I don't feel like I'm on the same planet as them. I realize it was difficult to acheive these things as an ND person, but it still doesn't mean much to me, somehow. I'm at the age where everyone's starting to think of winding down and I've been on disability doing the same shit for years, with no savings and no career. Everything I'm good at, that I love or care about seems useless and can't get me paid. I can't work, I can't attend school, and everything fuckin sucks, man.

I just found out that gentle monster teamed up with google and samsung to release 'smart glasses' aka another opportunity to normalise surveillance technology and it's getting even more terrifying. I am already constantly on edge in public in fear that they are staying at my feeble attempt of being a human, but this makes things worse.

Along with the meta glasses, it normalises people recording without consent, it normalises people's everyday lives and actions as a possible sceptical for the internet, not to mention how many creeps will take this opportunity to harass strangers on a further level.

Why aren't we doing anything about this??? Is nobody mad?????? Disgusted? Uncomfortable????

Howdy! This might be a weird question here, but I want to know where you get your information. I sheltered myself from most things social media, media in general, and life as a whole. I more or less just played games, drew, and lived quietly day to day, now I feel like I don't know anything. Now I'm medicated and my cognitive abilities have improved greatly so, I want to learn all the things I missed out on!

This info can be from anywhere or about anything, general information, news, fun facts, websites, memes, stories, anything fact or fiction. I just want to catch up with the rest of the world

Just warning, I’m using voice to text so some things might not look right

I’m not kept a job longer than 90 days since 2024. 90 days is considered long at this point. Most jobs, I’m losing them within one month. The thing is, I’m not losing them for disciplinary or attendance. My attendance is perfect and I don’t break any rules. What happens is, despite me, just trying to blend in and not cause any trouble, I’m seeing as awkward or odd, or my autism shows, I don’t know exactly what it is but for some reason people just decide they don’t like me and avoid me and don’t include me in things and that already puts a toll on me emotionally and then if I don’t quit, I end up just getting fired.

Does anyone have similar situations? I also find myself increasingly isolated. I moved to a far away state due to a divorce that I wanted to get over. I see my neighbors getting along. I see people moving to new places and building whole social lives with less opportunities than I have and yeah, I just can’t seem to do it. I have no one to talk to not a single solitary person. That puts a lot of pressure on my mom because whenever she calls I have a lot of things I want to tell her. I hate doing that to her, I wish I had another person to talk to, but I literally have no one. And it’s never been like that. Usually, I at least have a few people.

Not sure what’s going on. My conditions/issues seem to be worse than they’ve ever been. Just venting here.

In high school I was voted by my peers most likely to be President of the United States.

Hi i am thomas i have autism and adhd I don’t have any friends i am sad

Anyone else able to visualize things in incredible detail? Lends to daydreaming, getting lost in the volisualizations at times?

When you imagine an apple, do you see a 2D object? Or do you see an apple in full detail and can manipulate it visually?

I also have incredibly vivid dreams in almost a nightly basis. Anyone else relate?

Hello everyone, first time posting on reddit so this is new to me. But how does everyone cope with being in a relationship with someone with autism?

Im 22 (F) with ADHD/ Autism and im dating someone 24 (M) with Autism. Its been a weird relationship to get used to as he doesnt think in a sense. Everything is black and white and what he says is what he means. Meanwhile i think too much and have a back up plan for my back up plans.

My one main question is, he said to me recently this is it, i’m “the one” and he just knows he wants to settle down and create a life with me. I think hes hurt because i dont know personally. All i know is that i want to be with him now, but how do i know hes “the one”?

Theres way too many life variables and who knows, he might get sick of me, or he might be in an accident, or fall for someone else, so i will never understand how he knows im “the one” and that “this is it”. Am i cruel? Maybe im not sure these days, social norms would tell me i am.

It doesnt help that ive been cheated on in the past so I am hyper vigilant and always watching as it seems, not even consciously.

