ADHD social problems vs ASD social problems
01 Mar 2014, 5:26 am
I have picked up a few differences over the years by talking to people with just ADHD.
For one, ADHD is not a knowledge disorder but one of failing to utilise the tools they have, i.e they might have a good knowledge of social norms but still say the wrong things due to impulsiveness and inattention. My ADHD side finds it very hard to concentrate on what people say and not get distracted by either my own thoughts or things going around in my environment.
Most people with ADHD don't have a problem with reading body language and seem to have a deeper intuition about working out peoples intentions. I actually learned a whole lot of social skills and build on my empathetic skills from people with ADHD.
You can still get the very logical/rigid thought types who seem to lack a theory of mind when it comes to ADHD but you can also get these deeply empathic people.
Other problems may be their hyperactivity turns people off. People with ADHD can be emotionally immature. Or the more inattentive symptoms might make it hard for people to talk to them. They are seen as either shy or rude.
My autism aside I have a very short attention span and shoot questions at people every ten seconds or jump from one topic to another. I can become easily bored with people if I'm not interested and instead of pretending to care I would prefer to turn off. It's not something I can really control. I can barely follow a conversation because of either my brain not slowing down enough to focus or my brain processing things too slowly. I can blurt out these offensive or embarrassing things which increases anxiety. Even learning issues as a result of untreated ADHD can make me feel a bit insecure which will make me say less or be put into a bad mood. People with ADHD have stronger than average emotions like people with autism. We make impulsive decisions which might effect relationships or our own criminal record.
People with ADHD usually end up with anxiety and depression over their social issues. Very few can fit into the mainstream and will have their own interests. Well, I don't know about very few. Some people may be able to fit in with a group and adapt more than others. The younger ones may get into fights with other children or be outcast because of having too much energy or being too spacey and shy.
They may not have difficulty with starting conversations. They just might talk too much or too little, struggle to focus or just get bored and want to find something else that can stimulate them.
If I end up going to a family picnic tomorrow I may do all the above plus my autism issues of not having a clue about what to say or being aware of some social norm. Heck, I'll just end up talking about my special interests or blabbing about everything that comes to mind to fill in awkward silence. Think that last one is related to ADHD as well.
I hope that helped.
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serenaserenaserena
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01 Mar 2014, 12:26 pm
For one, ADHD is not a knowledge disorder but one of failing to utilise the tools they have, i.e they might have a good knowledge of social norms but still say the wrong things due to impulsiveness and inattention. My ADHD side finds it very hard to concentrate on what people say and not get distracted by either my own thoughts or things going around in my environment.
Most people with ADHD don't have a problem with reading body language and seem to have a deeper intuition about working out peoples intentions. I actually learned a whole lot of social skills and build on my empathetic skills from people with ADHD.
You can still get the very logical/rigid thought types who seem to lack a theory of mind when it comes to ADHD but you can also get these deeply empathic people.
Other problems may be their hyperactivity turns people off. People with ADHD can be emotionally immature. Or the more inattentive symptoms might make it hard for people to talk to them. They are seen as either shy or rude.
My autism aside I have a very short attention span and shoot questions at people every ten seconds or jump from one topic to another. I can become easily bored with people if I'm not interested and instead of pretending to care I would prefer to turn off. It's not something I can really control. I can barely follow a conversation because of either my brain not slowing down enough to focus or my brain processing things too slowly. I can blurt out these offensive or embarrassing things which increases anxiety. Even learning issues as a result of untreated ADHD can make me feel a bit insecure which will make me say less or be put into a bad mood. People with ADHD have stronger than average emotions like people with autism. We make impulsive decisions which might effect relationships or our own criminal record.
People with ADHD usually end up with anxiety and depression over their social issues. Very few can fit into the mainstream and will have their own interests. Well, I don't know about very few. Some people may be able to fit in with a group and adapt more than others. The younger ones may get into fights with other children or be outcast because of having too much energy or being too spacey and shy.
They may not have difficulty with starting conversations. They just might talk too much or too little, struggle to focus or just get bored and want to find something else that can stimulate them.
If I end up going to a family picnic tomorrow I may do all the above plus my autism issues of not having a clue about what to say or being aware of some social norm. Heck, I'll just end up talking about my special interests or blabbing about everything that comes to mind to fill in awkward silence. Think that last one is related to ADHD as well.
I hope that helped.
Interesting. It seems like most of my social problems are caused by ADHD even though I am only diagnosed with autism. I know that I can't judge this but I believe that my social understanding is actually about average or at least better than most Aspies.
As a kid I didn't pay attention to social cues that much, but when I made myself pay attention to them I got way better at reading them. I'm not sure if Aspies can really learn social cues that way. I think they need to learn them explicitly. I also did a lot of inappropriate things, but most of it was caused by impulsivity. I still do or say stupid things because of impulsivity, but I'm way better at controlling myself. When I'm tired I tend to say a lot of stupid things, so I tend to avoid people when I'm tired.
