I remember watching some shitty reality show on Netflix and one of the contestants was very obviously ADHD and out of control because of it. And all I could think was… I’m so glad I have Autism to balance out the ADHD, otherwise I’d probably be like him
please excuse my ignorance but how do they balance out? my understanding was that adhd makes it hard to pay attention to things and you tend to be hyperactive while autism makes it difficult to understand social norms and situations, how would it help your deficit in attention to be less aware of how to interact with other people? wouldn’t it just make it worse? or is it just because you just don’t care if you’re hyper and not paying attention because social norms don’t interest you? genuinely curious and eager to learn
This chart explains it better than I could, but basically you are right in the sense that some things can definitely be worse with both. However, some things can somewhat balance each other out as well.
In the show I watched, the dude seemed to have such bad ADHD that (for example) he’d be in a serious conversation and suddenly hold up a fruit and be like “Man, tangerines are so good. You wanna bite??”, and it was like he wasn’t even serious about the conversation at all. He did shit like that constantly, and didn’t seem to be aware of how much he was pissing people off because of it. For me… I definitely start to get antsy and semi-checkout of a conversation if I’m not interested or knowledgeable about the topic at hand and it’s going on too long. However, because i’ve learned to mask in social conversations and gotten really good at reading people’s reactions, I can usually tell if I’m doing anything to annoy someone. And so, I can pull myself back on track through a conversation without too much difficulties, most of the time anyway. At the very least, I would never just let myself do what the guy in the show did, as I know that would piss people off!
interesting, thanks for the detailed response! So it seems that learning to live with autism you have trained skills to compensate and these skills have helped you in other parts of your life like dealing with ADHD?
I was diagnosed with autism and I don’t believe it. But that’s just the ADHD balancing shit out.
I remember watching some shitty reality show on Netflix and one of the contestants was very obviously ADHD and out of control because of it. And all I could think was… I’m so glad I have Autism to balance out the ADHD, otherwise I’d probably be like him
please excuse my ignorance but how do they balance out? my understanding was that adhd makes it hard to pay attention to things and you tend to be hyperactive while autism makes it difficult to understand social norms and situations, how would it help your deficit in attention to be less aware of how to interact with other people? wouldn’t it just make it worse? or is it just because you just don’t care if you’re hyper and not paying attention because social norms don’t interest you? genuinely curious and eager to learn
This chart explains it better than I could, but basically you are right in the sense that some things can definitely be worse with both. However, some things can somewhat balance each other out as well.
In the show I watched, the dude seemed to have such bad ADHD that (for example) he’d be in a serious conversation and suddenly hold up a fruit and be like “Man, tangerines are so good. You wanna bite??”, and it was like he wasn’t even serious about the conversation at all. He did shit like that constantly, and didn’t seem to be aware of how much he was pissing people off because of it. For me… I definitely start to get antsy and semi-checkout of a conversation if I’m not interested or knowledgeable about the topic at hand and it’s going on too long. However, because i’ve learned to mask in social conversations and gotten really good at reading people’s reactions, I can usually tell if I’m doing anything to annoy someone. And so, I can pull myself back on track through a conversation without too much difficulties, most of the time anyway. At the very least, I would never just let myself do what the guy in the show did, as I know that would piss people off!
interesting, thanks for the detailed response! So it seems that learning to live with autism you have trained skills to compensate and these skills have helped you in other parts of your life like dealing with ADHD?