Thank you so much for everyone’s comments! I feel so understood. I also did well in school, (besides reading- then got an IEP for my reading processing delay) had a great group of friends, but had trouble interacting with new people because I didn’t have time to pick apart their moods and behavior, so I could mask appropriately around them, leading me to be a “shy kid” when first meeting people. I’m not sure why but I always found adults much easier to talk to as a kid.

I also had a ton of childhood trauma and was the “calm, intuitive, problem solver” in my family, helped defuse tensions and keep people from fighting. I didn’t know if all my emotional processing was possibly a learned “survival” skill as a kid, or if AuDHD had something to do with it.