Am I over-trained?

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I was diagnosed at 8 with PDD_NOS. I have had extensive social skills training as a kid and teen, so I can pass as an NT outwardly, but I still very much think like a person with AS along with stimming and the occasional meltdown. However now most people who has not known me as a kid say, "you dont act autistic" I doubt one could grow out of it, and why would I want to anyway. But if I were to take the tests today, I might not qualify for the AS diagnosis because I have been trained for a very long time. Somehow this bothers me, I feel like I am in some kind of puratory between AS and NT. It is a very lonely place. A occupational therapist once told my mother that "all the social skills training that I was getting, all you will end up with is a trained monkey". Needles to say, she was pissed over that, but sometimes I do wonder if I am over-trained for my own good...but no I dont think I am a monkey. However, I do want to be an art therapist specializing in helping people with autism giving voice to what we cannot express otherwise.

If you're able to communicate well and explain to NT's what's going on with you, it's good I would think.

If you can teach others to do the same, that sounds good. If you can talk to both sides well and be understood and understand both it's good too.

You will have difficulty with communication because the expectations will be different than it is for someone who has more obvious issues but it will be good in your intended work to have these communication skills.

Are you able to articulate when you're getting over-stimulated? If so, that helps too.

well I am very good at explaining the NT world to folks with AS, and sometimes visa versa.
However, I tend throw NT's for a loop when I will be socailizing ok and all the sudden get autistic on them.
As far as overtimulation goes...I usually just freeze, become very blank in the face and then have a mini-meltdown that most people wont notice. If I am very overstimulated...like a major airport during holiday traffic...its not pretty.
If I am with people who know that I have autism, I just tell them that I need to get away because I am overwhelmed, and then I get somewhere quiet to calm down before it gets out of control. it just a matter of nipping it in the bud. However if I have no choice but to be in that situation, it does not go well.

I was rather low functioning as a kid and as I was through training, I am much higher functioning, so I am good with parents whose kids cant tell them why they are doing what they are doing because I been there.

So I guess you have a point, I could be more of a bridge...rather than whining about being in some AS/NT limbo.
Thank you for giving me a better perspective.

You are what you are. I guess training can be undone.

If you have developed good coping strategies then your autism will no longer be adversely affecting your life as severely as it would be if you hadn't....the effect on your life is an important part of the diagnosis, so yes you could be declared non-autistic. It always struck me as odd that they put such weight on that - if you hurt your feet and can't walk, your doctor wouldn't normally pronounce you fit just because you've secured a sedentary lifestyle.

I've heard that it's wise to stop using coping strategies while being diagnosed, so that they can see how things are when you're not working your butt off to compensate for the symptoms. But it can be easier said than done. All my coping strategies are home-grown because I wasn't diagnosed until recently (and I haven't had any help since then either), and they're largely unconscious because I've been using them for so long without knowing what they were. It's very hard for me not to do my best to cope with whatever life throws at me.

On the other hand, if you get meltdowns, then that suggests to me that your autism is still adversely and significantly affecting your life.

I think I understand your point about being in limbo. I have not been formally trained but have tonnes of experience interacting with people so my compensatory methods are highly tuned. I feel like I am stuck in the middle because I can interact but I hate doing it and usually mess up. But because I am able to communicate with people I am considered a mild case. I think its interesting to see yourself as a go-between.

I wasn't dx'd until later in life, but I've been a something of an anthropologist as long as I can remember and developed many coping skills which, if I could figure out how to articulate them, would likely be quite helpful to others on the spectrum and their families. Autism isn't something that can be trained 'out', but skills can be trained 'in', and this is good. I'd like to be a 'bridge', too, if I could get over my inertia to go out and make the effort. Obviously, I still have issues that need to be dealt with. :/

I admire your sense of direction.

I think that it's wrong to train the autism out of the child. As that child gets older, they will start to feel self conscious due to being in therapy and knowing that kids their age aren't in any type of therapy. On the other hand, I feel that social skills training could be a great benefit.

What does "social skills training" entail anyway?

Is it available for adults with AS?

Some days I feel like a bridge between the autistic and non-autistic worlds. Being a writer this is a gift, but at times it is a painful gift for me.

14 years or so before my Dx with HFA I trained to be a teacher of the Alexander Technique, as unconsciously I ached to learn ways of 'working on myself' sufficiently well enough to appear 'un-anxious' or awkward. Many people would say the Alexander Technique is all about 'un-learning' bad habits that we have accumulated over a lifetime.

Although I can see great value in all the self-help things I have done over the years, I can also see that they contributed to making me appear non-autistic, and as a result was able to integrate into the world sufficiently well enough to see everything I could not have.

Depression, self harming, anxiety, OCD etc, were all signs that all was not well within.

Many things are far from resolved in my life , however, as the German philosopher Rainer Maria Rilke said "be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves......Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, evolve some distant day into the answer."

However much at times I can feel alienated from the world, the reality is I know am living and breathing right at the centre of it.

I don't think your OT intended to insult you... I kind of agree with her. You train too much, without teaching the meanings, and you start to get people who are just scripting and stressing all the time--it just doesn't work.

If it makes you feel any better, I think it's entirely possible for you to drop some of the training and interact in a more natural fashion.

I see myself as a forger if it comes to social skills - I get better with every forging.
Even though I didn't have the social skills naturally, I can make a forgery that looks so much like the original even the experts can't tell the difference. Practice makes perfect

Even though I do sympathize on the purgatory issue, but it gives chance to trancend by having the best of both worlds so to speak. Don't worry, you never walk alone (link)

Over-trained? I am curious how you can be so. You can manage yourself socially according what you have told us here, but you still have the overload problems which non-autistic people also have from time to time in similar ways.


The bottom line is the following: Do YOU think you know to much because you are too NT to be AS and too AS to be NT?

I think it's the same issue everybody has. We're taught to watch ourselves constantly, always act the "right" way, constantly told what's proper and what's not. After a while, we lose track of what we want to do and what our natural interaction style is, in all of the rules.