Having Aspergers

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How can Aspergers make you worse? When I was younger, I didn’t have anxiety, I didn’t feel overwhelmed, I didn’t get depressed, I could do stuff like normal people do but I wasn’t normal, I have Cerebral Palsy. I didn’t know I had Aspergers until I was in my 20s. My Aspergers wasn’t bad until I was in my late 30s, I started getting panic attacks, when I did grocery shopping when I was living on my own for the first time in 2007, I had a panic attack in grocery store. My Aspergers got worse in my mid 40s.

This is interesting. I have found that Aspergers became more manageable through the 20s and 30s. Perhaps I simply adjusted to it better.

Do you think any neurological changes from the CP could have made the Aspergers worse?

The way that Asperger's effects people can increase as you age. It can lead to panic attacks and breakdowns.

But there is a method that can be used to reduce these effects. The tool is a form of exercise. It is like running the 50 yard dash as quickly as you are able. In school we tend to participate in a variety of exercise. When we transition to our own, many times we put exercise in the back burner. Many of us have other issues that make it difficult to exercise. But this is an essential tool to remove this form of stress buildup and put us back to normal.

Your Asperger's isn't getting worse. You are as severely Autistic now as you always have been. You just didn't know before because the stress of daily life had not accumulated to the point that you were no longer able to handle it.

After decades of dealing with the stresses, we become weaker and have less stamina to deal with them. When you have less stamina you have less brain energy to deal with all the neurological and social stresses. So your Autistic traits show more. That is why people feel like they sometimes become more or less Autistic as they age. That's not actually true. What happens as we age is that our tolerance to stress weakens. For some Autistic people, they are able to build tolerances so for them, their Autism seems less severe as they get older. It all depends on your specific neurological makeup and on whether coping strategies work for you or not. But you are not becoming more Autistic. Your severity of Autism is showing because the stresses of life are starting to overwhelm you.

I think that's quite likely true. The ASD symptoms may seem to get worse (or better), but I think it's mostly down to challenges from the environment changing over time. If the environment is bad for a long time, there can be a cumulative effect - something known as burnout. Maybe it can get to a point where recovery isn't possible, but I like to think not. I think there's always hope. It would be interesting to hear from anybody who had a terrible time but managed to recover. In my case my ASD problems were never really awful so not surprisingly I can feel quite good on a good day.

I agree with the sentiments being expressed.