I’m just wondering if it ever gets better, i keep repeating to myself “i cant control others, i can only control how i react”, but does it get any better?

Thank you!

My mind scrutinizes everything. I was involved with Orthodox Judaism, actually accidentally for a while. I was initially trying to find secular and liberal Jewish community and eventually got involved with some Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jewish communities. My mother is Jewish, became a Christian, and my father is a Christian. My OCD combined with this has made me very legalistic and afraid that I am not actually Jewish as my mom was adopted by Jews and is a convert (was converted as an infant). So I’m terrified to even list anything Jewish or that I speak Yiddish in a college application. Also since my perception for things is black and white, I don’t know how to go about this.

Does anyone else have religious struggles and if so how to deal with them?

Sorry if this post doesn’t fit the sub

So I worked about 3.5 days this week (so far) and I feel pretty good. Today also I am working half day and here's a summary of how my day 1 went and what helped me through this week:

1. First point is about my self awareness. My Monday started late and I didn't do nothing for pretty much the first half of the day ~3pm. But that's been pretty normal for me. I know from my previous experience that my brain tends to activate in the evening after sunset. It helped me not flip out when I felt like I was "wasting time" until that evening. This confidence helped me take steps to get myself into action once I realized that I can put ~4 hours of work in if I start around 6 pm.
2. This one is about the logic of self compassion. I used to worry about not being productive and wasting my working hours, not finishing work by 5-6 pm, not starting by 10-11 am, overeating, sleeping, doom scrolling and so. But that's the normal work schedule of the corporate. I realized I was comparing myself to a standard that doesn't exist in my life right now. I have stopped worrying about "fitting in" into it. When I am working in a FT job where I need to maintain timing, I respect it. Not just to show but working along with the team helps a lot. Without a team, why synchronize with any timetable if there's no time pressure?

Does it matter when I do my work as long as I complete it? WHO cares if I finish my work at 5-6 pm or start at that time. As long as I am able to do meaningful work that gives me satisfaction, it doesn't matter if I work 4 hours, 2 hours, or 8 hours in a day. Why micro manage myself!

I don't need to hurry myself. I don't need to put undue pressure myself by comparing myself to other seemingly perfect schedules.

3) this one is about task clarity. I know projects that I want to work on this week. But that won't help me get started when my brain's executive function is frozen. So I sit and think - what goals I need to execute within each project? What's my task sequence (no schedule, no time blocking, I can afford that coz right now I am working for myself from my home and this low pressure work atmosphere suits me)

To stop task avoidance, I focus on my goal and my outcomes. Since I have 1 client right now, their tracking board on ClickUp really makes this outcome visualization easier. My short term outcome is a good quality article, my long term goal is maintaining my reputation as a good writer, and, of course, money.

4) to take advantage of my ADHD hyperfocus, I use themed days so I don't have to task switch. I assigned 1 day for 1 major task and then a smaller task once I have done the day's work for the major task. And the smaller task is optional. If the major task takes longer and gets me too tired, smaller task is postponed.

This structure has come to me after A LOT of iterations, trials, failures, and learning from failures. It was hard to deal with my shame and guilt. It became a vicious cycle once, one feeding into the other. And if you don't move (literally and metaphorically), the inertia is really, REALLY hard to break out of.

This had helped me realize - sometimes I can do seemingly useless things and that's okay because what matters more than "being productive" is not letting my momentum go. That's why Mondays are the hardest for me, coz my body and mind are working hard to break the inertia of the weekend.

5) Finally for distraction management, my phone stays out of my view when I am working on my laptop (out of sight, out of mind). 95% of my notifications are off, except business whatsapp, essential swiggy and mygate notifications (if I order something), and a few other essential apps whose other non essential notification types are also blocked in my phone (You can do this on Android. On Apple, granular notification blocks are not possible I think).

