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.
http://www.adhdexpo.com/?blog I've just heard about this years Tara McGillicuddy adhd expo. It's free and it's a series of webinars to listen to on lots of topics. It's at the beginning of October and you need to register if you are interested.
Thanks Misfit, you are a mine of information, I for one will look into it. ()