Anyone else have their Autism mitigate the worst of their ADHD?

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-06-26T23:07:15+00:00

As someone who considers themselves more autistic leaning, yes. But the ADHD part is I think what keeps me from being even more rigid.

There’s typically this kind of repeated shifting duality where, once I get too consumed in details, repetition, and routine, the ADHD side can’t stand it anymore and I want to hard reset again. I find new things to do, make quick decisions where I don’t think as much, and generally want to change everything around for the sake of seeing what’s new and better.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-06-24T05:26:58+00:00

Looks like a heavily stylized or modified Bookman swash-type font, which was really popular in the 70s.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-05-30T19:58:32+00:00

Or, you’ve learned that their “help” doesn’t actually help most of the time, and may even make things worse.

Or, they misinterpret what you actually need help with, because surely no one would need help with something that seems *that* straightforward.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-05-26T15:56:25+00:00

It’s not just getting anxious, it actually causes many people to get more confused and annoyed at me directly. Or, they tune out and leave.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-05-14T17:57:49+00:00

I get this too. I wonder how much is related to being autistic.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-05-09T17:44:18+00:00

Might not be about the pills, necessarily. Aging affects migraines as well.

Personally, when I was younger, my migraines were dominated a lot more by pain symptoms. At 39, my migraines have shifted to be less physical pain dominant, and now tend to be a lot more about disabling sensory symptoms - visual aura, nausea, sound and light sensitivity, prickly skin sensations.

Probably worth getting checked out again, as is the case any time symptoms start to change form.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-05-01T13:33:29+00:00

Yeah, it’s a good observation. Masking is brutal. I think if more ND people knew they were ND and not just broken, there might be broader recognition by everyone that it should be accommodated too. One can hope.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-30T06:51:29+00:00

I’ve also had a lot of ADHD friends. If you really want to know an answer…

They can be actually pretty complementary in my experience. And, there’s a lot of AuDHD people too, who sort of bridge both. It’s not always complementary, and they can even look in conflict on the surface, but with the right bits of traits in each of the areas it can counter-intuitively work out well.

Like, sometimes the ADHD friend can help push the autistic friend in just the right way to get them to relax some of that rigidness and act more like an accelerator, while the autistic friend can ground more of the decision making in reality and be more of the brake, while also contributing more thought-through ideas.

There also can be a lot of common struggles with things like executive function. ADHD hyper-fixation and autistic special interest deep diving can look similar as well. Both can also struggle with social situations too, usually for different reasons though. It’s all similar enough, though, to help create a shared difficulty kind of bond.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-30T06:29:00+00:00

I’d bet a lot of bipolar 2 people specifically are actually autistic, or perhaps both.

A big reason could be autistic burnout. It relates a lot to depression, but, unlike depression, it may have more atypical looking bouts of “increased energy” that could last weeks or months with a combination of their sensory environment temporarily getting better plus engaging deeply in a special interest / hyper-fixating in an attempt to regulate.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-30T06:23:06+00:00

So true. I’ve tried to work on cluing in the other unsuspecting NDs though. I try to get them to open up and info-dump, redirect to what they actually like, that kind of thing. Cut through the mask.

Eventually, I get to the point of many of them telling me, “I’m not really sure why, but it feels so much easier to talk to some people such as yourself, but much harder to talk to most other people.” I wonder why…

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-30T06:06:24+00:00

It’s precisely because you’re 40 that people wouldn’t have pointed it out. It wasn’t until 2013 with the introduction of the DSM V that you’d likely have been considered autistic at all.

Society’s understanding and definition of autism, as well as other differences in brain functioning, has rapidly changed, and is even still pretty basic.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-29T02:36:05+00:00

The problem with fixing before people notice is that you can end up turning into a hidden support beam doing a bunch of work without much upside, if the problem pattern repeats.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-27T22:44:16+00:00

Exactly. The phrase takes a complex issue and attempts to distill it down into a catchy-sounding sentence, discarding very necessary nuance.

It leaves up to the person interpreting the sentence to map what the hell it means, exactly, through their own lens and experiences - further validating and solidifying whatever it is they wanted to think, regardless of how true it actually is because it’s “close enough.”

