How Come My AS seems not as strong as I get older?

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GeomAsp
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02 Apr 2009, 4:11 am

AS is not fading, i bet you still have those deep thoughts and you're still lost inside your world. The only difference is that as years go by, you just learn how to interact with people better.

In my case i don't make those strange noises anymore, and i try to stim at least as i can. There's many other things i have corrected. I can have better conversations and i pay attention when people talk to me

Being in my world is great, but i wait until i am alone in order to get into it.


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zer0netgain
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02 Apr 2009, 7:04 am

+1 to learning.

The primary "treatment" for AS is learning how to adapt and compensate for the ways AS affects our ability to interact with the world around us.

As you get older, you learn more and more and get better at it. If you don't know about AS (like me until this year), you have growing frustration that you never seem to get the hang of living in the real world but don't know why. If you grow up knowing about your AS, you accept that you may never be 100% NT-compatible, but you will see the improvements over the years.



Callista
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02 Apr 2009, 7:47 am

You're learning stuff. Why, you think people only learn communication skills as toddlers? Nope, happens through your whole life. Maybe you were just ready to learn around your current age rather than some younger age.

Plus, you may have a better living situation--if your family was stressful and you're away from them now, you've got a lot more brain left to learn.

I'm learning stuff, too. I'm 25, and ten years ago I couldn't have done a lot of simple things I can do now--I couldn't clean a room, couldn't remember to take regular showers, couldn't make a phone call except to my own grandmother, couldn't buy things at a supermarket, couldn't order in a restaurant, had a sense of direction so bad that I got lost on the way to my grandmother's house--a trip I had made every day for years... now I can find my way to a nearby city.

Of course you improve as you grow. That's what people, given a decent living situation, naturally do.


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MONKEY
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02 Apr 2009, 8:09 am

Mine has improved lots over the years, when I was younger I was pretty noticable but I got round some of it in time for highschool. And it also waxes and wanes depending where I am or how comfortable I'm feeling. I go to college on thursdays and because I have no friends there I feel like aspie extrordinaire lost in my daydreams lining my pens up. But when I'm with my close friends or at home/ relatives house I feel like a social butterfly.


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ruveyn
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02 Apr 2009, 11:09 am

JakeWilson wrote:


Sometimes it seems as if I am slowly just fading into neurotypicalism, and it is a little bit discouraging because when it comes down to it, deep down inside I really don't want to be like everyone else around me. With Asperger's I feel like I can be something different and outside of the norm. I would rather not look just like everyone else in my social skills and stuff.

So what is going on here?



You are adapting to the NT world. I am an Old Aspie. Over a 40 year period I made it a point to encapsulate my understanding of NT modes into a set of algorithms. I have practice the algorithms so long they are habitual and second nature to me. But I still am the same old narrow focused literal minded person I always was. I just do not display my annoying Aspie traits too much in the company of NTs. It annoys them and makes them uncomfortable and there is no point in making life any more difficult than it already is.

I am an Aspie very well adapted to the NT world. I adapted through paying attention, focusing my mind and working at it. I now easily pass for human. You probably are also.

ruveyn



richardbenson
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02 Apr 2009, 3:37 pm

its probably possible to reverse aspergers, the brain can do alot im shure


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rhubarbpluscustard
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02 Apr 2009, 3:44 pm

I've read that many aspies seem to grow out of some of their aspie traits as they get older. An intelligent, verbal person who's not severely autistic and is exposed to social situations in the normal way is going to learn how to adapt socially at least up to a point. That's what has happened to me. In early adolescence I was quite clueless socially, but then I was lucky enough to go to a very nice, quite small high school where, in my own time, I made a few good friends and learned some social skills. At fourteen I would hide in the toilets to eat my lunch; at seventeen I was hanging out with friends like a regular kid. At university I've managed to make a few warm, pleasant acquaintanceships and to keep my high school friendships. My newly-developed social skills cause some unforeseen problems: for example, when I talk at length, I find myself twisting up my words and accenting things oddly, and sometimes I make jokes when it would be more appropriate to keep things serious. On the whole, though, I'm much improved.



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02 Apr 2009, 4:42 pm

EvoVari wrote:
Let us know in ten years time when you have experienced some of the above and how faded your AS has progressed. Periods of high stress in your life regress your AS very quickly IMO.


In my experience it is therefore important to learn and to adapt stress coping strategies. Everyone is different, but with me it works quite well, when I do try to analyse the situation rationally and use my abstract reasoning to cope and to solve the situation.



grizeldatee
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02 Apr 2009, 6:18 pm

20ish is the first neural die off. Brain cells live about 20 years. What doesn't get passed on fades away. Your unique way of thinking and being will persist, but some of the things you haven't been doing, probably intentionally, will be left behind. So now I am 45 and have been through another transition. I don't know that I could climb a tree very well these days even though I was really good at it as a child. I don't mourn the loss of this knowledge, though, since I don't particularly care to climb trees. Hope that analogy made sense to you.

Be you and do what you like to do.


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rhubarbpluscustard
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03 Apr 2009, 4:19 pm

It's possible to be diagnosed with residual AS, meaning that you had the characteristics when you were younger but have now outgrown/masked/learned to compensate for them enough that they don't affect your functioning much.



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03 Apr 2009, 4:49 pm

It isn't fading away, you are just learning new skills. It is also happening to me.


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