How can I deal with being misdiagnosed by my psychologist?

[Gymnastxo96]

Back in August of 2025 I did phycological testing at a phycologist that I go to and they said my full IQ was 76 which I don’t understand because I type just fine and have good grammar and could type full sentences. Many people say you sure your IQ is 76 because I type just fine and have good grammer and can communicate well. And my adaptive behavior score was 57 which is pretty low. Why would they misinterpret that too? Why would they misinterpret the results and think I don’t understand medical decisions and they recommend medical guardianship. Why would they misinterpret my results? Now people think I am mentally challenged because of this. Are they wrong for misinterpreting the results to make me worse then I seem? Keep in mind I do have high functioning autism so do you think my autism played a role in how I did in the IQ test or you think I was completely misdiagnosed and it could be something else?

None of this speaks to your concern about your diagnosis or wish to have a baby. You need to look at organising a meeting with a professional to discuss these things.

OP, these tests of cognitive ability and adaptive behaviours are standardised and very reliable, meaning that lots of research has gone into demonstrating to us that certain scores mean certain things in terms of level of functioning, so they are hard to misinterpret. Your scores are very low on both, generally meaning that you would require support for independent living- due to challenges you may have with reasoning, solving problems, planning, decision making, and learning (the cognitive abilities); in addition to difficulties with social and practical skills (adaptive behaviours- you can continue to learn adaptive skills as you age, to help with independent living). These difficulties do make you more vulnerable and more in need of support to live independently.

I don’t believe for one moment that everyone going for guardianship is doing so because they love the person. Many people do so to get their hands on people’s money or for control.
Has the mother or father been to a psychologist to find out if either or both are on the spectrum.
There does seem to be an element of control going on

To have a baby you need to be living independently, working, able to demonstrate that you are able to budget your money, manage chores in the home, and be in a loving, stable relationship. That's before you even think about having a baby.

At the moment you are living at home with your Mum. There's doubt that you could live independently without family/outside support. You haven't confirmed if you work, but I suspect you possibly don't and at the moment you aren't in a stable relationship. All these things equate to it being a disastrous idea to have a baby.

The baby would end up being cared for the majority of the time by your Mum. Your Mum clearly believes you would struggle to care for a baby, even with support. Or the baby would be automatically taken from your care at birth, and placed in foster care, possibly leading to the baby being adopted.

You aren't in a position to be having a baby.

I think you're wrong.
There is no evidence whatsoever of control here, but I can see why the OP's parents are very concerned about her.
The OP has no insight into her mental state at all, and she seems to want to have a baby with a random man in the future.

No wonder her mother is anxious.

As others have said, it'd be fair enough for the mother to want to control whether she gets landed with a baby that the OP can't look after. It doesn't sound like the mother is making a mint from having the OP living with her or that she's controlling anything other than the IUD issue. But as has been said many times, if the OP believes the diagnosis is bogus and she's capable of deciding on her own birth control and looking after herself and a baby like other mature adults, then there's a process she can follow to establish that fact and make that happen. If she can't follow that process, then the mother/doctor may be correct. Love's neither here nor there tbh. It's about not bringing a baby into the world that the mother can't care for. Control isn't always a bad thing in such cases.

Do you think the OP sounds independent and capable of living independently and caring for herself, and possibly a baby?

Yes, it sounds like the mother lacks control and choice on that matter. I feel for her if a baby eventuates that she has to take care of.

The mother in this case would almost certainly end up having to parent any grandchild.

I worked for many years with teens with similar learning disabilities, and their parents were very much on the ball with regard to the fertility of their daughters and sons. At that age, managing that was usually with the agreement of their child. But when it comes to adults starting to push against it, getting some kind of guardianship (and I don't know how it works in the US) makes a lot of sense.

I don’t know what a consent test is but the fact that we are all picking up on the fact that you seem half your actual age is telling.

By all means get tested again but there is a risk that it will come out exactly the same.

For your sake, your mother is right not to let you remove your IUD - do you really think you can live independently on your own with a child?

People keep asking whether you work, or you can live on your own, budget, run a home etc but you won’t answer

I think you are hoping to find a man so you can have a reason to leave your mother and have someone there to take over the mother role.

If you believe those scores are wrong then maybe stop looking for a man and concentrate on getting yourself your own place and living independently for a while, paying your own bills on time, keeping a track off your finances, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and reading the laundry labels. As well as washing, brushing your teeth and getting yourself up and to work on time.

Then you can prove that you can live independently

Which one? The OP or her mother?

