pathological demand avoidance diagnosis fake

My (now former) psychologist did a good job of convincing me that there as no point in getting a diagnosis at my age. Truth be told, I don’t even have a formal diagnosis. There is little light about some of the moments from the past few years, but maybe that is unfair to the autistic people who can’t function in day-to-day life like I can. The one thing I am sure of is that when I try to explain this to people and they say, “Oh, you have light autism”, that does not feel right. I don’t like the urge to micro-classify things, it feels dishonest to me, so I tend to think of it as simply “autistic”, or on “on the spectrum,” if you must.

Reading a little, I guess I would probably fall into what used to be called the Aspergers camp, although I also identify with many of the traits that would once have been codified as Pervasive Development Disorder, today I believe it is snappily referred to as Pathologic Demand Avoidance. High-functioning was the word my psychologist used. After all, using Google MD, it is too easy to convince yourself that you have at least four cancers and a malignant personality disorder, and as someone with a diagnosed anxiety disorder I know to stay well away. It is not underselling it to say that I had never seriously thought of myself in those terms. Last Autumn, a month or two after I wrote my last column, I found out that I am probably autistic.īlindsided doesn't start to cover it. Right now I don’t know how to talk about what I’m going through, how to package it all up in 1,500 words and tie it off with a bow. This year I have been staring at a page trying to write something for months, but nothing comes. They were milestones about which I could hopefully make a point and try to leave the reader with something to think about. My second and third years were a continuation of the same theme, steps towards what I hoped would be going back to a life that didn’t look too different from before.

Where I started, what happened, how it ended.įor the past few years that has happened naturally - my first was a year out from my nervous breakdown, so I had enough time to get through the worst of it and attempt to offer some hope from the other side. With that kind of timeline I usually spend some time trying to shape my thoughts into something that makes sense - a beginning, middle and end.

In my head I think of these pieces as my annual mental health columns.

Pathological demand avoidance diagnosis fake