As per requests, this is my description of auDHD experience. As there is very little research into this, I’m going to draw primarily upon my own personal experience and I’ll draw upon peer experiences and I’ll draw in bits of research through this post here and there. I am diagnosed with both ADHD and autism, both adult diagnoses, and there is treatment history to establish these as being accurate diagnoses. The psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ADHD gave me a diagnosis of primarily-inattentive ADHD but I had come to my own conclusions that I was probably combined-type which has had its hyperactive aspects mostly buried under trauma. My psychiatrist also independently arrived at this same conclusion unprompted. It’s worth noting that being combined-type will colour my experience of auDHD.
As a disclaimer, this is going to be my experience so it will be limited by that fact. This should only be taken as information and not the definitive guide or the be-all end-all of The One True™ auDHD experience.
To start, I think it’s of fundamental importance to understand that my experience of auDHD is one of internal conflict - I have competing sets of needs and desires. This manifests in a lot of internal struggle and it also means that my autistic or ADHD traits can be more prevalent and I can feel “more” autistic or ADHD, depending on my circumstances. (Maybe I’m a Marxist because deep down, at a fundamental level, my ADHD traits exist in a dialectical relationship with my autistic traits lol.) This manifests in a lot of extremes and a lot of bouncing between one extreme to the other.
Ultimately this is why I think I was previously diagnosed with a mood disorder and why it’s very common for late-diagnosed autistic/ADHD/auDHDers to be misdiagnosed with mood disorders.
So what does this look like in practice?
I thrive under most novel situations and under high pressure. I find it exciting and this really engages me. However, I also find that I hit my limit in high pressure situations very rapidly, so there’s a sweet spot where things are just new or high pressure enough that I thrive. Less, I feel pretty bored and checked out. More, I become an anxious wreck.
However this is counterbalanced by my deep and abiding need for stability, routine, and structure. I need enough that I can count on in my life that I feel capable of dealing with high-pressure and novel situations. Too much change, especially unpredicted change, leaves me really rattled and out of sorts (and not just feeling a bit uncomfortable but it can put me into complete disarray). It can take ages for me to cope with too much change or unpredicted change because, although I can be quite adaptable and flexible, if my base circumstances change then the pace at which I find my feet again is truly glacial.
This is also sort of why I find that I am either extremely well organised or I’m an absolute disaster, with little room in between. Without having structure and organisation, my autistic needs aren’t being met so I feel very dysregulated and I am far less capable of relying on this aspect of myself to manage my scatterbrained ADHD traits.
When it comes to socialising, I can be very gregarious. (It’s worth mentioning that I’m pretty high-masking when I want to be, so that may also be a factor here.) I am capable of being the life of the party and of facilitating stuff like group work and educational spaces in an engaging and interactive way, and have done so professionally. But this comes with a high level of social anxiety and an extremely limited social battery. I find that I much prefer facilitating, or better yet public speaking, than I do participating in a group activity especially if it’s unstructured or there are a lack of clear guidelines and expectations. So externally I vacillate between being very social to being extremely introverted, depending on a variety of factors.
Another aspect is that I genuinely do need a lot of time to recharge after socialising, even when it’s great and I’m really enjoying myself. Sometimes days. I feel like this is very much my autistic needs taking the front seat.
With regards to interests, this is a little bit tricky on account of being combined-type but I have very long, stable persistent deep interests (“special interests” but I am loath to apply that term to myself tbh). I also have the classic ADHD sort of brief, intense, transient interests that breeze in and breeze out just as quickly. There are things that I will always be interested in doing or talking about, then there are things that I have a sort of wild fling with before I find that I’ve suddenly wrung all the dopamine out of it and I’m ready to discard it and move on.
I’m capable of bending my deep interests and sorta redirecting them to topics that I need to prioritise but I’m not sure whether this is a me thing, an auDHD thing, a combined-type thing, or something else.
