"Outgrowing" Aspegers

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I only discovered I have AS recently - like this week.

I've read a lot of the discussions here, and the feeling is ... difficult to describe.

I graduated in 1992, near the bottom of my class. (before the 'recognition' of AS) I was diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and some other stuff when younger. (Parents couldn't figure out why their bright young child did so terrible at school). I spent most of my childhood being bullied or otherwise screwed with by NTs. My dad - who meets some of the criteria for AS himself - was ... difficult. Not unloving, but a strict disciplinarian, and a natural scholar. My school difficulties led to very deep conflicts with him.

At some point - probably in high school - I decided to just frickin' stop trying to understand other people. Since, after all, they made no damn sense most of the time. Arbitrary social rules ... Strange protocols for interactions ... confusing structure/heirarchy ... 'micky-mousy' rules about behaviour ... couldn't say WTF they meant ... just generally petty. (I have spent almost each instant since high school until this week *ANGRY*.) Then I joined the Army.

*Amazingly* - now that I look back on it - that helped me a lot. Basic was hell, moreso for me, I imagine, but i managed.

What I gained from it - the whole military experience - is a block of social behavior knowledge that dictated social interactions, what to wear, what heirarchies existed, etc. it was *explicit*. I suddenly _knew_ what to do when I met someone. (I still had teh same problems with civilians of course. I'd revert to just kinda standing there dumbly, or worse) Amazingly, I was still pretty much alone, the vast majority of the time. (FWIW, the Army is less like the movies than you think, for me, it was a pretty normal job, but with a perscribed dress code, and understood social interactions)

Getting out sucked a lot. Attempting to reintegrate back into this f'd up arbitrary, capricious world was very difficult. Eventually I managed to find something that really worked well for me and my AS.

I am a computer security consultant. I break into stuff for a living. Alone. From home. At all hours. I can program in 14-15 different languages and get to focus *deeply* on what i like to do. And, my social interactions are limited. Conference calls (generally with an agenda) and the *very* rare visit to a customer site are about the extent of my professional social interactions. I can typically handle the act-like-an-NT stuff while on a customer site long enough to make it back to a hotel.

My 'growing out of it,' is probably described as the increase in accuracy of the immense set of rules I run through when dealing with other people. For example when my wife says 'the trash is full.' My first thought is 'True.' I have to remap that onto 'hey honey, please take the trash out.' Or that 'emptying the dishwasher' means to refill it too. stuff like that.
Or, like when talking with normal people - I know now that when other people laugh at a joke, it's usually easier just fake a chuckle or something. And so on. (Of course, sometimes I'm totally baffled. like, the joke relies on incorrect assumptions, or an incorrect interpretatoin of something, and i get all antsy)


EDIT: Important note: I am married, have been for going on 14 years. My wife is an Aussie NT I met while stationed in the UK. That she is still with me is a testament to her as an immensely patient, and unusually forgiving person. I haden't had a meltdown during out marriage until a few years ago, and she stuck with me. Tehy do seem to be occuring more often now however. Maybe knowing about AS now will help me.

The older one gets, the better one fakes it.
Up to a point.
When your memory develops holes and your body starts failing it all falls apart.
I'm only 48, but i feel an accelerated decrepitude underway.
Social interaction is becoming harder and harder.

Outgrowing Aspergers?

I'm inclined to doubt it.

I don't think Asperger's is something you outgrow. With time and therapy you can develop work arounds for it I think.

I've gotten really good at 'role playing'. I have my Professional role, my Social role, my Out In Public role, and other roles as needed. I put them on like masks. I can switch between them and pass for 'normal'.

But underneath it all, I'm still myself. If I get nervous, the thumb gets tucked into the fingers and squeezed, and I become watchful and silent. I am much more aware that I am playing roles, and using elaborate scripts. But underneath it, my mind, with its myriad connections, is still humming along as it should.

I no longer fear who I am. I no longer disguise who I am- even if it seems rude to some. At 50, it's time for me to be kind, rather than nice. Nice made me a doormat. Kindness, on the other hand, makes me able to defend myself, teach a lesson, and move on.

My mind is radically different from the norm. I fought that all my life, and probably did some damage. I have decided not to protest against my true nature any more. I am new! Improved! Now with more directness!

I am liking this bigger space.

One thing with AS is that someone with AS can easily become fond of his / her problems and think that they are an inseparable part of his / her personality.
It is also painfully obvious (often too obvious for someone with AS to even recognise) that personal problems are interesting. You can analyse them over and over again, always from a new perspective, giving those problems a new chance to flourish every day.
Because of this I try to let my problems go nowadays or perhaps solve them. I will still be AS when I’m happier. Furthermore, there is really no point in holding on to problems deliberately as life tends to generously offer a new set of problems to analyse every once in a while, almost guaranteed.
So instead of outgrowing Asperger's I can outgrow some problems.

One of those problems is actually trying too hard to fit in or to be something other than who I am.

Lately I have managed to change my perspective to all my problems: just deal with the ones that can't wait. It really makes sense then
that my main focus right now is to be easy on myself.

I so agree with this, and think it could be true for many of us - it can be too easy to forget how many adaptations for comfort it is possible to build into your life, until circumstances change. And it has as much to do with the things which you do not do, as with the things you do.

If you can build a comfortable reliable rhythm into your life, it reduces the need to think and anticipate about those things, which allows you to have some spare capacity to cope with variation. But if the rhythm gets disrupted, the ability to do even ordinary things can be lost altogether.

