Neurodivergence

💡 Note

This topic is long.

My neurodivergence is the primary lens through which I understand my mental illness and disability. I've been diagnosed with ADHD, and I've been treated for it since 2016. I believe a combination of medicine and therapy has led to me becoming a happier, healthier person, but the condition still greatly limits the things I'm able to do. I'm able to work, with accommodations, but I'm unable to live a full and satisfying life on top of that. I'm unable to maintain social relationships outside of the one with my spouse, and I'm unable to accomplish long-term goals. With treatment, my mind is quite functional during the day, but 8 hours of work leaves me feeling drained and needing rest no matter what that works entails.

In terms of gainful employment, I work best when I can be by myself, in a distraction-free environment, and listening to something that provides mental stimulation while I endure the tedious task. I use similar coping strategies to complete tedious chores at home, and have used podcasts, audiobooks and youtube videos to gain a level of executive function I never had before those things were available to me. My brain experiences tedium and drudgery in a way that's comparable to physical pain, and I often have emotional breakdowns after long stretches of unstimulating work.

Through therapy and self-reflection, I've made a lot of progress towards seeing this as a disability rather than a personal moral failing. I try to live my life with an attitude of forgiveness and acceptance towards my differences, but it's hard in a world very much not designed for me.

I also suffer from sensory sensitivities, and wear thick noise-blocking headphones to protect myself from the constant aural assault of urban life, primarily the noise of cars I'm forced to coexist with. I also dislike overhead lights, am sensitive to certain textures, and have a long-time food pickiness disorder that I've made some progress towards overcoming. I also have great difficulty relating to other people, due to an inability to make myself be interested in things that interest the people around me. Even when I do find a common connection, I often struggle because I'm not interested in exactly the same way someone else is. It's made me feel like an alien for most of my life. But of course that's silly, I'm not an alien, I'm a raccoon 🦝

I'm also diagnosed with generalized anxiety and major depressive disorder, and I think my neurodivergence is at the root of those problems, too---or, more accurately, society's refusal to accommodate it. I tried to treat these issues unsuccessfully for years before receiving the ADHD diagnosis, at which point my anxiety and depression improved somewhat.

It's been suggested that I may have autism, and I wouldn't reject a diagnosis of autism if one was given to me, but there are characteristics of autism I don't identify with. I took one of those online autism assessments tests---not a "real" one, since those apparently costs hundreds to thousands of dollars and no doctor I've spoken to has been willing to look into the logistics of getting insurance to pay for it---but the unofficial free assessment put me right in the middle of the "do you have autism?" binary. It's the most definitive "maybe" I've ever received.

I understand that autism isn't a monolith, but here are some of the traits I commonly see people with autism relate to that I don't:

I don't struggle to understand how people feel based on their tone, facial expression and body language. If anything, I'm over-sensitive to these markers: I often assume people are feeling emotions that they're not, or assume whatever emotion they're feeling is stronger than it actually is.

I don't "infodump"---I tend to assume other people aren't interested in the same things as me, and won't volunteer information about myself or my interests unless prompted. Because of my tendency to over-analyze other people's reactions, if someone seems bored or annoyed when I talk, I internalize this and become very anxious about ever opening up to them again. I've seen this described as "rejection sensitive dysphoria", and it's true that in the past I've experienced emotional distress at the inference of rejection, but I've become more (for lack of a better term) "zen" about these experiences, and tend to disconnect and withdraw rather than get upset. It's not as stressful, but it can be quite lonely.

I don't have "special interests"---in fact, quite the opposite. There is no one thing that I'm always going to be very interested in no matter what. The closest I come to a special interest is in games, and the way in which I want to engage with games is changing constantly. There's no one game I will go back to over and over forever; no matter how much I like a game, at some point I need to be done with it and move on to something else.

This same quality impedes my ability to find a meaningful career: I can't "get a job doing what I love", because no matter how much I love doing something, I'm eventually going to want to stop and do something else. It follows, then, that I'm going to have to work every day for the rest of my life my depression is fairly well-managed these days, but letting myself dwell on this conclusion is one way to make myself spiral, so I try my best not to think about it.

Routine is important to me to an extent, but this is mostly because I'm forced to exist on a rigid timetable for work. If I didn't have to go to work, there would be a few broad strokes to my daily routine, but the details would change dramatically from one day to the next, and I'd be very comfortable with it. My brain is novelty-seeking, and I feel stifled and unfree if I'm not allowed to explore new things spontaneously.

It's possible that I have what I've seen people refer to as "AuDHD", but I don't know enough to say what that would mean. I understand there's a certain amount of symptomatic crossover between autism and ADHD, but I don't know how much crossover there would need to be to consider it a third thing or combination of two things. I hope there's more research on this in the future.

I'm not so concerned with the specific diagnosis, because no matter what diagnosis I have, I know how my mind works and I'm the authority on what accomodations I need. I don't need a doctor to tell me what I need, I just need people to believe me when I tell them how I feel.

This isn't to say I have all the answers, I'm constantly coming to new understandings about how my brain works and figuring out new coping stratgies, but the solution definitely isn't "I need to try harder to be normal". It didn't work for 30+ years and it's not going to work now. It's only after learning to accept myself, limitations and all, that I was able to see myself as someone deserving of love and understanding.

Tags: topics, mental health