With regards to sensory processing, I am a fairly typical autistic scattershot of being mostly sensory-avoiding with some atypically high degrees of sensory-seeking, as per the Dunn Sensory Profile 2 administered to me as an adult. I am acutely sensitive to a lot of sensory input however my ADHD is a countervailing force here and I can be completely oblivious to certain sounds or smells or tactile feelings until suddenly my awareness is drawn to this and it becomes borderline intolerable. This may also be due to me being high-masking, having poor interoception, or experiencing dissociation due to lots of trauma, mostly developmental so keep this in mind.
With regards to trauma and rejection sensitive dysphoria, there’s evidence that ADHDers are more prone to developing PTSD symptoms. In my opinion one of the major factors in this phenomenon is the fundamental emotional reactivity inherent to the ADHD experience, especially if it’s not appropriately medicated. My autistic traits lead me to ruminate a lot and so there’s this unholy alliance that exists within me of my being more prone to traumatisation, having heightened emotional reactivity (even with regards to PTSD triggers that occur well after a particular event), and the classic autistic perseveration meaning that I get into ruts with my thinking that are very difficult to get myself out of. This is on top of the typical experience of PTSD and being emotionally and psychologically “stuck” in the traumatic experience. So it’s a double whammy. Or maybe an exponential whammy idk.
I experience rejection sensitive dysphoria and I respond to treatment for it. I think that RSD in an auDHDer is especially difficult as being autistic means that I am just prone to making more faux pas, I’m going to unintentionally annoy or upset people, I’m going to miss cues, and ultimately that I’m going to face a whole lot more ostracism and social rejection than if I were allistic. So not only do I have a lot of the psychological consequences of trying to exist in a social world that is far from well-suited to an autistic person, I also have very visceral responses in my nervous system when I think I have fucked up or when someone gives me the impression of negative social feedback (whether imagined or real) and this has a pretty major impact on me. I am of the opinion that the ADHD traits that make me inclined to seek out social interaction and push me to be novelty-seeking means that I am much more socially engaged than I would otherwise be and since negative social feedback affects me unusually deeply, I think this is one of the major factors in why I am capable of being very high masking to the point of probably doing quite well at being neurotypical-passing if I care to.
It’s my suspicion that most auDHDers are high-masking, not only because they tend to go undiagnosed and maybe even unaware of this personally for a lot longer and so they naturally develop strategies to compensate but because they tend to be more socially-oriented and I reckon they take knocks harder when socialising, all things being equal, so the end product is a person who is a sort of grizzled veteran who has learnt how to survive in the harsh wilderness that is the allistic social realm.
Moving on from that, I find that I am very extreme in how I experience fine details. I often plunge headlong into the deepest depths of detail but I am also quite careless and I can miss very obvious or critical details. I tend to shift between these two poles. Sometimes this also manifests in being so consumed by one aspect of the details that it’s to the exclusion of all the other details as well, although that’s more of a classic autistic experience imo. This might also be something specific to me but I am a voracious learner. Often I feel like my mind is like an odd-couple where I can get engrossed in a subject for virtually an unlimited period of time and I can be remarkably persistent with learning but I also have intense cravings for instant gratification and novelty which causes me to end up diving into one subject with great depth only to dive into the next soon after, and this pattern repeats itself constantly. It feels like half of my brain is constantly dragging me down one particular rabbit hole and the other half of my brain is desperately and impatiently dragging me to the next rabbit hole. This may also be something specific to me but I find that I’m actually quite a slow learner because of my needs to understand the intricacies of any given topic but, once I really grasp the fundamentals of something I tend to learn very quickly from that point onwards.
With regards to executive dysfunction, my experience is one of constant struggle lol. I feel as though I am constantly juggling too many balls - my need for novelty, my need for certainty and stability, my sensory diet, the need to stay focused and remember things, the need to observe the details so I don’t make simple mistakes and so I don’t find myself getting lost in any one particular detail, my need for routine and my fundamental incapability of maintaining a routine, attending to my interoception as I am very liable to not register that I’m hungry or thirsty or tired and so on. It feels like I am more or less constantly mediating the tensions between my different needs which often exist in direct contradiction to each other. So yeah, this means I burn out and I burn out hard lol.
