Did your Autism get better with age?

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From the answers in this thread, one can deduce that there is no one answer. It depends on the person and circumstances.

There are two main directions this can go
1. Perspective, maturity, and figuring out mitigating and coping mechanisms can make Autism seem less burdensome

2. The stress of being autistic in a neurotypical world can hasten normal physical decline and mental decline and enhance sensory sensitivities.

I think it is a mixture of both for most older autistics, and which predominates is an individual matter.

It's seemingly getting worse. It seems I can tolerate less and less nonsense from people. Also loud noises and bright lights are impossible for me now. I went into a restaurant last Sunday and walked out after a few minutes, as they had this loud music going and tons of people. Nope, wasn't going to happen.

so, finally, it is getting better than at a younger age when you would have got to endure the music and crowd for 1 hour without having the social courage of walking out and then having a shut down ....

For the initial question (autism get better/worse with age) I would say it becomes what *you* make it become. If you succeed to build a life trajectory which alleviates the bad sides of autism and enhance the good side, it may be perfectly liveable. For instance trying to identify soon enough the types of jobs which are not absurd for your form of autism is helpful, and so on. I mean trying to have the clearest possible awareness of what we are able to cope with or not.

I feel as if my sensory sensitivities have gotten worse as an adult, loud noises in particular are very hard for me to deal with now. (I've recently begun working with my dad, who's a mechanic, and the loud noises I have to deal with are really wearing me down, I've been stimming way more frequently to cope).

Worse with age

My sound sensitives got better due to me kinda being forced to be in loud environments. My dad worked in construction & sometimes brought work home & he's also a big DIYer. I sometimes kinda had to help him with various things that were noisy. The three jobs I had were in noisy environments. My second & third job were custodial stuff in retail while the stores were open & my first was dish-washing. My way of dealing was by trying to stay focused on my work & I kinda learned to tune a bit of the noise out. It seems like my sensitivities to heat, cold, & humidity have gotten worse over the last decade but I think it may be a medical issue more than autistic sensitivities but I'm not sure what condition it would be.

My girlfriend on the other hand always had sound sensitivities & me & her don't think she's capable of learning to tune it out like I was. Her way of dealing is by having consistent noise on like fans, ACs, TV &/or music on & sometimes wearing earplugs. This isn't a great coping strategy for her though because she has an auditory processing disorder & often mishears things when there isn't much noise & having a bit of background noise or wearing earplugs almost guarantees she'll mishear. It tends to be very funny for both of us but other times she gets triggered by something she misheard. Thankfully she kind of learned to let me repeat & better explain myself before going into meltdown mode.