I also have zero tolerance for boring conversations. This can be a big problem. Especially at school. Whenever I have to listen to the teacher talk for more than five to ten minutes I get very sleepy or restless.
_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 82 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 124 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical
01 Mar 2014, 1:32 pm
I was diagnosed with ADHD (only) as a child, and then Aspergers as an adult.
For me, strangely, I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 5 AND then PDD-NOS by age 6 (and then found qualified to receive autism resource services at age 9), but in elementary school people only told me about the ADHD (and they emphasized it a lot). It was not until I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at age 13 that people told me about my ASD. I did not know I had been diagnosed with PDD-NOS already by age 6 until I had read through my records when I was in my late 20s.
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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
01 Mar 2014, 1:33 pm
Actually, Russell Barkley has talked about this and he says that people with ADHD have normal emotions. The problem is that we tend to express emotions very impulsively without thinking about the potential social consequences.
In this video he explains difference in brain function that leads to emotional impulsivity in ADHD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cw8jHUkHiA
Now if all of that sounds like a mood disorder, it isn't. Mood disorders are where the limbic system is overexpressing abnormal levels of emotion, and individuals have trouble regulating it. That would be bipolar disorder, for instance, which is largely a limbic system disorder.
In contrast, ADHD is not a mood disorder. It's a failure to regulate mood disorder. It's a self regulation of emotion disorder. The emotions the individual is having are quite normal, but most people would have suppressed them, would have inhibited, moderated, self-calmed, self-soothed, and then brought those emotions in line with their longer term welfare in that situation. That is what the person with ADHD cannot do as well: inhibit, self-calm, self-soothe, contemplate, and moderate that emotion.
So if you're an adult with ADHD, you may find yourself sitting in a business meeting where you have just been insulted. You are much more likely to leap across the table and throttle your supervisor. And you will be fired. Everybody else felt as you felt, thought what you thought, and summarily suppressed it. In their mind, they throttled the supervisor, but it is not released to be expressed through the spinal cord into real behavior and action.
And now you understand the difference. The mood is the same. The expression of the mood is not. There is no stopping to self-regulate the emotional state.
01 Mar 2014, 1:35 pm
Also, my early descriptions of ADHD were interesting, to say the least, at age 5 my level of attention was "consistently inconsistent" and that paradoxical term was used to describe all my behaviors; they suggested I had problems with short term memory. They also mentioned speech delays (which I did not find out about until I was well in my 20s) and problems processing information.
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
daydreamer84
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01 Mar 2014, 4:17 pm
Yeah, my attention was described as "inconsistent" and "intermittent". "Consistently inconsistent" is funny though.
I was also diagnosed with both ADHD and Aspeger's (ASD).
I'm not sure if most of my social problems are from not being able to read social cues/understand the social context ect. or if I'm just not paying attention to these things/to the right things! I know I've had and still have problems due to both.
01 Mar 2014, 4:28 pm
Never diagnosed with ADHD but suspected it and was diagnosed with ADD instead. Then it was AS in 6th grade. The treatment I was getting for ADD was ineffective so my mom knew there was more going on. My school also wrote I had a short attention span and attention problems but a doctor who did tests with me said it was due to my mind running too fast so it's not processing information well. So do I not have a short attention span? I get bored easily, can't listen for long periods of the time when a teacher talks. It's hard to keep up even if it is interesting and it gets very frustrating. I even hate youtube videos with a person in it and they are just talking because then I just zone them out and it's harder to listen to them so I hear bits of it. I can also listen and still miss what was said because I have no memory of hearing it.
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Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed.
Daughter: NT, no diagnoses.
01 Mar 2014, 4:49 pm
As a kid I didn't pay attention to social cues that much, but when I made myself pay attention to them I got way better at reading them. I'm not sure if Aspies can really learn social cues that way. I think they need to learn them explicitly.
I'm curious about that, because I think I have fair enough social understanding, I'm just not always able to USE it effectively in real-time situations.
One of the main differences between ADHD and autism, is that is no deficit of skills or knowledge in ADHD, compared to others in the same peer group. The problem is in being able to USE the knowledge and skills you have when you are called upon to do so. That's true of social skills and of life skills in general. One of Dr. Barkley's catchphrases is, you know what to do, you just can't always do what you know.
People with ADHD are generally very intuitive and perceptive of other people. This is not in the diagnostic criteria, it is more anecdotal, but I have seen it mentioned in every book I have read about ADHD. And it is usually talked about as an above average perceptiveness, an uncanny ability to understand things about other people that others are oblivious to.
However I have read that it is also true of many females with Aspergers, to be highly intuitive about other people.