I think ultimately my experience of auDHD is one where I can sometimes spot the very clear traits of either one shining through, such as struggling with pragmatics in communication and being completely capable of eating the exact same thing in perpetuity or being so forgetful and inattentive that I’ll put my phone down in a drawer only to close it to later have zero recollection of what I did and having a real drive to experience new things. But more often it feels as though I am an odd mix of the two or that there’s a sort of stalemate between the two and I feel like I’m kinda neither and yet both at the same time.
Sometimes this works really well, as my ADHD traits make me more adaptable and a bit more even in my interests and how I engage socially or as my autistic traits help me sustain my focus and to have a much better memory for things than I would otherwise have. I guess in short, being autistic keeps my ADHD traits more stable and consistent and my ADHD makes my autistic traits more flexible and it broadens my horizons. Each of them softens some of the rough edges of the other and I find that I can often lean into one in order to compensate for the deficits inherent to the other.
Unfortunately, the upshot of the autism and ADHD combo is that very often these needs compete and are in direct contradiction to one another as well. It’s a weird sort of in between space to exist in, one where the only relatable parallel that I can think of that comes remotely closely is ennui - that feeling of being bored but where it’s a conflicted or maybe a more existential sort of boredom; if you’re just purely bored, you find something interesting or exciting and you have fixed the problem and the need has been addressed whereas with ennui there’s a sort of restless interregnum-like quality where you experience a feeling of boredom but the thought of doing something exciting is also in itself boring somehow. That probably doesn’t make a lot of sense lol. Also for my experience of auDHD it’s not a feeling of being bored at addressing different needs but it’s more like craving new things whie simultaneously craving the same things and the same routine, of craving excitement but also being overwhelmed and craving quiet and calmness at the same time. It’s really quite odd to be honest.
Ultimately, while I identify with a lot of traits and experiences of pure ADHD or pure autism, I feel as though my experience of these are much more varied and they shift in intensity. I also think that the way that I present, even if I’m not putting in effort towards masking, is one where the traits of both are apparent but they aren’t easy to pin down because I readily switch between, say, a classic autistic infodump monologue to being very socially-engaging and mischievous like you might expect from an ADHDer. Or I can be incredibly details-focused while also being seemingly oblivious to details. That sort of thing.
Anyway, I think that wraps up my own personal experience of auDHD from an internal perspective.
It’s a weird sort of in between space to exist in, one where the only relatable parallel that I can think of that comes remotely closely is ennui - that feeling of being bored but where it’s a conflicted or maybe a more existential sort of boredom
I get this so often where I feel like brain is pulling me in multiple opposing directions and I get extremely fatigued and disinterested in doing anything. Last week I was messing around on my piano, got up to go to the toilet, and on my way back just collapsed into bed where I stared at the ceiling, drifting in and out of consciousness for about 6 hours. This has been happening more frequently and I don’t really know what to do about it. I sometimes feel like I’m paralyzed while the various factions in my brain fight each other for control.
The novelty/routine dialectic also helps add context to the last time my mental health issues faded into the background and I was able to thrive. We had a new roommate move in that I hit it off with on day one. We talked for hours every day relating stories and learning about each other (novelty). We also settled into a routine of going for long bike rides every Sunday and climbing at least once per week. Beyond that the knowledge that we would see each other on a daily basis, go for walks, cook together, etc reduced uncertainty about what I would do with my time and helped me focus on things that mattered. This is in contrast to now where this person has moved out and I am faced with an empty void I need to fill. The routine has been dismantled and the ADHD is really resisting me as I try to establish a new one.
I don’t have a lot of words for this, but just wanted to say 1) thank you and 2) this hit very very close to home…
I was also diagnosed with adhd as an adult but I came to the conclusion a few years ago that there is a smattering of ‘AU’ inside of me. I’m old and set in my ways now, but toast realization has helped me communicate my needs and feelings to my partner and family.
