Aspergers?

[fina5aubrie]

I'm a teenage girl. I was diagnosed at 14 with ADHD and social anxiety. The social anxiety label was later removed, as was the ADHD label because a psycho-ed test said I might not have ADHD. A few months ago a new psychiatrist re-diagnosed me with ADHD even after reading my psycho-ed. I am now diagnosed with ADHD, Borderline Personality Disorder, and NVLD. My psycho-ed test said I have S-NVLD and P-NVLD (Social Nonverbal Learning Disorder and Perceptual Nonverbal Learning Disorder) and a learning disability in math. It said that I have problems reading facial expressions... Sometimes I do. Only when the faces are moving, and I get surprised, scared, and worried mixed up, sad, mad, and disgusted mixed up and I can't tell when people are fake smiling or really happy. And I've had to teach myself how to recognize the ones I can get to get this far... Would that still mean I have trouble with facial recognition? I hate feeling like I am faking something. I took a class at school helping autistic children and I failed it. The teacher told me it was my social skills that caused it, because I couldn't even interact with autistic children, and suggested maybe I have Asperger's. I do sometimes play with my fingers and twist and wring them, I have a hard time making and keeping friends, I have OCD-like behaviours, I have trouble with change and need rituals and routines, people say I lack empathy, I hate eye contact and hardly never maintain it, I have one topic that I talk about almost constantly to anyone, people say I "talk at them" instead of "talk to them", my parents say I don't point things out that make me happy or want to share things that make me happy with others, and I have always been very uncoordinated. I was wondering, if these problems I'm describing might point towards Asperger's Syndrome or just be part of my NVLD?

[fina5aubrie]

Thanks? I don't like to write... I used to but I have a lot of trouble making it sound proper sometimes. But thank you both for the answers. I know the diagnosis doesn't matter really, but unfortunately you seem to need one for anyone to believe you or understand you and the school requires you have one in order to receive help. My grandma says it's okay to say I have Asperger's rather than NLD because people have never heard of NLD and it's basically the same thing but I always feel bad or like I'm lying or something.

[tejodouro]

You really understand yourself and sound very smart. I just wanted to tell you that you write very well.  The way you explained yourself, also shows that you pay alot of attention to detail and you are smart.  I am not sure how old you are now.  Given what I read, you should find what you like to do and makes you happy and focus on it.  Try to ignore all these lagels.  Labels will just drive you crazy.  Focus on what you do best. I can tell that you are good writer. Good luck.

[Jason C Bourret, Ph.D., BCBA-D]

What you are describing has some features of Asperger’s and it would be worth talking about with your psychiatrist. However, whether you have that particular diagnosis or not, it sounds like you have a good understanding of the areas that you feel like you would want to improve. Everyone has behavior patterns that they’d like to change regardless of whether or not they have been diagnosed with something. The most important thing to do is to address these issues head on. All of the concerns with social skills that you have can be improved. The most important thing is to find a psychologist or behavioral therapist who is working with you on them. Be specific about the areas of your life that you’d like to see improvement in and take the time to work on those things. The diagnoses is much less important than making sure that you’re actively moving toward addressing the areas of your life that you’d like to see improvement.