I was taught to be very polite as a child. I didn't always follow the rules I was taught, some I didn't see the point in following. As I have gotten older I do see the purpose in doing those things, but I still don't like doing them. Anyway it's hard for me to estimate just how much I might have picked up on intuitively because I was taught explicitly to be very well behaved and well mannered.
I have trouble with the oddest things, like one time when I was being presented with an award in a meeting, I had no idea I was supposed to actually walk up to get it and shake the presenter's hand. I certainly knew from past experience that awards are usually given out that way, but I just wasn't thinking about it at the moment. People had to tell me to go up. If I hadn't been the first one on the list, if someone else had gone up before me, of course I would have realized I was supposed to go up because I saw someone else do it first. I don't know if something like that is more of an autistic thing, or an ADHD thing.
01 Mar 2014, 5:46 pm
It has seemed to me that the people who are more intuitively perceptive of others who are on the autism spectrum are the people who have to work harder to use words, which kind of made sense to me. We have to make the best use we can of what we are able to do.
If words take a long time, one has to have some skill to lean on to try to survive.
01 Mar 2014, 5:47 pm
As a kid I didn't pay attention to social cues that much, but when I made myself pay attention to them I got way better at reading them. I'm not sure if Aspies can really learn social cues that way. I think they need to learn them explicitly.
I'm curious about that, because I think I have fair enough social understanding, I'm just not always able to USE it effectively in real-time situations.
One of the main differences between ADHD and autism, is that is no deficit of skills or knowledge in ADHD, compared to others in the same peer group. The problem is in being able to USE the knowledge and skills you have when you are called upon to do so. That's true of social skills and of life skills in general. One of Dr. Barkley's catchphrases is, you know what to do, you just can't always do what you know.
People with ADHD are generally very intuitive and perceptive of other people. This is not in the diagnostic criteria, it is more anecdotal, but I have seen it mentioned in every book I have read about ADHD. And it is usually talked about as an above average perceptiveness, an uncanny ability to understand things about other people that others are oblivious to.
However I have read that it is also true of many females with Aspergers, to be highly intuitive about other people.
I was taught to be very polite as a child. I didn't always follow the rules I was taught, some I didn't see the point in following. As I have gotten older I do see the purpose in doing those things, but I still don't like doing them. Anyway it's hard for me to estimate just how much I might have picked up on intuitively because I was taught explicitly to be very well behaved and well mannered.
I have trouble with the oddest things, like one time when I was being presented with an award in a meeting, I had no idea I was supposed to actually walk up to get it and shake the presenter's hand. I certainly knew from past experience that awards are usually given out that way, but I just wasn't thinking about it at the moment. People had to tell me to go up. If I hadn't been the first one on the list, if someone else had gone up before me, of course I would have realized I was supposed to go up because I saw someone else do it first. I don't know if something like that is more of an autistic thing, or an ADHD thing.
I do have the ability to pick up on people's vibes. I can tell when someone is gossipy, rude, stressed or irritated. It's a useful way to avoid people who will stress me out. I often shut down when I'm around too many people people with bad vibes.
I'm in a lot of situations where I know how to act, but I can't act. It's super annoying. It's gotten way better with age, but the expectations rise as I age as well. Hopefully I'll catch up to everyone when I'm an adult.
_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 82 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 124 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical
01 Mar 2014, 6:02 pm
If words take a long time, one has to have some skill to lean on to try to survive.
I actually have a higher verbal IQ than performance IQ and I'm also more perceptive of people.
I only have trouble using words for very abstract or complicated concepts. They make sense in my head, but I have trouble finding the right way to express them. Especially on this forum.
A lot of people here don't understand my metaphors and analogies. I often try to make my ideas concrete, but that results in misunderstandings as well.
People here often find logical inconsistencies in some of the things I write. Usually that happens when people can't understand my posts.
I actually have an easier time explaining stuff in real life because I can often express one idea at a time and I can let the other person ask for clarification if they need to. I can somewhat do that here, but some people here don't even understand my clarifications.
_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 82 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 124 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical
02 Mar 2014, 6:17 am
Actually, Russell Barkley has talked about this and he says that people with ADHD have normal emotions. The problem is that we tend to express emotions very impulsively without thinking about the potential social consequences.
Must be my bipolar then.
There is someone I know with ADHD who sees people with ADHD as having a type of mood disorder. I don't really agree with him. My moods cycle between super high manias and deep long dark depressions. I don't think my hyperactivity is associated with ADHD as I developed it after taking Ritalin.
So do people with autism have stronger emotions than most?
Thanks for clearing that up for me btw. I do love me a good Dr Barkley quote.
I sometimes think I have a processing issue. I can understand things faster on ADHD meds but sometimes comprehending the written word was hard for me.
_________________
My band photography blog - http://lostthroughthelens.wordpress.com/
My personal blog - http://helptheywantmetosocialise.wordpress.com/
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