Anyone else feel your neurology fluctuated over the years?

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Apologies if "neurology" isn't the right word.

I'm not saying my brain literally changed neurology throughout my life, but it's just what it FELT like judging by my behaviours during different parts of my life.

It seems my neurology went:-

Age birth to 4: Neurotypical
Age 4-5: ADHD and anxiety disorder
Age 6-10: ADHD at home, Asperger's at school
Age 10-12: Asperger's and ADHD
Age 13-15: Autism and learning difficulties
Age 15-17: Asperger's, ADHD and social anxiety
Age 18-24: Bipolar, Asperger's, ADHD and social anxiety
Age 24 to present: ADHD and anxiety disorder

Anyone else felt this?

More or less.

Except it's not a shift of diagnosis in my case.
More like an environment of my brain shifted -- namely my body.

At ages 1-7, I was likely fine.
8+ onwards until recently? Chronically angry.
Ages 9-16; some form of anxiety bad enough to quit school half way through puberty for few years.
Ages 14, 21, and 28 gave me a burnout.

Yet 28 and onwards; I'm losing "debuffs" and dysfunctionality.


For 3 personal major factors;
One was this unprocessed emotions from childhood that I largely able to process since 2 years ago (and still continue to do the work further in different areas of whatever emotional complexes),
Two was the chronic rhintis that's been unmanageable -- and an unegotiable source of chronic stress -- until only recently,
And the third that I've yet to solve in a meaningful way is hormones since puberty -- had attempted since 28, even if it was brief, it's enough to cause long term positive change.


My autism did not change.
My sensory inclinations, cognitive profile and inner self remained untouched.

Definately, my physical and mental health, habits and behaviors did changed.

I only needed to rid of those 3 personal major factors to be less dysfunctional.
But not everyone in my life is listening and just continue blaming the autism instead of realizing that I was right and actually help me.

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I've never been diagnosed with bipolar and I don't think I had it, although I might have because ever since I went on Sertraline at age 24 my manic mood swings kinda subsided and have been more shorter-lived ever since.

When I was age 18-24 I kept getting days where I felt like I was on top of the world, so happy and loving life and believing that I'd never have another angry outburst again, without any reason to make me feel that ecstatic happiness. Then when I least expected it a day came where I hated my life, wanted to die, and lashed out verbally at my family. This was usually triggered by bouts of depression, but nothing really triggered the bouts of depression, although sometimes being reminded of my lonely life could set it off but my mind still had to be in that state in order to lose control like I did and become like a bomb that would explode without warning.

But I'm not sure if that was bipolar or if I just had raging hormones and the typical ADHD trait of difficulty with managing emotions. But it still felt like bipolar during that period of my life, whether it was or not.

Not exactly what you're talking about, I think, but I used to have a tremor. I thought it was just a part of my life, maybe a side effect from the meds, or just another neurological problem on top of autism and OCD. But then a bad relationship ended and so did the shaking.

Hormones probably make everyone's neurology fluctuate. I am starting to feel the effects of perimenopause now, which sucks.

There are times in my life where I have felt “more autistic” than other times in my life. I do not think level of autism changes. I think how autistic one feels and presents is a result of changes in life experiences such as stresses, health, your surroundings, what you learn from experience etc.

I'm not sure my behaviour fluctuated because of conditions, circumstances and environmental influence in all my cases but maybe for some.

This post isn't about the one above.
I'm writing in general terms.


You're born autistic.
The rest has a relatively small impact.
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I don't know, it seems like there are people here who aren't at the highest level of the autism spectrum.
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Others reject it: I find it illogical to reject it as it is.
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As far as I'm concerned (I can speak for myself), many of my relatives are autistic, and that's it.
It doesn't depend on living conditions.

They're like that.
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My mother was like that.
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Many of her brothers and sisters, my grandfather...
Many of my relatives even later.

Genetics currently plays an 83% role in research (which is currently proven).
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In my case, the environment had absolutely no impact.
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If you're born black, you're black; you can say what you want, but that's just how it is.
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Now, many deny the apparent color, which is black.
Making it quite black and quite white, indeed almost white, if it hadn't been for this or that situation.

Are we sure that's really what happens?

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Not that it's a virtue, on the contrary.
But a condition that's increasingly close to a nearly 100% valuation (this will be evaluated in the future).

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A CNR researcher contact of mine wrote that many neurotypicals sometimes have more pronounced autistic traits than us.

He studies human genetics.

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A DSM is valid until it's disproved by the next person.

The next person will disprove this one.
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There are cases that are either NT, or subclinical, or ND.

But it's not clear whether they are truly pure conditions.

For now: I'm referring to published research.

I write that a pure condition is opposed by the medical culture and the denialism in which we are socially steeped.
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A natural condition is considered wrong.