Thank you again for a very thoughtful and detailed writup of what it’s like.
This sounds exactly like me, and now you’ve convinced me I have both as well lol. First I thought inattentive adhd, then after stimulants it was clear I had autistic traits. The stimulants burnt me out so hard (and guanfacine made me sick) that I was convinced that they didn’t work for me because I have actually been autistic this whole time and not ADHD. Otherwise the meds would have worked, right? So I’ve been talking to my therapist about my autism. But every single thing you just described is like you read my mind. Now what?
(also do you have any advice for how to get a routine going? I think that’s what I need the most right now.)
This sounds exactly like me, and now you’ve convinced me I have both as well lol.
I’m not gonna lie, there was a part of me that felt concerned that everything I wrote in this post would be unrelatable and all specific to just my personal situation, that other people would be like “The fuck is this person even talking about!?” so I’m relieved to hear that it makes sense to other people who experience the same.
First I thought inattentive adhd, then after stimulants it was clear I had autistic traits. The stimulants burnt me out so hard (and guanfacine made me sick) that I was convinced that they didn’t work for me because I have actually been autistic this whole time and not ADHD. Otherwise the meds would have worked, right? So I’ve been talking to my therapist about my autism. But every single thing you just described is like you read my mind.
So there’s a comment I made recently that has all the things I wish someone had told me when I started on stimulant meds here. One caveat though: I think that ADHDers generally tend to notice a significant reduction in anxiety when on stimulant meds but I am not convinced that this is necessarily as common for auDHDers.
It’s super common to get burnt out on stimulants as an adult, especially if you’ve been through a lot of shit in life in a general sense and/or it’s been a really arduous process of arriving at the diagnosis of ADHD.
This is compounded by a few factors:
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AuDHDers tend to report being sensitive to stimulant meds.
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It’s my hunch that auDHDers are more prone to autistic catatonia and, while studies indicate that stimulants are helpful with catatonia, I’m of the opinion that in the mid to long term stimulants are prone to aggravating catatonia. (Catatonia very likely being interchangeable with burnout in this case.)
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Stimulants tend to make your nervous system more reactive. This isn’t always the case because it’s a complex matter but auDHDers may find themselves trading off between improving their executive function with stimulants at the expense of being more prone to becoming overstimulated and imo suppressing or internalising the experience of overstimulation on an ongoing basis is a fast track to burn out.
AuDHDers routinely report that when they are on stimulant meds they feel “more” autistic. My hunch is that if your mind is a whirlwind of hyperactivity or your attention is so thin on the ground then when stimulants help to address this and with a quieter, more focused and attentive mind you are able to notice your autistic traits more readily. I also think there’s probably something in there with ADHD sorta taking a predominant role which sidelines autistic traits because autistic traits tend to be more subtle, a bit like when you’re in an emergency and you’re just focused on the immediate situation but you don’t even realise that below that urgent experience which is blanketing out everything else, it turns out that you’re actually really hungry but all of your awareness is devoted single-pointedly on the situation so it’s only after the emergency is resolved that you are like “Holy fuck, I’m starving all of a sudden??”
Now what?
Honestly, that’s a hard question.
My general advice would be to consider revisiting stimulants at a low dose. Note that different stimulants can vary in their effects and from person to person so responding badly or not at all to one stimulant medication isn’t conclusive evidence imo.
I’d also inquire with my prescribing doctor about adjunct ADHD meds. I’m a big fan of clonidine for me personally - it helps with my sleep, it has basically resolved my PTSD nightmares, it really dampens down my RSD, it works well for me to counterbalance my sensitivity to the norepinephrinergic side-effects of stimulants, but perhaps most importantly for your question it really helps me with regulating my nervous system.
Clonidine doesn’t work for everyone though and there’s a sweet spot with it - too much and you’ll sap all your motivation to do anything because your brain will be critically low in norepinephrine. I’ve heard reports that ADHDers tend to respond well to either guanfacine or clonidine but generally not both.
