as changes

Post Reply New Topic

does aspergers normally get worse as you get older, or does it usually get better?

As I have gotten older, I seem to have acquired social skills that make it alot easier to deal with folks, but still have social anxiety issues like being uptight at parties, etc. I used to finger flap as a kid, but have not at all as an adult.

AS is often considered a curse during childhood, but a blessing during adulthood

You can say asperger's, being a commuciation
flaw not a learning disability, can be a blessing.
The average NT adult doesn't have the time, nor
patience to explore past their TV set. "Oh! it takes
too long", "I already have one", ect... are quick
excuses, and they tend to not allow room for
a reasoning process past their TV show. I use
TV because we can all associate the commercial
break time.

The asperger's adult will have more patience and
developed wording and phrases that most NT's
do not have past their jobs and TV's, so yes
it improves your character.

The way I use language, phrasing and word-play is very instumental to my success as a radio program director and is directly attributable to my having AS. It helps me with non-sequeters and puns a lot because I associate words in an uncommon way sometimes. The hyperlexia aspect of my AS makes the morning show I do a little more entertaining. The downside is being uptight around folks, sometimes and having to socialize.
Hiding inside a radio every morning is not a bad way for an aspie to get along.

For me definately worse as i got older. Didnt realise i had a problem bfore, but i was always ultra shy, but thought id grow out of it.

Well i dont think my AS has got worse, just im now older and i must do more social things like, get a job, study and basically interact with people all the time.

I was fine until around age 8, but then my behaviors stated to get wose, and they've gotten worse and worse ever since.

Once I realized the vast majority of my behaviors were uncommon, I tried correcting them. And so, I'm getting better every year. Don't think I'll ever get over certain things though, like eye contact and depth perception.

And, keep to heart that as you get older
you learn to master your emotions
better than the average NT. Let's take
the bar person. They drink, cry, express,
get angry, don't feel this is "manly" and
must start a bar fight.

The AS/HFA person like all of you and I
will, to the best of our abilities express
little, but inside want to explode, as fireballs
of expression rage, facial reactions want
to show, and what makes this AS/HFA
a good thing is we walk away and find
a way to express this. And as we find
the more positives outlets we let the NT's
overreact since we develop slowly coping
skills for our emotions.

For me it's gotten alot better.

Congrats to Ghosthunter for a post I can understand! Yeah, I have almost complete control over my emotions, people who don't seem weird to me simply because it only takes a few years. Why is something like this not common for NT's. We can control our emotions better than them? Wow. We're dedicated.

I don't think you can just out and say we have more control, because its not just that simple. Who knows to what extent NT's feel emotions, or how powerful they are for NT's. You cannot compare an NT's emotions with an AS's because any experience will be colored by the person experiencing the emotions. They may feel emotions every waking minute, having to hold them in check all day. How can we know what they feel? Regardless, I believe this to be the case and it simply increases my admiration for NT's who accomplish this. I know how hard it is for me when my emotions are anything but neutral, I am merely fortunate I am generally neutral most of the time.

All valid points, Danlo. The reason I suggest we might have better control is because, as I understand it, the emotions of some people on the spectrum - especially people prone to overload/rages instead of numbness/shutdown - tend to be more extreme than average. So in growing up, they have to find a way to control it or else be unable to function in society.

Maybe it's because the part of the brain that handles emotion doesn't develop as fast. It's normal for a 3-year-old to throw a tantrum, but when a 15-year-old has the same emotional reaction, it's considered pathological.

Certainly there are plenty of non-spectrum disorders that involve extreme emotion (bipolar, histrionic, panic disorder, etc). So I don't think ASD people are the only ones. But people on the spectrum tend to respond differently to emotional stimuli than NT's. Something that would freak out an NT, like the death of a family member, might be shrugged off. But something that an NT wouldn't even notice, like flourescent lights or background noise, can throw them for a loop. When your natural emotional responses are out of sync with the rest of the world, you tend to get disapproval for expressing them, so you learn to control them to a degree that the average NT wouldn't find necessary.