Autism & ADHD: How the AuDHD experience can be, well…different.

The dichotomies of living with ADHD & Autism, combined.

My life has always felt like one big polarizing, both-and of opposites. My personality holding space for just as much ‘this’, as it does ‘that’. What I mean by this is…

I am:

• Free spirited
• Loud
• Social
• Full of big emotions & all the feels
• Spontaneous
• Adventurous
• Center-stage, entertaining
• Colorful and sometimes, inconsistent
• BOLD in personality
• An outside of the box thinker, possessing wild thought processes that beg to challenge even the most rigid — IE: I craaaaave change and shakin’ shit up a bit!

AND. I am also:

• Structured, systemized, and contently trapped in my own rigid routines and undivided ways
• Live and function by my color-coded scheduler and to-do lists
• Mute
• Apathetic and inflexible to most social settings, innately loathing anything ‘small talk’ or superficial ‘friendly’
• Analytical, compartmentalized, and ‘numb’ to feelings — often my own
• Intolerant of change (on my terms, ONLY… please and thanks.)
• A hidden, home-body hermit, of a human being
• Observant, private, and quite an over-thinking wallflower
• Dull and predictable
• What many might consider, nerdy and ‘boring’
• Demanding of clear structure and rigid black and white rules. Almost incapable of living ‘outside’ of my formulaic, metaphorical box.

A Piece of My Story:

After my ADHD diagnosis, I turned to the social platforms to connect with other like-minded and misunderstood souls, and to gain a more ‘real life’ understanding of how my brain operated.

I could, of course, immediately relate to so many others’ experiences, and was able to seek out and satiate so much of the validation I had spent a lifetime craving and pursuing.

However, it wasn't quite the ‘whole picture’. For every validating moment or experience I clung to in my now, overwhelmingly ADHD-obsessed Instagram feed, there were just as many that I found myself not relating to, or rather, feeling quite opposite of.

There was an itchy, underlying ‘something’ (gut instinct) that continued to challenge and question if this ‘ADHD thing’ was really the correct DX.

Coincidentally, I was talking with my unassuming teenage son one afternoon, during the phase of my diagnostic-journey (which he was not at all aware of). He unapologetically exclaimed that he has ‘never been able to put his finger on’ me. Continuing, that just when he thinks he has me ‘figured out’, I throw a stick in his metaphorical bike spoke and behave or respond the exact opposite of what he would have come to expect.

This, stung.

Here I was, trying with all my might and all my guts to just pave over any self-questioning or doubt that didn't otherwise ‘identify’ with ADHD, and ONLY ADHD. And my unsuspecting kid just set off a nuclear bomb inside of my psyche, reminding me, that I'm still not right…broken…ill, throwing me into a tailspin of camouflaged, dissociated shutdown.

I found myself instinctively masking and overcompensating with a playful, ‘owning it’, outward expression and attitude, though inside — my wounded inner child had just been stabbed in the gut and I was wallowing in shame and perpetual self-hate.

Why was I like this?! I’m crazy…I’m fucking crazy.

I had this unrealistic, ideological sense that I had somehow hidden this ‘two-part’ personality of me, my entire life.

I would go as far as to say, that I had over the span of my entire social existence, unconsciously compartmentalized and systemized groupings of friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers. Instinctively pairing them to ‘which side’ they recognized and identified with…which side they ‘knew’ as me. And then, like a professional chameleon, or a flattering mirror, play the respective role expected of me — day in, and day out — for 35 years.

Told you. Fuckin’ crazy, right?

I spent months hyper-fixated and obsessed over anything and everything ‘neurodivergent’. As a ground-up thinker and processor, I wanted, no NEEDED, to know absolutely everything about ADHD and the neurodivergent brain.

As you might expect, throughout this journey I subsequently, by default, began learning about autism and all the ins-and-outs that came with that particular neuro-wiring (ultimately uncovering the insanely high co-morbidity of the two, albeit, otherwise dichotomies of symptomatology).

I had not even considered autism. And still didn't…

Fast forward

After a couple months of tinkering with ADHD medication and finding that sweet-spot dosage, I was feeling pretty great. It was as though I had been handed a coveted opportunity… a do-over at life. I was determined not to F this up. Onward and upward!

I continued down my rabbit hole journey of neurodivergent studies and self-identification/reflection. And just when I got comfortable, and was feeling fairly and consistently, one sided, I began noticing the opposite. Not just here and there…but rather, opposite, on a vengeance.

This opposite, came with it, all of the qualities that historically weren't ideal or acceptable to others. Qualities I had spent a lifetime denying and going to great lengths to hide, discredit, and otherwise shame out of myself.

Black and white thinking/processing, rigid structure, intolerance for change in routine, heavier need for stimming, undeniable sensory overload, lack of patience for social experiences, and more often than I could keep up with pretending, compartmentalized empathy/apathy.

The ‘other’ side — the side I thought I would now be able to hide forever with this new DX and corrective medication that gave me an indescribable sense of ‘inner calm’, helping to emotionally regulate my inner chaos, refocus my overwhelmed executive dysfunction, and for 8 hours a day, smothering out a lifetime of crippling anxiety and depression.

I was slowly growing more and more incapable of pretending, of performing, of hiding this ‘other’ me that was all but demanding I let it back in. It felt as though this other side was all but storming through my brain’s double-door entryway, and uncomfortably pissed off, from being kicked out of a brain-car on the side of a brain-road, in a terrible neuro-thunderstorm, now standing there…sop n wet…exhausted from having trudged 5 miles, and ready to unleash the self-denied fury it was carrying.

I immediately went to my therapist with a ‘theory’, and to confide in what I had begun noticing in myself. Terrified and crippled with preconceived thoughts of rejection and denial — but still awkwardly incapable of hiding the angsty other presence staring me down with expectation— I asked:

“Is there a reality in which…I am not just ADHD, but…

also…au…tis…tic….?”

“Yes”.

“Is there also a reality in which I have begun ‘controlling’ my ADHD symptoms with medication, ultimately allowing autism to come blazing through in all of its rigid glory?

“Yes”.

“This! THIS is what I have been saying all along to you and never once realizing…! The two sides…the dichotomy of my personality…the extreme sensory sensitivities…the stimming and repetitive movements…the skin-picking…the executive dysfunction…the…

horrible meltdowns since I was a little girl. The…

Oh my God…”

“Yes”.

“…You knew all along.”

….smile.

And so goes the story, of how my lifetime of self-diagnosed crazy, turned ADHD, turned Autism, turned AuDHD — and the incredible struggle that can come with the being just as much ‘this’ as ‘that’ — in a beautiful, chaotic, simultaneous mess of neurodivergence.