"Growing" out of AS

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For the better part of two years now, I've considered myself to be an aspie. When I first heard about it, I read everything I could find and determined to be a suitable model for how my brain works. I reasoned that there must be a way to train my mind to act more NT, not because I wanted to completely conform, but because I wanted to function in a mostly NT society.

After I developed a mediocre understanding of the differences between AS and NT, I found ways to navigate through the differences of the AS mind. They weren't easy, the driving philosophy behind these methods was "fake it until you make it". Since most AS differences are related to social interaction, I decided that I was going to act like the most socially adept person who is similar to me, my mother. After lots of practice and making and sustaining a great friendship with someone, I'm finding some of the mannerisms by mom uses are being integrated into mine, it's slow, but there is progress

There has been talk of whether or not "true" aspies can change their ways, so I'm doubting whether or not I actually AS in the first place, and since I'm trying to become more NT to function in this world, I don't know if inquiring a diagnosis is even possible or useful.


Long story, short: Consider this self-diagnoser, un-diagnosed.

I know what you mean.

I wish I would have known about AS a long time ago. I really gave up on myself at an early age because I thought I had something nobody else did and couldn't be *fixed*.

I read "my" story from so many different people here, especially about *reprogramming* themselves at some point, especially during the teenage years.

I definitely did this, more than once. I guess the last time I MAJORLY deprogrammed and completely reprogrammed myself was around 18, and this, for me, was when I became as "normal" as I've ever been.

If I had known years ago that AS(or just being somewhere on the spectrum, even if not an Aspie) would have explained so many things I wouldn't have been so self-destructive. But, at 27, I feel like I've sort of missed the boat. I don't know. It's not like I'm not the same person, essentially, and OF COURSE my brain is still wired the same way, but I HAVE grown up. I learned coping skills for life and came to understand things about the way I am and how to change it or just make it WORK for me long before I knew anything about Asperger's.

I am very interested in AS, though, in general now. I just see something NEW every time I come here I see something I relate to, that explains so much for me, but really see no reason why I should ever seek a diagnosis.

You don't outgrow autism or Asperger's, you just learn how to cope.

I feel like I've outgrown it to a great extent...and then I hit my forehead excitedly while laughing hysterically as I watch "The Cosby Show" by myself. :/

I'm in the same place you are. I feel like that in a case like this, you were born with an AS-wired mind but learned to cope with life better than most people on the spectrum by reading up on it and observing others. You may not qualify for a diagnosis now as you may not fit all of the behaviours, but there's a good chance you may have a couple of traits. I've noticed this in myself and a few others that have made similar gains, but it isn't a bad thing as long as you learn to cope with what you still have.

People tend to learn coping mechanisms. While its not truly growing out of it, there is a large percentage of people who no longer qualify for a diagnosis as an adult (apparently, I've not knowingly met any of them, but that's what the books tell me).

Just be aware that if you hit high stress periods you're likely to lose some of those coping mechanisms and "revert back to more autistic".

I don't think anyone ever completely outgrows it. But I think people can learn to act more normal (or cope).

Who wants to be normal? Normal is boring!

You either never had it to begin with or you learned how to cope.

One of the diagnostics for Asperger's is being late learning to tie your shoes. When I was a child, there weren't any shoes with velcro tabs: velcro hadn't been invented, so it was quite noticeable that I was late learning to tie my shoes -- downright humiliating for a second-grader to have to find a teacher or a cousin to get her shoes tied. But I did learn. Eventually I learned to put loops through loops so well that I became a blue-ribbon knitter and crocheter. But that didn't make me any less late at it.

I was sixty-five years old before I was diagnosed. I was fifty before I ever _heard_ of Asperger's! I'd heard of Autism, but as "Childhood Schizophrenia". My daughter took some college courses in counseling, and figured it out, and the local Mental Health Center sent me for diagnosis (they were already treating me for Depression). My daughter, of course, knew me and my quirks as well as anybody could.

I'd learned a lot of un-Asperger things in sixty-five years, every one of them for the good reason of living in this world with other people, but learning to mask traits didn't make me any less Aspie, and once I knew about it to read about it, and with all the work that's been done and all the writing that's been done just in the last fifteen years, there's a lot to read. And a lot of the mysteries of my personality for all my life have suddenly been solved. But I wasn't nearly as weird at twenty as I was at six.

And I still can't catch a ball!

The brain can do some amazing things. People can use an audio device to play representations of visual objects, and somehow see images after years of blindness. There are many specialized parts of the brain, but many are not so special, and can function to do any task we put them to. If we knock out the agenda of a brain cluster, another brain cluster can be given that agenda. Imagine that parts of your "social" brain clusters are damaged, but we have a need for them. The brain may attempt to write the agenda in some other brain areas. Perhaps our natural ability to interpret facial expressions is gone. We can rewrite another part of the brain to interpret facial expressions.

Eventually we get around to enough firmware upgrades that we seem normal. You just have to be obsessed with doing it, thereby inducing selective plasticity.