Spot on. OP clearly doesn’t understand what having a baby and a home entails and her insistence that she wants it is a good indicator of her capacity

The mother who may not have a choice but to raise a grandchild when she didn't choose that. (Not seen any evidence so far that OP is able to support the child on her own).

Have you got a job @Gymnastxo96?

Because your comprehension is inadequate, you're clearly not getting the gist.

Having a child is not just about you, it is what is best for the child. Nobody has a RIGHT to have a child. The childs needs come first.

Perhaps your mum forsees a future of caring for you and the child, have you even thought about that?

How are you going to be able to sustain an individual, physically, financially and emotionally, when you lack comprehension yourself. How are you going to advocate for your child in times of difficultly?

AND as soon as the IUD is removed you can get pregnant so what have you set up with your BF to ensure you can both support this planned child?

It’s not clear now whether there is a boyfriend 🤷‍♀️

If you are having sex without contraception, you essentially are trying to get pregnant.

Youve said you dont want a baby while living with your mum but also that you want the IUD out and what happens, happens. What happens in healthy adults is sex leads to pregnancy unless you prevent it.

That links back to this idea of capacity and judgement. If you arent wanting a baby while living with your mum, leave it until you move.

Your thinking and writing style appear circular and that make be an IQ thing or a thinking pattern linked to your autism. I think what you need to ask yourself is do you think the assessment is wrong or do you just not like what it showed?

How old is your partner? Is he autistic too?

All of this but people are getting hung up on IQ and comprehension/cognitive ability, there is also, in many cases of people with SEN/LD and perhaps also here with OP I can see, a lack of self awareness/insight

I think OP you need to work with your mum and try to move your focus away from having a child and into hobbies and work and independence skills.

When you are fully independent.

You cannot forever depend on a man or your mother to be around to support you.

My partner isn’t autistic but is 2 years older than me.

Hi OP,

im in the uk so we may be different here to in America but I will answer your actual question , which was about misdiagnosis, as I complete cognitive assessments and adaptive assessments. It’s very unlikely to be incorrectly scored as scoring is often done by systems now and even if it wasn’t you wouldn’t expect incorrect scoring due to human error across both. In any case the report will go into detail about the specifics and if there was a mis-match between the scores and what was reported or observed in the room it would be picked up on quickly.

It is unlikely that the scores have been interpreted wrongly , and it sounds as though the outcome was that you have broadly low IQ- although not so low that you can’t engage with school and writing/reading. For that range I would expect people to be able to access education but struggle and quite possibly fail exams/struggle to sit them in the first place without extra help. Alongside the adaptive behaviour score (which is quite low but again, not so low that you need constant supervision), I believe the outcome was probably that your ASD and cognitive ability combined make you vulnerable. Because it is quite borderline it is not black and white, and it’s not clear how well you would be able to make decisions for yourself hence why you’ll have had a capacity test to think about relationships, which you said seemed it safe for you to make decisions about your relationships. You’ll also have a capacity assessment regarding medial decisions unless that’s already happened, and other capacity discussions will come up over time (like living independently).

For people who have autism we often see a ‘spiky profile’ on the cognitive assessments- and there are often areas of real skills and almost overperformance, but then very very low performance on other areas of the testing. We often say we won’t use an overall IQ score because of this (as someone could end up being diagnosed with a learning disability wrongly). Anyway, the point of me saying that is actually that the IQ score itself is irrelevant in this case - Ultimately it is saying you don’t have a learning disability but your autism and learning difficulties will make it hard for you day to day and you might struggle with things like making important decisions and those things will need to be assessed on an ongoing basis. If you had scored lower (as having a learning disability) things would have been more straight forward in how the professionals understand your needs.

Using the original definition, high functioning autism meant the person didn’t have co-morbid learning disability (called intellectual disability in the US) with an IQ above 70. It didn’t necessarily mean the person’s IQ was high. How ‘high functioning’ was originally meant to be used didn’t mean the person functions well in life, either.

Under the old system the difference between high functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome was that the former had a language delay as a young child and the latter did not.

The fact that you had to take a sexual consent test is an indication of how vulnerable you are, though.

Also, you've said (and I'm not using your exact words) that these men have been happy to have sex with you but didn't want an actual relationship with you because of the differences in your mental age.

For most men, dating someone who is very much younger than them mentally would seem like dating their little sister.

Okay do you have a partner or not? You keep saying you do then you say you don’t but you are looking for one.

If you do have one, and he’s 32, I would be concerned about him dating someone who is emotionally more like a 13 yo child.

Could you perhaps tell us whether you have a job or any experience of independence? Ten pages in and, unless I have missed it, you seem to be sidestepping it in favour of talking about having babies