Chapter 33 My AuDHD Story Part 4: my thirties & early 40s
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- Опубліковано 10 лип 2024
- Chapter 33 recapping my unexpected Autism and ADHD year: this week I'm looking back at my thirties and early 40s and the two opposing stories of those years, both of which were equally true - the happy smiling adventure version, and the struggle that having undiagnosed AuDHD was having on me trying to find my place in the world that ultimately led to a breakdown and an ASD diagnosis.
My thirties were the decade where my outward success and inner turmoil became most in opposition to each other as I came to realise I was struggling badly to be able to enjoy the life I was living, simply because I had no framework to understand why my brain works the way it does. This is why knowledge and understanding of neurodivergence is so important to push up the agenda, so people simply understand themselves and how to accommodate the way they process the world.
Please do like, share and subscribe to my channel and videos if you resonate or find any of this useful, or message me to get in touch and connect.
Contact email: amineurodivergent@gmail.com
Some useful links:
AQ Autism Self-Test:
I'm going to keep posting the link to the AQ Self Test for autism every episode in case this is the first video in the series people come across. Take the self test (remember it's JUST a self-test) and see how you score. You may have been on the autism spectrum all along and just had no idea, like I was:
psychology-tools.com/test/aut...
Cat-Q Test (Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire): An alternate self-test if you've gone a long time masking.
embrace-autism.com/cat-q
ADHD Self-Test:
(with all the same caveats as above) ADHD is even MORE common than autism (and many of us will have both); the vast majority of ADHDers just struggle through from childhood through adulthood having no idea that they even HAVE ADHD, let alone working out strategies to cope and deal with it all better to be happier and less frustrated with ourselves and others.
psychology-tools.com/test/adu...
Thank you for putting into words what so many of us who are late diagnosed experience.
Thank you for commenting. Just hearing from others that they experienced much of all this too feels .. not great obviously because we all seem to have gone through a similar version of what was really quite a shi**y internal experience at times .. but great in that it wasn't just a thing we all went through alone, and great that the more the awareness of this increases that hopefully less of us will have to go through in the future.
These are my favourite videos on UA-cam at the moment.
Thanks!
Me too!
Hear, hear! different universe, same story... thanks for putting words to it
I'm a newly diagnosed AuDHDer. I'm getting a lot out of you sharing your story. Im a 50 yr old, mother of 7 "twice exceptional" artistic , musical, peer support Autistic (actually ASD2 due to trauma and neglect) ADHD combined type AuDHDer. I'm really grateful to you for sharing. Getting my head around my diagnosis of less than 2 months
It's gonna be a journey! Thanks for sharing, and for watching my vids. This one was another rough one to get through but done enough of bottling it all up at this point. I hope you're feeling great about the new self-knowledge right now, there can certainly be some ups and downs.
Thank you again for sharing your experience. Makes me see some of my own experiences in a new light.
And Happy Hollidays!
Thanks - and to you are yours!
Thank you for creating these videos. I find them to be super helpful. You have a wonderful way of sharing many of the same things that I am feeling but don't yet have the words to express. I'm at the tail end of my assessment process and will likely be diagnosed AuDHD as well. The last 10 minutes were particularly valuable to hear, I was thinking - yes exactly! I'm 51 and happy to have finally figured it out but also really angry that no one else even considered this as an option.
Yeah, I'm struggling a bit again with the anger and grief at the moment. You can think you're in a better place and then it floors you a bit again. It's a process and you can't necessarily guide it, I guess, just observe it and listen to it and be in it if it's telling you that's what's needed, until it's not. We'll get there!
Thank you so much for these videos. I'm struggling for words a little today, but please know that you sharing your thoughts and experiences has been very helpful and validating to me. I'm looking forward to your video on rediscovering values as that's something I've been contemplating myself recently.
Thanks for the nice feedback, and you're very welcome. It'll be into the new year before I do the rediscovering values one, as it's one I want to give a lot of thought to. Cheers and all the best to you on your own journey!
It's all soooo painfully recognizable. I've got myself on a waiting list for a diagnosis. You videos helped me take this step. Thank you! 🙏
"Trying to be happy by trying to make the world happy with me..." The source of so much trauma, paralysed by fight/flight and constantly triggered every day.
