Both Aspergers and ADHD?

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Any of you have BOTH Aspergers and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?
Please enlighten me.

Some symptoms of Aspergers and ADHD are very similar but have different reasons or causes of the symptom. But at the same time Aspergers and ADHD are different disorders.

How do you compare your symptoms of ADHD and Aspergers?
Have you noticed that you have symptoms of Aspergers but at the same time, symptoms of ADHD?

For example...
I can focus on a specific intense interest for a long time and obsess over it and never get tired of it. -Aspergers
But at the same time I have millions of other interests and I get bored and jump from task to task or topic to topic and it takes me a long time to get something done. - ADHD

I have both diagnoses...ADHD and Asperger's.

If I'm really interested in something or motivated to do something I can hyper-focus on it and my attention span is really really good (for example reading my novels) but otherwise , for example if I'm preparing a meal or talking to someone about something I'm not so interested in, I'll tune out a lot...and have a really crappy attention span. I'm not sure if this is any different from people with just ADHD or just AS though.....

Basically my life in a nutshell. At the moment I'm lurking here on the forums and have an ear trained on the talk radio station and watching my birds eat a piece of bread, while attempting to plan what I should look up on Wiki later and I still haven't finished changing out of my jeans - ADHD

Adhering to routines ( I have one for almost every day of the week), stims, meltdowns, alexathymia, trail of relationship and career wreckage, and par-for-the-course of nobody knowing what I'm talking about - life on the spectrum

me too.

Dx'd ADD (current ADHD PI) as a child, have come to suspect Asperger's as an adult. It's a fairly common thread amongst those who post here.

Last edited by outofplace on 14 Oct 2012, 2:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

Technically (going by DSM4) you are not supposed to be diagnosed with both...but 3/4 people with an autism or aspergers diagnosis could qualify for an adhd diagnosis.

I have both. Apparently not one excruciating problem is not enough in my existence. I suppose at least in some form, this has at least made me aware of what excrement I've had to wade through in life if only for the simplest of tasks.

I guess it's not so bad, though. I've been accredited for having a penchant in writing very similarly to Stephen King in my amateur writings even though I most certainly do not try to copy him or anyone really. Whether I would bestow such a gift to my disabilities or not, I would not be sure to say either way.

i have asperger and used to be very hyper in my youth, but now i'm just tired all the time, so i cant be hyper anymore.
i still cant concentrate on anything for too long without getting bored, depressed and frustrated. that's why work can be torture sometimes.

I met someone who I'm confident has both.

He's off on most of the social cues, bouncing around subjects, but when he gets on ones he likes, he could go on for hours (for starters).

The mind is a complex thing and you can have all sorts of stuff simultaneously.

I got told by my psychiatrist that I cannot be both ADHD and Asperger's, yet that there is a component to Asperger's which could cover all the symptoms I relate to ADHD being the executive functioning issues (organisation, planning, attention, focus, prioritising, time management, etc). So I see it that I have AS and that the executive functioning issues of AS are a big part of it for me.
My Son has been diagnosed with ADHD-PI and I share the same issues as him with this.
I find it helpful to read about ADHD info as well as AS, as I relate highly to it. In Tony Attwood's book about Asperger's, he mentions that many of us on the spectrum have the executive functioning issues.

That's me. I'm diagnosed both. ADHD does not help in social situations unless I'm interested in the topic I may get distracted by passing birds, on top of general not-knowing-what-to-say(Aspergers) makes me really awkward in social situations. It's better when I'm more comfortable with the person I'm talking with.

I was diagnosed with ADHD(inattentive type) by a psychologist and a psychiatrist when I was nine. But another psych I went to said she didn't think I really have ADHD. She suspected Asperger's. My current psych doesn't think I actually have ADHD either. I think she suspects Asperger's as well because she started asking me about special interests, problems socialising, anxiety etc.

I personally think I might have both, but there aren't many autism specialists where I live, so the doctors mostly just follow the DSM to a T, and the DSM says you can't have Asperger's and ADHD at the same time.