AS to NT

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Do you think it is possible to be transformed over time from an AS to an NT? I used to be obsessive beyond belief, but I have come to learn how to take myself away from and also avoid things I obsess about, I do this because overly obsessing makes me depressed. I may feel great at the time but afterwards I get depressed knowing I just waste a lot of time on nothing. I may be able to do this but I am still an Aspie when it comes to socializing and thinking.
I also know someone who can very well pass for an NT when it comes to being social and using NT logic from what they have learned, however, they are always obsessive. they just can't help it.

Is it possible to fully transition in the world of NT and even become an NT? If I somehow merged my anti-obsession ability with my friend's social and logic traits, we could make a full NT. Would I really want that though?

For me, when you say that you can control your obsessions it's all about a conscient effort. If you are not in this effort you will act like an aspie.

So no, I don't believe that an AS can become a NT.

Don't torture yourself trying to become something that you aren't and can't be.

Enjoy yourself!

I think you can learn to cope and you can act a certain way to fit in, but deep down when you're alone, you always revert back to being Aspie - I think anyway.

No, there are fundamental differences.

Aspies are worn down by social interaction--no matter how good we get.

Many NTs are just the opposite--social interaction charges them up!

I think you have a point.
I do have to try to not be obsessive. And when i'm not obsessing I am bored.
I just wish I could socialize and not have to attempt to shift the way i think just to be able to survive in this world.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This. I love obsessing. It's not all a waste of time. I believe there is a lot you can benefit form obsessing.

What you call "obsessing" we call hyperfocus on our special interests. It's a superpower, not a flaw.

Aspies can learn to consciously process body language, fake normal eye contact, protect the senses from overload, and save the meltdowns for when they are in private. However, this is exhausting and leads to stress-related illnesses and burnout. And despite yours best efforts, the NTs will still sense you are different and your success will not be as great as you think it is, because as an autistic you lack a sense of how others perceive you.

Just the other day I was thinking that Aspies could be like Xmen

I liked it to no end!

More likely that we could be the Xmen than NTs!

If you are not as obsessive as you were before, you have probably found a way to channel that obsessiveness in a positive direction (such as a job or school, hobby that requires a lot of focus).

Last edited by zacb on 03 Dec 2012, 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I heard that AS becomes "less severe" when aging. It's probably caused by compensation behaviors.

The NTs don't have all their NT features until having them developed after childhood. Maybe the Aspies mature slower in some ways. I don't know if the Aspie brain can change to be more NT (for example, develop increased desensitization to stimuli, or have a higher dependence on verbal-symbolic processing like the NTs) over a long time after the childhood, like in the 30's and 40's.

somebody told *me* it get's worse with aging, because it's less obvious you're different as a kid and more obvious as an adult? *shrug*

I was certainly more functional in grade school than I am now in my early 20s, (to the point nobody diagnosed me as a kid because they just thought I was a prodigy) but hopefully having recently been diagnosed will help me deal with all that.

I've also gotten a lot better at socializing over the last 10 years or so. part of that is more practice, but mostly I've learned to mimic NT conversational tendencies so I don't sound like I escaped from a colloquium at Oxford when trying to order food in Arkansas...

No. It's not a matter of "becoming" NT as opposed to "previously being autistic."

You can learn to adapt, but if you're truly autistic, the adaptation takes on going effort, some elements of "faking it," and though you may actually overcome certain traits, at your core, within your "being," you are still autistic.

In fact, over time, the effort of adapting can wear you out, even to the point of total burn out if you don't learn to take the necessary time outs from it all to just shut it all out, and be yourself, without all the superfluous external "stuff" that may make you appear "too normal" for others to accept that you are who you are. A more skilled autistic than you once were.

That burn out can look like, and is sometimes seen as regression. The truth is, it was always there. Many of us just learn how to hide it, but it never really goes away.

Changing your cognitive profile could make you no longer fit the criteria to be diagnosed. Cognitive profile is an important part of diagnosis.

For example, improving spatial and sensory processing abilities through practice, and learning to speak with prosody.

I wonder if actively changing one's cognitive profile would change things socially as well. It's my personal feeling that most of my social issues are caused by the same visual-sensory processing disability that makes it impossible for me to find my way around without iphone maps (I have a less severe audio-processing ability too). I have been told that I am NT over the phone. That's not quite true. But it's better. IRL, I get overloaded, appear awkward, have timing issues, run out of things to say (because I have trouble thinking and processing fast enough + listening), and make social errors even I myself know are errors (and beat myself up about it later).

What's the solution? IQ building puzzles (even for those with no area that is below average, correcting imbalances), maybe martial arts? Exercises to improve audio processing? I don't know.

I remember, when I was 17, I went to visit a college where there was a group activity for admitted students day. After it was finished, I kind of noticed small changes in the surroundings but wasn't sure what to do. I was just paralyzed with uncertainty. Will we move onto the next activity, or what? Then, someone asked if I was in the group. I said I wasn't sure but where was the other group?

The problem was people from the new group entered the room as people from the old group were leaving, and I couldn't process the gradual change visually, so I found myself in a whole new group of people.

Obviously, these skills have gotten much better. But I am still a bit slow and off (both audio and visually). I wonder if there are targeted exercises one can do to improve this, or maybe I'm not really aspie and just have more specific problems (like non-verbal learning disability taken to an extreme) (diagnosed with PDD-NOS, so really could be anything).

hehe so true, especially if you think about the societal difficulties faced by the Xmen.