"Outgrowing" Aspegers

Post Reply New Topic

My son has recently been diagnosed with Aspegers. Upon reading up on it I realized that a great deal of it applied to me as well - or at least it used to. I was socially hopeless, terribly disorganized, ackward, and have obesessions.

I'm almost 40 now and feel like I now fit in pretty well. Turned my technology obsession into a good career, taught myself communication skills when I was around 30 and figured out that it would be useful to do so, and my organizational skills (while far from perfect) are fairly decent. Still an introvert (but my job is now, strangely enough, all about communication) and I need plenty of quiet time. I think my brain still works pretty much the same as it always have, but I have explicitly learned many of the things that comes naturally to NTs therefore have "outgrown" my Aspegers.

I'm curious as to how common this is? Do most Aspies learn well enough to get along comfortably and pass as NT, or is my scenario uncommon?

I don't know how common it is, but I'm generally considered successful - if a bit wierd - by those who know me personally.

It's kind of like learning to write with your opposite hand. Your instincts always will be to use your right, but with time and practice, your left will look almost as good as anyone else's right. An aspie is a right hander writing with his left hand. After years of practice, any one of us can do it. It's just a matter of recognizing the problem and putting effort into practicing.

Asperger's Syndrome has only been "recognized" since 1994...how do you think many adults got along before that time?
They did many things just as you did.

I'm a classic autie, and I have been mistaken by many to be NT. However, if those who think I'm NT were around me for a couple of days, they would realize that I am not. I'm 40 and in all of those years, I have managed to fake NT well enough to get along.

I think I've made some improvement in the last couple years. I know it's 'bad analogy time', but it's almost like alcoholism; in that it's a condition that will never go away, but it's something you have to work on every day for the rest of your life.

Agreed since most Aspies eventually figure out how to pass as normal by the time they are 40. Though I suspect that many older Aspies think they pass as NT just because they have a job and maybe a spouse and a few friends. Though the NT's around them can usually point out that they are still "weird" or "eccentric" acting. In other words you may be fooling yourself just how well you do in social situations.

Luckily I as well have turned my obsession and comfortableness with technology in general into decent, well-paying jobs ranging from working as an IT Manager to working in a technical capacity to use a terminal and command line to SSH into wireless nodes.

My issues only come up when I get into social conversations at work. I have a hard time changing the subject, and pretty much only talk about the things I'm interested in or comfortable with.

I know how you feel about having to 'fake it' to get through each day and I usually seem to come across as a NT well enough, however they still think I'm a bit eccentric.

Bingo. For periods of time, I have thought that I was really normal. But then something happens, and I really feel like the same person I always was. For example, I may be forced to interact with a high-energy boisterous stranger and realize that I can't mirror the way he's acting.

I think "passing as NT" and "outgrowing AS" are two separate things. I can pass for NT almost all of the time, but I still need time to recover from the over-stimulation of the environment. I just plan my schedule and endure until I have my own private time to shut down.

Quoted for truth.

Who, and why no quote?

Well, pretty much everyone above me.

Yes, you can develop a lot. I have. But you can't stop being Asperger altogether in the sense that no matter how much insight you develop into "those NT people out there" and how the world works and how you can keep your life running, you still can't learn to lie well, prosper while being invaded by those special things that disrupt your senses, and make the other more basic neurological symptoms go away.

You can train your body to have better mind body response to develop fewer sensorimotor clumsiness symptoms as an adult (just like a normal person can develop better "reflexes" is they do sports all their lives). You can learn how to stay on a diet that will help you have more high-functioning weeks than low-functioning weeks and otherwise control your environment.

But you can't make the fundamental insanity and irrationality of the NT world go away. If you find yourself comfortable in the NT world, and not in a frequent state of cognitive dissonance at the pointlessness, injustices and hypocrisy of NTs -- and not just those NTs that society agrees are the dysfunctional ones but of even the most popular and admired of them -- or if you don't spend your time in personal isolation to avoid that cognitive dissonance, you were probably never really Asperger but just someone who was clumsy, shy, sensitive, etc. when young.

If, at some point in your development, you realize that you know how to manage your environment and your mind so as to to support your having higher and higher levels of functioning, but you can't maintain your needed levels of functioning while still buying into the crazy social realities of NTs, i.e. that to continue to stay among them you have to become, as they are, un-self-consciously insane and content to be that way so long as everyone in the group is, too, but you can't because that will crash your cognitive functioning, then you truly have Asperger syndrome. E.g., if you can't become one of those men and women in the Arab village who picks up a stone to throw it during the public execution of a young girl because she had sex with a boy, if you can't be one of those professors who sides with an esteemed colleague and the university to indignantly throw out a student who claims your colleague stole his discovery without giving the student's claims and evidence any hearing, and if you can't do those kinds of things -- even if you want to and try to -- because it would crash your functioning, then you truly have an autistic processor and chipset. If you can do those kinds of things, and be content and self-satisfied in the group afterward, then you aren't, and probably never were Asperger.

