You all bore me

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That's funny, when I was a kid, someone told my mother that I would eventually grow out of this abnormal mental state.
14 years later I still don't understand social cues, I'm still as obsessed with snails as I was when I was 7, I'm still anti-social and even though I've spent many years "thriving" for normalcy, it has only taken me that long to realise that I will probably never reach the same level of normalcy as someone that isn't on the spectrum, simply because I am socially deformed.
You may as well tell us to grow another head with a completely separate brain that is wired differently... normally.

A quick ps to this. My experience is virtually identical to Radian & CyborgUprising's> Age has brough some understanding for me. It crtainly has NOT eliminated my autism. At one point I actually thought my difficulties in relationships were because I was introverted, but since I had 3 "Semi" girlfriends who were also knockouts, it turns out I was not SHY. I had a lot of things going on I was unable to conceptualize at the time. The end of my longest relationship revealed my lack of body language comprehension. I had chances most males could only dream about, but was totally unaware of how to understand when a girl was being serious & was really interested in me. I still do.. This is one example, I have quite a few other challenges that go beyond human relations, like coordination, writing, speaking.. The list is prettylengthy actually.

Matthew

I'm fairly well convinced that there is, in the NT brain, a mechanism that passes information from the brain's perceptual area to activity areas, mainly in the face. On this mechanism are based the behaviours that underpin theory of mind. I'm fairly well convinced too that there's no such connection in mind. That's the one that starts with a returned smile in newborns, I think, and is interwoven with normal language development.

Without that link, which enables replication or shadowing of facial microexpressions in sub-500ms timeframes, the best we can do is use thought and deliberate movement to fake what the machinery doesn't do. That, in practice, is good enough for general acceptance but not, without sensitivity to autism in the NT population where you're trying to make it work, completely successful.

What he said.

Great reply.

However for myself its not worth the effort and stress.

Even if you don't have an official diagnosis, if you have Autism, in any form, it isn't going away. No matter how much you can cover:
* you will still need solitary downtime to recharge where NTs recharge with others.
* your understanding of body language and non-verbal communication will still be running "in software" instead of "in hardware" as it does for NT's
* there will still be things that will simply go over your head -- sometimes you'll feel the draft, sometimes you won't even have a clue it happened.

Quite frankly, if you think you have outgrown Autism, either you never had it in the first place, or you are lying to yourself.


I actually count myself fortunate in that I lost my job before I crashed -- I found out after my departure from my job that my hubby and best friend were increasingly concerned about my physical health -- there is no doubt in their minds that I was heading for a catastrophic health collapse from the stress.

This.

Do you honestely know how tiring and how draining it is to always have to censor yourself? To always have to watch out for the things you say? To watch people's reactions.

For me college and eductaion isn't what drains me, it's the socialization, it's the people. Whenever I go out into the public the most tiring thing is socializing. I use so much brainpower just to filter myself that I slowly lose a part of my indentity.

People don't grow out of their quirks and oddness, they simply hide it.

This is where the NTs misunderstand this forum.

Acting normal is not being normal and natural it drains us.

I am what I am and pretending to be NT is not worth it.

Sadly this concept doesn't work in college.

I am almost 40 and pretending never worked for me in the past.

I never even understood I had any disorder.

Getting older I understand sometimes there is no right answer.

What I mean by it's not worth it is I can not pretend any more it drains me too much.

School was Hell so I feel for you.

Too bad...I always heard college is much better than high school. Maybe for NTs

I'm leaving for college next year.

My community college sucks.

I'm going to a state university two hours from my hometown. I need to get out of this toilet town and I've always wanted to live in the city (more resources for help if/when I need it, better variety of entertainment)

I'm terrified. But I know if I don't make myself leave town now, I never will.

It seldom works in the workforce either.

I would not try to judge the OP's ASD status in this discussion.

I think what makes college better is that it becomes easier to be anonymous. Or at least it was for me because I came from a small town. Now, granted, I didn't become anonymous because I was still hell-bent on fitting in, but if I would have wanted to find a nice quirky group of people to hang with, I could have, and I would have been able to stay away from the "popular" people much more easily than I could in high school.

Whenever you leave your current environment, you have a bit of an opportunity to reinvent yourself because no one knows who you were before. I would have been smart to just forget about being popular and just embracing the more introverted side of myself. Joined a photography club or something like that. Or just studied more.

College can be better. But you have to get yourself out of bad habits and immerse yourself in the right kind of people for you.

+1.

A person with AS can learn different strategies to adapt, but they DO NOT "grow out of it."

A person who looses a foot in a car wreck can learn to get around on crutches, but they cannot "learn" to grow a completely new foot.