Hi! Dual diagnosis- Adhd and autism

Hi Hannah,

Sorry for replying late.  I’m sure you’ll have a great time in this community and make loads of friends.  

No, I don’t have a dual diagnosis of ADHD and autism.  However, there will be many others in this community who do have a dual diagnosis of ADHD and autism and they can help answer your question about which condition affects someone more on a day-to-day basis/forms a larger part of someone’s self-identity.

You are very welcome. I am glad the links I have provided are useful.

This is yet another reason why the autistic/ADHD community is great- we can collaborate and compliment each other’s strengths and challenges! For example the creativity and passion for  writing that stems from your neurodivergence and the monotropic focus and efficiency that stems from my autistic brain! I love how our community can work together to provide knowledge and solutions like this! 

Maybe you just need more dopamine for your ADHD brain!

 I am glad you agree about the beauty of our autistic experience. It’s our community, culture and space.  I absolutely love it (if that wasn’t already obvious!). I feel really passionate about this and I feel that our community has a lot of power (knowledge from lived experience) to one day completely change the narrative about our neurodivergent lives.

I am so glad that you feel so positive too. It’s really important and freeing to be proud of our autistic/ADHD identities.

Your writing sounds cool. What storyline or project are you working on currently? Where do you get ideas from?

I was thinking of getting The Neurodiversity Reader book. I completed an essay on the subject of autistic experience and neurodiversity. It’s really cool!

I hope you enjoy the autistic book club or creative writing group if you decide to join.

Hi! Thanks for your reply. For what it's worth, to me it definitely sounds like there's good cause for you to have an assessment for ADHD. My experience has been really similar to your friend's- the medication I was prescribed after my diagnosis was transformative. It's not a cure-all (would be too good to be true if it was!) but I've found that the focus it can provide makes it easier to address and initiate coping strategies for the other symptoms of ADHD. I would say definitely don't lose hope because getting the right diagnosis and treatment could be life-changing for you and allow you to have another, fairer shot at getting through a degree (which is really, really hard with undiagnosed/untreated ADHD). I hope your assessment comes around quickly and you get the right support. 

Honestly, thank you so much, that's so helpful, and also encouraging! It would be great to gauge interest in a neurodivergent creative writing group. As a distractible ADHDer I'm very impressed by your efficiency- you've already developed my idea further than I had over a much longer time! I also like reading and writing about neurodiversity (as well as fantasy and dystopia), and definitely agree on the beauty of the autistic experience.

I'm waiting my ADHD assessment.  Hopefully it comes before I die. :)  The psychologist who did my ASD assessment thought it would be worth me doing one, because I have impulsive tendencies and tick a few other boxes.  I suspect I do have it.  I have no drive/focus and seem to bounce between order and chaos a lot.  Doing any task is hard due to zero concentration, but I still hyperfocus and lose myself in hobbies.

On a day to day basis, the (possible) ADHD has probably more of an impact.  it makes everything I do hard.  Studying, completing tasks, having any sort of concentration availability for tasks i don't hyperfocus on. I will impulsively buy things, maybe after finding an interest in something new.

I have lived with ASD all my life, I actually function pretty well for the most part, my camoflage of coming across as NT is pretty much perfect for day to day interations (although stress gets amped up over time), although i have no skill in relationships or friendships and women scare me on some level to the point I don't interact with them.

A friend got diagnosed with it.  He got amphetamines for his and he says it 100% improved his life.  He now has perfect concentration and got a new job which he has been in for the last 6 months.  When i was at Uni a housemate gave me some of his and it had roughly the same effect on me.  I wasn't hyper or dancing for 12 hours in a club, it was like I was normal.  I actually got so many assignments done in those months and got really good grades for them.  That is what i hope my assessment would give me, if I do have ADHD.  Focus and concentration.  I never completed Uni, because I couldn't focus on it at all in the end.  I would like to go back and finish the final 120 credits I needed to get my BSc.

Just found another group on Facebook for autistic writers:

https://ms-my.facebook.com/SpectrumAutismGroupPublicPage/posts/492760435605730

Cool. I like creative writing too, namely writing poetry. I think my creativity and non linear thinking stems from my autistic brain.

That’s a great idea, very interesting. I think many of us in this autistic community would enjoy a group like that. The NAS run an online book club and you can probably share your creative writing projects with other autistics:

https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/branches/online

You can also set up your own creative writing club for our autistic community if you want to via this email address:

online-branches@nas.org.uk

You can also publish your own creative writing in the magazine Spectrum which is led by autistics for autistics:

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/the-spectrum

Your dream sounds very much achievable, within this autistic community we could share ideas about what the neurodivergent creative writing group could look like.

What do you like to write about? 

My main dedicated interest is autistic experience (because in my very biased autistic  opinion) it is beautiful. I love writing and reading about our autistic experience, and especially connecting with other autistics.

 I hope the links I have posted are what you were looking for!

I'm sure I will! My main special interest is creative writing- the dream is to find a good neurodivergent writers group because executive dysfunction does trip me up a lot with long form projects, so if you know of any, I'm all ears! 

How about you, what are your dedicated interests?

Hello again 

You are very welcome. This online autistic community is very friendly.

I hope enjoy Aucademy as much as I do! It’s a very useful and positive platform for learning about your own autistic identity  from other autistics.

What are your dedicated interests?

Hi! Thank you so much, I really appreciate the welcome and the recommendations. I'll get to watching!

Hello, welcome to your autistic community!

I am autistic but not ADHD. I am sure you will find lots of other AuDHDer’s to chat to here.

I don’t have a wealth of knowledge about the ADHD experience. One thing I do know though is autistic people who are ADHD sometimes feel that their needs are conflicting. It must be difficult sometimes to balance all of those needs. 

It’s great that you are so glad you have found this forum, it’s always brilliant and validating to share experiences with our neurokin. The great thing about the autistic/ADHD community is the way we learn lots from each other.

In the meantime, if you really want to hyper focus for ages then I would definitely recommend Aucademy:

https://youtube.com/channel/UCLsMY1ZY9-8IReQfGX-CvBQ

There is also a brilliant video on this channel about autistic people who are also ADHD:

https://youtu.be/V_tF88-YUDk

We are here to help you on autistic/ADHD discovery journey. I hope you enjoy your time here!

Hi Alisha!

Thank you! I'm really glad to hear you're feeling good about your diagnosis now. I'm actually feeling mostly positive about mine, I think because I had already found out I was neurodivergent two years ago when I got my ADHD diagnosis, so the recent ASD diagnosis wasn't as much to get my head around. It's also been nice to add another piece to the puzzle to help me understand myself better- did you find this?

And I would probably say the autism affects me more at the moment.

Hannah xx

Hi Hannah,

Welcome, how are you feeling about the diagnosis? it took me a while to accept it but now i am really pleased with it.

Not personally, but i know a lot of people here have both. which one do you feel affects you more?

Alisha xx