Extra Dxtra

As I’ve mentioned many times before, receiving my autism diagnosis about ten years ago was a real game changer. It may have come very late, but nevertheless it made me feel a lot better about myself. I came to realise that it wasn’t me being useless or crap at life. The reason I didn’t fit in was that in general the world wasn’t optimised for people like me. It was as if my mind rolled along on wheels, but there were a lot of mental staircases to negotiate and no lifts.

Once I’d realised this it meant I could stop burning up so much energy trying to fit in and please others, right?

In theory. I certainly no longer tried to hide my eccentricities, but the people pleasing part of the equation was more difficult to overcome. I rationalised it as avoiding emotional outbursts from others because my own disappointment was easier for me to cope with than their potential reaction to not getting what they wanted. (Far from being non-empathic, autistic people are in fact often overwhelmed by others’ emotions.)

It turns out that this wasn’t the whole story though. I recently received a diagnosis of ADHD in addition to the autism and the former very often comes with a side order of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) which results in people pleasing.

RSD is one of those things that you feel awkward bringing up because most people will respond "Well, we all get that sometimes. Get over it!" Which, quite apart from being a misunderstanding, actually can trigger the RSD itself. It's far more than just "taking it too personally".

The symptoms of RSD amongst other things include getting extremely upset and being sensitive to the smallest of changes in tone or language when speaking with someone else, as well as reading meanings that aren't there into quite innocent statements.

I suspect the tendency of there to be implied and hidden meanings in many neurotypical modes of communication means that some neurodiverse people start to try and second guess these and can end up overdoing it. It's a trauma response to having missed cues and got things wrong in the past.

Of course, it also applies to non-spoken communications as well. The "Typing..." animation in a messaging app that suddenly stops with nothing subsequently being sent can have you wondering for hours about what was about to be said. It feels like being constantly on the alert for danger, constantly self-critical, over analysing mistakes made in the past. Going over conversations both before and after having them and yet somehow messing them up in the actual event.

Thankfully over the past few years I've made a conscious habit of constantly questioning this behaviour whenever I spot it in myself; getting the diagnosis has bolstered my belief in the validity of this questioning! Important note: no-one else remembers your imagined mistakes but you. They really are all in your head.

As it also turns out having both Autism and ADHD (the combination is known colloquially as AuDHD) can also result in each condition masking the other to some extent, so people in the outside world have no idea how much you’re actually struggling. The struggle is very real; as well as masking each other, the two conditions can actually fight each other. It's an out-and-out battle between the two sides; the order-loving autistic side versus the chaos-inducing ADHD side. Neither side wins, and the only outcome is an uptick in self-loathing.

However, the outside world is oblivious, especially if you’re also consciously making an effort to avoid displeasing them. There’s a tendency not to want to mention the difficulties you have especially as the responses more often than not contain yet another element of “Well we all feel like that sometimes!” which actually reinforces the suspicion that you’re making it all up and are in fact just lazy and need to Make An Effort Like Everyone Else.

Nevertheless, the new diagnosis is a HUGE relief; it's good to know that I'm not simply lazy and, say, terrible at housework. I’m not looking for an excuse but if this does make me feel better about myself it should be welcomed. It’s early days yet of course, and I am still processing it. But it’s good to find out and accept who I actually am.

It also means I have more time to concentrate on the areas in which I actually do still appear to be useless.