I am Cassandra. I am right yet again when no one believed me.
This time there were doubts that I was an Aspie. Some friend of my parents planted the seed of doubt in my diagnosis and now my parents know more about the subject than I do. I tried to be patient and agreed to be evaluated by a psychiatric nurse. This evaluation happened today
I kept my opinions about my self diagnosis to myself, seeking an independent evaluation, not colored by my preconceptions. It turns out that my mother and regular psych had already talked to the Nurse. The nurse, either because of some social ability she sensed in me or because of my mother's opinions, leaned towards not having asperger's for the majority of the session.
I explained my lack of fine motor control, my obsession with textures, my awkward body position, and most importantly my complete lack of anything resembling a connection to another person. I told her about my odd foci and phrasing. She told me that she was still open to the possiblity, but was leaning towards believing that I was simply the product of a disfunctional home with a few assorted oddities (so much for Occam's Razor folks).
She finally came around to my side of reasoning when I told her that Sam has an early diagnosis of Autism and I told her one final personal story. Apparently the way I told this story was absolutely matter-of-fact and I didn't seem to be searching for aproval or understanding or trying to guage her response at all. This shocked her. Combined with other things I had said and done, she could finally see some 'emotional gap between what was happening and what I was understanding'.
The Nurse kept telling me that I was 'incredably intelligent' and this explains why I can seem to be normal from time to time. I guess that I'm pretending to have body posture and the like. I have the same emotions as other people, but I don't understand them, and I don't show them naturally.
More on this some other time.