If I was ever autistic…. I outgrew it

[Finlandia86]

So to start off, let me say that I am far from ignorant about Autism, I have studied it at length and I know it is a condition present from birth / very early childhood and is not something you can outgrow.

Having learned a lot about Autism, including its presentation in girls, I look back on my childhood and see that I had a whole load of traits, including:

• Difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, especially as a young child
• Long running obsessions as a tween and teen (characters in books and TV shows mainly, to the point where it would interfere with my life and I would secretly pretend I was them…see above)
• Fixations on certain people in real life (usually teachers).
• Social difficulties - being thought of as aloof and stand-offish when actually I was shy and didn’t know how to ‘be’.
• Avoided showering (couldn’t be bothered and didn’t see the point).
• Sensory seeking (chewing stuff all the time, humming all the time, tendency to jiggle/rock in my seat)
• Difficulty with eye contact (shyness and low self esteem)
• Difficulty organising myself and terrible procrastination, until hyperfocus kicked in (after days of tears)
• Black and white thinking about right and wrong / good and bad, and giving myself an extremely hard time because of this.
• Lots of examples of supremely cringy behaviour, because I didn’t understand how I would look to other people.

If I was a teen today, pretty sure I’d get a diagnosis.

But… at nearly 40 years of age … I have grown out of all of it.

Okay, not quite all. I am still a terrible pen chewer and procrastinator (although my hyperfocus superpower seems to have left me). But the rigid fixations and the social awkwardness… gone. Gradually, it has to be said. It took until I was about 26 to truly grow into myself and find my social confidence, and it was around then that I stopped fixating on both real and fictional people, which I think had a lot to do with finally developing some self-esteem. You’ll be pleased to know that I now shower daily.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, as I imagine a lot of people will think I am trying to invalidate their diagnoses or those of their children… I’m not. But I guess I am wondering whether we can be a bit quick to diagnose ‘low support needs’ / Aspergers type autism, when actually it’s just a case of ‘quirky child’ / ‘immature teen’.

Or, I guess a different takeaway could be one of hope: that as a probably autistic person I have learned to navigate and overcome many of life’s difficulties by middle adulthood.

I suppose my question is whether anyone else can identify with my experience, and if anyone has any interesting thoughts about it.

Please seek psychotherapy. I am diagnosed with autism and I think what you're writing here is very harmful in perpetuating that autism is something that people can just "shake off" like a cold or grow out of like a bad habit.

The Psychotherapy helped me alot to understand myself and how I think. I think it would benefit you to learn more about the topic and yourself if you are indeed autistic.

I am a 40 something successful person in a career and have a family. I have a nephew who is autistic and non verbal. Austism is not all the same.

100% their is a massive difference between a person who can mask and can generally cope with life and will live independently in the future and have a home, a job and a partner and children they will have struggles along the way just as NT people do but will learn coping skills to manage this just like NT people do, these are the people who would be better of without a label as its a massive barrier in adult life. Then the other side of the spectrum is people who have autism and will never function in life and will need full time care their whole life these are the people who need the diagnosis the funding and the help and shouldn't be put in the same category as the others as it's not fair and it's not fair that resources are taken away from them and years and years of waiting lists because parents watched a few tiktoks and are now convinced their child has autism. If your spending years fighting for a diagnosis as its not blatantly obvious then your child doesn't need it. Children will often play up for their mums this is not masking this is normal. Children will often kick scream cry and harm themselves and others this is a tantrum not a meltdown. Children and adults for that matter often don't have good social skills or are unable to make or maintain eye contact again completely normal this is shyness. Some kids will only eat beige food as will some adults this is again very normal as some people are just fussy. Most children don't like loud noises and certain textures this again is very normal. Most children if allowed to do so would sit on a tablet all day and eat nuggets and chips. At the moment their is a significant amount on social media saying I have asd or adhd so I do this and then every person in the comments saying I do that to so I must be ND when the majority of these things NT people do to. There needs to be a massive nhs campaign explaining to people that certain things can absolutely be normal. It's just the same as mental health feeling sad and tired isn't depression and feeling nervous isn't an anxiety disorder only when this message has got out and is understood will waiting lists go down and people who genuinely need the help will recieve it.