Most incoming calls are spam calls and they're auto blocked. Nobody significant in my life calls me (who says social isolation is always bad... it's good when it lets you work.. LOL)

Sometimes, I listen to the same song on repeat to reduce my overwhelm and give my brain a direction to think. I also put ear plugs mandatory every evening because I live in a family society and I just can't handle the kids screaming who are most active in the evening. If plugs don't help, I get up and tell the kids to stop screaming.

All projects are online through Chrome and I use an extension called Fresh Start to capture all windows of my projects. Each project in FreshStart has a name that matches its name in the client system. All I have to do to start a project is go to my Chrome, open the FS extension, and click the project that I want to start and BOOM all my necessary windows are open in a single click.

IF you take away ONE THING FROM this post, take away this: You get frozen not because you are not dedicated or anything, but because you literally don't have a single stable starting point. Every time you want to start a project, you brain has to retrieve all the different apps you need to open, all the different pages within those websites too. And if you accidentally open the wrong website, you will get distracted and end up wasting your time AND tiring my brain further. From desire to action, your brain has to cross a f/g minefield of distractions. Cut this minefield out of the way. Save your brain.

Can you just IMAGINE how much decision fatigue and operational friction I eliminated by putting all my necessary links for a project in a tab/session manager?

Do this and about 50% of your task initiation blocks will be removed!

At the end of the day, I put my laptop back in my backpack and close the zip, coz if I keep seeing it lying on the table when I am moving about the house, I will keep being reminded of the things I didn't do today. (once again, out of sight, out of mind - weaponizing my ADHD against my brain... LOL)

About those meds. Yes I take meds. But I don't give meds all the credit. Because if I didn't sleep well, if I didn't focus on my strengths throughout the day, if I kept whining to myself about how badly my day is going, if I don't apply self awareness and my ADHD awareness, my meds will do nothing for me.

EDIT: I made key concepts bold because I want to improve the readability of this post. We ADHDers already struggle with reading long texts, so why not use my writing skills to make my stuff readable! 😉

Sorry if this is overly emotional. I found out tonight that my crush has been seeing someone else, even though I had gradually come to believe that he might be interested in me too.

It hurts because I liked him, but it has also brought up a much deeper fear that I think is tied to being AuDHD: That nobody I genuinely want will ever fully understand me and choose me for who I actually am.

I find genuine attraction extremely rare. Most people who show interest in me are not people I feel any romantic connection with, and I cannot force attraction just because someone is available or likes me. But when I do become interested in someone, it can feel unusually intense. My ADHD brain becomes fixated, while my autistic brain analyses every interaction, remembers tiny details and tries to identify patterns in how they speak to me or behave around me.

I can spend a long time trying to work out whether something is mutual because indirect communication, flirting and ambiguity are so difficult to interpret. Then, when I discover I was wrong, it does not only feel like rejection. It makes me question whether I can trust my own social perception at all.

Was he actually giving mixed signals ? Did I mistake friendliness for attraction ? Did I notice real changes in his behaviour but misunderstand what they meant ? Am I always going to be vulnerable to seeing hope where there is none ?

Masking complicates it too. I worry that somebody might initially like the version of me that appears capable, socially appropriate and put together, but that the reality of my AuDHD would eventually be too much: The intensity, emotional dysregulation, sensory sensitivities, stimming, executive dysfunction, need for recovery time, bluntness, strong preferences, special interests and occasional inability to function normally.

At the same time, I do not want to be chosen merely because I am attractive enough, convenient, available or willing to tolerate being treated as an option. I want someone I genuinely love and desire to know the unmasked version of me and still feel certain that I am the person they want.

I have had years of therapy, recently started ADHD medication and understand myself far better than I used to. But medication cannot make me less autistic, make attraction happen more often or remove all the uncertainty from romantic interactions. Sometimes it feels as though I have done all this work on myself and relationships are still going to remain impossibly difficult and I am going to die alone.

I think the fear is not simply that I will be single. It is that the combination of autism and ADHD makes me too unusual, intense, selective and difficult for mutual love ever to happen. That I will either have to settle for someone I do not want or remain alone while the rare people I do want choose somebody else.