I’d encourage you to try and trace out the causes of that burnout: was it that you lost your appetite and your diet was significantly impacted? Did the stimulants disturb your sleep? Did you find that you were pushing through tiredness, the need to take breaks, and the need to eat during the day? Was your nervous system getting really dysregulated by your sensory “diet” at the time? Did you notice that your brain started dredging up old, unresolved trauma which led you to burn out? Were you just on too high a dose or were there any difficult side effects from the meds?
There’s a lot of causes and it’s likely that there were multiple factors involved. I can’t tell you what they were for you but you will be able to determine what happened last time and this will put you in a better position to manage these factors if you go back on stimulants.
I can help workshop some of this stuff with you, especially in regards to meds that are useful for ADHDers, but of course I’m not an expert so take what I say as being general pointers and not as professional advice.
(also do you have any advice for how to get a routine going? I think that’s what I need the most right now.)
That’s a big question.
First thing, if you’ve got ADHD or you suspect that you do then it’s always going to be an uphill battle on a neurodevelopmental level. Reconcile yourself to this.
I think that appropriately-medicated ADHD is important for establishing routines and habits because it’s the dopamine that is crucial in the neurochemical reinforcement of whatever pattern you’re trying to establish. If you’re low on dopamine, you’re going to be attempting to establish a routine on hard mode and there’s not really any way around that fact.
Next, a lot of habit and routine advice comes from well-meaning neurotypical people which works for them. This is not necessarily applicable to autistic people/ADHDers/auDHDers.
One thing that I urge this cohort to be very cautious and mindful of is habit stacking and task stacking. While everyone does this to some degree, and while this is very helpful and often important, the risk of stacking for this cohort is twofold imo:
- You run the risk of stacking too much and bringing about inertia, paralysis, executive dysfunction, and overwhelming yourself.
Making a habit stack of checking that a door is locked when you leave the house?
Great!
Having a huge chain of tasks that you feel that you must do, making it feel like you can’t even get up because it has all snowballed into one massive project?
Not so great!
- The more you stack, the more vulnerable your habits or routines become to being disrupted.
This is where the autistic traits take centre stage but if you have a big stack that you work to and, for whatever reason, you have to change the order or you aren’t able to do certain parts of the chain then this can really make it difficult. At worst, your brain can get kinda frozen or it can go into full autistic revolt because of unexpected changes.
Next up, I hate the “swallow the frog” advice for this cohort. I think this is a shortcut to being completely overwhelmed and hamstringing your motivation and productivity. I’m a big fan of starting very small and going for the easiest task so you can start to build up momentum with which to tackle the larger tasks rather than trying to force yourself to do the biggest, most difficult task first.
Following up from that point, I think it’s really important to milk the dopamine as much as possible from a routine. Checklists are great because you can cross things off and you get a sense of progress. It also offloads some stuff from your working memory by outsourcing it, which is a good thing all round.
I try to very consciously cultivate a genuine attitude of appreciation and gratitude towards myself for doing tasks and routines. When I wake up late and I’m scrambling to get out the door, I will consciously turn my attention to how I put my wallet and keys and stuff into their designated place the night before to feel thankful that I saved myself a lot of stress and a lot of time. I often go carrot-and-stick with myself, recalling the last time I lost my wallet and keys because I didn’t put them in their place, and how this negatively affected me, then I contrast that to my current experience.
[Continued…]
[…Continuing]
I think it’s also important to start small with routines and to aim for something that is below 75% of your capacity, however you wanna measure that. If you are trying to implement a new routine and it requires you to devote 90% of your effort to maintain it then you’re setting yourself up for failure because it will fall apart as you are inevitably going to be operating at 60% when you happen to have a bad day.
So start realistically and don’t bite off more than you can chew. You can always incorporate more into your routine once you’ve settled into it.
It’s also important to recognise that you’re probably not going to be able to maintain the routine indefinitely, there are going to be some setbacks and disruptions along the way. That’s okay. A routine that is done 50% of the time is infinitely better than a routine that doesn’t exist, so remain focused on the positives and on the benefits that you got from it. Don’t adopt the attitude that one slip-up or a couple of missed days means that you blew it.
