Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone. I received a high functioning autism diagnosis just over a year ago (at the age of 36) and have been dealing with understanding it ever since.
I have been having regular sessions with a clinical psychologist at my local mental health hospital as as well as the diagnosis I was also told I was suffering from depression and anxiety.
A large part of our chats revolve around my concerns about getting back into employment. She has mentioned, as have I read online so many times, that employers love people on the spectrum who have crazy attention to detail.
This is when I feel like a fraud. I make stupid mistakes all the time, I lose focus on longer tasks and flip flop between interests. In my previous jobs I was able to do really technically complicated things like software development but made silly errors and was unable to do simple data entry into a spreadsheet. This theme has followed me since primary school.
Today I accidentally came across an article saying that it is common for people on the spectrum to also suffer from ADHD and it then listed the common symptoms of ADHD. I tick an awful lot of them.
What I don't understand is how can someone on the spectrum, who are supposed to have incredible attention to detail, also have something like ADHD where they continually make silly careless mistakes - I don't see how they are compatible.
I'm going to raise this next week at my next session - it very complicated as I am, as far as the diagnostician and the clinical psychologist I've been seeing, autistic. But as I say, I often feel like a fraud and before I start looking for a job openly stating that I'm autistic, only to say "oh, but I don't have some of the really useful attributes", I want to make sure I fully understand it.
Does that make sense? Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Hello Chuckalicious. I have dyspraxia (dcd), adhd and Aspergers. All diagnosed in my 50's. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Some of the characteristics overlap, seem contradictory. Sometimes one applies the next the opposite. I think I should type up lists for each diagnosis so that I can compare them as it is confusing. On one of the threads I posted a ven diagram showing the overlap of Neurodiversity. At one time it was said that you couldn't have both autism/asd and adhd but this has been found not to be the case. I know what you mean about the mistakes too which in my case became worse after menopause when hormones change. My short term memory got worse so that there are jobs I have enjoyed in the past that I could no longer do. It is bewildering. I hope Ellie's advice was able to help you on the practical side but I just wanted to encourage you to look into the dual aspect of asd/adhd more because it sounds very like it
Thanks for the teply. Have you found that since your diagnosis, has any treatment improved your quality of life? Have you been given any medication?
I have my next appointment tomorrow so I will raise this and see what the outcome is.
I have read that for many medication really works well so it is worth exploring with them. I wasn't brave enough to try as my tolerance to meds of any kind is low. I wasn't sure I could cope with the effort of trying to get the right one at the right dosage at the moment which could be a mistake because it is life Changing for some re add/adhd. I will be interested to find out what the outcome of your appointment is as regards the meds. Quirkyfriend has written about adhd in her family with very practical positive advice.
When I had my assessment I filled in lots of forms but it got quite confusing and not sure what I ticked was accurate especially when I could have easily ticked contradictorily i.e. Yes and no for different reasons. Then they talked a lot about following only one route of treatment for one aspect which I found quite odd.. I can't separate out like curds and whey so it didn't make sense. That is they would go for either adhd or autism but not both ( that could have been initially but don't think so) They said yes adhd but autistic traits. Adhd had already been mentioned on my dyspraxia report but I hadn't realised how bad it was. I haven't been back since I got my Aspergers diagnosis elsewhere. I hope you have a much better response and something more concrete to work with. It's good you still have apts with the psychiatrist. I think I might have found that helpful as I haven't had any post diagnostic support at all. I hope you will eventually feel like you have finally got all the pieces of your jigsaw/ instinctively know you have got to the root of your issues. Yes I'd like to hear how you get on.
Quick update. Saw my psychiatrist yesterday. She was surprised I hadn't had the AdHD test as part of my ADS screening. I filled out the screening test and she will discuss it with the person who did my original diagnosis and then get back to me.
Will keep this up to date.