She wanted me to make this post, because she is not sure if she is just “weird” or if she can get diagnosed with ADHD and/or autism and make her life a bit easier. The symptoms that bother her the most are the following:
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Sometimes walks away from uninteresting conversations without realizing (with familiar people) with strangers, feels like being held hostage.
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Intense focus to the point of forgetting to eat, drink water and neglecting to go to the toilet.
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Periods of low mood and anhedonia vs periods of intense obsession(?) and excitement with some activity (specific game or game genre, desktop customization).
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Diagnosed with dysthymia and BPD traits (due to self-harm).
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Suicidal thoughts since 14 yo but never made an attempt.
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Low self esteem.
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Persistent interests for many years in which she has made great contributions.
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Does not like to go out much and feels dirty after going out.
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Very annoyed by insects, afraid of bees and wasps.
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She is a perfectionist.
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In kindergarten, she would not go out for recess if she was still in the middle of doing something (finishing a drawing).
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When learning how to do something, she liked repeating the process e.g. making boxes out of paper, drawing the same image.
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Always sits with her knees close to her chest.
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Occasionally rocks back and forth or from side to side sometimes repeats certain sounds / jingles / song melodies.
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She thinks in images instead of words, except when having depression-related thoughts (e.g. “I am useless”), or positive thoughts (“I can do this”) or when daydreaming scenes with dialogue.
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Because of this, speaking is hard for her as she has to translate the images to words.
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Performs great at work but gets burned out quickly.
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Is bad at socializing, and has cut contact with her old friends and does not want to go back to having friends
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Zones out of conversations.
Can’t diagnose anyone, know autism and ADHD and auDHD pretty well. I’ll give you my read on what the traits seem to fit:
- Sometimes walks away from uninteresting conversations without realizing (with familiar people) with strangers, feels like being held hostage.
This is something that is common for autistic people. ADHDers may do it too but I’d say it’s much less common in adults.
- Intense focus to the point of forgetting to eat, drink water and neglecting to go to the toilet.
ADHD or autistic. Also depends on what it is but it leans pretty autistic.
- Periods of low mood and anhedonia vs periods of intense obsession(?) and excitement with some activity (specific game or game genre, desktop customization).
Either, could be other things like a mood disorder too
- Diagnosed with dysthymia and BPD traits (due to self-harm).
Either or none
- Suicidal thoughts since 14 yo but never made an attempt.
Either or none
- Low self esteem.
Either or none
- Persistent interests for many years in which she has made great contributions.
Autistic
- Does not like to go out much and feels dirty after going out.
Autistic
- Very annoyed by insects, afraid of bees and wasps.
Either or none
- She is a perfectionist.
Either or none
- In kindergarten, she would not go out for recess if she was still in the middle of doing something (finishing a drawing).
Autistic
- When learning how to do something, she liked repeating the process e.g. making boxes out of paper, drawing the same image.
Autistic
- Always sits with her knees close to her chest.
Either, leans autistic
- Occasionally rocks back and forth or from side to side sometimes
Autistic
- Repeats certain sounds / jingles / song melodies.
Either, leans autistic
- She thinks in images instead of words, except when having depression-related thoughts (e.g. “I am useless”), or positive thoughts (“I can do this”)
Either or none
- or when daydreaming scenes with dialogue
Leans autistic
- Because of this, speaking is hard for her as she has to translate the images to words.
Very autistic
- Performs great at work but gets burned out quickly.
Either, leans autistic
- Is bad at socializing, and has cut contact with her old friends and does not want to go back to having friends
Very autistic
- Zones out of conversations.
Either, leans ADHD
I wouldn’t rule out other things. There’s a lot in there that really indicates autism to me. If someone came to me and asked me what I thought based on these categories I’d encourage them to explore autism as a likely candidate.
ADHD is a possibility. AuDHD is another, although that’s more complex, harder to diagnose and imo less understood.
It’s also worth considering whether it’s a combination of, say, ADHD and a mood disorder or something like that. I’d keep an open mind tbh.
I would encourage her to do the RAADS-R test here (down at the bottom of the page under the discussion) and the ADHD screening test too.
The ADHD screening test is less good. I can elaborate on this if anyone is interested. It’s also not great at identifying auDHD and I can elaborate on this too.
If she feels comfortable to post her results I can give you my take on them.
Also an autism diagnosis can be pretty expensive and the waitlists are often extremely long. For adults I tend to advise them against seeking a formal diagnosis, and especially against paying for the full ADOS-2, because often this doesn’t really provide much benefit except in countries where it may give the person access to social security benefits or similar. It also depends on how much autism affects the individual’s life - if a person is working or studying and managing that okay and things are reasonable, there’s probably not a whole lot of use in an autism diagnosis. If someone is really struggling with these things or isn’t capable of them then an autism diagnosis may be of much more use. Partly this is an ethical position - there are often people who are desperate to get access to an autism diagnosis because they really need the support and, while I encourage anyone to get themselves screened for things that they think they might have, if there’s no clear material benefit to you getting an autism diagnosis (especially as an adult) then I’d encourage thinking about it in a triage sort of way; an ADOS-2 is a lot like an exam in the sense that it assess an individual’s performance in the examination setting. But not necessarily in the real world. Often insight into one’s experience tends to come from engaging with autistic peers and doing self-directed learning on autism.
ADHD diagnoses, on the other hand, provide access to a lot of medications that can make managing the condition a whole lot better and so if someone was coming up high on the likelihood of both autism and ADHD then I’d strongly encourage focusing resources on an ADHD diagnosis over an autism diagnosis. Also note that for an auDHDer, the accomodations that you can get in the workplace or with study are probably about the same as for someone with an autism diagnosis so in that respect, if you’ve got an ADHD diagnosis you probably won’t get much more with an autism diagnosis as well.
