Day: September 24, 2018

libraryimagination:

my-autistic-things:

reinedescruelles:

unpopularly-opinionated:

ms-demeanor:

skinnersboxy:

the-real-numbers:

ms-demeanor:

ms-demeanor:

waitingforgalois:

ms-demeanor:

the-real-numbers:

Fuck, my sleep schedule does naturally fall into the 4am-12 pattern, doesn’t it

What fucking else about ADD/ADHD don’t I know?

Do you sit weird in chairs? Apparently that’s one.

Does criticism really REALLY really upset you, to the point that you get upset and consider walking away from whatever the thing you were criticized for was?

Is your sense of time utterly fucked?

Oh fuck. I was recently diagnosed but all of these things have been true my whole life lol

Imagine my surprise when I had this plus all the standard symptoms and got diagnosed at 31! *Fingerguns*

More Adult ADHD symptoms that people don’t know:

• “Hyperactivity” can include chattiness, or an obsessive focus on one topic that you’ll happily go on about for hours in a conversation with *anyone* at the slightest provocation (last week someone brought up pockets in women’s clothing near the end of a small-group workout session and I may have spent the rest of the session giving an impromptu lecture about pockets while doing hammer curls)
• Zoning out and staring off into space because you’re thinking really hard about something and then not noticing that people are talking to you
• Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD. There’s this pervasive myth that folks with ADHD can’t pay attention but sometimes the problem is you can’t leave something alone.
• Random impulsive shopping sprees that leave you wracked with guilt can be part of ADHD
• Interrupting or talking over other people
• P R O C R A S T I N A T I O N (because you can’t feel bad about failing a project that never gets started)
• Worrying that you’re going to get fired every time your boss wants to speak to you privately (this is a sign of rejection sensitive dysphoria and emotional hyperarousal)

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got the attention to look up for now so ttyl, if you think you may have ADHD check out some of the blogs dedicated to it, read up on symptoms, and talk to your doctor, bye.

Everybody who thinks they might have ADHD go read about dyspraxia holy fuck.

Super common symptom: Left/right confusion.

Everybody raise your hand if you developed a mnemonic as a kid where you flexed your right arm to remember which was right and which was left and kept that into adulthood because I’ve now spoken to three people who have a half-second “right-flex-okay-it’s-this-one” “left-flex-okay-it’s-the-other-one” process for figuring out which is right and which is left.

Specifically, raise your left hand :p

Almost all of this fits me but also I read most of these as autistic and not ADHD. Can someone explain how these display differently?

I’m not gonna lie here, I don’t honestly know that there is that much of a difference. I’ve had lots of people suggest that I might be autistic and unaware of it, and overstimulation and processing issues and meltdowns can also be observed in ADHD adults even though they frequently go in the “autistic” column.

FWIW I’m enby and fall heavily into the “looks like a woman” category and had trouble getting diagnosed even with ADHD. I’ve discussed autism with my doctors in the past because I’ve had so many people go “uh, hey, you might want to ask” and they’ve consistently done the “no, you’re too good at recognizing social cues and maintaining eye contact” thing (am I good at these things because I’m good at them or am I good at these things because I’ve learned to do them as a survival skill after years of bullying because I was the weird kid who couldn’t act right? It’s hard to tell). I’ve heard a lot of people discussing the fact that adult women have trouble getting diagnosed, especially if they’ve been masking a long time.

Apparently there’s at least something of a difference in regard to desire for order and repetition and verbosity as children. I don’t know how much of a difference there is for adults.

As an adult I can’t even get diagnosed for ADD/ADHD because if I ever mention it my doctors always ask the leading question “do you know how they treat that?” which feels like this dumb test like if I answer with yeah I know what they do they’ll immediately assume I’m there for the drugs, which like yeah technically I am, but not for THAT reason. If the shit helps me why wouldn’t I want to take it?

It feels very catch-22. If I know anything about ADD and can accurately describe my symptoms as ADD then they just think I’m reading from a premade list of symptoms I read online, but like looking online is how I IDed my symptoms so…I don’t get it.

I am a 23 year old female and was diagnosed (at 21, took a lot of self advocacy bc by family didnt believe in adhd) and medicated for ADHD by a professional. I can confirm there’s a huge overlap between symptoms of adhd and autism and that’s because they’re both neurodevelopmental disorders and thus have similar effects going on regarding brain chemistry. However, they are distinct diagnoses evem though they affect some of the same parts of the brain and have similar symptoms (also, similar symptoms appear for different reasons in the disorders, so sometimes they may present similarly but be caused by different issues). @ms-demeanor @skinnersboxy

• Also, procrastination bc your brain only releases norepinephrine (fight or flight) at the Last Second™ to do your assignments right before you fail
• Having that norepinephrine response the exact amount of time to do your assignments before the due date and being too ADHD to sit and do the assignment so it’s late
• *sees a commercial about literally anything* I. N.EE.DDD.D IT.T.T!!1!!!!1!1!

on the topic of autism:

1. you can have both

2. autism comes with issues with communication and social interaction in addition to sensory and processing issues. while some of us speak early or around the same time as NT kids, a lot of autistic people speak late or not all. Most of us can go non-verbal sometimes, particularly when stressed. So verbal speech or any communication at all can just be harder for our brains. We tend to rely heavily on scripts or models and may use echolalia (repeating this). While we may learn strategies to help, communication issues persist our whole lives. We can take things literally and struggle with metaphors or joking/teasing. We tend to have trouble reading social situations and understanding how to apply social rules which often seem obscure and arbitrary. Part of this may be because we have different natural body language and can struggle to read NT body language–includinng facial expressions. That makes it hard for us to get information about what other people may be feeling. All of this is general and will not apply to every autistic person–we’re all different.

as for how the overlap traits are different between the two it’s very hard to be sure particularly as some people can have both.