Developmental path

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The "Are you a bloomer?" thread made me want to make a poll that was asking a similar question but with different options.

Eh?

None of the above.

But I think I was more "mature" as a child.

If it was none of the above, I'm curious what it was.

I picked slow and steady decrease, but there have been periods of decompensation/burnout that I would not refer to as "regressive" but were still more dramatic than slow and steady.

I'm not sure what to pick.

I would say I had a severe degression (increase in severity) when I turned 18 where I stopped functioning at all and was housebound for a year, unable to tolerate any sensory interference at all and wore the same pyjamas and became very overweight. It was hell.

Then I would say a steady decrease (as in slow-and I would say it's been very slow in some ways- development) until then, with a rapid progression recently in the last year, where I wisened up.

It's weird.

But then I was over-serious and like a middle aged person at 19, whereas I am just becoming more lighthearted now at 25.

I don't understand it at all

So does some people's autism actually worsen with age?

What does that entail as such???

I was hoping to become more and more wise to the ways of the cruel world, and more and more able to copy NTs, even though I'd still be as Aspie as I wanted to be when alone.

Last edited by Cuckooflower on 10 Dec 2012, 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I chose "other" because I feel like I was in stasis for the first 30 years of my life. I was intelligent and mature in a lot of ways but extremely immature in others. I was also completely not engaged so there was no real growth, I was always just me on the inside, pretending to be what others wanted me to be on the outside. I have begun to grow in my early 30's but not because of some spontaneous increase, through serious life changes and dedication.

Technically, I voted "other."

If you don't mind me saying, your options are a tad too "linear" to describe my experience. For me, I developed in "fits and starts." I was highly developed in certain areas, and lagging in others. I started talking at 18 months, which is pretty average. I walked and potty-trained early. As for the rest, I was strong in some areas, and weak in others, and the relative "strength" or "weakness" in any given area could, and did, change depending on circumstances.

As a child, I was an "old soul" in a small body. Now that I'm an adult, I'm a little kid in a too big body. If that makes any sense.

I'll refrain from typing 12 paragraphs about my life lest the internet die from boredom.

I wrote rapid increase at some point and for me it was around the age of 11. I wasn't extremely low functioning before than because I could still talk and I had the intelligence of an aspie but I had no self awareness. At some point that self-awareness suddenly just came to me. It clicked and became so much easier.

After that I got support in high school that resulted in further improvements. I still missed signals but my mistakes became a lot less common. Instead of missing everything I'd miss 10% of the nonverbal signals I received.

I still feel like I've regressed just a little bit this past year between the ages of 18 and 19. It might be depression influencing my performance but I'm missing things more than usual.

I think this poll is helpful, even if people have to pick an option that is closest and doesn't completely describe them (otherwise, there would be too many options). Though I think an option for "stayed the same" would have been useful, too.

I do think that autistic people with a good understanding of their condition and a good support system probably generally move in a positive direction, and the expectation of that being the case is a logical one to have - I don't think it's likely that sudden regression would happen to anyone in that situation. But I think a lot of this really hinges on the help, or lack thereof, that autistic people receive. It's well known that children who are diagnosed early and have the right sort of tutoring tend to improve, sometimes substantially, but the flip side of this is that children who aren't diagnosed and who are treated badly because of their autistic traits without being offered any understanding of them might be at risk of regression and further withdrawal. It is a little illogical to assume autistic traits can move in the direction of "more neurotypical" but not the other way.

In my case "slow and steady decrease" probably fits best. I think this is due to a combination of factors, including environmental factors, effects of medication, and increased expectations of others (whether or not my symptoms naturally worsened as well, I'n not sure, but my ability to manage life certainly did). My hope is that having recently understood the cause of my worsening difficulties, I am better able to work on them and I hope I can turn that around and see movement in a positive direction.

I'm wondering if certain family experiences actually held my development up significantly as well.

My parents were very abusive, but my brother was extremely abusive towards me over a long period of time that in end lasted about twenty years, well into his adulthood.

I only managed to escape him within the last two years and I plan never to have contact with him again, because he has a deep seated pattern of abusing me that started when we were both small children and it doesn't take much for him to revert back to it, especially since he is most likely not even consciously aware of such a deep seated tendency.
Sibling abuse is down to lack of discipline and boundaries on behalf of the parents, but eventually he should have taken responsibility and changed, and he didn't.

Anyway, being continually sadistically bullied and put down and so on over such a long period of time eroded my self esteem to less than nothing. I have had to scratch it back as an adult, and it is very hard work to dispel all the things I have been told about myself over a lifetime (that I now know to be projections and not true, but it is still very hard to unlearn these things. It will probably take me the rest of my life).

It makes me angry to think I could have developed fully much sooner if I had not had my brother abusing me all through childhood, adolescence and early twenties, alongside the ASC and so many other s**t experiences.

Well, anyway. I guess it's never too late to gain self awareness and evolve. Never, ever too late, even if you've been held up.
That's the important thing to hang onto.

Same here, maybe a little later than 11, although for me I must admit that while I was glad the sensory issues and fears had gotten less (fewer compulsions, fewer sensory overreactions and fears of fireworks, dogs etc as a result of sensory issues), that sudden self-awareness pulled me out of a world I was quite happy in, and I miss that sometimes. (I did not appear LFA even before that but was just a lot more cut off than after ca. age 12 upwards)

that sudden self-awareness pulled me out of a world I was quite happy in, and I miss that sometimes.


Wow, I really get this.

It's quite shocking realising how f****d up everyone is and how dangerous the world is, isn't it, when you suddenly gain greater awareness of what is actually going on?

I find it bewildering.

My plan is to learn good self protection skills, because I don't expect ever to be able to level NTs socially at all.

Slow and steady decrease, because that's exactly what happened.

I regressed as an child. I was never NT-like, and I was a late speaker, but once I did have speech skills (full, coherent sentences), I completely lost the ability to speak and had to be retaught. I've been basically the same since then with up and down moments.

In terms of autism specific stuff it has remained about the same as long as I can remember. the offshoot comorbid OCD and depression progressively got worse in my mid 20's and only improved after I started taking meds.

i selected 'other'.