AS and ADHD

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Hi everyone again. I'm trying to figure something out here. I was diagnosed twice with ADHD, once as a young child and once as an adult. I was diagnosed about a month ago with AS, but I'm not 100% sure about this diagnosis as I seem to have so much in common with AS as well as a lot of typical AS symptoms that I don't have.

Is there anyone else out there with both AS and ADHD? Do you tend to talk a lot? Are you okay in social situations? What does having both mean as opposed to only having one?

You can have both, autism and ADD/ADHD.
But this is quite complicated.

Some autistic symptoms also occour more often in ADD/ADHD and can also be part of ADD/ADHD and also autistic people have more often ADD/ADHD symptoms, but it's just seen as part of autism.

So I would go to an expert in neuro developmental disorders if I were you. To be sure.

Last edited by Raziel on 02 Sep 2012, 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have both AS and ADHD and I'm clueless with social situations plus I get distracted very easily, making it worse. IMO, the two make each other worse and also better; my ADHD pretty much makes it nearly impossible to carry out obsessions with any consistency which makes it easier on my hubby and family. I don't take any medication for either disorder, tried Ritalin but had a bad reaction to it and I suspect because of AS I won't be able to take any psychopharmaceuticals (very sensitive system).

I don't know why people say it's hard to diagnose both in a person, but then again my case was obvious to the clinical psychologist. I have the inattentive type of ADHD and had been diagnosed with the hyperactive kind as a child. Also that was a common dx when I was a kid given to those with emotional and behavioral problems that couldn't be explained by another disorder.

HTH

Sounds similar to my situation - I have both ADHD and aspergers. With some disturbances, my mind enters a distracted "cloud state" and my productivity drops to zero,

Because they have a lot of overlapping symptoms.
Of course there are some cases who are absolutly clear that they have both but even in most cases it's not that easy to tell if they have ASD with some ADHD-symptoms or if the inattandivness just comses frome the overloads and the autistic symptoms and so on.
It is still not totally clear how both disorders relate to each other.

I definitely see the crossover between the two. I'm sure someone out there could supply an excellent Venn diagram of ADD/HD combined with AS symptoms.

I've been trying to wrap my head around if I have any sign ADHD or not... So I think to myself "I believe I'm capable of paying attention for as long as I want, but I know I'm probably going to be extremely fatigued at the end." This would lean more toward AS alone I suppose.

But then there would be some "flareups" in behavior that *seem* like ADHD, like uncontrolled laughing by thinking something is "too funny", not pulling myself away from a thought to listen to others, or cutting off someone talking to me by making noises or jokes.

Funny, I am the opposite. I do okay in social situations though I do get distracted and I have major obsession issues.

My son has ADHD and NVLD, which his neurobehavioral-developmentally-focused neurologist believes belongs on the spectrum.

For him there is a lot of overlap and sometimes I cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. When he was younger, however, he was a lot more "socially fearless" than his sister with a straight ASD diagnosis is at the same age. He is a true extrovert, so he socializes, just makes mistakes while doing it. He can come off as overly excitable and intrusive. He is becoming more aware that he is "different" though, so in unfamiliar environments I find him closing off more. But in "safe" environments he is extremely talkative, engaging, and social. As I said, he just tends to make mistakes that other kids his age don't, and he doesn't always pick up on social cues that he is annoying other people.

Sometimes I wonder if there isn't more than one kind of ADHD. And I don't mean the hyperactive type vs. the non-hyperactive type. I have known ADHDers who have no noticeable spectrummy things going on, and others who definitely have some spectrum-like quirks. My son and I both fall in the second group. He tends toward hyperactivity, I do not.

This is very interesting and it just goes to show that the vast complexities of the human mind cannot be matched by our categorizations. My psychiatrist told me that it is very difficult to see where AS begins and where ADHD ends and often the two are blended together. She said she came to her conclusion about my AS based on my body language and facial expressions as well as my explanations of things that happened in my past and present (such as always getting in trouble because people perceive my reactions as different as my intentions.) She told me that my talkative nature can be attributed to my ADHD but that I also use it to cover the social anxiety I feel when in new social situations.

It's strange to me because when I look at the symptoms of ADHD, I tick almost every box. I have no doubt that I have ADHD and it's something I'm comfortable with because I have had this diagnosis since I was around 5 or 6 years old. AS is something that makes me much more uncomfortable because I don't feel like it describes me fully. While I can certainly relate to a lot of AS issues, I also feel like the label is an outfit that doesn't quite fit me. It might be because I did not know much about AS and that it is a new diagnosis and I don't deal with new situations easily, but it does fascinate me to find out how I fit into all of these classifications.

For my son, it seems like ADHD is an incomplete outfit, like his pants are missing, but AS seems a little too large, like being in an XL when he only needs a M.

My brother was clearly hyperactive as a child, but with no autistic features and I am HFA with the typical language delay and everything as a child. I was very isolated and very typical autistic until I was 14 years old.

