Aspergers is like wine: it get's better with age

Not that I have any experience with wine though... yeah.

Anyway, I just want to write for a second about something I read a little while ago. I was surfing the web trying to find something related to Aspergers interesting enough to read, and I found a yahoo questions post asking if Aspergers gets worse as you get older.

I think this is the opposite of the truth. As you get older, I find, you get tired of the Aspergers and you learn ways to make it easier for yourself. As long as you have a desire to get better when you grow, the Aspergers problems diminish, and the benefits of it grow.

When I was younger I would have frequent outbursts of anger, and I was very sensetive to sound and touch, and just about everything. Now that i'm older, I learned several ways to be able to cope, and I have much less anger and I can tolerate more things.

For example: when I was younger my dogs barking would drive me crazy. Now when they bark though, I can tolerate it better, and it doesn't really affect me.

This is Jordan from teenaspergers.blogspot.com signing off.

Basic Meditation

Meditation is a good tool to have. There are many aspects of meditation, but for now, i'm going to wright a basic technique that you can do for only 10-15 minutes a day. You can do it whenever is convenient, but I find that it's best to do before bed.

During the day your brain has to process the information it is receiving. Whenever you do anything, it adds to the data you have to process.

Taking 10 or 15 minutes to lets your conscious mind rest, and sort out that information helps very much to reduce stress. It's good to use before bed, because it is relaxing and also helps to slow down any racing thoughts you may be having.

Just sit or lie in bed, or a chair if you want, close your eyes, and let you thoughts wander. You'll likely start thinking about something that happened to you, or something that's been on your mind. After a little while, your thoughts should slow down. When this happens, you know the meditation worked, as that's the goal. To slow down your thoughts.

That's it. It's just that simple. This is the basis of most, if not all meditation techniques. You can deep breath if you want, and that can make it more relaxing, but I don't think it's necessary. It's just a matter of turning your attention away from the things happening around you and focusing on your own thoughts.

Acceptance

Acceptance is, at least for me, the holy grail of fighting Aspergers. It towers light years above anything else I've learned or tried my whole life, and if I could only learn one thing to use against my AS, this would be it.

Acceptance is a mindset that is formed through experience, practice, and devotion. Acceptance is one of the hardest things to master in life, but also one of the most useful. It is possible, just not easy. But when has beating up Aspergers ever been easy.

Forming a mindset of acceptance, will help with any number of problems that you may encounter in life, but for the sake of explanation, I'll use Aspergers as an example.

Acceptance, is one part acknowledgement, and one part denial. It took me a while to understand it myself, but when I did, I came up with this.

You acknowledge something bad happened or is happening, but you deny it has any control over you. By deny, I mean you don't let the fact that you found out you have Aspergers in and of itself bother you.

The actual Aspergers symptoms may affect you, but the name doesn't have to. And for the symptoms, you can fight them, so don't get discouraged. That's the worst of things you could do.

By acknowledging that it really does stink to have Aspergers, and you do have it, you aren't ignoring any strong emotions. Ignoring things like this, may not always blow up in your face, but it's never good for you.

Acknowledging your feelings does not mean beating yourself up over having them, because in all honesty, it does suck to have Aspergers, and that feeling is justified. It just means facing those emotions in the eye and saying "Get away from me, you are useless, and I choose to ignore you."

You can't let dealing with strong emotions drag you into an emotional abyss though, which leads quite well into the second part of acceptance: denial. Denial in this context, means a refusal to let something affect you.

If that something happens to be depression or anger over having Aspergers, then denial is a good thing. Getting all bent out of shape over something you can't change won't do any good. After all, Aspergers is just a name.

The actual symptoms of AS may not be something you can fix simply through will power alone, but letting the name affect you won't help. I know I just said it one sentence ago, but I want to hammer it into your head, because it took me a long time to learn this.

After several years of not accepting my Aspergers, I eventually found a better way, acceptance, and ever since them I have been so much better with most of the symptoms, because I don't have negative emotions seething under the surface. If you get anything at all from this post at all, please let it be at least this:

Getting upset over a name won't help!!!!

Acceptance is truly the best tool to use in the war against Aspergers in my experience. Just remember acknowladgement and denial. This is Jordan from teenaspergers.blogspot.com signing off.