Before I became an autism consultant in 1996, I had heard about a teen and a young adult who both ‘outgrew’ their autism by age 5. It was around 1992, before Aspergers had become a diagnosis in the English speaking world. Both had been formally diagnosed as ‘classically autistic’, one in the late 1960s, one in the late 1970s, both in an era where autism was deemed rare, 4 in 10,000, where one had to be quite recognizably autistic to get a diagnosis, far more so than today with a rate of 1 in 150 where almost any avoidant, solitary, developmentally delayed child with delayed speech who stims is diagnosed with ASD.

I saw the pics, met the parents. They both still had elements that were ‘different’, as if they were people who you could still sense had once lived in a dream state.

One had been diagnosed in the late 1960s, by one of Australia’s leading autism expert at that time – Dr Margot Prior. Now working in a professional field himself, he scoffed that she had recommended to his family that he was so severely autistic they should consider institutionalization. By age 5 he no longer presented as autistic. The other was diagnosed in the late 1970s by a UK autism specialist.

What was so amazing though was that both attributed emerging from their autism to having ‘made a friend’. They said they then just started coming out of their own world, waking up, then only later they realised they’d lost their old world, their autistic world.

BUT in their cases it was not that they JUST “made A friend” in each case they felt they had made THE friend… like a horse whisperer connection… someone who was able to enter their world and create such safety in company that they began to move from inner directed to outer directed, to show curiosity, and progressively challenged themselves to keep up with these ‘soul buddies’. In each case it was over at least a year that it took them to ‘wake up’ out of their own world, to discover curiosity about these other children, to begin to challenge themselves to keep up with their friends’ reality… so it wasn’t JUST that they’d made A friend, these were very special matches.

Within five years of meeting these two I had qualified as a teacher and become an autism consultant. By 1996, I had worked with over 1000 people with autism. Often those I worked with had gut, immune, metabolic disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, Selective Mutism, compulsive disorders, dissociation, dyspraxias, agnosias, aphasia, often they presented with personality disorders – Dependent, Avoidant, Schizoid, Schizotypal, Obsessive-Compulsive personalities disorders in particular, sometimes attachment disorders associated with severe sensory perceptual issues or associated with being born prem, often the environment unwittingly reinforced or failed to address these pieces of autism ‘fruit salad’ but once it did, well most of these kids began to become ‘less autistic’… they still had degrees of parts of their ‘fruit salad’ but some kids were so less autistic they came out of the autistic schools and were integrated into mainstream, some presented no longer ‘autistically’ but clearly still with elements of their various fruit-salad related disabilities.

So what had gone on with these other two who attributed their emergence primarily to having made ‘THE friend’?

Motivation is a most amazing thing. Depression, anxiety, personality disorders, dissociation can all get in the way of motivation, especially if one also has delayed development, information processing issues they find overwhelming. Many families of kids with autism see MOMENTS of what these two found. Sometimes they see their child make great advances due to a magical connection with a particular child, teacher, an animal, even with characters in a TV show. Of course we could say those who do are not the ‘real autistics’, but in such bigoted purism we then fail to learn about motivation and how this is often so key to anyone striving to do the best they can with any disability or limitations.

What, for these two, was the cause of their autistic withdrawal into their own world, their pulling away from development and communication, their fixation with all things inner-worldly, their cut off from the external world?

It may have been a combination of Schizotypal/Schizoid personality disorders with associated derealisation (so the world felt unreal) and depersonalisation, if not associated depression/withdrawal and social anxiety/social phobia/exposure anxiety, and that they probably also experienced such depths of dissociation they were also out of touch with their bodies. In other words they functioned like most severely autistic children, the causes for which can differ MAJORLY from case to case and unless those other severely autistic children had their SAME combination of ‘fruit salad’, the motivators that worked for these two simply may not work for others, yet all were equally autistic.

If their cases their autism were PRIMARILY a combination of dissociative, personality, mood and anxiety disorders, then had they STAYED in that state they’d probably have remained non-verbal and PROGRESSIVELY more developmentally delayed. But because they didn’t, their development got on track and they’d barely present now as autistic. Was there still something ‘odd’ there. Yes. Were they now Aspie? No, neither came across as Aspie, neither were pedantic, fixated, cerebral etc. Both quite ‘dreamy’… yes. So had they once been far more Schizotypal and far more dissociated but now they were not? Fast rewind them back into the states they began in, would they be diagnosed today as autistic. You betcha.

You can also find more info at my website http://www.donnawilliams.netincluding my consultation page for DID where I offer online Peer Support.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

COMMENTARY

Janet Matthews
Would you class this as childhood autism

Caitlin Browning
I was one of those children, I “outgrew” AS according to everyone, got intense social training and social pressure, become seemingly normal, and then started having deep-seated feelings of indescribable loss and depression, and I realized that I’d lost my inner world. Tried to regain it back again, but it’s never been the same as it once was. I still feel loss sometimes and a sort of emptiness like something is missing.