Socrates had a lot of autistic traits, and was a kind of genius who had one foot in an objective reality and one foot in the explorations of the world of illusion of NTs. He held conversations across the divide via his dialectics. During the public hearing when he was tried for his life over the things he tended to expose, he told an offended Athens that if he didn't continue to follow his "inner guide" he would cease to be as he was. I don't think he was making any rhetorical appeals regarding the existential value of conscientious speech. I think Socrates had Asperger Syndrome and was very plainly saying that he couldn't be as they were and still have a coherent mind and maintain his functioning.

NTs can live in a fundamentally crazy, unhealthy and ugly world -- indeed, they create much of that ugliness unnecessarily out of ignorance and egotism -- and yet they maintain short term sanity and high functioning while doing so. In that sense their social minds are amazing assets and their schizoid talents of creating worlds of delusion and agreeing to live in them as groups while pretending nothing is out of order, are the gifts of genius. But having a social mind that allows one to live happily and with high functioning in crazy, unjust and deluded social realities, is about as beneficial in the long run as having the ability to eat a lot of unhealthy junk food, drink sodas all day and never exercise without dying before age 60 because our bodies are resilient to a point. To consciously choose to eat that way and live an obese sick life physically, as many Americans do, is the choice of the animal (or, as Japanese like to call Americans, Gaijin, "barbarians"). Similarly, as social animals, NTs can maintain their functioning and be happy in the short term living lives of un-self-aware ignorance and injustice, buying into and supporting the group delusions and injustices, but they don't have great lives. Indeed, under their admirable, charming surfaces the NTs can be shockingly stupid, vacuous, and personally and sexually impoverished. Having learned to use lies and compartmentalization and phoniness their whole lives and believing that the social mind, when used that way, is an asset for getting ahead and getting along, the average NT tends to lose the capacity to face or recognize reality at an early age and then as adults they get smaller and smaller as people even as their reputations, stature and egos grow.

If you can't do the foregoing -- even if you want to -- you have Asperger Syndrome and that hard split between you and the world of illusion of the group minds around you will never conveniently disappear. You will always be faced with seeing the unpleasant realities of the world around you, being the only one who can spot the sociopaths and predators who hide among the NTs so openly and prey on their victims by manipulating the blind support of the group, and you will be punished with a loss of your mind's coherence and a drop in your high functioning every time you try to train yourself to ignore those things so that you can get along and fit in like everyone else. If you can't, no matter how much you develop yourself, plug in the BS blinders without losing your mind and becoming low functioning, you have Asperger Syndrome.

I think the degree to which you THINK you are fitting in and being like everyone else depends on how sane and well-grounded the NTs in your environment are. You may be deluding yourself as to how well you fit in. If the parameters change a lot, say a girl accuses the boss of sexual harassment and everyone demonizes and bullies her to destroy her credibility, would you really go along?

Finding the right environment is a big part of superficially "outgrowing" Asperger Syndrome. But that environment can change at any time and if it does, the NTs have the social conscious ability to flex along with it, while you may not. An Asperger individual among NTs should always be aware that at any time without notice, they may have to do more.

Bad metaphors warning - I found it was possible to contort a square peg into a round hole long enough to earn a living by mirroring/acting NT...but the drain on energy was huge. I was burned out after about 20 years of it and I gradually sprang back into my original shape. I always felt trying to pass an 'normal' was like putting on a very tight pair of shoes.
Perhaps you're higher-functioning.

Melody,

Your description of approaching 40 sounds very similar to mine. All of those "classic symptoms" once applied to me, but by 40, they just didn't seem to fit any more. I had learned how to get on quite well.

Or so I thought.

Dealing with the world when on the spectrum involves in large part learning how to deal with people even if everything is processed through intellect. No problem there. However, there is more. Much of "dealing" actually meant suppressing the entire essence of who I really am to appease people and sneak in under the "weird" radar just enough. Fit in I never did, but I no longer weirded people out.

However, the amount of energy required to do this, even when it's a rehearsed act, is tremendous, and takes a hugh and insidious toll. Eventually, it reached a point where I could no longer keep up the act. So I stopped. I'm totally unrecognisable from five years ago in just about every way. It disrupted just about every personal relationship I ever had. But I am authentic now. And now if I feel I belong somewhere, I can be confident that it is me personally that truly belongs, not some character or image. I would NEVER go back to how it was five years ago, when I was "successful."

I have meet people with mild AS to severe. How successful you can be, being determined and self discliplined is important but some people can have dual diagnosis. Like ADHD and ASD. Also Personality Disorders, Learning Disabilities and Anxiety Disorders.
If you have just got AS and it is not severe thats good.
Alot of people dont just have AS and as if life isnt hard enough.
I have AS or plus 4 other confirmed diagnosis.
I have to say 'AS is not my most difficult problem and what I am wanting to express is that the older I get the more labels I get and it is frustrating me.

Last edited by Samara on 29 Nov 2008, 6:55 am, edited 2 times in total.