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Is it possible for AS to get "worse" later on?

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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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14 Oct 2010, 10:50 am

ruveyn wrote:
. . . A lot of NTs in my milue have no idea I am an Aspie.

ruveyn

There's medium disclosure such as 'I'm a pretty nerdy individual,' or 'I'm a pretty big bookworm.'

And then sometimes people are accepting of differences, even appreciative of these same differences, and sometimes they're not.



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14 Oct 2010, 11:16 am

conundrum wrote:
. . . This has been especially apparent for the last few weeks--I have gotten some job/career opportunities that I've been preparing for/working towards, which is great, but I've been stressing out over doing things exactly "right" and worrying that I'm not. Then, everything kind of "stopped" when I caught an illness that laid me up for over a week. Since then, I've been having a LOT of trouble focusing and have been feeling very depressed. I was only able to pull myself out of it a couple of days ago.

So yes, any kind of stressful event, good or bad, can exacerbate autistic traits.


I struggle with this, too. I really encourage you to take a deep breath and give yourself permission. Mistakes are allowable. Mistakes are at times even good because they give you information. They are part of the texture of the situation. And make it much more real, and much more interesting.

As an antidote, if you're in a position where you can be proactive about a situation, then it's kind of like doing course corrections early and middle for a space vessel, and then at the end you only need to make a couple of adjustments and you don't need to be so "perfect" about it. And I'm also learning for myself, that in many situations it's about multiple quick passes and 'good enough really is good enough,' that instead of trying to do it perfectly in a one-shot deal.

I'd also be very interested if you have any kind of favorite methods for dealing with perfectionism.



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14 Oct 2010, 11:40 am

lostD wrote:
. . . SteelMaiden, I would defintely consider university as a stressful event. My first year was awful (not intellectually), I had terrible insomnia, felt that my intelligence was leaving my brain, that every symptoms I had in the past of some unknown condition were becoming worse and worse (coincidentally, this is when I learned about dyspraxia and asperger), I thought I could have a social life because no one would know me but I totally failed (and it was even worse at first than in the past though no one was bullying me), even my physical conditions worsened (IBS which was embarrassing).

Really, I think it is linked (but I think you had already draw this conclusion), but it may get better as time passes.

My experience of college and living in a dorm the first year (way back in school year '82-83), was that the kids were generally mean, stupid, exclusionary. It was almost like a throwback to junior high. Maybe because no one knew anyone, the skills the young adults had started to learn in high school of being decent and kind on some occasions and constructive on many other occasions, kind of eroded and people went back to earlier "skills."

It was definitely not the intellectual environment I was looking forward to, and that was a big disappointment.