sorta new and looking for resources for undiagnosed adults

[eriktrips]

I haven't introduced myself since joining a couple of weeks ago so I thought I should say hi at the same time that I ask for some help in finding diagnostic services as an adult. I'm Erik and I'm 47 years old and a female-to-male transsexual living in San Francisco CA. My real work is writing but I only get paid for editing, currently. I do all my

Comments

[errantpenny]

Hi and welcome. I'm also in San Francisco, and I wish I had a good assessment resource for you. However, I can tell you about one place that I emphatically don't recommend: Bay Area Psychological Testing Associates, http://www.bapta.com. I went there when I first sought an assessment. As far as I can tell, there's only one neuropsychologist on staff, and she does the assessments. Like a lot of professionals, I think she applied a narrow, rigid set of criteria to me--and a set that's more applicable to children--and determined that I wasn't autistic. I made eye contact, had no flat affect, etc.

I have a diagnosis of AS from the clinical psychologist whom I see for weekly psychotherapy. Unfortunately, I don't think he's accepting new patients. Would the professional whom you see for psychotherapy be able to diagnose you? It might be an option.

I understand why other adults with AS have no interest in or need for a diagnosis. I'm really glad I have one, though.

the validation of a diagnosis that I haven't established for myself by myself would also be helpful in certain contexts--familial would be one

Yep, that's part of the reason why I sought one. Even though I was pretty damn certain, after reading about AS, that it described me, I knew that my family wouldn't believe me without an "official stamp".

Also...I guess that I don't have much confidence in my own opinions, so even though it seemed that AS fit me very well, I was worried that I was wrong about it. I'm glad to have my opinion validated. I look at Asperger's as the grand unifying theory of my life; it explains so many things.

[eriktrips]

I guess that I don't have much confidence in my own opinions, so even though it seemed that AS fit me very well, I was worried that I was wrong about it.

Yeah that is very much my predicament right now. My therapist thinks that it makes a certain amount of sense but I get the feeling that she does not think she is qualified to make an "official" diagnosis. She is not a psychologist but an MFT/MEd; she is no fool but is not a neurologist nor yet a "doctor" (I'm a doctor. Can I diagnose myself? Rhetorically..?). She is trying to help me to find resources in the Bay Area but honestly I cannot even afford to pay her right now. She is seeing me on credit. So I don't feel right in asking her to do a whole lot of detective work for me.

That is good to know about BAPTA though. I did run across them in the course of some internet research, and I vaguely remember even emailing them. They never answered, if indeed I did. I thought they sounded like a sure thing clinically, but I have no financial support and so am looking for, well, charity I guess. It's in short supply right now, though. Leave it to me to decide I need professional services during our Next Great Depression.