When autism fades, do you really lose your unique talents?

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I'm at a time in my life where I can safely say that I've "grown out" of my diagnosis of Asperger's. I am atypical of many people on the spectrum in that over the past 2-3 years, I have become increasingly (and successfully) social.

I have many close friends of both sexes, have lovers, enjoy meeting new people and love parties/social get togethers. I see friends nearly every day that I haven't reserved for studying, class or errands. Some people refer to me as a vagabond as I often stay over at multiple friend's places on the weekends. I also take an anti-anxiety/depressant pill which has halted my anxiety, obsessive thinking and attachments to certain subjects/people/objects. In other words, if you had no knowledge of my background, you'd likely see me as a fun loving, enthusiastic, empathic NT.

When I look at my life, I see an image of success despite struggle...but I was also such an interesting child and teen, with many gifts and talents that, if nurtured, would have made me much more vibrant of a person than I am now.

In the prime of my full-blown Aspie years, I created these "projects" where I would research a very specific topic (e.g. milk cartons, silos, bathing suit backs) or create imaginary worlds complete with geography and characters. I would fully immerse myself in these projects, devoting all of my waking hours into writing down everything in great detail. These projects of mine would enthrall adults, but bore my peers to death. Looking back on my life at this time, I see the dedication and passion for these projects as unequalled to the things that typical peers were involved with at the time.

Another aspect of myself that I feel I lost when I gained social awareness was my intelligence, particularly in the area of reading, writing, and communication skills. I was labelled as "hyperlexic" and "verbally gifted" and was found to be reading at a grade seven level in kindergarten.

Now, I'm in university and my profs tell me that I can't write an essay worth crap. I'm not saying that I have lost my academic skills altogether, but they have most definitely degraded from the time I gained social awareness. When I became focused on pleasing others and refining my social skills, I became less focused in school: my grades also dropped from high As in high school/college to straight B+s in university. I realize the fact that your grades do shift when you first start attending university: but I'm now in my third year and mine haven't changed. I've also become more cynical and apathetic towards university/institutionalized learning as a result, preferring to gain knowledge/realizations via my creative friends.

The thing is, though, that I am too used to the norms of the 'real world' to be able to gain all of these abilities back. I am far too self-aware to just ignore people and focus on my projects and schoolwork like I used to. I feel as if I don't have the focus and passion that I used to have for academics and particular subjects, as instead this focus has gone towards social skills.

What does everyone think? Do you agree or disagree with this particular phenomenon? Has anyone else gone through a similar experience?

I would disagree.

I have mild AS, and my unique talents/interests are still as prevalent as ever.

I'd say it's more a difference in focus and time consumed. Back when you were younger, you were hyperfocusing on all of those topics, when you dove into them, you were immersed. Now your focus is more split.

Maybe it's also the medication? Anti-obsessionals tend to make it hard to focus at all, I think that's their purpose. It's the kind of thing that's really a trade-off. They help with some things, but they take away other things, and you have to decide which you want more. I was on Luvox for a bit, and it made me really irritable and not able to focus on much of anything at all. I'm not totally sure if that was it "working" or if it was a bad reaction. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between how a medication is supposed to work, and the side effects.

One of my aspie friends once was great at math and then he lost it. I used to write and not get writer's blocks, now I do. I had a better memory and then I lost it. I can still remember things from the past but these days, I forget. I think the only time I ever slipped back to my old self was when I was pregnant so I got super focused on it and was reading about it and remember trivia like you burn up to 50,000 calories during labor. 1 in 4 pregnancies end in a miscarriage, 80% of miscarriages happen in the first termester. I was even reading about miscarriages before it even happened. My doctor seemed impressed I was reading so much about it and I thought "don't all mothers?"


Yeah I guess there are cons to over coming bad aspie traits. You then can't even keep focus on your own obsessions

I might sound really naive but I'd love to have my asperger's fade away. It's not like I have any unique talents, but I must say I'm very obsessive.

Give yourself time and you will get some of your abilities back. Be aware that you may also regain some of your deficits. I don't mean to make anyone feel bad, but many Aspies do go through "life cycles."

I was very isolated in my childhood and spent a lot of time inventing new languages, developing code, cracking cyphers, and reading so much it could only fairly be called obsessively.

In my twenties, I started developing friendships and relationships and had a reasonably large circle of friends. I had lovers. I was invited to and attended parties. People dropped by my home so often that I moved to a neighborhood farther away to cut down a little on all the socializing. I wasn't doing puzzles, I wasn't writing, but those were golden times for social interaction.

