Does AS get worse over time?

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My husband's AS symptoms seem to be getting exponentially worse over time. In fact, there are times where he looks and acts like he's strung out on drugs, but I know he doesn't use them. During these times he can be crazed and just like nothing happened, be his old self again. I don't understand it, and I don't understand the bigger picture of what appears to be a significant progression. Can someone explain?

Asperger's is frequently comorbid with other mental illnesses - could he be bipolar, or suffering from another issue? I suggest bipolar because I know manic episodes can look like you're high on drugs, and between swings a person can seem perfectly normal. (My hubbie has Bipolar II.)

He could just be under a lot of stress. Have there been any recent major stressors in your lives? I know anxiety makes my AS symptoms far worse. I'll stim all the time and become easily distracted, and either flighty or utterly withdrawn.

I'm curious, because generally people with Asperger's do better over time, as they gradually learn social skills and coping methods. To the best of my knowledge, anyway.

I don't think he's bipolar -- his swings can be instantaneous and never in a manic/high way. It's always in anger, and his eyes soemtimes look like he's not there. We have plenty of stress to go around here, but he claims he doesn't feeel any anxiety. In that way, he lives in his olittle world of confidence that he can handle any situation, even though he can't. I am constantly playing clean up. But I find myself cleaning up more and more -- he takes no responsiblity for anything and lays it on me in all sorts of ways:"You should have told/reminded me," "I didn't know" (after telling him ten thousand times over a decade and a half), etc.

I just don't understand why it's so bad now or what to do about it. I have him on the GF/CF diet, which he tinks helps, but he's lost so much weight, I wonder if not eating enough ismaking him worse. I'd just hate for him to go back to eating gluten and dairy and have those meltdowns again.

Hmmm....if the diet really is preventing meltdowns, I would say he should stay on it unless the weight loss becomes problematic. It most disturbs me that he's not taking responsibility for anything. It's important to stand your grand in such situations (not saying you don't, I just get rambly when I think about these things).

These problems don't sound necessarily due to AS to me, though I honestly don't know. I wish I could be more of a help...

Thanks, and you don't sound rambly to me! Rambly is what I need right now, anyway.

You might want to check this out -- it's a lot to read, but there's various reasons why people can look like they're regressing. (if that's what's going on, of course)

"Help! I Seem to be Getting More Autistic!"

I don't know your husband's age, but at mid-life or so, people seem to lose a bit of their mental energy reserves, and since people on the spectrum do a lot of 'compensating' with willful mental effort, the result can look like regression. And/or maybe he's heading for a burnout (described in the above article)

Last edited by Apple_in_my_Eye on 29 Oct 2009, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree that people with Asperger's get better over time and that there must must be something else going on with your husband. I would respond to this just as you would if he didn't have Asperger's.

Thank you, both. I am going to spend some time with that article to see what I can glean from it. Maybe it is burnout. I don't know. He is a highly successful Aspie who never realized he was all the different or had limitations.

Good luck! : )

If he's losing weight while not trying to lose weight, that screams either "physical illness" or "depression". Both need to be checked out by a doctor.

If the diet is causing him to lose weight, my guess is probably malnutrition. Your brain goes crazy when you don't give it enough food, or give it enough of the right nutrients. Restrictive diets are a great way to create malnutrition even in a world where food is plentiful. Vitamin supplements help, but you really need a good diet. Have you had your GP refer you to a decent nutritionist yet?

GF/CF doesn't help autistic symptoms; it helps stomach problems that make autistic symptoms worse in sensitive autistic people. (Autism doesn't particularly predispose you to stomach problems; it just makes you more sensitive so that when you have them, they affect you more.) If you're having meltdowns because your stress level is high because you feel like crap because you're eating stuff you can't digest, then yeah, it will help meltdowns. But it won't do squat, no matter how bad the original can't-digest-this-stuff problem was, if you don't replace the originally badly tolerated food with a diet that has all the nutrients you need.

AS itself is a very stable condition. It does not get better or worse over time. If anything, people usually get better at adapting over time therefore reducing the "symptoms".

I can only offer you several guesses (some are based on my own relationship experience with NT women):
1. If the relationship is relatively new, you may be experiencing what I would call a "fake facade crumbling". See, Aspies are aware of their weaknesses when trying to start a relationship. The typical strategy is camouflage. The person may attempt to consciously control every aspect of his persona to appear more attractive and mask the ASness as much as possible. The pretending may be so good that you'd never get to know the real person. Unfortunately, the "new you" requires such a tremendous effort to constantly maintain that it's only a matter of time before you simply run out of steam and cannot do it anymore. It may take months or even years, but when that happens, the person will start losing self-control in response to the most stressful events first. Desperate to maintain the image, the person will wrestle the self-control back, but it's a losing battle over time.
2. He could be under some sort of stress. Causes of stress as well as ways of dealing with it may be very different from yours. Accumulating anger and frustration may be something that is happening. These things need an outlet and the "crazy" episodes may be just that.
3. As somebody indicated, AS may be accompanied with other mental problems, such as bipolar disorder

Consider:

Those on the spectrum develop coping skills based on their experiences, observations and analysis. These are often accumulated over long periods before becoming clearly defined. As time passes, those mechanisms no longer work in the manner they once did, resulting in episodes of frustration and confusion when these nearly imperceptible changes build to a point that what once worked is at a point of collapse. Such a cycle leads to the situation where how one's condition affects them to greatly different degrees at various stages in their lives.


M.

I think that Asperger (at least for me) get better after adolescence till 25-30 years old, then some habit can come back. I think is a sort of "natural pressure".

I agree that AS doesn't usually get worse over time.....like others have said, coping strategies tend to make it appear to get better.

But the environment can sometimes change for the worse, which might make the disabilities look worse. Also I usually find that when I'm stressed out, my AS symptoms seem to get worse, or to put it another way, when I'm calm and relaxed I find it easier to apply coping strategies. Another possibility is that he's been putting in an enormous effort to cope but is gradually running out of energy. And I've heard people here report their symptoms "waxing and waning" over time.

Susie one warning!: (Pay special attention to irritability and depression!)

Diet Side effects (from wikipedia)
Dieting, especially extreme food-intake reduction and rapid weight loss, can have the following side effects:

Prolonged hunger
Depression
Reduced sex drive
Fatigue
Irritability
Fainting
Sinus problems (especially post-nasal drip)
Muscle atrophy
Rashes
Acidosis
Bloodshot eyes
Gallbladder disease
Seizures
Malnutrition, possibly leading to death
Subsequent weight gain

I always thought it was the opposite, but now I don't understood it anymore because for me AS seemed to get worse, then better, then worse.