But with 14 years my entire symptoms kind of shifted within a year. My mom even thought that I would take drugs or something, because I changed that dramatically, but nothing. Just puberty. But something must have changed there biochemically.
Since this time I have far less autism symptoms, I'm more social and hyperactive and I have bipolar (like) symptoms.
And lithium seems to work (I don't take it since that long and it's lithium orotate at the moment, but I want to switch to lithium carbonate).

I have to say that my other brother has schizophrenia, so it is:
me: HFA
1. brother: ADHD
2. brother schizophrenia

So, we really can't explain everything with our diagnostic cathegories.
I never found a real explenation why my symtpoms changed that dramatically within a short period of time, hitting puberty.

Last edited by Raziel on 02 Sep 2012, 1:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I don't have an explanation, but I can tell you that among my parent friends, there have been more than one who reported that their kid's presentation changed drastically when puberty started. Some get more or less social, some get more violent, but you are not alone in that you changed.

Autistic people can appear to have ADHD around other people, without ackshuly having ADHD due to lacking ADHD symptoms when they are alone and not having sensory overload, brain shutdown, general physical malaise from being around people for too many minutes in a row, all these things disrupting your functioning around other people but not by yourself. I often act like I have ADHD in public, the inattentive rather than hyperactive appearance of it. The person I know who ackshuly has ADHD doesn't act like she has ADHD and appears completely normal in social situations and lacks any autistic traits in public, but she has the most problems alone, when she is trying to get her work done and going off on tangents that interfere with getting things done and spending too long on researching a topic that is not related to the things that she has sat down to do, and she is depressed due to not getting things done that she wants to do. She thought that I had ADHD, because I appeared eggstremely inattentive in social situations.

I too fall in this odd sort of middle ground between AS and ADHD. I have an official ADHD diagnosis from a neurologist in the mid 1980's, but to me it doesn't explain all of my issues. I do have the communication issues of AS, but do not go into the sensory overload meltdowns that many seem to experience. I do, however, chose my clothing carefully for comfort (cotton only) and practicality and care less than average about style and other social reasons for dressing a particular way. I can focus very intently on things I am interested in, but it is difficult to focus on things that do not catch my fancy. I am logical and practical and don't always get social communications but can get it some of the times. To some people I may seem normal, but that facade quickly falls when asked to interact in a new situation with people I am not used to. It takes me a fairly long time to learn new people and I can be quite withdrawn around them until I do so. I also have had lifelong executive functioning issues with keeping my house clean and motivating myself to start and finish tasks because I feel tired all the time.

Oh, that's interessting, I didn't know that.
In my case this makes it very difficult for psychiatrists who are not autism experts to recognice my autism correctly, eventhough that I was VERY typical as a child. My mom even thought that I could have some intellectual problem, until I was 12, because I was so autistic and had no social understanding what so ever. So you can diagnose it for 100% sure that I have autism, but today it's more tendencies I think and I'm in my social understanding even nearly "normal". But because I was so typical as a child and still have a lot of routines and overload and stuff and my AQ is 32, I got diagnosed with HFA.

I once had an ADHD suspicion but the next psychiatrist sayd I don't have ADHD.
I don't have real concentration problems, just when I have depressions, but then they can get really severe. I'm just more "hyper" sometimes, but because of my probably bipolar and my autism I see it a symptoms of those two and I really don't need every diagnosis.
Mostly it is very hard to define anyways.

I have been diagnosed with both AS and ADD (which would now be ADHD inattentive type). I've also been diagnosed with NVLD....I collect disorders. I believe they are all correct diagnoses...even though I know ADHD and AS are supposed to be mutually exclusive...I don't think they are and a lot of Psychologists would agree with me.

How I am in social situations: In a word awkward: unconfident,often unsure of myself and make mistakes (accidentally offend people, misinterpret what people are saying and say something stupid etc) but not constantly. In one on one situations I am WAY better , both more confident and less likely to make social boo-boos than in group situations. In groups situations I either "tune out" and am just spacey and quiet or if I'm really comfortable with the people and we're talking about something I know about I'll completely dominate the conversation , interrupt people etc. I don't quite monologue but I do go on too long about things (I've been told) and give irrelevant details and have trouble finding gaps in the conversation. I'm negative and put myself down a lot and try to make jokes about myself (self deprecating humour) but a lot of times they don't get taken as jokes. I'm very emotionally expressive though and my voice has inflection/emotion but I have been told that I sometimes have strange body language , facial expressions, even laugh, and my voice has an odd rhythm (according to my mom) and I talk sometimes too slowly or too loud.....but it's never been emotionless...I don't have a robotic quality at all. As a kid I was much worse though had similar traits...always emotionally expressive but odd (I'd go around talking to myself walking in circles and twirling a string in front of my face everywhere I went and was very much in my own little world. I was ALWAYS talkative, I was the kid that didn't shut up (once I learned how to talk-and I learned earlier than average). When I was a toddler /preschooler I'd go around reciting memorized story books. When I was in primary school I would recite the rules in class and tell the other children to follow them. etc.