I find this nonsense.
I'm writing in general terms, not in response to your posts, let's be clear.
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You are it, you feel it.
There's no point beating around the bush.

You can do it for self-protection: because you don't accept it.

Also because this is a very mixed forum.

In a pure one, one wouldn't have this induced hesitation.

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Then, for goodness' sake, I respect your ideas.

But do they correspond to reality?

Perhaps they do, however, correspond to non-pure Neurodivergents, or to NTs who don't know that it's essentially unlikely that they don't belong to our condition.

They possess it to a lesser extent, but they possess it.

Unless genetics is minimally taken into consideration.

Dialogically, this is difficult to appreciate for now.

Okay, I feel a little autistic.

Some of you feel like a poneurotypical if you actually think about your existence, but honestly, I mean?

Or is that not how it happened at all?

Denying a condition is human.

But it's not scientific, not even logical.

It makes no sense from the point of view of *evaluating it according to precise standards*.

The rest is just sensations.

In research, we don't use sensations.

We evaluate things in the most aseptic way possible, if anything.

Otherwise, we'll remain in the realm of ifs, buts, maybes, or enoughs.

Do we need to think like this?
Yes?
No?
How much?
And does it mean reasoning according to scientific parameters?
Or not reasoning so much, because not doing so is protective?

It's not approached like this.

Reply to thread: no!
My neurology is just like this.
It hasn't undergone "fluctuations."
It's always been like this.
I was born with it.
Then others have doubts: I understand that there are people with anxieties about wanting to belong to what they aren't.

Absolutely not.

Then anyone can write here.
I respect your difficulty in expressing what you are (or belong to) with such subtlety.
Sorry if I've offended anyone: I'd be sorry.

By behavior and habit changes; I do really mean stimming less, being less clumsy, being less unreliable.
Definitely spiralling, ruminating and on a verge of whatever "rude behavior" (i.e. dysregulated) significantly less.

I never use the term "less autistic" because my own autism IS the same. I believe those who uses that term are people who associates "autistic" with "dysfunctional".
By dysfunctional, meaning, not "normal presenting" or feel "closer to neurotypical" whatever the hell that means because they really are the type who only associates neurodivergence with only disability or dysfunction.


Why stim less? And not call it more masking?

Because I'm less prone to dysregulation and overwhelm. Because I'm healthier. Because I'm stronger.
Because I gained more energy to spend and less energy to borrow against my tomorrows.

Because my time and resources is less spent managing whatever chronic illness or deficiencies that other people blames my autism for.

Because of that, I have less need to stim -- because I'm less dysregulated, less overwhelmed by those crap people had been ignoring, but stuff I've been figuring and I was right.

Because I'm a neurodivergent who found something very right for myself that most people cannot figure the heck out, and it's not even a form of managing said neurodivergence.

My environment's the same, my life situation's is the same -- yet I will have more power to change that.

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No. But stress has and that intensifies my neurological sensitivity.

@Edna3362Sorry, I owe you two-thirds of an answer.

I'm not sure what you mean by less motor clumsiness.

At least, it's impossible.

We could open a discussion about how many autistic people don't have it and what level they are.

I don't associate autism with dysfunctional.

I mean the term as it is.

The problem is, for example, what it combines with the natural condition we have.

I'm not interested in resembling neurotypicals, but in functioning socially in a diverse world because it's not just a world populated by non-natives; they are the absolute majority.

At least, I don't perceive any desire to resemble neurotypicals.

I try to function as I am.

For me, it's normal to be as I am.

It's just that you can't do anything like that, at least not if you're truly intense, I mean.

Then there are people with less severe conditions who often write here.

Or are they ashamed of it? Question... can you be ashamed of something for which shame has no meaning?

For me, it means not hiding anything; I'm not interested in hiding anything.

Just being just one among many who walk or take the bus, or move around a market, or manage to do things.

Without having to take an anxiolytic even just to be able to leave the house...

Reducing sensory difficulties, many other things.

Excuse my English,
I'm struggling to understand some of the passages in your post; you're perhaps the only one here whose writing style is difficult to delineate.

Perhaps you write very well.

I'd like to understand more of what you write, but I'm not capable of it.

Also because your posts don't seem trivial to me; you use a form of cascading reasoning, which, due to my incompetence, I can't deduce.

At least in this post.

Other people's posts are always clear to me, but this one isn't.

I'm sorry, because it's probably full of meanings I can't decipher.

I can read it, but not understanding it is quite rare for me.

Sometimes I wonder how you understand my posts.

This isn't a criticism.

I don't mean to criticize anyone who writes in their native language; it would be surreal if I even thought of that.

You're one of the interesting people on the forum.