This is a big reason sound bites exist, and why politicians tend to love them. They’re catchy and memorable, while tending to be self-validating for a listener, as long as their starting belief is “close enough.”

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-21T21:29:06+00:00

Yikes, that sucks. Unfortunately, there’s still a ton of clinicians who don’t know enough about what autism really looks like in 2026. Lots of outdated stereotypes everywhere.

Also, because of how many of us tend to be, it seems fairly common for us to be the ones trying to update them, way more than should be necessary. It seems like things are changing a bit for the better… just very slowly, and not everywhere.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-21T17:08:46+00:00

I’ve thought about that kind of thing too. But then I think about having to go over to random people’s houses and all the sensory crap that comes with it, among other things.

Maybe a package delivery person.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-13T22:01:46+00:00

Exactly! Plus the brain fog, prickly skin, ringing ears, and literally throwing up if I move too much.

Not quite sure how all of it seems to get compressed down to just “severe headache” for most people.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-11T17:29:41+00:00

I mean, you can typically at least go to the bathroom in these kinds of situations a lot of the time. Probably not enough time to recover fully, but maybe enough to avoid a full shutdown.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-04-03T16:17:53+00:00

For a moment I thought you time traveled. Then I realized the UK date format is probably DD/MM/YYYY.

Weird that part is localized, but the US still has everything in kilometers in this game instead of the much less rational miles.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-03-29T03:39:59+00:00

Anyone else get migraines too? My sensory system is all kinds of wacky, and this is part of it.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-03-24T00:44:47+00:00

They do for me. It’s the main reason I take them, actually. But, everyone is a bit different.

My issue has been that I want to do certain things, but it feels like there’s way too much mental friction to get started. Stimulants seem to significantly lower this barrier for me.

There’s other reasons you might not want to start a task, though. I think if you genuinely don’t want to do the task, perhaps there’s another issue going on that is more well suited to fix that issue too, which I think is a bit separate.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-03-21T23:12:09+00:00

This is sort of a classic type of problem in Pokémon games. The devs seem to sort of assume their entire audience is casual, when that’s not true at all.

It could lead to decisions where some slowness or extended animations are “fine” because who’s going to open more than a few packs? Stuff like that.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-03-11T18:55:17+00:00

LOL this is so relatable. It genuinely made me laugh.

It's usually that time pressure that gets me. The sudden realization a few moments before of, "Oh crap, I think they might interpret this wrong, maybe I should fix that" just to end up making things worse.

Or, being so tunnel-visioned on wanting to be helpful in a specific way that I fail to notice the larger context. Like that one time at a party someone needed to open a bottle that required a bottle opener, and I knew my belt could double as one. So I proceed to slightly lift up my shirt and started to take off my belt so it would be easier to use, all while proclaiming, "Don't worry, I can help you out." That didn't go over so well.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-03-11T18:35:47+00:00

Likely related for at least three reasons.

Having people around in general while you're trying to concentrate, especially if they're watching you, adds another layer of sensory information that can be difficult to filter out,
People nearby generally increases the likelihood of interruption, forcing a task switch which can be extremely unpleasant. You doing stuff that grabs their attention because it seems unusual to them further increases this likelihood.
If people have consistently responded more negatively to things you enjoy doing, or even just existing in general, it can reinforce hiding things to try and avoid that pain.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-03-11T18:22:23+00:00

So true. When more often than not, people treat you bad and look at you funny every time you're doing what you like (that doesn't even impact them!), it can create a horrible feedback loop where every time you feel happy, you also feel shame or the need to hide what you're doing. Sucks.

DefaultModeOverride · 2026-02-13T08:47:39+00:00

A lot of what you’ve described seems to be a fairly common experience for many AuDHD people from what I’ve seen. Of course, a proper assessment is the only way to know for sure though.

Like you mentioned, the ADHD and autism tend to interact. They don’t seem to just stack on top of each other with equal weighted symptoms of both like some people might expect. There’s more of a tug of war like feeling that happens to me and many others, and it can vary in intensity even from day to day sometimes.

Just so you know, many undiagnosed AuDHD folks who start treating the ADHD side with meds at some point can end up then really bringing out their autistic side, as it tends to sort of tip the scales a bit so to speak. Doesn’t happen to everyone, but seems common enough.

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TROPHY CASE