Having Aspergers

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Can Aspergers make you worse when you get older? Can you get worse later in life, like in your 40s? Can you get better or worse with Aspergers later in life? When I was younger, I had little symptoms of Aspergers when I didn’t know I had Aspergers, I only had a very big problem with making friends, my Cerebral Palsy caused social skills too. I was almost normal when I was teenager, I guess, but I didn’t have any friends, I had classmates that I talked too, but not too many, I remember going to the library alot during lunch time. I have Learning Disability too, that makes everything sooooo more worse for me.

I don't think the actual ASD gets any better or worse over time, but it can impact on your life to a different extent depending on the circumstances at the time. And as people get older they might have less strength to work through the problems that ASD brings them, so it could easily feel as though the ASD is getting worse. On the other hand, an Aspie might have learned a lot about good coping strategies that continue to work well, so their acquired wisdom might carry them through.

I sometimes think the world itself is getting less suitable for Aspies than it used to be. For example, shops and hospitals used to be smaller, more local, and easier to navigate. Travelling by plane used to be fairly simple. Things didn't change so rapidly.

I think another factor is that we are prone to autistic burnout, meaning that masking for long periods of time can take a toll on us, as can changes, as can too much social interaction, etc.

When we are burned out we may seem "more autistic" than we did before burnout onset because we are having a hard time coping.

No, Autism is not a progressive neurological disorder.

In my personal experience, yes, it can worsen/change over time.

Mine was absolutely worst in my late 20's. I realized my diagnosis, went to my doc and he said "Yes, you're right. That's what this is. (Asperger's Syndrome) But what do you expect me to do? We have no medicine for this."

I couldn't accept that as an answer. I Knew that my symptoms weren't always that bad, and that if something could make it worse, something could make it better.. I just had to figure out what it was.

More than 10,000 pages of reading later + a chance meeting of an Herbalist and his Naturpathic Doctor father and I eventually figured out the digestive root cause and how to treat it via diet, supplements, intestinal cleanses etc and got to work treating what ailed me.

I still have ups and downs, but in general my symptoms have been much lower over the last 10 years or so and I've been able to function in life, work, and play much, Much higher.

So, yes, depending on the root cause of one's ASD symptoms, it's entirely possible that they worsen with age/time - but it's also entirely possible for them to improve, too.

Others have found similar success in altering gut flora - like the statistician with a website called N of One that found that some antibiotics made his son's ASD worse and others made it better. etc etc there are now medical studies published over the last decade about these things.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

I think I got better at coping as I go older.

But, I also became better at controlling my circumstances...and did so. And therefore was less tolerant of things I didn't like.

Like others said: it's mostly about circumstances. I've gained skills but life also gets more or less complicated. For me, life was rough at age 8, peaked at 19, bad until 30, medical hardship into 40s, workplace hardship late 40s (that really "brought out" the social aspect of my Autism - got my diagnosis), finally at 50 I'm enjoying life much more. I know in the future there will be increasing health issues and declining Executive Functioning that will be challenging, but I will also have less responsibilities and hopefully will maintain/build my support system.

Wishing you manageable ups and downs and good resources and supports.