I have 'recovered'!

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QFT

Druidsbird - thx. All I can suggest is do what I did. Spend as much time as you can stimulating your mind with challenging things that really interest you, i.e. hours and hours of intense concentration, but it must be something you're really passionate about that engrosses you. And learn about new things, e.g. if there's something you don't quite 'get', such as why NTs are drawn to a particular thing that bores you, find out about it, and keep researching it until it makes sense. Although the thing itself may bore you finding out why 'they' are interested in it can be interesting if that makes sense. One of the reasons ASD individuals don't improve, perhaps, is that they spend too much time in their own world. Use the internet, etc., to try and find out how NTs think. Ironically, you can find out more about how they think via the internet than real conversation sometimes, as there's things people won't divulge IRL, and IRL your contact with NTs is only limited to certain people! I didn't really use my mind until I was 30 (I daydreamed through school and work), and until I had the net I had all sorts of assumptions about the NT world which were hopelessly wrong.

Obviously I can't guarantee all this will work, but that's what I did during my period of improvement. It could just have been time though. Good luck.

I am not claiming or implying that there is not a huge difference. On the contrary, I would think there was something odd if you failed to develop and grow over a 15 year period, unless of course you were comatose or dead.

The point I made is simply this: to be diagnosed (rather than misdiagnosed) with an ASD, one must have present, on-going clinically significant impairment. It is literally a criteria for diagnosis. Now improving does not mean "no longer impaired" but rather "not as impaired". You may be significantly less impaired than 15 years ago, but that does not necessarily mean that you are unimpaired, and it would appear that whoever diagnosed you believes you are still impaired, because otherwise, why would they diagnose you?

I was diagnosed on my life history. Diagnosis is BS in some ways, especially in adulthood, as it depends on what the patient tells the psychologist. Anyone COULD get a diagnosis as an adult if they made up stories about having certain symptoms. The diagnosis isn't really important to me. I know I HAD ASD, because I had all the classic symptoms, and I know that I've 'recovered' (for want of a better word) because I don't have any symptoms now (though there might be a feint residue of ASD in there somewhere, e.g. I still have slight light sensitivity).

Well, that's how they do it. The criteria are primarily geared towards diagnosing children, so any diagnosis you receive as an adult will most likely look into your childhood for clues.

It's possible that you were more severely impaired in the past... enough to get a diagnosis, and it's great that you are no longer as impaired. However, the point that many here are making is that your level of impairment has nothing to do with how "autistic" you are, i.e. an autistic-style cognitive process. You can be the most unimpaired, unencumbered-by-your-neurology person in the world, but it still does not mean you have an NT neurology.

If all the symptoms and 'disabilities' associated with ASD virtually dissapear then you're effectively 'normal'. Making a distinction between a 'normal' person and a normally functioning person with ASD nuerology who has NO ASD symptoms of any kind (except very slight light sensitivity) is academic in the extreme. I don't have any problem with being classified in the latter category, it's just that it's easier to explain in everyday conversation that I had ASD and it's now 'resolved'.

Since it is a developmental condition it is not appropriate to diagnosis anyone who did not manifest symptoms in early childhood, none of which changes the criteria requiring clinically significant impairment. No amount of sophistry changes the fact that to be clinically diagnosible there needs to be on-going clinically signficant impairment.

I did have symptoms in early childhood.

As for on-going impairment being necessary for a diagnosis: can ASD improve? If you say no, then you're disagreeing with the most renowned authorities, and we'll have to agree to disagree. If you say yes, then the point you're making is semantic and trivial, i.e. I couldn't care less whether you want to describe me as an ASD individual who no longer has symptoms, or someone who's now effectively 'normal', or whatever.

No offence but you're making a mountain out of a molehill. The point is I did have very significant ASD symptoms (and it's really impossible to explain those symptoms as anything other than ASD) and now I don't. That's all that matters to me. The description of what exactly happened, etc., is irrelevant.

What is the relevance of this question to the fact that for a current diagnosis (to make a diagnosis at time X) it is necessary that current on-going clinically significant impairment be present?
That's what the criteria state.

I do not have any problem with disagreeing with reknowned authorities. Evidently, since reknowned authority seems to matter to you personally, do you imagine that reknowned authorities were not involved in constructing the criteria that I am referring to?

Fallacious reasoning. If you assume "X has improved" means "X no longer has any pathological symptoms/traits/characteristics/impairments, then you make an erroneous assumption. What did the middle ever do to you that you are inclined to exclude it?


No offense but people discussing things on a discussion board is not making a mountain out of molehill anymore than starting a thread on a discussion board is doing the same.

The simple fact is to be diagnosed with AS requires ongoing, clinically significant impairment. Whether you were misdiagnosed (for instance should have been categorized as BAP for clinical purposes but not diagnosed with an actual current disorder), or whether the physician who diagnosed you happens, as result of not having an ASD, to have better insight into your level of impairment than you do, I do not know, nor claim to know.