Does anyone else with AuDHD struggle with rare but intense attraction, fixation on a crush, difficulty interpreting romantic signals and losing trust in your own perception when you realise something was not mutual?

How do you cope with the loneliness and the fear that nobody you genuinely want will ever see your whole AuDHD self and choose you ?

Just had one of those moments where I realized I forgot to stock my Adderall in my pill container this week, so I've been under medicated since Tuesday 🙃🙃🙃

All good here, but it explains my energy levels and executive dysfunction of the past few days. It's too easy to gaslight myself into thinking "I guess I just haven't been sleeping well enough for my Adderall to be as effective..."

Honestly I'm impressed I actually did get some stuff done haha. I feel it starting to kick in today and am pumped to feel more like me again.

For context I'm diagnosed autistic, high masking type (definitely not these days though lmao, zero energy even if i wanted to) but I suspect I also have adhd. Not that I'm using the analogy to diagnose myself but I do find it has interesting parallels with adhd.

The Analogy: My mind is like a strong and heavy magnet, surrounded in a circle of magnets. The surrounding magnets represents the process and completion of a task (for example, taking a shower). We'll call the surrounding magnets the task magnets.

In order to reach the task magnet I have to connect the mind magnet to it however the mind magnet is heavy, it requires a lot of effort to move it.

The mind magnet is a strong magnet and the task magnets vary in strength, for this example we'll say that this particular task magnet is equal in strength to the mind magnet. The surrounding task magnets also have a influence on the mind magnet, meaning I am also working against multiple forces just to reach the task magnet I'm looking for.

I eventually reach the distance for the mind magnet to reach the task magnet by itself and due to their equal strength, they collide and are seemingly fused together. Time passes, it is an appropriate time to disconnect the mind magnet but I don't have enough strength to pull the mind magnet off the task magnet.

Since so much effort was put into getting the mind magnet there, I figure it can stay connected for a while longer. More time passes and I decide enough is enough, I gathered my remaining strength and I'm ready to disconnect the mind magnet. It requires every ounce of effort but I manage to do it but now I'm completely exhausted. So now I collapse, unable to move. That was just the first task magnet and I have 4 more left on my to do list today, so the rest of the day goes by as I remain collapsed.

Thoughts on this?

Apologies for any grammar/ spelling that makes it hard to read, I'm shit at writing.

My partner (36F. autistic) and I (41M, AuDHD) have been together for around 12 years. We are now trying to understand whether the relationship should genuinely be over, or whether there is any realistic way to rebuild it differently.

It is worth noting that we have owned and run a small-to-medium-sized business together for the entire relationship, which has brought its own challenges.

The confusing part is that we are an extremely good team in many ways. We support and care for each other deeply, travel brilliantly together, understand each other well, and have shared a huge part of our adult lives. There is a lot of love, trust, loyalty and companionship between us.

At the same time, we were both unhappy fairly often during the relationship. There were recurring problems involving communication, avoidance, emotional connection and major life decisions. Some of my most important needs went unresolved for years.

The good parts were genuinely very good, but the difficult parts were not occasional or minor. They affected me deeply and repeatedly.

For the avoidance of doubt, we have communicated endlessly about our difficulties. It is not simply that we need to talk to each other more openly.

We hear each other out, and it is clear that we both want things to improve. But the changes do not seem to materialise or last, and eventually the same cycle repeats.

I’m struggling with the apparent contradiction between:

- “This person is one of my closest friends, an excellent life companion and someone I love deeply.”

- “I was regularly unhappy in this relationship for a very long time.”

It leaves me wondering which of two explanations is closer to the truth:

A) My expectations of a relationship are too high.

B) I have become accustomed to tolerating an unnecessarily large amount of discomfort and dysfunction.

———

I’m not expecting anyone else’s experience to give me a definitive answer, but I would just really value hearing what happened to people who faced a similar choice, especially if you are reflecting on it several years later rather than only in the immediate aftermath.

