Quote:
Originally Posted by Talthybius
How does it help treatment? The only treatment for Asperger syndrome is treating the symptoms. So what does the diagnosis add? You need to know the symptoms to do the treatment.
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For the entirety of my childhood and a good portion of my adulthood I was a g*d d*mn, worthless idiot, with no common sense who can't do anything and had a host of behavioral issues that were easily explained with a diagnosis. You wouldn't ask a one armed man to use both hands when trying to lift something and then get mad at him when he used the only hand he had, but that's effectively what happens to someone without a diagnosis. That does significant damage to ones self-esteem. Getting a diagnosis made much of my early life understandable to me and gave me the confidence to address challenges that I had simply avoided, and the knowledge - by seeing what tools others with my diagnosis used to accomplish those challenges, of how to succeed without having to re-invent the wheel.
Treating symptoms without understanding the underlying causes of those symptoms can be unproductive at best and dangerous at worst. I would go in to sensory overload as a child and my mothers solution was to bombard with more sensory overload to desensitize me. What she did instead was to exacerbate an existing dissociative disorder. As an adult who plans on returning to college (hopefully in the Fall), I can ask for a reasonable accommodation with a diagnosis that I wouldn't be able to get without one. The university that I plan on attending has a autism support group made up of students. With a diagnosis, I can make use of that resource - without it, I am without a helpful resource.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Talthybius
How do you have to suffer silently without a diagnosis? Not all people that would be diagnosed with Aspergers are suffering. And how do you have to suffer in silent without a diagnosis, but not with one?
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Though much of the answer to these questions I answered above, but I have discovered things that I have had trouble with that I didn't even realize before the diagnosis - much the same way that people with dyslexia didn't realize that everyone didn't struggle like them. I've struggled with things that there was an easy solution for, but I didn't even know to look. I wasted a lot of time, and suffered a great deal of frustration and self-recrimination because I tried to do things the way others did, tried to think about things the way they did, etc. Understanding how I think and experience the world differently has allowed me to make adjustments accordingly.
For instance, I struggle with any change in routine due to my placement on the spectrum. There are others who struggle with a change in routine, but for entirely different reasons. As a result, the ways of minimizing our struggles are often different.