Do people change?

[WereBear]

I don't see it as a brain defect, @Calibar . I have an NT husband who respects my needs to be solitary and express myself differently from the norm. He actually likes it.

Don't let stupid societal rules mask what is really great about us.

 

[Calibar]

I view it as a defect. It makes life much harder, makes it difficult to interact with others. I would agree that there are good things as well, but the bad parts greatly outweigh the good...

 

[Professori]

Of course people do change. We have personality, temperament and character. The most important change that can take place is in character.

So, we can change our characteristics over time, for example, from impatient to patient, unhappiness to joy, fearful to peaceful, self-centredness to kindness, etc. we can move from being an angry person to being a person who is calm most of the time.

However, it does take work, and most importantly, the right people in your life. Right relationships are essential to the change in anyone's life because the accountability in change is what keeps us on track. This is often difficult for Aspies given that relationships are difficult.

There are not many people who stack up to being good friends and who understand true relationship. You need people who are really honest with you about your own faults and characteristics. These true friends are few and far between, mostly because too many today are selfish and self focused, narcissistic.

Hang out with the wrong people, even if they are family, and you are hardly likely to change because they will always bring you down. Change takes hard work and that is precisely why most give the impression that they do not change. People believe that they should be accepted just as they are, good or bad.

 

[tdrfreebird]

I feel the need to clarify a few things:

-I wouldn't go as far as to say my brother if sapping off me. He has his own job, and he makes more than I do. At the risk of sounding like I have Stockholm Syndrome, he is really not as bad as he use to be. The example I gave of the borrowed money happened 3-4 years ago and he has matured a bit since then. He has own life; right now I only see him about 2 or 3 times a week. The job he has now doesn't allow him to slack off. Historically he has been careless about his jobs (not caring if he gets in late, taking days off, getting in arguments with managers, etc.) But after becoming a supervisor at UPS last year, he has had to change his habits. He is very much a social and affable people-person, so getting jobs is fairly easy for him. As far as I know, he has been disciplined about his newest job but as I've said, I fear he'll revert back to old habits. Him taking advantage now amounts to not reciprocating on small favors enough. I'm not excusing him of anything, but he's gotten his act together quite a bit in the past 2 years.
-A good deal of my negativity for the future comes from the fact that I have done some self-improvement. I used to weigh approx. 400 lbs. 2-3 years ago, and now I'm down to 245 lbs. I want to be a writer and after a post-college hiatus from it, I've written more in the past two years than I have any other period in my life. I've put myself in social situations I normally wouldn't have to try to make friends, but to no success. I've tried online dating, which has also been unsuccessful. I've gone through two therapists and both weren't telling me anything I didn't already know about myself and the psychiatrist is a jerk. I've done more self-help and reflection in the past two years than I ever have in my life. After all of it I just find disappointment and I just feel worse about life. I've gone through periods where I quit an addiction that could be holding me back (overeating, weed, alcohol, etc), but then I feel worse and I need to fill the void.

This move is very pivotal for the both of us and I'm looking forward to it but I still have a lot of anxiety about it. We might not be able to handle it.

 

[Bella Pines]

Of course people change, continuously. Personal choice is a fundamental aspect to the world we live in.

I'm in my 40s now and have changed many times, both physically and mentally. I have adopted visualization or brain training techniques to recover from trauma and change my neurological responses, I have taken up various physical training activities to change my physical responses and I have taken a whole bunch of communications training courses to change (and fake) acceptable social responses.

Different techniques work in different ways for different people, I found that yoga works well for me physically and an "inner landscape" works well mentally. It really is trial and error.

It is perfectly possible, however, it is not always advisable. Ultimately, being popular, or thin, or rich, all the other things that "happy people" have is an illusion.

The desire for change often stems from an inner dissatisfaction. Rather than addressing the symptoms (which admittedly can help and has occasionally helped me), look to address the root cause. Your brother is his own person and really nothing to do with how you perceive yourself. So perhaps find something inside yourself that you can learn to respect and appreciate and maybe the need to change will begin to dissipate into something manageable.

 

[icesyckel]

I have long held the belief that people don't change. They can change their habits or their appearance, or they can make an improvement in their temperament and/or attitude. But ultimately, people don't change from who and what they really are at their core. Admittedly, I'm a pessimist.

This is where it is vital to be precise with words, because people do and do not change, depending on the context.

My brain is autistic. No matter what I do, and no matter how many coping mechanisms I learn/adapt/use, the way my brain perceives and processes information is never going to change.

However, as I learn, I adapt my behaviors to employ that which I have learned. Being autistic is no excuse, for example, to intentionally mistreat others. Sometimes, miscommunications or unintentionally hurting someone is inevitable due to the differences in how NT's and ND's think, but we all learn and improve. In this sense, all people change - and they change all the time.

Some people refuse to apply what they have learned and to adapt moving forward, but that is not really anything to do with autism. That may be a personality or psychological disorder, or it could be a disability caused by brain damage.

However, most people, NT and ND, learn and change with frequency, but it is a process that doesn't always show. If I learn to crochet, then you might not notice until you get a blanket from me at Christmas. If I learn to be more diplomatic, then the change in conversation may be too subtle to notice right away.

But people don't change how they think. I know neuroplasticity is a thing, but that's more making behavioral changes over time that become second nature. Really, an autistic brain never becomes NT insofar as I know, and vice versa.

Even personalities can change slowly over time. I've got a daughter. That changed me in ways so profound I can hardly believe it myself. I'd say the changes were immediately noticeable. Other life events spark less drastic change, but it happens.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Yes people can change, quite dramatically sometimes, but it takes either a lot of time and effort or an extreme life event, such as a near death experience if you'll excuse the cliche.

The mistake many people make is thinking that a change in circumstance will result in a change in themselves, such as someone thinking that when they go away to uni they'll suddenly become confident and popular, or if they move to their dream location they'll become happy, or if they get the perfect job their self-esteem issues will be fixed. The fact is that a change in circumstances won't change a person, only addressing the root cause of your issues and putting in months of effort to change habit and thought patterns will really make any difference.

 

[Mathalamus]

being able to change your basic personality is a very high level ability, something that even i have trouble with. its definitely possible, but only if you have a clear idea what to change, what to change to, why you are changing, how you are changing, and whether you have the support, external and internal, for the change.

 

[Aidan49]

I think people change due to experiences.