New to this planet, can you help?

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all, I have 3 children all either diagnosed or on the pathway and now I’m looking at myself. I am so confused as I thought (perhaps naively) that a lot of my over energetic mind, interrupting myself to comment on random things that take my interest, ( I am totally that “ooh look at squirrel!”type of person), not being able to concentrate or see tasks through etc could be adhd. My mind basically feels like it never stops. However, at an initial consultation at a private practice recently it came to light that I do have a lot of ASD traits (social communication and sensory) and after a couple of weeks mulling it over I can see it more and more in myself and going back to my childhood too. Anyway, got the report back today and they suggest an adhd assessment (would have to go elsewhere as they don’t do that) and an ASD one too. Started looking into it and realised that adhd would have to have been present in childhood too and, apart from my head being full of crazy ideas or whimsical thoughts, I can’t think of any signs that it was. Did fine at school, academically pretty good, didn’t struggle with exams etc.

So, I have no clue what to do? Anyone that can help? How much can ASD alone affect attention and concentration? Can it fill your head with so many ideas that you can’t speak them quick enough? Does it cause you to be really easily distracted? Make it impossible to find the motivation to finish tasks?

Sorry for the long ramble and probably shamefully ignorant questions, I’m really confused and finding it very stressful not being able to get answers quickly. I just want to finally understand myself but I’m wary of being told to go pay a large amount of money for something I just don’t need.

Thanks for your time.

Other UK members can advise you better on how to get a diagnosis as an adult

I can say parents suspecting, figuring out, or getting diagnosed as autistic after their child is diagnosed is quite common. ADHD is a common co-occurring condition with Autism.

Thanks for your reply. I have found somewhere I can be assessed for ASD and I plan to go ahead with that. I guess What im asking is, could the symptoms of a racing mind, distracted by interesting things, seeing things differently and noticing small details be part of ASD? I can’t see how they can be adhd when I didn’t have hardly any of the diagnostic criteria for adhd in childhood. (I did have ASD traits though).

There is a massive overlap of ASD and ADHD. It is common for people to have both and so it is hard to untangle which traits belong to which condition. IMO some symptoms of ADHD can mask some of the symptoms of ASD. They are both considered to be neurodiverse, as in the brain is wired up differently to that of neurotypical people. For a person to be diagnosed with either of these conditions there needs to be symptoms present in childhood..

I was assessed last year for ASD first and then referred to the ADHD clinic as a result. The first showed a lot of traits but at a sub-clinical level, so I now consider myself to be of Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP, although this has never been an official diagnosis and is now be phased out of use completely.), I was then diagnosed with severe ADHD in January this year. It's important to recognise that self evaluation is very difficult, maybe impossible, to perform unambiguously.

In my experience, the ASD assessment was deeply flawed, questioning was not pursued deeply and I also do not have anyone who could give an accurate account of my childhood behaviour. Ultimately the report contains multiple mistakes and the scores I was given and the total figures do not even match. In contrast, the ADHD assessment I felt was much more rigorous, the consultant questioning probed much more deeply until he was satisfied that the answers were conclusive.

From my experience, both personal and anecdotal on this site, adult ASD assessment vary widely with the experience of the assessors, even more so if you are female. Obviously it is possible that ADHD assessment are also performed poorly. I would recommend that you start to compile a file on yourself, if you have not already, detailing what traits you feel align with either condition. It is quite easy to get lost in the myriad of information available on the web, and then get more lost when you actually need to describe this to a professional.

I'm afraid there is very little NHS support for either condition for someone in your position. If you did receive an ASD diagnosis there is no NHS support or treatment. If you are diagnosed with ADHD the first line of treatment is stimulant medication, which is said to be effective for something like 70% of people. What you can do for yourself is improve on the things that have a detrimental effect on your life, but bear in mind that medications such as anti-depressants and therapy such as CBT often do not seen to be as effective for neurodiverse people. If you are considering going private, check whether the results will be universally recognise,d by the NHS and other official bodies, also private prescriptions are massively more expensive that those provided by the NHS too.

Theres lots of information here for ASD and links to other useful sites, for ADHD it seems to be more Facebook and Whatsapp chat. There maybe Meetup groups near you, not sure if you have the time for that.

Good luck and best wishes and take care of yourself. I hope you find some answers and resolution, but it will take some time. You want answers quickly (ADHD trait?) but try to have patience, you will need determination and maybe approach it as a job or project. You've made it this far, small steps are easier to achieve than taking giant leaps.

Thank you, that’s really helpful and very interesting to read. Your time and advice is much appreciated.

I also didn't realize that I had ASD until my daughter was diagnosed. I was misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder for quite a few years, but it never really fit. Reading about HFA in females,I was like "omg this is all me". My current psychologist said she didn't see the BPD either...so I got reassesed and dx with high functioning autism. I feel so much better now with the right diagnosis..I've never been able to work or drive and I'm very intelligent but didn't even graduate high school. Things made so much more sense.

Welcome from a fellow "ooh look at that squirrel" person!

I was diagnosed (ASD Level 1, equivalent to Asperger's Syndrome) just over three years ago, well into my forties. I can tick off pretty much all of the traits which you mentioned - distractability, more thoughts than I can communicate, difficulty initiating tasks or seeing them through, brain which doesn't ever shut up (often keeping me awake at night), and I also did well academically at school (though struggled much more socially.) This doesn't necessarily preclude ADHD as a diagnosis or component of a multiple diagnosis, but it does seem that the executive functioning impairments which can be a part of autism can show themselves in a very similar way.

One of the difficulties with discovering autism later in life is that, having grown up with it from birth and found our own adaptations, it can be very difficult to perceive how different our "inner world" is from most of the people around us. It can be very easy to assume that, if our external behaviour approximates that of our peers, then our motivations for behaving that way must also be the same. Without even realising it, we can often "pass as normal" quite successfully for long periods, thinking that any inner turmoil which this leads to is simply our personal "normal" - I believed for decades that my frustration with the workings of my own mind and the consequent anxiety and depression were simply things that I had to accept because my "personality" was simply prone to those things.

Before going any further along the road of an expensive private assessment, I suggest hanging around on WrongPlanet (or other similar forums) for a while to get a sense of how your thinking patterns and other traits are similar (or not) to other autistic people and those with other neuro-diverse conditions. A diagnosis may still be useful, or even necessary, for you; but an assessment will only look at a narrow selection of autistic traits which are necessary for the formalities, and the assessor is rarely an autistic person who has actually lived the experience. Even after several years, I still find myself coming here and having "A-ha moments" where explanations which have eluded me for decades fall into place, and I receive good advice which only someone who has "lived it" could possibly give.

The so-called "impostor syndrome" is perfectly natural; most of us with a late diagnosis appear to have experienced it to a greater or lesser degree - sometimes even after diagnosis. I find that the best way to tackle this is to try to separate things out into the specific traits which one is struggling with, find people with similar difficulties, and work together to look for coping strategies (or even just some sympathy and to lose the feeling "why am I the only one?") Knowing the root cause of those traits can be useful and reassuring, certainly, but finding ways to reduce their negative impact on our lives is the most important thing. Also, being able to view the traits more clearly may help you to better explain yourself at an assessment and to make the diagnostic process less stressful for you.