Obviously this is general advice. I’m also not a lawyer so I cannot tell you what your specific country’s laws are with regards to disability access and inclusion, and it’s gonna vary so I’d encourage anyone to do their research.
Hmm I just took the RAADS-R test after reading this comment (already have an ADHD diagnosis) and scored a 68:
- Language subtotal: 2
- Social relatedness subtotal: 36
- Sensory/motor subtotal: 11
- Circumscribed interests subtotal: 19
On some of these questions, like when they use words like “normal” I found myself wondering “how do they define normal?” The “interests” part stood out to me too, because its always been true that if you get me on a topic it can be hard to stop. I also feel way less awkward when I’m talking with someone about a shared interest. Like “finally I can get all this information out of me.” I also feel compelled to provide all the context in order to tell what might be a simple story.
🤷♂️ its interesting, giving me something to think about.
On some of these questions, like when they use words like “normal” I found myself wondering “how do they define normal?”
Yeah, that’s definitely a question that comes up in these sorts of screening tests.
It’s also limited because it’s self-assessment and that can be inherently flawed because the question might be worded in such a way that it prompts you to assess how well you perform than necessarily assessing how much difficulty it causes you or what you are like when you aren’t engaging in the methods you have developed to compensate for or adapt to what you’re like at your baseline. For a high masking autistic person, they might be quite disconnected from what their baseline is because they are so used to always being high masking that this obscures their baseline from themselves.
Without knowing more, your results are in an interesting place - they are high for an allistic person and low for an autistic person. This might be reflective of your ADHD, although if I was expecting your results to be reflective of ADHD as the reason for why you scored highly I’d anticipate a skew with higher numbers in the sensorimotor category and a lower score in the circumscribed interest category than you have.
Without knowing how you answered each social relatedness question, I’d venture a guess that your score is significantly higher than the typical allistic score because ADHD/society and societal expectations makes social relatedness quite difficult for a lot of ADHDers.
If we used ADHD to explain the SR score and the SM score, for argument’s sake, we’re left with an interesting split with your language score being expected for an allistic person, if not a little low for an ADHD perhaps, and a CI score which is high for an allistic person and higher again than I’d expect for an ADHDer.
The questions this leaves me with are:
Is your ADHD helping you to compensate in the language domain, or perhaps is it making it more difficult for you to make an accurate assessment of your function/level of difficulty in this domain?
Is your CI score reflective of ADHD traits? I’m going to grossly stereotype here for the sake of contrast but if your CI is such because you love model trains then that would make me want to investigate more but on the other hand if it was this way because you love something like paintball or MMA then that would probably be more in line with what I’d expect for an ADHDer. (Of course everyone is different and there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that some autistic people adore MMA or paintball and some ADHDers adore model trains, but I’m sure you get what driving at here.)
The other things that would be informative would be knowing your ADHD type based on how you perceive yourself today as well as how you score on the ADHD screening test (although as people reach adulthood they tend to mellow out on the hyperactivity and end up drifting into the combined-type or becoming more towards the inattentive type just because of how things work) and whether you were socialised as a boy or a girl when you were a child.
It’s definitely interesting and your results are pretty inconclusive tbh. You might find that other autism screening tests that you can find on that site provide you with more clarity on the matter.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this! Very interesting perspective. When I was tested for ADHD I was never really tested in a way that determined what kind of “subtype” I might have, but it’s definitely a combination of both inattentive and hyperactive at this point in my life.
I never have an issue talking to people, I can make small talk, but when meeting new people for the first time I generally stay quiet for some time. I have this tendency now (and when I was young) to “ramble” lacking a better word. In my social circles when I was younger, my friends group latched on to calling it a “RedWizard Story” and would regularly interject with “Uh oh, here comes another RedWizard Story”. That hasn’t changed as I’ve aged. Regularly I have to “get to the point”, but I’ve become much more aware of when I’ve entered this mode and can find off-ramps that terminate to the point. I won’t lie though, I always feel cut off, or like slighted when this happens because I’m always “sure” everything I was saying was relevant (it’s clear to me now that’s not always the case from the listeners’ perspective). So part of staying quiet initially is me waiting for my opportunity to “cut in”, but also not wanting to dominate the conversation if I happen to get on a topic I’m particularly interested in.
Those topics are like coiled springs in my mind. If I find out you have played D&D before, for example, I have an ocean of thoughts about it that range from practical to philosophical. Engaging with me on that topic is like pulling loose the cotter pin on the spring and releasing a payload of D&D enthusiasm that might not be shared with the person I’m talking to. I’ve learned over time to temper that enthusiasm with some leading questions to try and gage what level of interest the person has in the topic and navigate from there.
I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily anxious about engaging in casual conversation. Likewise, I don’t get stressed about the prospects of socializing. Sometimes I feel a little off kilter if I have to make pleasantry with people I’m assisting at work, the kind of idle chatter you engage in to fill the void while you are working towards getting them what they need. Especially if I’m not super familiar with the person.
Maybe what I’m describing here is masking, but frankly, I have no idea how to identify if I am masking, or if I’m just doing what people normally do in regular conversation. Which I think leads back to your initial point of:
It’s also limited because it’s self-assessment and that can be inherently flawed because the question might be worded in such a way that it prompts you to assess how well you perform than necessarily assessing how much difficulty it causes you or what you are like when you aren’t engaging in the methods you have developed to compensate for or adapt to what you’re like at your baseline.
If I find some time today, I’ll look at some of the other tests on that site.