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.
Sleep tight all. x
You guys are so sweet x
Yeah eyeore piglet and Winnie the Pooh
just listening to this
http://www.erictivers.com/176
Eeee-yoooore. You've to love donkey noises in the mix. x
And to you
Ok . enough reflection for me today. Take care both of you and goodnight
Yes to all of that Spotty. It is disheartening isn't it. I Only managed a couple of years teaching.. I keep thinking of all the different professional salaries that have gone by the wayside during my lurch from job to job. The lady that helped me recently was helping me with my paperwork which is why it had piled up again. There is inspiration to be had from the women who have found ways forward and offering their experience and advice. Don't think of it as a bandwagon. Just think of it as further research and self exploration. If it's there you can't wish it away ... plus if you ignore it you can't do anything about it at least you can listen/read pick up ideas. Mostly tho try to be kind to yourself which I know is a lot easier said than done it's like finding out about Aspergers, there is a reason for the chaos and messiness and that in itself helps a bit.
Take care of yourself Spotty x
Monkeys, tortoises, elephants etc...what a crazy farm we live in xx
Giving a monkeys is giving more than enough, thank you Ellie, look after yourself. x
Yes......you seem quite lost my lovely, can we help? X missed you today btw
I like pruning too but detest the clearing up! And yes wisteria is much more civilized than ivy.
I'm really wary of climbing on a band wagon, but the educational decline, unemployability, monetery incompetence (despite NVQ level 3 in accounting) chaotic nature, messiness that has existed all my life...
Expect wisteria slightly less sticky and full of itchy things than ivy but .. I quite like pruning. I'm not quite so keen chopping it all up and tidying up afterwards!plus pruning is quite good when mulling over things.. lots of chopping! It has been a dull overcast day here today. I'm looking forward to some more sunshine.
It is all rather overwhelming, yes and I'm sorry you're going through the mill just now. The different aspects of the whole ND thing seem never ending and in the end you feel like you've got everything there is.. the more you read the more you fit different conditions.. I stopped looking in the end as it all got too much. I thought I'd ticked more than enough boxes! At least I know why I find it hard to focus to follow the strategies I'm supposed to be implementing! So in some respects it's helpful to know. I have been trying to clear my dining table which was overflowing with "stuff" and got out of hand so I have made some improvement today.
Not too much at all Misfit, I had to go gardening, pruning wisteria today. It's very helpful what you've said but I did spend the whole time at my gardening job wanting to cry and say 'I can't do this anymore'. Guess I'm just overwhelmed at the prospect of ADHD being in the mix, it seems even more of a can of worms than ASD, I can understand why you don't know where to start...
I think it first occurred to me when we did the great desk reveal too.
The emoticons are quite funny trying to work out what it says, I did assume you didn't put them there on purpose ;)
Spotty was all that too much? Sorry . Also I don't know why it's full of emoticons .. unintentional.
The podcasts I listen to are adhd support talk radio by Tara Mcgillicuddy
adhd experts ( from Additude)
adhd rewired by Eric Tivers
Thrive with Aspergers podcast
The Autism show
but there are others and most of the above have websites too so you can have a look for yourself but it is easy to be overwhelmed by so much information
No no more is how I feel I think that's why I haven't chased anything up.. but yes I do need to find a way forward to feel more settled and fulfilled.( I used "symptoms " because I couldn't think an appropriate word.)However on one level I do now feel as though I have got the whole story it's just learning to work with it rather than against it. You know how it's not really been a female ing to have autism/asd ? Well it's the same with dyspraxia and adhd but as knowledge and research develops the professionals have realised we present differently. I started off reading about dyspria/dcd and as I read I followed this link and that. I felt like the tangled ball of wool would never unravel because once you start following the links there is a lot of information. For 2 years Iigned up to the women's palooza which offers a whole week of mini webcasts. The lightbulb moments just kept coming ( as I do with the podcasts terry Matlen and Linda Roggli and as with women's Aspergers one person leads to other so there are a few really good writers and speakers on the subject. Also there is the attentive and the inattentive types and a mixture of the two. It's also going back to the ND vendiagram ea. The professor/Dr I saw first "got me" immediately. It was the first time anyone had. But she said anyone with anything (in my case dcd developmental coordination disorder/dyspraxia which was wt she was assessing) is most likely to have elements of the others to a greater or lesser degree and it would be rare for that not to be the case. It's not whether you have or have not. It is the gree to which it affects your life. Communication, coordination and executive function difficulties overlap in all 3 conditions and probably other things too. Some people have x y z but have full ves or muddled through others are more affected by it and with me it has had a cumulative effect until I have sort of ground to a halt. Plus as said before memory and executive function in particur is much worse since menopause to the point that do not trust myself. This makes putting myself out there in the real world harder both socially and work wise. For example I cannot tell when I'm ing to be exhausted and let people down, I cannot tell when I am going to forget something important or what I am going to break next. It's really embarrassing and frustrating to the point that I most keep it a secret because to NT who don't have these problems wouldn't believe it. Mm not sure I've helped.. sorry foggy brain doesn't help! How much we want to find out or get to the root of things and how to deal with it is such a very personal decision. However I did wonder about you as soon as you mentioned your work space...
This is all interesting reading, Misfit, can you go back to the place where they diagnosed the ADHD with your ASD diagnosis and ask for some help, or go to your GP and ask to be referred back there? You really sound like you need help making sense of your alphabet soup to enable real changes to make your life more settled and fulfilling.
I've been looking into ADHD, or trying to, it seems a lot like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Depending on how it is written about it describes me but then I read something else and it doesn't. I also think my head is very resistant to the idea of there being something else on top of ASD, it's hard enough to come to terms with that, like you said some of the 'symptoms' of the two conditions are so contradictory that how the hell do you pick the bones out of it all?
Part of me wants to raise the question and like you and chuckalicious, get to the bottom of it all but the other part wants to stick my head firmly in the sand and shout 'NO, NO MORE!'
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.