A change in approach
For the longest time, I used to think that the way I thought about the world was as normal as it could get, and that all people needed was just to read more and think more critically, but there were always several ideas that never managed to get through, by way of being utterly incomprehensible to people.
For example, I really understood what people meant by thinking from the heart, as the heart doesn’t have any neurons. If anything, the closest would be thinking from the spinal cord, as it does have neurons (it’s part of the peripheral nervous system) and is quite close to the heart, although nobody really caught on to this, perhaps because it doesn’t make sense for the same reason: the spinal cord, like the heart, also doesn’t have the neuronal structures required for even basic thought.
A possible but unlikely explanation
If you think I’m crazy for thinking like this, or if you thought my previous posts about things like my IELTS experience were satire, there is something rather important that I think is worth consideration: just yesterday, I was diagnosed with Asperger‘s (mild ASD).
I don’t believe it myself—there’s a lot that points to it, but there’s also a lot that doesn’t, and if I really had ASD, I’m finding it difficult to understand how nobody noticed it even after I became an adult.
I’ve been telling myself that the diagnosis was flawed—namely that I lied about too many things, perhaps as part of a peculiar subconscious intent to want to be diagnosed with ASD, but what exactly did I even lie about? Not to mention I initially went for an ADHD diagnosis, not ASD, as I was very certain I didn’t have ASD. I have a copy of the DSM-5, and I have read through the sections on ASD many times over the years, but not once did I even think I had ASD. In fact, the only reason I ended up being screened for ASD was because the psychiatrist who was supposed to screen me for ADHD thought ASD might be the case instead and recommended I go for it.
As the initial interview also brought up questions that I was all too familiar with from reading the DSM-5, I quickly became completely convinced I did not actually have ASD—just like I knew all along, and I was becoming more and more confident that my being here was utterly pointless, as much as I still enjoyed the novelty of the experience.
How the ASD diagnosis went
As both my parents, now getting on with their age, entered the next room with several professionals for further questioning, I was tasked to fill in the AQ (Autism-spectrum quotient), which I had done online twice over the years, the EQ (Empathy quotient), and some other self-report form I wasn’t familiar with that contained similar questions.
Perhaps the fact I scored highly for autism on both occasions for the online AQ test I took should have hinted at something, but I never really thought much of it since they were done online, never mind that the questions were exactly the same.
It never made sense anyway. Because of this, I referenced my DSM-5 a lot over the years and, despite always going back to re-read the section on ASD, I never thought it could possibly apply to me, because there were always a few nagging, uncharacteristic traits, such as my love for spontaneity, hatred of routines, often abstract thought, and hatred of rote learning or memorisation.
I knew I wasn’t like everyone else, but I always chalked it up to personality differences, and never thought it could be ASD, even though no personality tests I have tried to date (FFM, HEXACO, MBTI) managed to describe me with any accuracy. For the MBTI, I even went to read every single type only to find absolutely no matches. I mean, it’s a scientifically-rubbish test, but I still thought I’d be able to find something.
FFM and HEXACO have the defence of being gradations of traits instead, which, while borderline unfalsifiable, does mean they were not outright “incorrect”.
Anyway, I went on that tangent because we’re still waiting for the parent interview to be done. At this point I had long finished the self-report questionnaires and was finding a way to kill time by strolling around outside in the aisles before deciding to continue reading Guns, Germs, and Steel on my phone. The book is almost a thousand pages long, so I figured I’d take my time reading it as a “side” book when I’m out without my “main” book (which I leave at home), currently Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture.
After a brief trip to the morgue to pay respects to all the time I killed, they finally invited me in for my portion of the interview. I have absolutely no idea what they talked about, nor had I any interest of trying to listen in, as at that point I was already convinced I didn’t have ASD, as illogical and contradictory as it may seem, given that I answered the AQ in almost exactly the same way as the last two times, both of which produced a similarly-high score.
Perhaps to clarify why I still thought that way: one of the key diagnostic criteria for ASD requires that the traits be present since childhood, which was obviously not the case from the initial shared interview, leading me to quickly eliminate the possibility of ASD.
My turn
I was greeted by three people, one of which a girl who looked rather young, who immediately piqued my curiosity—it’s quite a young age to be participating in clinical diagnoses, suggesting that she could be a very talented and intelligent. She was also previously holding an old IQ test report earlier which I vandalised in disagreement as a rebellious teenager. Because I thought it was embarrassing, I made sure to note in passing that I no longer agreed with the mostly angry remarks I wrote back then.
Anyway, the psychiatrist in charge proceeded to ask me several questions, most of which were very similar to questions I already answered in the questionnaires earlier, but here is where the problems began: I think… some of my responses were lies.
What lies did I tell?
Recognising sadness
I said I couldn’t recognise when somebody was sad, pondering about it for a long time. He said that he found it very difficult to believe, and suggested that it was impossible and absurd. I agree, I don’t know why I said that. There are obvious signs, such as people saying “I am sad”, and I can guess the right emotion more often than not, so it was incorrect to say that I couldn’t tell when somebody was sad.
I can also tell the difference between various emojis, such as the frowning face :(, and the smiling face :), so it made no sense for me to say that I couldn’t tell when someone was sad, especially if they were also crying.
Although crying can mean many things, the important point I should have considered is that, on average, I get it right a lot more often than not, meaning I do have an idea of what being sad looks like. Neurotypical people make this mistake too, mistaking tears of joy for sadness, hardly something worth being surprised about.
