out there been diagnosed with both aspergers and personality disorder. I suffer from depression and had a challenging upbringing and was diagnosed with personality disorder 3 and half years ago, recently i was assessed by the personality disorder people to say I had aspergers traits although they wont/cant give me a proper diagnosis.
I was told that people with aspergers should not have psychotherapy , in fact it was dangerous. I feel that i am being treated as if having aspergers means that my experiences in childhood can not affect me as my brain works different.
The whole thing has been really unpleasant experience. I was bullied for the first 2 and half years of group therapy by 2 women, the staff didnt believe me, even though some of it was going on in front of them. It was only when these two unpleasant women left that other members of the group spoke out as they were scared of being bullied themselves.
I have found myself feeling an outsider, the psychiatrists idea of someone with aspergers is the big bang theory.
Actually the whole experience has been unpleasant , of the 3 and half years I have been going 3 years have been dealing with bullies. because I am stupid and have to keep to routines, I kept going back. I kept hoping things would get better.
I have only just started to deal with the aspergers and also my past, but i feel so angry that I leave in 6 months and have not dealt with a lot of issuses other than survive.
Am I on my own with aspergers and personality issues
-----"suffer from depression and had a challenging upbringing and was diagnosed with personality disorder 3 and half years ago, recently i was assessed by the personality disorder people to say I had aspergers traits although they wont/cant give me a proper diagnosis."
If they can specify a set of traits to which yours belong, then they MUST diagnose for that category. There is no single trait that is, in and of itself, autistic; it is, rather, the collection of traits that co-occurs that gets the descriptor of autistic. When clinicians use the term 'X traits/features/etc', they are essentially committing fraud by trying to identify a diagnosable set of traits without diagnosing them for what they are. If a set of traits can be identified as belonging to a category X, then the category X must be diagnosed.-----"I was told that people with aspergers should not have psychotherapy , in fact it was dangerous."
Whoever told you this was destructively wrong.
Psychotherapy can be aimed at helping to overcome, for example, the tendency to cognitive-behavioural inflexibility we have, without it altering the fact that one is autistic: the therapy provides a work-around, rather than eliminating the tendency to such rigidity of thought and behaviour. There is a massive difference between the two. And, since the tendency to rigidity in thinking is definitely a harmful thing in life (to anybody, not just autistic people), then learning work-arounds is very much a good thing that will help with mental health problems that are based on that way of thinking and behaving.-----"I was bullied for the first 2 and half years of group therapy by 2 women, the staff didnt believe me, even though some of it was going on in front of them. It was only when these two unpleasant women left that other members of the group spoke out as they were scared of being bullied themselves."
This should never happen. If they were staff, then this should have been a disciplinary matter. If they were group member - then this should have triggered a letter to their referral agent, informing of their inappropriateness for the group.-----
David N. Andrews M. Ed., C. P. S. E.- psychologist (teaching, learning & development)/- psycho-educational consultant- autistic adult