ADHD vs AS Traits, Similarities & Differences

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How does ADHD affect people when they are alone?

A person with ADHD once asked me if I had ADHD, because I appeared to have severe inattentive ADHD during all the meetings we attended together, which were the only times we saw each other. She told me that she spent a lot of the meetings watching me, my wandering eyes, my fidgeting, my stimming, my clock-watching, my dislistening to everyone speaking, my projected vibe of not wanting to be there, etc etc etc. Based on my behavior in these meetings, I think that I could have been diagnosed with ADHD. The actual cause of my behaviors was sensory overload and shutdown. My mind was either shutdown and blank and unable to focus and respond or cluttering and sputtering just before the shutdown during these times when I exhibited these behaviors.

When I am alone in my space, all these apparent attentional difficulties disappear entirely, and I have excellent executive functioning for whatever I am executively dysfunctioning (hyperfocusing) on at the time. I don't have a lot of problems getting things done, even things I hate doing.

But what about people with ADHD? Do your ADHD-related problems get worse around people or away from home, and what are they like when you are alone?

I'm not diagnosed yet. But when alone, I tend to channel my energy into my interests, but I'm still task switching a lot. For example, I hardly ever read a full webpage in one go, even when short.

I don't think I really hyperfocus, but I can easily entertain myself doing a thousand little bits of things a day. I tend to keep them all in a related field, that way I kinda build up a knowledge base like thousands of rats eating holes in cheese, until all the cheese is gone. Hopefully I'll be able to use that cheese productively at some point.

It can go either way. There are too many variables to make it easy to say one way or the other. But generally I am worse off when I'm alone, mainly because with other people around I am more aware of time passing. When I'm alone I feel like I am in a "forever" space where time passing doesn't mean anything. A whole day goes by and I get nothing done because I don't feel the sense of urgency to do something.

My ADHD is the same whether I am at home or away, with people or alone. But the way it affects me is different depending on these situations. For instance, at home I am much more likely to fall into hyperfocusing, procrastinating, and avoiding, because I have no outside stimuli to make me do otherwise. As a result, I tend to get less done that really needed to be done, which can depress me and stress me out. If I am at work, everything and everyone (including myself) is driving me to accomplish certain tasks. It's not any easier to focus and multitask and socialize and all of the other things that are expected of me, but I feel that I must do them. I get a lot more accomplished at work than at home, but the bad side is that I am also overloaded and majorly stressed when I am at work. Work is exhausting for me, but I have functioned this way for so long that I am kind of used to it. Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time before start I falling apart--shutdowns and mini-meltdowns that I try very hard not to let happen while I'm actually at work. These occurances are usually the beginning of the end for me at job. Other people stress me out. Their demands on me make my ADHD much harder to manage. When I'm alone, I still have ADHD, but the stress and the pressure are mostly absent. I have learned to laugh at myself a bit and work with my difficulties. I'm even free to groove on the cool bits of being the way I am!

Good synopsis of it, ( and dianthus and Moog brought up another effect too).

And to add: It is a strange ethereal existence, at least from my perception of it by my experience. The introspection that I find/ found myself engaging in gives rise to a meta cognitive analysis by looking at myself or sensing myself on a deep and very sensitive level of awareness. I'm introverted by nature, but I do wonder if this disturbance in instinct with ADHD causes this become more pronounced. But it's really impossible to delineate (I believe).

Going by my denatured vibe, though, I find nothing else to account for this-- one can really feel or be in an asynchronous state around others.

When I'm feeling good, meaning my cognition is riding high, one can come across as otherworldly to others. I have a definite creative strength in these states as noticed by others, but there is the time that my cognition dives and I'm sloooow. People, including my wife have suggested that I'm bi-polar. I'm never manic, and I do not feel clinically depressed.

This is overall a difficult set of circumstances to contend with, especially so being un-Dx'd for decades.

Last edited by Mdyar on 09 Dec 2011, 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Do people with ADHD have extreme difficulty switching attention from anything to anything else, regardless of what the things are?

I have this problem. The Switch is short-lived, but feels like torture while it lasts. I live in dread of switching attention and will not start things if I cannot finish a large enough chunk before the next mandatory switch, e.g. forced stop or potential interruption from others. Once I make the Switch, however, all is hunky-dory, and I can pursue even odious tasks with a lot of focus.

I leave the cereal in the dishwasher and the cat in the cupboard.

Seriously though, it's just as bad. Having people around makes me more frustrated because they sometimes laugh at my mistakes. My speech problems are ADHD related and I could speak out loud while alone and still mess my words up.
I feel my ADHD symptoms upon waking up. When I'm inattentive I don't want to get up and it will take a few hours to feel awake. On my hyper days I get out of bed no problem and make a lot of noise and sometimes forget to take medication but then throughout the day I feel the symptoms start to show.

And to answer that old 'why don't people with autism reciprocate' I feel it's because social interaction doesn't involve a plan. I do better with socialising when I've memorised a bunch of replies or when people are interested in what I have to say. Maybe my way I reciprocate isn't correct but it works for me. Sometimes I feel it's a bit pushy but hey, I'm talking now.

I like the 'bing' that goes in the brain of NT's when they talk doesn't go 'bing' for us. There was a study done where autistic people and NT people had their brains scanned to see this 'social network' of brain areas that activate when NT's make eye contact. This wasn't activated in autistic which leads me to impulsively jump to the conclusion some autistic brains are not conditioned for social interaction, like me who once went so long without socialising that they forgot some of those skills they developed earlier. I basically only socialise to keep those skills and work on more so I can talk to rock stars.