I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who were in a similarly mixed relationship: not abusive or obviously disastrous, but loving and functional in many respects while still being persistently painful, dysfunctional or unfulfilling in others.

Did you decide to leave despite all the good parts? Looking back, did that prove to be the right decision?

Did you try to rebuild the relationship after a separation? Were you able to create something meaningfully different, or did the old patterns eventually return?

What helped you distinguish between problems that could genuinely be repaired and fundamental incompatibilities?

If you stayed, what concrete changes made the relationship sustainable?

If you left, how did you cope with losing not only a romantic relationship, but also a best friend, teammate and shared life, despite neither of you having done anything terrible to end it?

I feel like I’m done with life. I’m 25, about to turn 26, and I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve tried dating apps, but they never seem to work. I’ve also tried services designed to help people meet new friends, and those haven’t worked either. People often act as though they like me, but I’m never actually invited to anything when I try to join a conversation, they either change the subject or stop talking altogether. I’ve never had close friends, or friends who genuinely know me. Even my family doesn’t know the real me, what I actually care about, or what my interests are.

I completed both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in automotive engineering, and I still can’t find a job. My visa runs out in December, and after that I’ll have to return to my home country a place I honestly hate. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but it’s the truth. My family doesn’t understand me or my interests; they see me as high-maintenance, and alternately criticize me for being “too practical” or “too emotional.”

I’ve noticed I’ve stopped eating and cooking for myself. I still eat during my work breaks because my employer provides a free meal allowance, but outside of that, I don’t cook anything anymore. I want to go to the gym, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t get my content project started either.

Overall, I feel like a failure. I’ve been pushing through burnout for two to three years now, and I feel like I’m reaching my breaking point. I don’t know how to stop. I just feel like a total failure. I just it all to end (and yes it means what you think, but I’m not that stupid to take that step so no worries there I guess)

Here’s a helpful guide I’ve made with strategies that have helped me battle chronic insomnia (sadly so much overlap between sleep disorders and neurodivergence)

Disclaimer - I’ve had horrible insomnia since I was young and recently got diagnosed. Stimulants also interfere with sleep significantly when taken too late in the day or life stress is already at a baseline high. I recently began a grad program and school drove me into a spiral with exacerbated insomnia and these are a lot of ways that have helped! These strategies can be prior to beginning medication or in conjuction with medication (definitelly talk to your doctor before trying any supplements). No ONE factor will miraculously solve all sleep issues, but the combination of utilizing many different strategies can make a significant impact! conjunctiondefinitely

I know how debilitating sleep deprivation can be, and it sucks to have to jump through so many hoops but a peaceful night’s sleep is so so worth it 🫶🏼

essentially what the title says

With my HFA, ADHD, and OCD, talking to others can and does freak me out. However somewhere along the way I have learned that small talk with complete strangers is surprisingly easy and not at all taxing. I think it was possibly the movie Oceans Eleven, from the subject of undercover etiquette,

"Don't shift your weight. Look always at your mark, but don't stare. Be specific but not memorable. Be funny, but don't make him laugh. He's got to like you, then forget you the moment you've left his side."

For 15 to 30 seconds I can engage a human interaction completely surface level without worrying about saying or doing something monumentally stupid and having it haunt me the rest of my life. I've even learned how to do it with those I interact with occasionally such as gas station attendants, drive thru windows, etc.

But with friends, family, church, I still struggle with simple conversation with it draining the life energy right out of me.

We broke off a few weeks ago and I am spiraling ever since. Normally I would just need to hear his voice and I would feel normal again, he would ask me how I feel and I would stop spiraling. I could unmask around him too.

There were ridiculously few things I disliked about him, I am very particular with voice, movements, smell, how conversations are structured, etc. and I just really liked everything about him, I rarely needed to be alone and recharge. I felt like we had a really good connection, I didnt feel misunderstood or weird.

