Outgrowing AS

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I am 18 years old and was wondering if I could outgrow AS. Do you think I can?

Many people, myself included, gradually developed accommodations or adaptations to it. For all intents and purposes, no one would suspect that I was Autistic unless I told them (which I do frequently often to just gauge their reactions).

It really, really depends. A lot of people aren't 'in treatment' - for example myself, but we are still quite disabled. It depends on the profundity of your disability as well in terms of passing.

One word of advice, though; there may come a time when 'passing' is no longer worth it in terms of your energy level. Something may have to be jettisoned, as it did for me. I am starting to act 'more autistic' but in less problematic manners - it keeps my other issues in check. As in more socially awkward and 'geeky', but fewer shutdowns and the like, and easier for me to handle bipolar spectrum issues. I don't think they are correlated but they could be, for some.

This is a calculated move, based on the popularity of 'nerdiness' in society. Before this stage in my life, acting like that was a potential liability (high school).

There's a book called "Be Different" that will hopefully be helpful. Life can be tough as a kid/teenager/20-something but eventually it can be possible to turn our "problems" into "advantages".

I'm in my mid-50s, an ex-professor, now in Corporate America, and didn't learn about "my little problem" until last year. Like the other "old guy" who posted a response, most people don't suspect that I'm on the spectrum. That said, I can think of a lot (countless) of "broken eggs"/disasters/screw ups/etc. I made/did when I was younger. If only I had known...

You have a big advantage - you know what you're up against. Learn to play the game, but try to keep the fun of "seeing the world differently" alive.

You won't outgrow it but you can adapt and probably already have to a good extent.

You cant' outgrow a neurological condition.
You can work out strategies to cope, including things you can learn from books, from therapy, and from experiences.
What you should do though, if you are aware you have difficulties, deficiencies, and problems that others don't is speak up and ask for help when you need it.
Sitting looking dumb or sheepish will only mean you miss out on opportunities, and learning that others have.
If you've been formally diagnosed and have services available use them.
If not look closer or lobby for services to be made available for those in need.

Remember no two people on the spectrum are the same, and some that look like they are not effected and put on a brave face may be facing real difficulties and putting on a poker face.
Be grateful for finding out so soon and so young, rather than thinking about how to avoid it, learn to embrace it and make the most of it.
There are plenty of us here on WP who found out far too late to avoid the difficulties associated with being on the spectrum, and only now as we age (some of us are in our 20's, 30's 40's 50's or even older), do we have an explanation and a label to apply to the difficulties we've faced and the differences we have to others.

Embrace it, learn to accept it, and use it and the positive traits that go with it, but don't let it define you or restrict you; because you will always be a dynamic and different person Aspie or not.

Growing is learning, the older you get the more you'll have learned, learning is problem solving. If you have problems because of your disability then the older you get the more you'll solve.

Therefore I reckon you will "grow out of it", to a greater or lesser degree.

Of course your awareness of how it affects you will also increase so you may think you're falling behind.
Also everyone else grows too so your 'normalcy' will be increasing slower than NTs so you may seem to be falling behind.
On the third hand a bunch of stoopid people will be dying the longer you live so that will make you seem more normal too.

I am not sure one can outgrow one's physical neurobiology, but many people do outgrow certain expressions of it. For example, I outgrew most of my sensory issues and am much less troubled by the ones that remain (compared to early childhood). I understand this is fairly common.

You can also improve yourself with therapy or other efforts, and many people do eventually "pick up" on things enough to somewhat offset their social deficits. This does not mean one has outgrown AS, though--it only means you are functioning with it differently than you had been.

Yes, though I had speaking impairments far more than social skills impairments (the two go together of course).

I have learned to speak more fluently and naturally and to follow the timing and topic in conversations. I still sometimes have odd facial or head movements that cause NT's to have microexpressions that express discomfort. And I still have very little in common with most NT's even if I pass for fairly normal upon first meeting .

This is similar to my experience (I'm 32 and wasn't diagnosed until this year). I got very good at masking my autistic traits, especially in my late teens/early twenties during university and in my first year or so of work. Now I just don't have the energy to keep it up at all times, and I've realised how many problems it causes me in other areas to try to be something I'm not.

As per previous posts, you can't outgrow a neurological condition but you do get a lot better at living with it sucessfully. A word of caution from me is that to mask the traits of an aspie can be a very bad thing because internal anxiety is being suppressed and will eventually surface. I think that learning to accept yourself, be comfortable with who you are and finding a lifestyle and working life that suits your unique persona is that ultimate 'growing'. If you do that, there is far less that you will need to mask. Its less about masking yourself and living a life that was not meant to be and more about allowing yourself to explore options and find that life that is waiting for you.

Like many people have said already, I developed adaptive abilities over the years, to the extent of closely watching other people to try to figure out how "regular" people dress, move, etc. and keeping my different behaviors (stims etc.) tightly under wraps. However, at this point in my life, it's gotten to be too stressful to always try so hard to be something else, and I've started letting myself just be myself anymore. Not stressing out so much if I stim, even in public and especially when I'm alone. Not trying so hard to look and act like other people. It's keeping me calmer, in a way. I used to take medications to prevent meltdowns and now I don't, and I hated them, so if letting myself act a little "more autistic" on a daily basis leads to fewer meltdowns without meds, so be it. I'm past caring. That said, some of my traits ARE less pronounced than they were when I was a kid. If you think about it, NT's are more intense in their personalities as kids too, so maybe we all just mellow out as we grow up. But I don't think anyone ever actually stops being autistic. We just grow, shift, adapt, accept, whatever works for us.

As a child I was more obviously Asperger, but was not diagnosed until I was 21. The school did get me assessed when I was 10, but that was for educational purposes, and it showed I was emotionally and physically immature, with a severe discrepancy between skill areas.

I improved a lot since the age of 16 in terms of social development, but my anxieties and OCD have got worse since then, although with support I am now getting them under control. I don't appear obviously different when I am out and about (as long as I am not in a panic), and this can make things harder.

Speaking from my 54 years . . . it's like your face. You don't outgrow it, but it grows. Love the you you've yet to know.

It probably depends at least somewhat on how far you are along the spectrum. The deeper you go, the more you will have to do in order to compensate to the point of your condition being difficult to detect.

Mine has always been pretty obvious. I've learned how to keep a lid on it to the point that I can function in a conversation, but I can't seem to get it right, and trying to do this is very tiring and stressful.

I'm learning to pre-empt stuff. I'm finding that if I let someone know in advance and remind them from time to time, they are generally very accepting and things tend to go a lot smoother. Do they feel awkward? Yes, at first, because they don't generally know what to expect at first, but I've had much more acceptance socially using this strategy. NT's get anxious too, with the unexpected and the unknown. Most aspies qualify as the "unknown" to the average NT, as far as one-on-one interaction. It's usually more helpful to just become less of an unknown. It helps put them more at ease, and saves me the stress of having to simultaneously resist every stim around me AND somehow figure out what kind of NT stuff I need to do to appear less obvious.

Meanwhile, yes, of course work on areas of difficulty, like perhaps just saying hi in the proper tone and volume or something.

Do you grow out of it? Well.... you'll gradually learn skills that NT's already have. Hey, everyone has to learn skills.
But a neurological issue doesn't typically just go away.