But a diagnosis requires a degree of social impairment. I do not feel socially impaired at all, nor do I feel like I am masking. Why would I get a diagnosis in that case?

I felt a bit like this getting the diagnosis for my DC like I was medicalising his personality and were the difficulties just me being a rubbish parent but actually the process has highlighted why certain behaviours happen and helped us support DC better and given me the confidence to do that well. Certain things I don't think will ever come naturally but I think DC can learn how to do them

Very interested and relieved to see others noting similarities with the transgender debate. I have been thinking the same for a while and wondering whether other people were.

I'm also interested to see how the explosion in diagnosis due to widening the criteria plays out. Will it be shown by research to be helpful (in terms of improving educational outcomes, mental health, employment prospects etc) to people who wouldn't previously qualified for diagnosis. Or could it even hinder them? Overdiagnosis is a recognised phenomenon in other areas of medicine.

What utter ignorance.

You don’t get a diagnosis of autism unless it impacts your life hugely and you struggle to cope.

Resources aren’t taken away from those who need full time care as different resources are needed.

You don’t spend years fighting for a diagnosis. You spend years waiting and that is it. If your child isn’t diagnosed, that is the end of it.

You don’t get a diagnosis for liking beige food and not liking loud noises.

There doesn’t need to be an nhs campaign explaining things are normal as normal behaviours do not get you a diagnosis. Waiting lists won’t go down because MH services and diagnostics are hugely under invested in and under staffed. Diagnostics have got better.

You don’t spend years fighting for a diagnosis. You spend years waiting and that is it. If your child isn’t diagnosed, that is the end of it.

We have a post on our local parents Facebook group every few days saying their child was assessed and didn’t receive a diagnosis, and asking for private assessors they can try again with. They get a LOT of responses so it clearly isn’t the end of it for some people.

Overdiagnosis is a recognised phenomenon in other areas of medicine. @Reallybadidea - which other areas ?

@Differentstarts
100% their is a massive difference between a person who can mask and can generally cope with life and will live independently in the future and have a home, a job and a partner and children they will have struggles along the way just as NT people that do but will learn coping skills to manage this just like NT people do, these are the people who would be better of without a label as its a massive barrier in adult life

I was undiagnosed until late in life. OMG if only I had known. Yes, I survived - but I might have had a happy life rather than a sad one, I might have chosen a much more suitable career I could have excelled in instead of one I was embarrassingly bad at, I might have got a degree. Understood why people avoided me. Known the reason for bullying.

People are so superior and ‘expert’ on this thread it’s almost funny.

Most people can’t afford several thousand to go private, paying doesn’t guarantee anything and going private doesn’t involve years of fighting. There is no wait or fighting to be seen.Also some parents actually welcome a non diagnosis, wish myself and my children didn’t have a diagnosis. It’s hardly something to crow about. 🤔

there are serious qualms over the ethics of private clinics, which seem to overdiagnose as they’re providing a paid service.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65534448.amp

You don't outgrow it. You develop coping mechanisms.

So why on a thread recently where an 8 year old hit her mum because she didn't want to leave the park was all the posts from mumsnet saying it sounds like autism, don't punish her that doesn't work on autistic children you need to get her assessed as this is how my nd child is.

I was diagnosed with bpd as an adult which is most likely misdiagnosed asd, adhd nothing good has come from that diagnosis it's just meant it's created a barrier in life and now everyone gaslights me and nhs staff treat you like shit. Thankfully iv only had to live a labelled life for a few years as an adult I couldn't imagine having to grow up with it before I'd even grown up.

All the people wanting a black or white answer maybe stop and have a think why. Autism is so personal and variable that's why it's a spectrum disorder with traits. My son is autistic and always will be that's who he is. He would remove it in a heartbeat if he could and so would I. His autistic experience is that it's debilitating and as such it's a disability. That said he has fluctuated throughout his life so far with the things it has impacted and he has struggled with. His struggles now as a young man just don't resonate with his struggles as a child. Self diagnosis is just one I personally can't get on board with as we don't accept this with anything else we have a medical profession for a reason. If the OP feels the way she does then good that means right now it's not affecting her life in a way such as to make it harder. That's my hope for my son that he will eventually reach that point himself.