Donna Williams
This is how these two described it. I don’t think they lost their inner worlds… I think they lost the HYPNOTIC ALL ENCOMPASSING DEPTHS OF COMPLETE DISSOCIATION… a kind of suspended animation, a womb-like developmental limbo. I wrote about one of these cases in Somebody Somewhere. Remember these ones were RARE… I did see amazing progress in others with autism, but always with other interventions… health interventions, interventions for agnosias, interventions for communication disorders, interventions for Exposure Anxiety etc

Suzanne Midford
Sometimes, sometimes, autism does spontaneously remit. Rare, yes.

Caitlin Browning
yes, I think so. I feel like the person I was when I was young and the person I am now are two completely different people almost. When I was young I was in a completely different mental space most of the time, hypnotic yes, it was sort of …like a weird ecstasy, but I didn’t realize it was ecstasy until I lost it because while I was like that I didn’t know anything different. These days often I feel trapped in the external world, but I have never been able to fully “be” inside the internal world again. The change occurred when I was 16 to 17 years old. It would be to a very different extent with the children you talk about Donna, maybe they were more completely cut off than I was because I was never non-verbal or classically autistic, just disconnected from the things going on around me most of the time, but I was able to communicate with the outside world, like leaning out through a window. What happened to me was more like being locked out of the inner world completely, and now only getting occasional glimpses back in through a window.

Jennifer Wieczorek Polak
I am curious about this. Just the out-growing based on having a friend.. Did they still have any other issues? Fascinating stuff. the thing about both autism and developmental progression is that they are both beautifully different for everybody♥ it is too bad when someone can not accept another different experience as even a possibility. I say, embrace em all 🙂

Elyse Bruce
If going from not engaging to engaging in the bell-curve world was the only basis upon which the “outgrowing” from autism was based, I would question if the children in question were actually Autistic in the first place.

Hope Elizabeth Welker
My 16 yo son has friends–even a girl he considers his girlfriend–but trust me; he has NOT “outgrown” his autism.

Susan Mann
These behaviors can be learned by watching others. I can’t think of the word I am looking for here, but it involves watching and internalizing the interactions of others, w/o “studying” it.

Jennifer St. Jude
My daughter has grown leaps and bounds with lots of work and she can look pretty NT but she’s just learning ways to compensate, scripts to use, ways of coping. So she’s starting to look “cured” but its cause she uses all her learned skills, because we work with her, because we don’t give her foods that make it worse and a million other things. If she was “cured” she wouldn’t need to compensate anymore, none of us would. I think we’ve learned to compensate, treat and cope.

Devlyn Rhys Young
in some cases, in my opinion, dissociation is a coping mechanism for safety (however that is experienced); once the ‘core child’ actually experiences safety in interactions, the need for the ‘shield’ disappears (once it feels the same inside as outside, the shield becomes moot)

Alyson Bradley AsPlanet
I grew up being told I was all wrong, spent years trying to be like everyone else as was continually told I should be, it just screwed me up for years, lost within an empty and had no idea why, eventually I allowed me to be me and I smile again 🙂 AS traits are apart of who we are and however much others have tried, they flood back as we get older, as the pretense is far to exhausting. Everyone grows, adapts and changes who ever they are, what ever difference they have, what ever amount of conformity forced on them. The only thing that helped me, was accepting my differences as part of self, fully understanding and in term regaining my confidence. Every child and person, should be embraced for the individual they are. I also feel its important if have autistic or with any difference we are all out there being ourselves, as too much segregation earlier on, may make it harder to integrate later in life.

Chelsea Reinschmidt
Yeah I think everyone is different. But just because you have a friend or friends does not mean you are not autistic. Particularly because there are a lot more kids with autism now so a lot of those kids that are “similar minded” will gravitate toward each other and make friends with each other in adulthood especially. I don’t think that takes away the autism. Probably helps lessen some of the effects of it that are undesirable though. Ah yes….sigh….integration is difficult when one isn’t comfortable being themselves out in the world.

Leanne Casarotto
REALLY hard to tell. They may have ‘outgrown’ their autism even if they didn’t find a friend. Something we will never know unfortunately….

Carmel Anne Jones
I doubt they really outgrew the autism but they must have had significant breakthroughs in which the autistic symptoms drifted to the background. What probably happened was they went from being quite severely autistic to being mildly so. If they lost their friendships and/or suffered some major stresses in life, I would expect to … see a return of many of their old symptoms. I also have lost much of the “inner world” I used to have that made me happy. I can remember having it but now have no idea how to get it back and have had depression ever since I lost it. Like Alyson, I’m tired of the pretense that some want us to do every single day and look as if I’m regressing but maybe I am becoming more who I really am.

Isabelle Monod
wonderful article ,someone wrote about friendship that : friendship is borne from an insufficiency (shortage,deficiency) of the being so it’s a wonderful example to see than in order to become whole one associates ( even through dissociation) to fill up one ‘s emptiness & so, expend, motivation comes from the fun , understanding etc qualities of sharing & expending with another.

Debra Steinbaugh
Thirty years ago I was sitting in a literature class hoping for the world I could stay focused and visual details would not dominate. In walks the instructor, she smiles and immediately I knew this was how a smile should look, something I rarely did.. I so connected with this person that I was able to stay out of dream-land, focus on academics, plus learn some valuable lessons about how my emotions should be a part of my expression.