When I hit thirty, it was like a floodgate opened, with respect to my writing and suddenly I was writing thousands of words per day and the words just kept coming and coming. But as the words returned, the friends began drifting away.

Now I am in my early 40s and I have no friends. I don't get invited to parties (with the exception of the neighbor who was planning a noisy party and invited all us neighbors to her party. My husband explained to me that it's something people do to keep their neighbors from calling the police on the noisy party and that I could go if I wanted but it wasn't a "real" party invitation.) I seem to have forgotten how to make friends altogether. In many ways, I have regressed in my Asperger's.

But that is just the deficits. I have increased in the benefits as well and now I write all the time, I solved complicated puzzles, I construct puzzles, I am able to combine ideas in my graduate research in ways that my professors tell me are fresh and unique.

I'm not saying that this is what is happening and what will happen to you. I am just saying that it is what happened to me and I have talked to others my age who say it is what has happened to them as well. So don't despair that your abilities are lost because they might not be lost forever. But also don't take your new social skills for granted -- enjoy them thoroughly and try to learn as much as you can from your social interactions because you might need to draw on that knowledge later in life.

Be well and be happy!

Sparrow

The anti-depressants really do help with overcoming social anxiety. How long have you been on them for? I started taken half of a pill to wean off them but it didn't go down well, so I'm back on taking a pill a day.

My grammar skills fall dramatically after I go out socialising. Maybe I need to always practice them to be good. I dunno.

Well I am glad that you are doing better.

Well, its hard to differentiate between the effects medication can make I guess. BUT my son was super mathematical, almost magical with numbers. At age 6 he could add compute huge sums INSTANTLY in his head! (And got in trouble at scholl for not showing the 'working out', but HE didnt know how he'd worked it out!) ANYWAY, he was also not very good at playing with other kids and socializing, as it seemed "beneath" him. So he was the classic gifted child, who had trouble mixing with his peers. At about age 7, i still do not know why, but i suspect he made some kind of "decision" after figuring out a role to play....but he became alot better socially! BUT...his magical maths skilss faded. Dont get me wrong, he was in the top 5% of state in his final exams, studied engineering at Uni for a couple of years...is now a talented poker dealer/player....however, when he was using less of his mental energy socially, when he was more "autistic", he would have been in top 0.05%! His brain may still be the same, but his focus and use of other parts of it have meant he has lost access to alot of the "magical" prfoundly genius parts.
BUT having said all of that, he is happy!! And has good friends..(and a sweet girlfriend)..is using his still Aspy mind in his drive to win money, earn money...talk about money...haha! He feels he belongs somewhere and is happy in his own skin and fully aware and able to laugh at his auty tendencies. A quote from him. "I dont do feelings. I do maths. Feelings cloud your judgement!"

I have had a very similar life experience to yours. I became a very social person for many years. I had parties, friends and so on. I could go up and talk to people and had many close friends. It was only until recently upon the realization of having Aspergers that I have become less social. My anxiety has ramped up because of fear of making social mistakes I was formerly unaware of. As I have been forced in to more social situations I find my special interests have basically been lost. I miss them, it's tragic. I guess. I do feel a thrill when I walk in a library or pick up a book of short stories though, I just no longer have the time. Also, I have become worse at writing, articulating my thoughts and my executive dysfunction is a... dysfunction. Part of this has to do with overcompensating in one area (social). It is very much like my brain shuts down if it is overloaded with social - i can forget many many things.


I would suggest a few things about university: high school teachers baby you to some extent - when you write are you using the writing process (notes, predraft, revise, final draft) ? I know I don't, but I did in high school because it was part of the assignment. Also, there is far more review in high school - do you review frequently? From my experiences, my Aspie mind needs frequent review because I find other things that I am interested in and have problem focusing on what the teacher thinks is important and what I think is important. I also tend to have minor problems with whole/specific which become amplified in academic writing because I ramble on about points that I am not connecting to the whole of the essay. One thing that I found was that I largely depended on my intelligence in high school - it does not work in college because you don't have failing kids to make you look good and the prof knows the material better. I know I had very poor study and organization skills when I entered high school.

Institutionalized learning is largely useless for many people. Trust me, I'm a teacher! Either way, you should be more worried about making yourself attractive to employers. Be more worried about being able to sell yourself (special skills, specialized training, work experience) then the difference between an A and a B+.

