Can you outgrow autism?

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NTs in professional jobs often don't want to admit they don't really know stuff. And autism is the sort of stuff that takes a lot of experience to understand, because you really need to experience a large number of cases to understand the variation.

Current understand is Autism is lifelong.

However, one can learn ways to compensate for it as one gets older.
One can sometimes find the freedom to avoid the things in life which hit the stress points of one's autistic profile.

Plus in many minds it is a condition associated with childhood, because the severe presentations were obvious in childhood and picked up.

I'm sorry this happened to you my friend. It sounds like it was quite aggravating and difficult to tolerate in the extreme to hear those words from a so-called educated medical professional. The psychiatrist you were unfortunately exposed to sounds like a quack indeed and has no clue about the true nature of Autism at all.

Being Autistic means that we're all wired completely differently from NTs and can no more outgrow it anymore than a motorcycle could suddenly morph into a car.

As a man of 42 years of age I can tell you with absolute certainty that my Autism has appeared to have gotten worse but at the very least, stayed the same from when I was very young. Diagnosis or not this is not something one can spontaneously outgrow for any reason.

I still stim constantly, have regular meltdowns, sensory issues are still the same and one or two are still extreme, social difficulties have gotten worse, I still can't tell another's emotions, eye contact is still very minimal, anxiety has gotten worse, my emotional development is still stunted and I feel like a 10-year-old, incontinence still exists, I need regular therapy, etc etc etc.

You had a right to be angry and I would have been angry as well because Autism is here to stay for all of us unfortunately.

I'm so sorry you had this experience. I walked out of my last psychiatrist visit too. The guy was so angry! When I asked him if knew about autism he said "Of course I do but I work with adults so I don't come across it." Really? He's never met an adult with autism? I do not believe that. I think he just wouldn't recognise autism if he fell over it. He was absolutely monstrous to me and yes, it was like he was having an adult temper tantrum. As for complaining, there really isn't much point. I know in my country at least that less than 4% of complaints lodged against health professionals make it to the investigation stage and only a small percentage of those result in the health professional being disciplined. They seem to have to kill someone before anything happens and even then, if they provide adequate documentation to explain their actions they get away with it. They are pretty untouchable and they know it.

My personal experience re. this subject:

By FAR the biggest effect being autistic has had on me is social underdevelopment. For decades I was like a child inside, functioning way below my intelligence level. In the spring/summer of 2010, at the age of 43-44, i went through a dramatic transformation over the course of a few months. It was like a veil was lifted, and suddenly I understood things with a clarity I hadn't experienced before. I call this my mental puberty. It was the moment I transitioned from childhood to adulthood, mentally. Since then I've been able to function essentially normally, though I have some residual issues, e.g. I'm obviously way out of sync with my peers, who developed much earlier, and I still have the somewhat more feminine personality that's often characteristic of males on the spectrum. Funnily enough the experiences I had after this mental puberty had strange parallels to the kind of experiences most NT's go through in their teens. My forties were my 'coming of age'.

So, yes, in a way you can grow out of autism, just as NT's grow out of childhood. I may be one of those rare cases referred to earlier in the thread. Please note I'm NOT saying there's a cure, just that in some cases the autistic brain can eventually develop to the point where a person with a diagnosis can effectively function normally.

That may be something worth studying. Can people on the spectrum receive training to outgrow their autism in their 30s, 40s, and 50s? Typically, social skills actually decline due to social isolation when Aspies get out of school. So, even if their brains are more mature, they just don't have the opportunities necessary to improve their social skills.

I think the view of what's a skill and how that works might be the issue. I feel like NTs believe and give the impression that all ASD traits can be learned away. I think a lot of what they call skill learning we call masking. So skills can be learned, and some may last, but others are probably more dependent on what sensory stimulation is occurring. In another thread on eye contact, someone posted that their therapist wanted them to learn eye contact. The individual wrote they they already knew how to make eye contact, but usually didn't make contact because they didn't like it. I certainly learned to make appropriate facial expressions as I grew up, but this is still exhausting. My face will tingle and fall asleep if I socialize and am too expressive after about twenty minutes. I also feel very lightheaded from laughing/talking. Others can't sense any of that happening to me, of course, and if I believed the NT view then I'd keep powering through until these sensory issues went away. I'd be chasing this standard they set, which is to be like them. But, that isn't going to happen, simply because that's not how I'm made.

Mainly, they seem to confuse my inability and/or lack of care with not knowing. I can understand their jokes, what their communication style looks like, etc., but none of that is natural to me. If I do it, it's because I learned to mimic, not because it's felt. I also understand why dogs sniff each other's butts, but it doesn't mean I'm going to start doing that with a dog I own, or that I don't understand since I'm not joining in.