External motivation can be really useful for ADHDers especially. If there’s a way of having accountability outside of your own head, even if it’s just a habit tracking app or a whiteboard, then use it to help reinforce your motivation. Understanding the ADHD interest-based nervous system so you can take advantage of how it works might be really useful in this respect:
Last of all it’s hard for a seed to sprout and grow a firm network of roots unless the soil is conducive to growth, and likewise it’s hard for a routine or habit to be established if the conditions are hostile. If you are burnt out, if you get home from your day and immediately collapse into executive dysfunction, if you are chronically overstimulated, if you aren’t taking reasonable care of your physical and mental wellbeing, and stuff like that then it’s just going to be really hard work to establish routines and habits. You cannot pour from an empty cup, y’know? Sometimes it’s about addressing the underlying issues which are obstructions to having a routine rather than being about trying to implement strategies to create routines.
Sorry I don’t have some awesome, one-sentence piece of advice that changes everything. I really wish I did, believe me.
Thank you!!
I also showed this to my mom and she relates to a lot of it too.
I know I could try other types of stimulants other than Vyvanse, but I’m scared to try again because of how badly it fried me… I feel like I’m just starting to recover from that, and that was last year. I’ll bring this up to my therapist though.
Also I’m taking zoloft because it seems to help reduce my sensitivity, but I’m wondering if I should be trying something else, but I’m afraid to go off of it…
ReadFanon is writing about AuDHD again.
But you wrote a post! Great to see.
RSD
Omg, so that’s why I felt that bad about [that one time]! Interesting, thanks!
Realizing my constant mouse tapping is (probably…?) stimming is… I just had the word then I forgor. Anyways, doesn’t change much but interesting nonetheless.
You are single-handedly improving my understanding of AuDHD. Thank you very much. I like your posts and comments.
A lot of this sounds really familiar. I’m dealing with a lot of RSD right now diving into dating apps and seeing my communication issues come up time and time again, feeling like there’s a black hole forming in my gut because I might have inadvertently insulted someone and that’s why they’re not answering my text message
Also experiencing horrifying irrational guilt at the fact that I haven’t been keeping up on my Unmasking Autism book club, and identifying shame, sneaky motherfucker that it is, creeping back in on me, masquerading as simple anxiety and depression, and whispering suggestions of self-destruction and worthlessness into my ear again. You see, by not making posts on the Internet, I am a Bad Person™ and deserve the endless misery that is desperately needing human contact but being generally really bad at interacting with humans, only learning how to get by on trial and error and making people laugh and having absolutely no idea what to do when I can’t make them laugh. I’m starting to think I make people laugh the same way you would throw scraps of meat to placate a hungry predator. Like, a deep-seated fear of others is the motivation. Not just the desire to be liked, but the certainty that I will be punished if I don’t placate them. Lots of trauma informing this, I’m sure.
A lot of this sounds really familiar. I’m dealing with a lot of RSD right now diving into dating apps and seeing my communication issues come up time and time again, feeling like there’s a black hole forming in my gut because I might have inadvertently insulted someone and that’s why they’re not answering my text message
I’m a big fan of normalising being a part of the high social filter gang.
If you think I’m just making excuses rather than describing what I’m struggling with?
Oops - you just hit the filter!
If you presume the worst of me or if you aren’t able to articulate that you feel upset because of the way I came off/the way you interpreted what I said?
Oops - you just hit the filter!
Now I’m not advocating for just cutting everyone out of your life or anything lol. But it’s okay to have a high filter, and I honestly think it’s probably for the best especially for autistic people.
I need someone to say “Excuse me??” when something I’ve done feels insulting. I can’t deal with someone in my personal life who isn’t assertive enough to address these things, and likewise I can’t deal with someone in my personal life who isn’t going to listen to me when I explain what I had intended. If someone is going to brood on a perceived slight for days while expecting me to identify the change in their mood so that I will cast my mind back over the past week to try and figure out what did wrong, they’re going to be miserable around me and likewise I’m going to end up being miserable around them too; I just can’t afford to extend my masking so far that I’m constantly trying to shape my behaviour and language to meet someone else’s wants/needs while trying to decipher their emotional state and constantly going through mental replays to scour my memory for anything I did which might have caused offence.