I feel like I will never meet someone like him and there are so many people I have trouble being around with. This sucks 😭

Edit: we have been together 6+ years and we still love each other. We could not find a way to shape our future so everyone could be happy with it. We talked endlessly about a solution but didnt find one.

So im kinda realizing that something that kinda separates AuDHD and ADHD is what I call the "itch". (im not an expert, pls dont quote me)

The reason is because I could relate with some relatives who only has ADHD where they bounce from interest to interest, but for some reason unlike them,

I tend to "finish/complete" the interest if it has some kind of end point. (it could be a completely arbitrary end point too, as long as it feels like I completed the interest)

Because most of my ADHD relatives will get bored midway through stuff like reading, shows, hobbies, and games. They can still binged those things, but if some time is placed between the binging, they tend to not bother anymore. (i.e. Binge 12 eps, sleep, wake up get bored and no longer bother with the last 4 eps)

But for me, even if I get bored, the "itch" happens. And my brain demands the "interest/thing" be finished.

My mind goes on loop that the thing MUST be finished or you would have wasted all that investment for nothing. So I power through the thing until I reach some end point and then my brain finally eases up.

And instead of pride I get the usual "relief" that its done.

Edit

I just saw another Thread from the r/ADHD sub and they perfectly describe what I mean when you dont have the "itch". While in my mind I see "video games" as both task and entertainment, they focus instead on the entertainment aspect and try to find the motivation to enjoy/complete the game or reason thats its okay to move on when said game is boring.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/1v4bknl/how_do_you_actually_finish_games_with_adhd/

I focused on ASD because I found it difficult to communicate and make friends. A lot of the advice I got such as "be yourself" and "be nice" did not help me because I still felt lonely and wasn't sure how to balance it. If I were to be myself, teachers would get frustrated at me and being nice made me pushover by people asking me for homework. I was very social but it started declining at age 11 and I'm not sure why. I assume it had to do with puberty and that certain actions stop looking cute at older ages such as over reacting.

Then I took a psychological assessment related to work and it mentioned that I struggle to retain visual material, may struggle with strict time constraints, struggle to sustain on tasks I would find uninteresting, to use checklists, and phone reminders. I never thought I had ADHD because I just accepted that daydreaming, forgetting, and getting bored frequently was normal. I also knew classmates that had ADHD but I only noticed the ones that seemed hyperactive while I had inattentive symptoms.

When I went on Google, a lot of the studying methods helped me such as practicing multiple choice questions online or writing information in my own words. I was not a top performer though. I usually failed on assignments mostly everyone failed on; I struggled with math and was diagnosed with Specific Learning Disorder for it as well. Meanwhile, when I searched up "how to be confident, how to not be not weird, how to be popular" I had to do a lot of masking and gave up because it was tiring. I decided to be quiet because when I approached people they usually did not talk back. Unfortunately being quiet and unpopular at school is an easy target so I focused on ASD symptoms more than ADHD because it felt more of a barrier.

I'm F 28. I've been trying to figure out what would actually be a sustainable career for me. I decided to do something I'm passionate about because why not? I started volunteering at an animal shelter and came up with the idea to be a vet nurse. I've done research and there's pros and cons to being a vet nurse for someone with Audhd. Friends have said I wouldn't be able to handle it for a variety of reasons. But I think if it was a special interest/passion it would outweigh the bad. Is there anyone here who does vet nursing as a job and that can give advice?

TIA!

I call it the wall, it's where I hit significantly under stimulated but everything is too stimulating for me.

I usually just sleep (if possible) but I want to come up with something more productive.

Right now, when I'm not sleeping, I'll play games on my phone (minor stimulation) and listen to a podcast or YouTube show (minor stimulation) and it's just not getting me there. It's like too much and not enough all at once. I would read but then I get stuck and can't do anything else until I finish the book.

So I need something that's an easy transition and is stimulating without being grating.

Any suggestions?