At the moment I am teaching. I return to university in January and I intend to what I call "return to my Autism". Which I'm sure some people here wont like. But anyways, I have a longing to live in the library.

I have no idea, I wish I had hidden talents or unique ones because at least I would have some stereotype of Autism. but nope.. I have no unique talent.

Another one here. In youth and isolation, everything gets focused on a small area.

It happens to everyone, and grades decline, learning slows, as kids hit those middle years.

Developing social skills is a big load for teens.

The leading cause for not reading, losing all creative ability, is the University. They have no high standards, so they just want people to do enough to get by, then they complain of students poor work, but they are the ones with paid jobs.

Get the degree, it is meaningless except compared to not having one.

Most of my reader friends report that about three years after leaving the university they got back into reading.

I think you are making the best of it, it is social time, networking, that will carry past graduation.

Post education is a few years getting established, then things like home ownership and children, and that keeps most busy. 40 to 50 the kids are gone, the house paid for, and then writting, other projects put aside come back. It is said there are no good writers under fifty. Perhaps it is no one has the time to be a writer before fifty.

This may be an AS site, but social bonding works. In the words of Janis, "Get it while you can."

In the work world, few will ever care what degree you have, what your grades were like, but going to uni with Beth from Accounting opens many doors.

It is not just us, we may be poor at social, slow starters, but we can do it more or less. It sounds like you caught up just in time for the party. Look around, lots of normal people who are not invited to the good parties, who pass through without anyone learning their name, and never leave their small world.

Social is something that not even a university can teach, but may facilatate. Some are just better than others, and the science is weak about how. This is all super bonus points for you, so take them.

No friends, two friends, ten, a hundred, it does play out later when looking for work and support. Many consider it the most valuable part of uni. Just the sports fans that support the team will give a pass to a "Raging Gophers" girl.

There is also support from a large body who went to that school in 1934. who sent their granddaughter, and if you know her, your connections run up generations.

So graduate with a C and lots of friends, it is better than As and less friends.

When you are old and tired of partying, your creative side will return.

I don't think you ever outgrow your autism. I think that's what makes me unique, and so willing/determined to graduate from college. I feel that me being here, can make the world a better place.

ive heard many many times parents tell me when they see less of the autism due to intervention, biomedicals, therapies, etc, the childs talents whether it be art, singing, persvation, etc, they start to lose it. In fact one mother told me her son was a artistic savant could draw anything seen in seconds, then she started doing biomedicals with him because that was all he did was draw, and he started emerging as she would put it and he gave eye contact, and started wantin to be social more then he use it, but when she wanted to show everybody his artistic abilities, he didnt have them anymore, he couldnt even draw a simple painting. She told me it upset her so much because of how amazing his paintings were so detailed, but that she feels this is better for him to be normal then be gifted, which its her choice. Ive heard a couple parents tell me that of their now becoming recovering children. I find that so weird and interesting, i dont have any unique talents either but i do have great memory, could be a talent like me typign over a hundred words a second without looking pretty good, anyways so yes ive heard this happent o a couple individuals on the spectrum.

_________________
Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated

It goes in cycles like SparrowRose said. My autism has cycled for almost 6 decades. I go from being a hermit never leaving my room to a professional party planner and social bon vivant and back to a recluse all in an eleven year span. You get used to it.
But you don't 'grow out' of it, you grow into it.

Has the autism really gone away or are you just seeing less effect because of the social environment of being female of a certain age range? For example, many men are bothered by a difficulty in finding sex partners. Also, there's a pattern of women who have posted on this site, of apparent symptoms coming back when they've reached an age range where they're likely not in as heavy a demand for dating. I know a few older women (not from this site) who have even become animal hoarders. I've wondered whether the apparent gender difference in the occurrence of mild autism might be the result of an under diagnosis among females.

Social commentary (satire) points out that men will put up with a lot of variation that women would not put up with in men, and so problems become less problematic for people who have an easier time getting what they want, all other things being equal.

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion ... hen_why_do

I think there's something to this. I started seeing it happening to myself a little while ago. I'm trying to figure out how to reverse it now, or perhaps get back the passion and ability to obsess without becoming less competent at normal things.
I know it can be done!
(Maybe, though, it's the ability to obsess that can make us look so weird? I know that part of what I was trying to do was to distance myself from the fantasy worlds that I was so deep into because I realized it wasn't normal, but I think that's where I lost some passion.)

Sinsboldy: I hope you're right about that! I can see that happening, too. I go through veeeery slow cycles in lots of other things.