For those of you who also have ADHD, what made it clear that you had both Autism and ADHD?
I'm asking because I may have ADHD, but it's hard for me to figure out if I do. Any ideas on how I can figure that out? I plan to eventually get assessed for ASD, and if I think ADHD may be likely, I'll get assessed for that as well.
Brain no work to do thing never no. Brain think do thing, but do thing never.
Couldn't have summarized it better.
You should ask a trained professional. There is far too much self diagnosis going on in today’s world.
My diagnosis. The psychologist talked to me for 5 minutes then she said, she was sure I'm autistic and she was reasonably confident that I had ADHD. "But just to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, let's just do the rest of the assessment. Seven more hours of tests and talking and a questioning of my mother later, both were confirmed.
absolutely zero drive, hyper fixate super easily
For me it's the fact that I constantly pickup new "special interests" so I pickup hobbies like someone with ADHD but I keep up with them like someone with autism and a special interest.
Can you drink too much coffee then take a nap? That's a very common flag.
Nothing better than a pot of coffee before bed. Chamomile has nothing on an entire pot of coffee.
Coffee makes me jittery, so nope
The same applies to me. I have the purely inattentive variety of ADHD (sometimes called ADD).
ADD was very obvious as every single school report i ever received had a variation of “doesn’t pay attention in class but otherwise no complaints”
Took me embarrassingly long to even understand that other kids chose not to pay attention because they didn’t want to instead of not being able to.
Autism had been mentioned a single time but besides two unfortunately shallow questions was never properly looked for.
Then after depression and some level of identity crisis during a year of psych war someone finnaly saw trough my unintentional masking and gave me a more modern explanation of what autism actually means.
I was formally diagnosed with PDD-NOS at a very young age, which was later re-diagnosed as Asperger's Syndrome due to technicalities during a reevaluation. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD (without hyperactivity) until my fifth grade teacher was very concerned about severe issues with attention and excessive daydreaming that were likely previously dismissed as relating to my Asperger's syndrome.
Struggles with working memmory and executive function especially when work was just leaving me burnt-out. Although I found my autism to be more evident initially.
What are the characteristics of both? I got ADHD and my sister got diagnosed with autism prior to transitioning. She seems much more on the ADHD spectrum then autism since transitioning.
For me, it's the complete and total inability to focus on anything without caffeine. I can't even do something I enjoy for longer than 10 minutes before I'm off the rails doing something completely unrelated for 2 minutes before I'm on to something else unrelated for another 2, never getting back to the original task.
Having a fixation on a hobby for me, instead of meaning dedicating myself to it, means thinking about it constantly in between goofing off, and never being able to actually get myself to do it, to my own immense frustration.
Writing is probably my biggest fixation I have, and I have dozens of 40 page long plot skeletons for series I want to write, all written a single paragraph at a time per day, and exactly one novel where the first draft is half finished after 3 years of work, and I haven't written a single word in about a year because every time I sit down to write, I literally immediately get distracted. Forcing myself to do it in various ways instead of goofing off results in feeling horrible, and writing horrible quality writing I have to delete the next day, all because my brain could not engage with what I was doing, even though I absolutely love it normally.
And the biggest indicator that I have adhd, besides being actually diagnosed with it, is that all these issues vanish when I drink absurd amounts of caffeine. I can write and enjoy it. In fact, I can write 10,000 words in a single day and absolutely love every minute of it. Albiet, it tends to be 10,000 words into a novella I end up trashing, but that's still productivity.
As for autism, well, I have difficulty communicating, can't talk to somebody about anything without looping the conversation around to me (how do you even talk without talking about yourself? Still can't figure that out,) and also have extreme sensory issues. If my hands are even slightly dry I retch, if my fingernails are too short, same thing. I also can't be around large groups of people because it overstimulates me immediately and I forget how to everything.
My dx back in either 06 or 07
I knew somethings about it
I will often start lots of things but never finish any. I will often overwhelm myself and I have issues with executive function. For me my ADHD tends to hide and goes unseen but its still there waiting to strike. Also some things for me take a lot longer like a lot of school stuff for me takes me way to long. Your ADHD might hide a bit more like mine but look at memories from the past like things you did in school and you will be able to see it.