That’s not to say that I expect someone to be perfect in this regard or that I’m giving myself a justification to switch off my empathy but I do need someone who is confident enough to be able to handle miscommunications effectively and collaboratively.
If someone isn’t capable of that or they aren’t willing to meet me on that level, that’s cool—I know I’m not for everyone and I’m a bit of an acquired taste—you do you. But I’m also applying that to me as well and part of that means having people around me who just understand autistic communication because they’re autistic themselves or people who I can work with to bridge the allistic-autistic communication divide.
Also experiencing horrifying irrational guilt at the fact that I haven’t been keeping up on my Unmasking Autism book club
I was wondering where things were up to with that.
I had thought about reaching out to you but I didn’t want to add to the pressure. I’m just glad that things are okay and, tbh, I think it’s safe to assume that everyone who is participating in the book club feels the same way.
Remember that you are facilitating a book club specifically on autism in a neurodivergent-specific comm. If that isn’t the perfect crowd to say “Oops, sorry - this slipped off my radar and then I managed to roll that up into a huge ball of guilt and shame which has left me paralysed” to then idk who would be better.
but being generally really bad at interacting with humans
I’m really not in the business of telling people how they ought to feel but one thing that’s been really important for me has been to frame my experience of being autistic in an allistic world as one of an (invisible) cross-cultural divide.
Other autistic people generally seem to just get me. Always have, even before I started self-identifying as autistic let alone being diagnosed.
My mannerisms, my speech, my tone, my body language, my way of interpreting communication - these are all fundamentally at odds with the allistic mode of communication. I genuinely feel when I’m masking as if I’m in a different culture and I’m consciously translating what I want to say and how I want to convey that message while also carefully and consciously interpreting the communication from allistic people.
I once was fluent in another language. Masking while engaging in social interaction feels close to a 1:1 of the experience mid-level proficiency in another language—good enough to get by with concerted effort but not so proficient that it feels effortless—including the executive function crash that comes after a long day of translating and existing in a fundamentally alien cultural context.
But the kicker is that it’s usually obvious when someone isn’t a native speaker and people adapt and adjust their expectations accordingly. They also tend to extend a lot of grace to people from different cultures too.
I don’t get that same sort of consideration because I pass for being native to the allistic culture when it’s really not the case. That means people have higher expectations of me and they are less patient, less forgiving, and less understanding. In a lot of ways I think it’s actually harder to be autistic in an allistic world than it is to be a somewhat-proficient second language speaker in a different cultural context.
At the end of the day, I just have a fundamentally different way of communicating and experiencing the world but this is (mostly) invisible to others. That doesn’t mean therefore I’m bad at communicating any more than it means that your average allistic person is bad at communicating because they aren’t well equipped for communicating on the autistic level, it’s just different.
In fact, I’m proud of how well I communicate with allistic people and the amount of effort I put into this. If I end up in a situation where there’s an allistic-autistic miscommunication, as I inevitably will, I’m not going to shoulder all the blame for it. I’m doing my best and if I wouldn’t beat myself up for unintentionally saying or doing the wrong thing in a different cultural context then why would I do this when I’m essentially in an allistic-autistic cross cultural context? I’m quite happy to chalk these miscommunications up to being the product of a cultural divide tbh.
I’m starting to think I make people laugh the same way you would throw scraps of meat to placate a hungry predator. Like, a deep-seated fear of others is the motivation. Not just the desire to be liked, but the certainty that I will be punished if I don’t placate them. Lots of trauma informing this, I’m sure.
You are sufficient. Some people might want more or they might want something different, but that’s their own business. If you want to entertain people or to make them laugh then go for it but remember that you don’t owe them this.
