How has your Autism changed as you have aged?

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Simple:
Fear, Anger, Hate.
I used to be useless in social situations and people would hate me. Now people like to be around me, find I am funny and a cool person. I can manipulate and deceive people to see things how I do and to influence their actions. I f*****g hate schedules now, I am a chaotic person.

Very few things have changed for me.

As I aged the only things that have really changed are the fact I started taking my ADHD med more frequently (that has worked well on me) and that I've became more and more oppositional (I developed ODD).

I say it's been improved as I got older. I have been improving my social skills, my habits are starting to slow down, and I am learning from the mistakes that I make. To put it another way, I have adapted very well.

My social skills and social awareness and self awareness have improved dramatically since I was a kid (from elementary school to high school) but they basically stagnated around 16 years old. My main stim (twirling dangling things in front of my eyes ) is no longer constant and interfering with my schooling as it was when I was in elementary school. I just do it in private now. I've stopped a lot of my other stims like walking in circles and talking to myself and arm flapping (for the most part-I do some kind pf wringing or flapping arm thing when I'm really upset). I've stopped asking repetitive questions like I did as an elementary aged child. I'm no longer in my imaginary world nearly 24/7 as I was as an elementary school aged child and now just have periods of daydreaming (fewer than I'd like actually) and read fantasy novels A LOT. My need for sameness in terms of food and what dishes I use ect. and my sensory issues (with sound and smell and overload) were extreme as a child , got somewhat better and then got worse again over the last 5 years. My stimming in private has also increased over the last 5 years and I've become more socially isolated after major social failures and relationships falling apart.

I've beome a lot more aware of it as I've gotten older. I wouldn't say things have gotten easier or harder, but I'm more aware of being an Aspie. Also, I don't mean to sound defeatist, but I've run into how hard it is to change my natural self, in regards to social situations.

Most of you got better. Rhetorical question (maybe): why do I feel like I have only gotten worse?

I feel as if I've settled into it and made it my own.

You're not the only one.

I feel like it's getting worse. Much worse on sensory issues, especially sound. Much worse on fuzziness/inertia. My special interest and my career coincided before but the career is not a possibility anymore for various external economic reasons, so that's a bad thing. I feel resentful at having to figure something out at this late point. Much worse also at dealing with sudden changes like airline cancellations and so on. Those wouldn't have bothered me ten years ago but they really do now.

I'm also now permanently back in the US -- when I lived outside the country, I didn't have so many issues because I was *expected* to be weird and unaware of what was really going on. That isn't helping.

When I was a kid I was much more Aspie-like, but nobody knew what that was back then. I zoned out and stared into space, I would become enthralled staring at a leaf, I wouldn't make eye contact, etc. As I got older these things seemed to diminish but I don't know if that was learned or I grew out of it. I know the eye contact was something I was forced to learn to do.

I'm more focused at 40 to complete tasks/projects, but I'm also less tolerant of other people, my agitation threshold is lower than it used to be. My short term memory is worse, it's kind of scary. So, I can't say I'm better, I'm just different.

I have become more relaxed as I have aged with autism.

I had more troubles a long time ago. I'm only starting to reestablish friendships with people I went to middle school with, who luckily have developed a pretty significant amount of amnesia over the past 25+ years. But mostly my friends have been 10-20 years older than me.

I have lost many of my tactile hypersensitivities but still am quite sensitive. I have better executive functioning but this can dissolve in times of heavy stress. I have much better understanding of myself and other people. I think(!) I am better at reading social cues and knowing what I'm supposed to do in many situations. My black and white/rigid thinking is better than before but still can be triggered under stress. I am not [b]as[/b] gullible but still can get misled and don't always understand people's ulterior motives and still sometimes do stupid things not understanding that my actions might be misinterpreted. I feel less insecure now that I'm married and in a stable relationship.

I got better (WAY better) from elementary to high school but then got burnt out and got worse in the last five years (as an adult).That might not be clear from my post. It's not like I actually lost social skills and theory of mind that I gained as an older child (teen) but my repetitive behaviours increased and I became more socially isolated.

My problem is strange: I do not seem to lose skills I learn, but when it comes to social skills, I have some kind of "mental block" that makes it impossible for me to learn them. Most 10-year-olds are better at learning social skills than I am.

how would you do if you met somebody similar to yourself?

I think it would be the same as everybody else. If the person was similar to me, we would probably take some time to start a conversation (or even not try at all). If we did find a common ground, it would flow from there. However, I would still not learn anything and, in our next meeting, starting a new conversation would be as unnatural as before.

One way to start conversations that kind of works for me is by using non sequiturs. Most of what I say has no relation to the current situation, but once people get used to it, things get better. However, there is always some kind of "invisible barrier" between me and everybody else: we do not relate, they merely tolerate my quirkiness because of my knowledge in some areas while I tolerate their normality because, despite my asocial behavior, I sometimes need to interact with someone.

In other words, my problem is that I feel like an outsider. And it only gets worse.

^^^
I guess that is counter-intuitive to me, because I know when I've met people like myself I loved them to pieces.