Where this character, Chika, threatens another character with death, despite wearing an indisputably happy (and cute!) expression. This contradiction or mismatch between her words and her expression presents itself as very humorous, and also suggests that she isn’t actually planning to kill the other character, with the facial expression taking precedence over the literal meaning of her words.
To further stress this: it would be impossible for me to enjoy most forms of entertainment if I couldn’t understand facial expressions, and I’m always getting better the more I practice, just like everyone else. I can understand facial expressions, I had no reason to lie about it back then.
Comforting someone who is sad
Not being convinced by my initial literally unbelievable response, he went on to ask how I might comfort someone who is sad. I wasn’t sure, sometimes I just find it funny when people get sad over trifles, though I didn’t say this as I am acutely aware that laughing at them doesn’t exactly comfort them, proof that I do know these things.
I don’t know how I would comfort someone who is sad, as most reactions I see in various works in fiction make no sense. Often, when a character treats the sad character badly, they somehow become happy and say they feel better. That just sounds like bad writing. Similarly, when another character says something that’s perfectly reasonable and makes a lot of sense, others accuse this character of making things worse… which doesn’t make sense either but can also be attributed to bad writing.
The problem of attributing everything to bad writing, of course, is that surely it shouldn’t be happening this often (almost all the time)? But, even then, on average, I should still be successful at comforting someone more often than not, meaning I do have some idea of knowing how to comfort someone, and that it was incorrect for me to say I didn’t know how.
Being kind
At this point, I was also aware that I was beginning to sound like a heartless psychopath of sorts, since he alluded to the fact that comforting someone who is sad is considered kind, or something along those lines. I don’t remember the exact words he said, but this was the gist of it.
I don’t think I am that oblivious to others’ feelings to the extent I will ignore someone falling down the stairs or refuse to help an old lady asking for directions. The other day I saw an elderly man at a cafe trying to carry a hot cup of tea on a saucer to join his friends at another table, but he was visibly shaking and unsteady in his gait. As I was walking past, though I didn’t help as I was afraid I would scare him and cause him to spill and scald himself, I did feel some kind of pain in my chest, which made me stop nearby and watch carefully tll he made it safely to the other table.
It is from examples like these that I think I’m not psychopathic levels of unkind, though I didn’t do much in this case. That said, the conversation was drifting towards this implication, which I didn’t really deny. Incorrectly, of course, I should have insisted that I was able to be kind, even at the risk of coming across as arrogant.
Wanting relationships
When asked if I wanted a romantic partner, I said no. Not even if I didn’t have to do anything for it? I continued nodding. Probably the most blatant lie I told, I realised afterwards. Since the topic was about social interactions and friendships, I imagined having a romantic partner as being but a worse case of those already-troublesome social interactions, and it never really hit me that my stance on this does change dramatically depending on how much I like the other person.
I should have said that I do find certain people very attractive, and I should have alluded to the fact my stance on social interactions will likely be different when I’m with someone I really like, but in the end I just said I wasn’t interested because it was too troublesome. Though it was still a half-truth, I still find it enough of a lie to be considered false information.
The conclusion
At the end, after they had a few minutes of further discussion between themselves, they concluded that I met the threshold for ASD, or more specifically, Asperger’s, high-functioning autism, or mild ASD (more or less the same thing). From the way he said it, I suspect I only barely met the threshold, meaning the false information I gave could very well have been the reason I was given the diagnosis. Okay, actually, it was my mother who first picked up on that cue and mentioned it to me afterwards, but I’m sure I would have also realised it eventually anyway.
I wasn’t surprised, which was in itself surprising, but not enough to cause me to feel surprised by my lack of surprise. Instead, I just felt a bit puzzled, wondering why I had little to no reaction to this, as if nothing changed at all. I have run through many simulations in the past, including for ASD, trying to frame everything in its context to see if things made sense, so this wasn’t strictly a novel experience for me.
Even then, I expected the real thing to make me feel something, at least. Perhaps, just like now, I’m still overrun with doubt, wondering if the diagnosis is even correct, because… I feel normal.
I don’t mean I feel like I’m not different from others, but rather than I don’t feel like I’m disabled like someone in a wheelchair might be acutely aware of their inability to walk. I still felt the same, and I still felt exactly like myself. I don’t know what else was supposed to happen. I’ve heard stories of people who cried upon receiving their diagnosis, but I wasn’t even surprised in the least. Neither was my mother, who read about Asperger’s recently and already suspected I had it, though she didn’t tell anyone beforehand.
Closing
I still have very strong doubts about this diagnosis, and I am worried about the implication that much of what I say doesn’t apply to people in general and as such I cannot speak on behalf of them, but an appeal to consequences is hardly a valid argument.
It might be worth noting that this assessment was done in a highly-recognised, governmental institution, which means the diagnosis carries a lot of weight.
I don’t know why I gave misinformation (or, arguably, disinformation) like that, and I want to believe that, had I not said those things, I would not have been diagnosed.
I’ve always suspected I wasn’t normal, but I really wanted to be normal just like everyone else. I started off wanting to find proof that I was indeed normal by slowly eliminating the most plausible neurodiverse explanations for my behaviour like ADHD, ASD, OCD, etc., not expecting to be stopped so early in my tracks by an ASD diagnosis.
If that’s not existentially depressing… I don’t know what is.
Well, I’m not ending this on a sad note, I think, eventually, when I seek a second opinion, it will refute this diagnosis, somehow. Till then, I would prefer continuing to live under the assumption that I’m not disabled. After all, I don’t feel any different… right?