Growing out of a disorder

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Is this possible?

You can't outgrow a disorder, but you can temper it's severity a great deal.

Last edited by USMCnBNSFdude on 10 Jun 2011, 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

To generally put.

But concerning autism, you could 'grow out' most symptoms by getting more experience and over time by aging.

well said

This has been addressed before but I'll reiterate my views on this matter.

I think those who "grew out of" AS/ASD either never really had it to begin with and were just pegged with a diagnosis too young, or have learned to compensate for their weakness or hide their traits.

It doesn't mean the person is neurologically more "normal" than they previously were. It just means they've learned a few tricks.

I think another good word to point out is adaptation. In my case I know I am very much still me, disorder and all, but I've learned quite a bit over the years how to adapt to a social life that accepts me even with my quirkiness. Also I have grown out of quite a few of my less pretty social attributes due to being held accountable and learning a filter. That doesn't mean I always think much different than I used to, I just learned not to blurt out the way I think so much. I adapted. Don't know if that makes much sense, but hey, I try.

Yeah, that stuff.

I hope I never grow out of my AS. It makes me different and I enjoy being different.

You might think you've outgrown it but under enough stress it'll all come rushing back.

I don't think I will ever outgrow it or be able to cope so well that it will barely feel like I had it at all. I'm still trying to get back the skills I lost from my shutdown last year.

Like someone said, you can't truly outgrow autism. If you do not have autism as an adult, then you did not have it as a child. It is different wiring in the brain, and one cannot outgrow the way their brain has been set up since they were a fetus. That being said, early treatment can lessen the severity for some people. But if they had autism as a child, they will continue to have some manifestations of it as an adult as well. Because you cannot see autism, not everyone with a diagnosis is actually autistic. When they lose their diagnosis as adults and are perfectly normal neurotypical adults, then that means they were neurotypical children given a false diagnosis to a difference they may have had as a child.

You cannot outgrow AS. Its not a disease, so it cannot be cured... But... You can learn strategies, tricks and methodologies to function better in this society. That is really helpful, 'cause like it or not you will have to become a productive human being to survive in this environment. It requires a lot of effort, work and help, and also depends on how strong you AS is (how high functioning you are), but it can be done. Good luck!

What everyone else said. :p

No, more seriously, your brain WILL change as you grow. My own symptoms certainly changed over time. You might get better stamina around people, or an enhanced obsession. While the technical answer is 'no', you'll find a way to live your life and be happy. That's all you'll need.

I've mostly grown out of my allergies. However, if I overload my body's capacity to handle allergens, I'll have problems and I know this because this happens occasionally.

I can learn skills and appear more NT, and I know some things about avoiding social blunders that some of the younger NTs don't know. However, I come across wrong if I mimic things which I don't have the social skills to get away with. I am also still subject to impairment if I become overloaded. The need to suppress the urge to say inappropriate and extreme things also exists even though it is not apparent when I am successful at doing so.

You can grow out of some of aspects of the textbook definition, but that doesn't mean the underlying condition went away. For example you can learn how to decode body language and you could learn at least basic theory of mind, and some on WP have even learned how to make eye contact (remarkable! I can't do this).

Well... Kind of.

You don't really grow out of it, so much as you learn to adjust to the world around you.

Okay, let's use a physical example that might be a little more intuitive. Say you're born with some kind of dwarfism. Your adult height is predicted to be around 3-4 feet tall, so you're a great deal shorter than everybody your age, and you always will be.

You have problems reaching things. Everything's too big for you. You just don't fit into a world where everybody is nearly twice as tall as you are. However, as you grow older, you learn things that help you, with your small height, adjust to all those things that were made for bigger people. Maybe you carry a step stool. Maybe you get hand controls for your car. Maybe you buy or make smaller furniture for your room. By the time you're an adult, you know all the tricks of the trade, and you can make your way through life no-problem despite the size mismatch.

Autism is a little bit like that. You're born with autism; you're not born with the skills needed to live in a non-autistic world. Ideally, as you grow, you get therapy, education, and you probably teach yourself a lot of skills too. By the time you're grown, it's possible not to need any help anymore even though you've got an autistic brain like you always did--just like the little person who doesn't need any help even though they're still short.

When that happens, when a person learns enough that they don't need help and don't use a lot of extra effort, we often say they've grown out of autism. What they've done, though, is more like growing into a person who can navigate the non-autistic world.

It's easy to learn really. You start with staring photos of people in the eyes, and then you move on to real people who you are comfortable with, and then to strangers in situations where it's expected you make eye contact. Most people actually don't maintain eye contact. Their eye's shift around very slightly and make repeated contact with the other person's eyes. A person with AS can get by with initially making eye contact and then shifting their eyes to some other place on the face near the eyes such that the deviation is too small for the person to notice at whatever distance they are at.

You do have to force yourself into it, but as I said, start with photos.