As a simple example, I recently realised that when I have to go somewhere for a specific reason, that is all I do - the idea of taking a unscheduled break from my 'plan' to stop for a while in a cafe, or sit in a park, just never crossed my mind. Whereas if my trip has a leisure purpose, then taking breaks seems acceptable. It is quite strange to recognise how rigid I can be about different circumstances, even though at times I can appear to be adaptable.

I find the same thing when I get really tired. Like after a 80+ hour work week. My brain needs 24-48 hours at that point to recover. If it doesn't get it, my symptoms are really intense and generally unmanageable. My wife's the only one who witnesses it, so everyone else that knows me just thinks I'm a normal person.

Ello...

This very question is actually why I've come here. I feel pretty much "alright" now, but from every description I've read, AS perfectly explains my childhood.

And I thank the internet in particular, for teaching me how to communicate myself better (by which I mean engaging people with the written word, rather than in person).

At 51, I am functional and fit in better than I used to, but the inner struggle is the same. Still say inappropriate things at times, still need to be alone to recharge.

I'm younger than most but certainly of an age of maturity that I feel comfortable discussing my strategies for growing.

While in university my focus was on chasing girls, and I would mimic 'cool' actors from movies to figure out what to do. When a friend was successful at talking to a girl in a bar my question to him would be "what did you say?", "oh, and what did she say?", "oh, and what did you say after that?".

I'm married now and I believe I can use my asperger's to my advantage. Some people at an old job would get nervous when chatting with our company president. I wouldn't, because all my conversations were rehearsed, so I came off as extra friendly.

I find being strictly logical in everything I do has others adapting to me more than I need to adapt to them when it comes to actual work (I own a small company so that may be a part of it). I think I excel in some social aspects because I can grow socially by constantly studying what successful social people do.

When it comes to things like interpersonal skills, it is almost dizzying how far I have come since childhood, although many of the finer points have been mastered somewhat recently. Now, at 31, I find it hard to describe how weird it feels to realize that I actually have a level of maturity and discernment in many ways that some NT people I know greatly look up to. I was a VERY aspie-like kid. It stuns me that growing up, I was never totally friendless!

One really weird thing I am noticing though, is that just in the past several years, I am suddenly finding myself feeling things and thinking in ways that are FAR more NT than anything I've experienced before, such as genuine intuition, and I've suddenly gone from almost never crying at all to being a crier! Is it possible for hard-wiring to change later in life, if even a very tiny bit??

Yes. Especially if you mean a little bit. I say that based on what I've read about the brain. We can form new connections even in adulthood. How this applies specifically to aspie traits is another question. I haven't read anything specifically on that. But there are many cases of things that were thought to be "hard-wired" and unchangable in adults changing, of the brain changing and adapting.

I so agree. When we met, my husband thought I had it all together and was attracted to me because of that. Then I fell apart and have been doing so ever since. I didn't know it myself, but I had everything arranged the way I needed it, when I was alone, before he came along. With him in the picture, I don't, and I can't cope.

Or to put it another way, he drives me crazy.

I dont have AS MUCH problems with eye contact as I did before, but then it can sometimes depend on who Im with and I tend to look away mor with strangers that I can with other people who I am closer to.
I have learned that the answer to "whats up" isnt to give a brief description of my day and similar, and I have SO much info down, and still I find myself stumble all the time.
I have read about all books on social "games" including the attraction games and so on, and I'll find myself in a position where I have the basics down but when it comes to reading the response, Im lost again, because there is no manual for responses that tell me what peoples fiftyeleven responses mean, and thus, I wont know how to make step 2 in the process.
I dont walk into people anymore when walking next to them, but instead I may wander off too far.

These are just tiny examples of hos it can play out and me thinking that " I got it down" when really, I havent.
Im not sure I can outgrow it.Cope maybe, but not outgrow it.
I have terrible sensory issues as well as others issues too and some I can handle better and "hide" but I still am confronted with them eventually

Im not exactly sure if outgrowing AS is exactly the best word usage. As we grow older, we learn better coping mechnisms, we eventually learn better ways in how to get along in an NT world and we can also train ourselves a lot socially. I know my dad whos aspie has a very well adjusted life. But on the otherhand he lives within a very narrow world. He works at home, he doesnt socialize outside of the family much, he mostly follows my mom when socializing with outside people, hes has a set everyday routine that has little variation, he never really dealt with the social aspects of raising us kids. And when he does deal with outside people, he has his set scripts and fakes an outward friendly persona for brief periods. No one suspects anything weird about him. As in hes learned to cope pretty well with his surroundings to the point were aspergers isnt a problem.

Meanwhile, me Im still young and I still have sooo many problems with my life. Aspergers and social anxiety problems still are very prevalent cause Im young and my life is constantly changing. Ive trained myself pretty well so I can come off as NT. Im so much better then I was back when I was 18. If I keep up the rate Im going at, I will get to the point where I am well adjusted with my life. Maybe by the time my life stabilizes and isnt constantly changing. Dont know when thats gonna be.

I'd say that I developed some pretty good coping skills in my late teens and was able to 'pass' quite well through my 20's and early 30's. But in the past two years, I've been struggling with sensory issues and some social situations in a way I haven't since I was a teenager. Not sure what's goign on - could be stress-related, I suppose.
*sighs*