So what is the difference between someone with autism, and somebody without?

Another factor in masking or coping skills is the challenges different stages of life presents. Obviously early life requires learning everything, but socialising probably peaks in teenage years and 20s, where ND people can really struggle and feel self conscious and different. It's easy in your 40s or 50s to organise your life so you don't have to deal with certain situations, you know what suits you, what to avoid and you can prepare when you need to. Also your life coping skills have been developed and refined over the years so the problems seem to fade away.

But isn’t that the same for NT people?

The problem is you can't always tell which kid is which...

Imagine you have a young child who has motor apraxia and can't speak, but is otherwise intelligent. How, aged 2-5, can you tell how intelligent they are and whether they can live independently in adulthood, pray tell? It's hard enough for physicians to agree what autism is and who should be diagnosed, never mind know the life trajectory of a child presenting with severe delays at 4 years old.

I know people online who didn't speak at all until they were ten, but engage in degree-level discussions on X about scientific research into autism from the comfort of their keyboard.

The big mistake is to believe that ND people are the exact same as NT people, with a consistent set of skills across the board. Thus, if they can't speak at 4, they're thick and can't live independently in adulthood. And, if they seem chatty and friendly on first inspection, they're a-okay in every sphere.

It's only when you get into the wilds of 'savants', 'splinter skills', profound DME , and so on that you realise this simply isn't the case. To take one example, my DS7 could read before he was potty trained. He learned to read almost spontaneously, but it took two years to stop him peeing the floor and pooing behind the sofa. There's nothing more bizarre, as a parent, than having a child who can read "I want my potty", but who can't use one.

On a 'paediatrician knows instantly if this person can live independently' model, my DS7 simply makes no sense at all. Because, I promise, in those two years of miserable potty training failure, I was unsure if I was going to have a DS who'd be studying for a PhD at Oxford still wearing incontinence pants (happily, he's just come out of nighttime nappies).

The only solution is to support kids where they are, with the problems they actually have, not to work out how disabled they might be in 15 years' time. A diagnosis is simply a 'shortcut' to help identify the sort of help they might need.

I’m going to say it again.

PANS.

PANS (“Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome”) symptoms may include: OCD, eating issues, anxiety, sensory amplification or motor abnormalities, behavioral regression, deterioration in school performance, mood disorder, urinary symptoms and/or sleep disturbances.

When the immune system matures many of these dissipate.

It's impossible to answer that because of the various spectrum. One autistic person could be non verbal with learning difficulties and one verbal high functioning. How do you define it to an exact difference.

This is the thing people seem to think nt people have it easy and don't have these struggles when we absolutely do as a lot of these things are normal daily struggles that you have to learn to manage throughout each stage of your life being a human being is hard and it's complicated and where all different.

The point is ND brings another layer of difficulty on top of the normal difficulties everybody has to manage.

There is nothing autistic about him but somehow he now has this label which makes him even more anxious as he thinks he's different.

What bothers me is the assumption from armchair psychologists that someone is autistic because they're a bit 'different', whatever that means. I've seen this quite a lot on here, and in my personal life as well. For example, I was discussing a book with a friend where the character finds solace and escapism in maths (1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, great book) and I said that I could identify with that as I find data and working through equations really calming, they get me out my head. She responded 'oh, he sounds autistic' which really annoyed me. Another one that seems to trigger this is if you're a woman working or studying in the sciences, particularly if it's in a field dominated by men. Being very introverted seems to be another thing people are suspicious of.

It feels like if you don't follow societal norms then people question that, there must be something wrong with you, you're odd.

I think Jiddu Krishnamurti and Aldous Huxley had it spot on:

'It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.'

'The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.'

But wouldn't it make more sense to focus on helping your child with toileting then focus on whether they have autism or not a lifelong label that will effect their entire life. If it takes 4/5 years to fight for an autism diagnosis surely the time is better spent focusing on the specific problems and resolving them. Not everything has to be explained or have a reason something are just what they are and is what makes us all individual.

I wonder if masking has become second nature to you, and maybe when you’re in your 50’s you’ll feel very tired as it is exhausting even if it is second nature to you.