Our knowledge of ASD as a society is constantly evolving. The capacity for ASD to improve remains widely underestimated, and diagnostic criteria, etc., will no doubt be altered in time to reflect this. I'm not the only person by any means to significantly improve as I indicated in the OP. I've told you what happened to me. I'll leave you to intrepet it as you wish.

Why? Did something sound wrong to you?

Many AS traits are about delays in development or impedements.

Possibility #1
It took you 40 years to get the traits of normal people. People with no AS take 15 years. You didn't recover . You just developed as slowly as it often happens with AS.

Possibility #2:
You never had AS in the first place, you were just asocial for whatever reason, probably in your case social anxiety. With time you grew up and got over whatever issue was causing it, congratulations, but you didn't have AS.

If you want to insist, Then show proof that you had an AS diagnosis 10 years ago and wouldn't have it anymore today.

lee: QFT means "quote for truth" it means he quoted your post because your post is the truth and deserves to be quoted. So it probably means that he agrees with you whole-hearty.

I think so too. I think I spent so much time in my life studying people and mimicking and trying to pass and just get by, that I did develop the ability to do just that. I can 'put on' when I need to and no one would suspect a thing is off with me. I just cannot sustain it. Because it's sort of an act, or learned responses, or my force field as I call it, I can't keep it in place for long.

If I had known this way early on I may not have tried so hard. I may have accepted that I was damaged or weird and accepted the label and used it as an excuse to give up or not try as hard anyway.

Finding out about AS around the age of 40 was a huge relief, an eye opening experience and a joy. I was so happy to learn there were so many of my own kind out there and I wasn't just uniquely weird It really was a huge relief.

But in a strange sort of way, finding out at that age was just the right time.

(I also can't be certain of this, since that's my only life experience and I don't know how else it would have all turned out if I'd known earlier)

I read John Elder Robison (Look Me In The Eye) states that his 'genius' traits were way up in his younger life and his social traits were way down, and now as he gets older he is seeing them change - the social is up and the genius is down.

I can totally relate to that. He looks at things that he designed when he was young and said he couldn't do that same work today. I've had the same experience with programming. I've looked at programs I've written 10 or 15 years ago and I can hardly make sense out of them now. But my social skills are better now.

Unfortunately it seems that we sort of 'level off'. I don't call that being cured or "recovery" but it's a change. For whatever reason. I guess just enough years of practicing makes you fit in socially a little better. And maybe as every person ages they become less sharp intellectually.

I'm still extremely sensitive to light, glare, loud sound, smells. That seems to have remained the same or maybe gotten a bit more pronounced with age.

Interesting if we could hear from alot more 40s and 50s and older Aspies and see what their experience has been.

you also say you've "recovered"; there's nothing to "recover" from. You may have learned to adapt better and whatnot, but that's hardly 'recovering'..it just means you've worked at seeming normal.

So you have "normal" interests now rather than "obsessive" interests, I hear?

Don't take this the wrong way, but I have a feeling you're intentionally telling yourself to be an entirely different person; having "obsessive" interests is part of what makes us who we are. "Normal" interests are for what I call "fly-by-nighters"; basically they're interested in it the way their friends are--and for the duration of the period it's popular--then it's dropped. It's something I don't have tons of respect for, as it suggests a lot of flakiness and "style over substance" mentality.

Sorry if I sound like a jackass to you, but something about all this....somethin' aint vibin' just right...

Vexcalibur - Possibility 1 is plausible. In fact, this is probably what happened, though, as I say, the intellectual stimulation I did in my 30s may have helped. Possibility 2 is implausible as I had (almost) the full spectrum of ASD traits, e.g. poor common sense, obsessions, which don't come with pure social anxiety. It's obviously impossible for me to provide that proof on WP, as you well know, so I'll let you decide whether you want to believe me.

TheDoctor82 - It doesn't sound like you've read all my posts on this thread properly. I'm not telling myself to be a different person - that's ridiculous. How could I just tell myself to have common sense skills that I didn't used to have? The obsessions that I used to have were uncommon and very short lasting. I suppose you could argue that I still have obsessions (as NTs do), but now they're more mainstream and perpetual. Again, I'm not gravitating towards more mainstream interests just because I want to be more 'normal' (it would be daft to pretend to like things I didn't), I just don't have a compulsion for short-lasting uncommon pursuits anymore.

I knew there would be a lot of scepticism about this, as I said in my OP. ASD remains a very enigmatic condition - though some people on WP think they have all the answers - and the capacity for ASD individuals to improve (sometimes quite dramatically) is widely underestimated. I'm sure I'm not the only person on Wrong Planet who's experienced significant improvement, and I'm certainly not the only person on the actual planet!

@Another_Alien: Other than a hang-up on terminology (i.e. most people's definition of "recovered" doesn't seem to fit yours), it seems that we are all pretty much in agreement that you now function better and have "worked through" the things that were causing you problems. Really, that's great, and I think everyone here agrees.

So what you are arguing about, exactly? I have gone back and read this exchange between you and others on this thread, and it strikes me as a very aspie-style discussion on both sides. So maybe you're not exactly "trait free"?