Growing out of it (or misdiagnosed)

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Apologies if this topic comes up often. I wanted to give my own take on this.

Because I feel I have grown out of my AS symptoms - with maybe only a little bit of residue left.

When I was a child, I had issues with speaking to anyone, and avoided interacting with people - But now that isn't the case. I think I've gotten quite good at following queues, and have no trouble sustaining a conversation. (Especially when I'm not stuck in my own head.) I stumble on words sometimes, but I usually ignore the blip, and keep on talking. This makes me question whether or not I have AS at all.

When I was a child, I convinced myself I was an alien, and didn't belong around humans... Or otherwise I needed explicit "permission" to be around humans - As an adult, instead of AS, I base my "validity as a human" on how successful I've been in terms of finance, career, love life, etc. I blame AS in my early life for this.

When I was a child, I got upset over things for no reason - As an adult, this still happens quite a lot. Is this an AS thing?

When I was a child, and now as an adult, I feel uncomfortable in places with a lot of sensory stimuli. The worst is when it's a big birthday party, inside a smallish house. It doesn't make me nauseous, just very flighty, and feel a strong urge to be somewhere quiet. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable in rooms with a lot of objects. AS?

Looking back at myself (as I'm now in my late 20s), I feel like most of my life was experienced like a lost puppy. Simply drifting along and allowing things to happen, and making very little deliberate action. Telling myself I had done something bad in a past life, and didn't deserve to have nice things, etc...

I have few close friends - who seem to be those who have experienced abuse/struggles in their childhood, but are doing fine as adults. Otherwise, I still find it very difficult to make new friends - Especially in work environments.

All this said, should I be discussing these things with a specialist?

The other thing I want to know is, did anyone else "grow out" of their symptoms in a similar way?

You could have been misdiagnosed or:

You could have developed strategies which help you navigate the world despite your "disorder," to the point where, for intents and purposes, it's not a "disorder" any more--only a "difference."

Either way, you should never feel defined by your disorder or "disorder."

It's also possible to have residue Asperger's - where you previously met the criteria, but now your traits are subclinical, but in a stressful time they can again come to a clinical level. You could talk to a specialist, but I can't see why it's something to be worried about.

It seems normal for social problems to get better with time, especially if you have decent human relations training. Executive function and sensory problems tend to stay the same or get worse, but they aren't listed in the diagnostic criteria. As far as diagnostic labels, Asperger's in particular seems to focus mainly on having crap social skills (or sometimes non-problems like being an introvert).

Thanks for the responses guys. My family still think I need specialist help, but I think I need some good tools to manage my stress.

I didn't grow out of it per se, but I act completely differently now than I did during my childhood due to careful ongoing observation of how people speak and respond to one another, mimicry of facial expressions, hand movements during conversation, pitching my voice up and giving it intonation as other people do, developing (and unfortunately often overdoing) a sense of humor and so on.

I am also far more willing to be in social situations, but more because I feel less likely to come off weird and to be jeered at than in my youth. I play-act at being the social, outgoing one but actually am no less uncomfortable now than then and often after social interaction, I am so exhausted that I collapse onto the couch or into a chair and just stare, or sometimes have to sleep.

Even after coming up on 40 years of continuous work on saying and doing the appropriate thing, I still have times where I realize I screwed it up but I rarely know what it is I did wrong, I just get that "Is there something wrong with you?" look at some point. The most difficult part is not realizing, based on small changes in the scenario, that I should not have simply repeated what I did the last time. What changed from last time to this one? I never really know.

However, I "pass" well enough that I have always been able to hold down jobs, albeit with horrendous anxiety, and am even married and have children.

I'm glad to hear your story NowhereWoman. Your experiences sound a lot like me.

I have learned to function with Asperger's, but I still consider myself an Aspie. Learning to adapt is possible and, in my opinion, probable. Every person has some weaknesses. As they get older, most people learn how to deal with them better.