Since being diagnosed as an Autistic I have come to realize that the more I try to mask my habits, mannerisms, repetitive motions, and eccentricities then the more draining life will be for me. I'm getting closer to accepting myself for who I am and remembering all of the habits and mannerisms I had when I was younger that used to make me feel better. Stimming, in other words.

As odd as those mannerisms seem to NTs I have discovered that the more I try to simply be myself as an Autistic person the happier and more calm that I am.

I have recently gone back to rocking back and forth and tapping my right hand on my right leg in full view of the public in places like shopping malls, etc. Before I would simply grit my teeth and find more subtle ways to stim but I have discovered that this is quite detrimental for many different reasons. It also hurts my jaw muscles. But it is more subtle.

Suppression of my natural stimming made me very angry and stressed. Trying to suppress stimming for an Autistic is not something I would recommend for anyone.

And since this subject is about outgrowing Autism this is not something I would recommend for anyone because the more natural we act the more relaxed and happier we become as Autistics. Suffice it to say that outgoing Autism is not something that is even possible in my mind.

For me it seems to get worse as I get older

I don't think you do and nor do I want to.

What are the choices?

Living with your parents the rest of your life is rarely an option, no matter how much they love you. Most parents won't outlive their kids by the 20 or so years necessary to make this happen. And even if they live that long, they may become disabled themselves, so that they can no longer provide the level of care that they were able to provide when they were younger.

Thus, for people on the spectrum living at home, a transition to either living independently or living in a group home is necessary once their parents can no longer provide for them.

All quotes by Revistor

"My personal experience re. this subject:

By FAR the biggest effect being autistic has had on me is social underdevelopment."

Same here, except that I was also very uncoordinated.

"For decades I was like a child inside, functioning way below my intelligence level. In the spring/summer of 2010, at the age of 43-44, i went through a dramatic transformation over the course of a few months. It was like a veil was lifted, and suddenly I understood things with a clarity I hadn't experienced before. I call this my mental puberty. It was the moment I transitioned from childhood to adulthood, mentally."

Well, they said that 44's no age to start again, but [i]I/[i] say that there's no reason why it shouldn't be. The same happened here pretty much as soon as I started university at 16 -- I literally went from childhood to adulthood in two months. But... when my brain thinks something's worth doing, it's worth overdoing, so I didn't stop at a mental age of 17, and kept on going until I reached somewhere between 25-30.

"Since then I've been able to function essentially normally, though I have some residual issues, e.g. I'm obviously way out of sync with my peers, who developed much earlier, and I still have the somewhat more feminine personality that's often characteristic of males on the spectrum. Funnily enough the experiences I had after this mental puberty had strange parallels to the kind of experiences most NT's go through in their teens. My forties were my 'coming of age'."

I second this, though I didn't have the experiences NT's have in their teens. Yes, I'm way out of sync with my peers (as I behave much like someone ~30 years old; many believe I am actually that old!) and as a result talk mostly to those that are 25-50 years old, and yes I do indeed still have that somewhat feminine personality (and what's excessively bad about that? Women do make up half the population or so after all).

"So, yes, in a way you can grow out of autism, just as NT's grow out of childhood. I may be one of those rare cases referred to earlier in the thread. Please note I'm NOT saying there's a cure, just that in some cases the autistic brain can eventually develop to the point where a person with a diagnosis can effectively function normally."

Maybe it's not that rare, as there are two of us who had the same experiences.

Partly, yes, you're always going to have Asperger's as an integral component of your identity and personality. I see an autism support specialist who says I have "remarkably good emotional-social cognition", but that doesn't mean I don't feel eccentric and quirky compared with neurotypicals.

Over time, I've outgrown some of my repetitive behaviors (swinging arms, hitting my fingertips with a pencil, pounding my chin with my fist), make consistent eye contact, have an advanced capacity for empathy, understand sarcasm (quite proficient in it actually) and other nuanced speech patterns, my interests have grown from being very narrow and childish (Pokemon, Star Wars, Star Trek, entomology, memorizing the Presidents and the Periodic Table of Elements) to being more broad and general (astrophysics, psychopharmacology, military history, neuroscience and philosophy).

My former co-workers would just say I'm a "bit different" because while everybody would spend time gossiping I would be immersed in a book. Though I'm regarded as extraordinarily bright and extremely intelligent, as well as witty, articulate, well-read and eloquently-spoken, I always feel like an outsider, and I doubt that feeling's ever gonna go away.