Our stories do seem to link in some ways. The work contexts, the consulting thing, the Masters degree, the late nights/allnighters, the perfectionism, inertia, the chasm between outside appearance in inward perception. The thing that looks easy fuelled by the hating, and the anger and the drowning and the sense that there was something I just wasn't getting that others did.
Another incredibly powerful video. You articulate those AuDHD contradictions so very very well.
Please take care and we'll see you when we see you :)
Thank you very much. Take care of yourself too over this period.
53 and after a 3 year NHS wait have just got the letter for a diagnosis apppontment. Sad from researching and self diagnosis that I now know why the last 50 years have been a struggle and wasted but hope to now have an easier ride to the end.
Think of it as having got OFF the presumed straight-line and uncomfortable ride to the end, with an unexpected opportunity for a second ride you never even knew existed. A second ride that could go anywhere you point it. That mindset's getting me through right now.
Thanks for an excellent recap video! The two narratives approach you followed really helped better understand myself. One thing I could identify with in particular was doing well and getting promoted, only to feel out of my depth and a sense of overwhelm. One thing I struggle with is that I test highly for AuDHD, but a neuropsychologist tested me somewhat for ADHD, and said I did not fit the profile. But then again, this was before my autism identification.
This series has been such a roller coaster but also very helpful to listen to. There's been a variety of things I've learned from and related to in your words, I wouldn't even know where to start, but I do want to say thank you.
Thank you!
Cheers, mate. Whatever you want to share, whenever you want to share it. Here for it. :)
Thanks for watching
16:56 wholly Mac corral! Yup. I was so happy to get in at my institution. No structure and massive expectations. Ugh.
I've been in the same situation of faking working to my partner. When I moved from South America to Europe, the only job I could find was as a door-to-door salesman. Can't think of a worst job for an undiagnosed autistic. Every morning I got suited up, take the bus and simply expend all day in any square or park that I found along the way. I was sitting all day, no drinking or eating anything.
It was such a big change moving to another country. After that, I've found myself going to burnout stage every 3 years or so. Needing to change job to reset "my personality" (didn't know what masking was). I every time I've changed job I've thought "I can't hold on to this new personality I created, next time I need to be less extroverted or more whatever". So I changed jobs, and in every iteration finding a more sustainable mask. Until in one of those iterations I couldn't keep going anymore.
Edit: this is way too relatable "AuDHDers are good at rationalizing and justifying the coping reactions". Been doing this my whole life. When I was living in South America I always thought "I feel so alien here because my family is from Europe, hence it must be a cultural thing". Then I moved to Europe and I was still feeling like an alien in another planet.
I'm finding these videos focused on your personal experience and life story really emotional. I'm usually completely blank regarding externalizing emotions, but I'm tearing tears right now. It's like someone else is telling me the story of my life. It's also a relief to know there are people with similar experiences.
Thanks again for sharing!
You're very welcome - thanks for sharing some of your experiences, the door to door sales and just sitting all day unable to push yourself through something that is inauthentic to you, as well as the need to constantly 'reset' your personality and iterate it until you finally get it right is also very relatable to me. It makes me quite sad/ angry still that so many of us seem to have gone through such similar, soul-destroying journeys before finding out the 'why'; it makes me sadder still that so many others are going through it unknowingly as we speak and still feeling themselves to be an alien in this world that needs to be somehow 'corrected'. The message that we're all ok, all of us, needs to be screamed from mountaintops.
Thank you for these last videos, I have just caught up.
So grateful to you for being so generous in sharing your experiences in order to help others. You are making a difference in the world no doubt about that. I hope they are cathartic too and that your anger lessens with the sharing or at least is instrumental in the change that is happening for this generation.
I share your frustration with the lather, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum scenario because there was no one to recognise the pattern and understand the reasons.
At least for me retirement is providing a respite from needing to conform to a “proper working life”
It doesn’t stop me from judging myself however ,even if it is my ability to perform the role of a typical nanny
Beating ourselves up for not being normal is still a work in progress for me…
As it is for many of us. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
"why is diagnosis important if a person is coping?" Because "coping" is usually only true externally. We're managing to look okay while being anything but.
🤗❤