Does Aspergers get worse with age?

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I am 37 years old and went through a very comprehensive self-diagnosis process about two years ago. No need to get into that, but my confidence is extremely high that I have AS and yes it helped to understand my childhood quite a bit.

My question is, can the symptoms progress over time? It seems that 10-12 years ago I was very "normal" in my behavior, although with an unusual way of looking at problems and such I was praised for my brilliance and balance in life, I got things done and had a good mood and was definitely on a very strong upward path. Fast forward and I am now overwhelmed by a strong lack of empathy for others and my executive function skills have gone way way down over time. Naturally life is much more stressful as we age, lots more demands on us with career, family, finances, etc. but I'm trying to figure out if my worsening condition is only due to that, or if it could also be due to a progressive aspergers presentation. Just need to know if there is such a thing, so I can figure out the correct root causes to address. Thanks.

While there are ups and downs I do think that the symptoms generally get better as we age. I believe the reason for this is that as we get older we are able to build a larger set of adaptive tools and have them at our disposal.

I do wonder though as we get into old age and start to decline if things start to get tougher again. I'm thinking that a combination of Alzheimers and autism would be a really bad thing.

It changes.

It has seemed a lot worse for me, because as a child, I had the protection of parents, and also, a certain routine that was followed in our household. I did not have to learn to deal with independence until 10 years ago, and have struggled greatly with it, and still struggle greatly with it. I am certainly a lot more aware of my deficits now that I am actively seeking to socialise more, and coping with big life changes like moving and trying to sort out somewhere to move to. It is difficult. My meltdowns also seem to have increased threefold as I struggle to cope with an onslaught of negative thoughts from the years of struggling and not living up to expectations. I think as you grow older, you become more aware of the lost opportunities and the failings of your past, alongside the fact that time is becoming more limited.

Mine has, but that might be because of stress from college.

I've got worse, particularly in the last 2 years. (I'm 39 and was diagnosed at... 39 <_<.) In fact it was partly because it was so obvious I was deteriorating, that I didn't hesitate to take the opportunity for an assessment when it arose.

I don't think getting worse is inevitable, though. I've just been through a stupid amount of stress and illness in the past few years, culminating with a surgery which left me with a permanent ileostomy. After the surgery, I had two grim drugs to wean off - prednisolone and oxycodone. That messed me up for months afterwards. Then I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis and put on Levothyroxine, which seemed to increase my depression and fatigue overnight.

A whole slew of other crap caught up with me after the surgery, stuff which I don't even have the energy to write about. I was having nightmares almost every night for a while. I realised I was pushing 40 and had lost so many opportunities which I would never be able to regain. My past - near and distant - haunted me in vivid flashbacks.

So yeah, my ASD got worse, but probably only because my life got worse. It's not going to get any easier either, at least not in the very near future...

I have gotten more mature. Less infantile

But I am a lot angrier now. Sometimes the anger is almost impossible to contain, and I find myself leaving the house because I need to walk to calm myself down.

Yes.

In hindsight, I've had symptoms all my life & learning about AS has explained a lot about myself and my life.

A few years ago or so symptoms got worse and worse. It was a couple years ago that I remember saying to a very close friend of mine that "I wasn't always like this." & I knew I was right, that I definitely had my s**t together a whole lot better in past years.. and that there must be some explanation for it.

Long story short, I figured out that the root cause was digestive health issues that got worse and worse over time with both diet & medication, resulting in worse AS symptoms and executive functioning. I figured out how to treat the digestive issues via diet, herbal detox, and probiotics and am now living a second life for it. Everything has changed for the better. I'm happier, healthier, wealthier etc. I shared my story here on WP last January and the response was… rather negative. Basically people here figured I was a liar or it was a hoax. It was neither. Feel free to PM me if you want.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

I believe constantly "passing" as nuerotypical can cause "Autistic Burnout" that does this. I believed this happened to me in a big way in my early 50's. As is true with many things related to autism in adults there has not been any research about probably because NT researcher are clueless about how much effort to "pass." Because of no research that means to a bunch of people here it is the idea completely illegitimate.

While not lately there have been a bunch of threads on this topic http://www.wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=122215&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

http://www.wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=236321


If you are doing a self-diagnoses make sure your childhood is studied thoroughly.

For me change is stressful, and being an adult includes a lot of positive stressors like getting married next year, moving in with fiancé and some nagative ones like dealing with fertility issues and health problems. While school was horrible due to bullying uni and TAFE was really good because I had clear expectations and knew how to succeed. Getting a job however is more difficult and most of the time I don't understand what I did wrong or how I didn't meat expectations or more stress and uncertainty.