Yes especially when in that 'hyper focus' mode. Getting off the forums is really hard for me and I usually leave when mentally exhausted. With me if I spend too long on anything I get tired and then I worry about fulfilling my next task because I don't have the energy for it.

But I'm autistic too and adapting to change has always been difficult, in fact, it remains to this day my most impairing symptoms. Well, besides the sensory overload.

With ADHD just getting focus to begin with is hard. I'm either impatient and can't through a whole wall of text, overwhelmed by the many steps involved or I just can't keep my attention for longer than 5 minutes.

This sounds just like my life. I'm a full-time Mum these days and my daughter started school over a year ago, so you would think I would have a perfect home. It's nowhere near as bad as some I've seen, but it's not as I'd like it to be. Work was a nightmare. I used to procrastinate over anything that involved making a phonecall, speaking with a manager that I wasn't comfortable with or allocating work to another. I felt I was on the edge of burnout, the whole time. But, I could get a lot achieved very quickly, if I was dealing with something that I didn't have any hang-ups about - like designing databases and compiling stats reports, so long as no-one was looking over my shoulder.

Any interruption in my attention field causes something akin to 'pain'... I wouldn't say it's pain, but it's really annoying and irritating, I guess my brain knows that it's on shaky ground anyway, and the slightest thing is going to disturb it.

I also avoid tasks that I think I won't be able to make it through, in fact I've arranged my life so I don't have to do anything that requires anything that requires prolonged attention. But this is a kind of pathological avoidance behaviour that I don't think I can get away with forever.

I'm not sure that they get worse for me. Some things do get worse, others don't.

The autistic issue with processing stimuli in social (=unpredictable) or new (=chaotic) situations doesn't help with keeping my mind in order and keeping up accurately in real time with what is happening. I need a lot of mental energy and mental effort to function.

And that very autistic trait influences my ADHD because it negatively influences my ability to turn away from distractions. It makes it harder for me to use all my mental energy to fight the distractions and stay on topic/solve a task quickly and efficiently. Keeping impulses in check while being excited is generally harder for everyone and it's no different with my ADHD impulsivity and hyperactivity.

At the same time, experiencing new things and getting out of the is exciting because of the ADHD. That stimulation makes processing (new) stimuli much faster than processing normal, ordinary stimuli usually is.

It is therefore a bit of a counter effect for the ASD if the autism and the ADHD happen to be in balance at that time.

When I'm alone at home my ADHD is pretty much the same but the autism isn't and therefore the ADHD appears to change too (when in fact it is still the same). I can focus a little better because I don't need to spent as much energy on coping with my ASD and can use that energy on fighting off distractions instead.

I'm not sure that I experience this hyperfocus everyone in ADHD communities and ASD communities is talking about.

Yes even the simplest task that doesn't require a lot of thought can be hard to switch into or out of. It is because of what I mentioned in another post, the "forever" feeling, every task feels like a forever experience that isn't supposed to begin or end. Not only that but whatever I'm doing, feels like the moment links up to every other time when I have done that activity and that's all there is. I mean if I'm taking a shower, I remember every other time I've taken a shower and it feels almost like the whole meaning of life is about taking showers and there is nothing else. lol

If I find a natural stopping point then it is a little easier to just "stop" but that doesn't make it any easier to switch into doing something else.

I saw a post on a different site that cited "need to complete one project before moving on". It's not part of the official DSM criteria, and I'm not even sure how relevant it might be to somebody with "pure" ADD-free AS, but I can say it absolutely does not apply to me. My life is littered with unfinished projects. Some are more finished than others, and some by definition can only evolve forever one obsessive aspie-lurch at a time, but there are VERY few projects I've truly "finished" conclusively and intentionally.

For me, project completion is almost like an asymptote -- the closer I supposedly get to "completion", the harder and harder it becomes to keep moving. I either keep thinking of new things that have to be done before I can declare it to be "finished" (most of which I *really* don't want to do), or eventually sweep the remaining debris into a box (to forget about) and call it a day.

When working on software, fixing major bugs and implementing huge new features is easy. I've done breathtaking architectural overhauls over a long 3-day weekend that would make most people's heads spin. I wrote a bunch of classes to do fully-asynchronous http requests with automatic retries and graceful error-handling during a 4-day programming marathon that literally WAS an outright Aspie obsession. I still haven't fixed the typo in the titlebar of the error message's dialog. The harder I try to force myself to fix small bugs, the more demoralized and demotivated I become, and the easier it is for any setback to derail me for days or weeks.

In home improvement terms... tearing down the walls was easy. I did it in a single Saturday. Hanging the new drywall (after rewiring and running new conduit for cat5, fiber, and whatever else strikes my fancy) was satisfying. It took a weekend. Taping and sanding took 4 months. 4 long, horrid, awful months. I still have a piece of new baseboard that I forgot to paint, and has been that way now for almost 2 years. Sigh.

Having lots of unfinished projects is actually very typical for people with ADHD.

This is true if "moving on" means being able to mentally let go of the project. I actually lose a lot of time every day just being overwhelmed by all the unfinished projects I see around me. It's as if I open a circuit in my brain for each project I start, and if I don't finish the project, the circuit just stays open and it keeps going round and round on that particular topic. I can do other things but in the back of my mind I'm ALWAYS thinking about the painting that needs to be done, the trim that needs to be replaced around my closet door, etc.

I just love it that there's an thread just like this on an ADHD forum too.

Sorry, random. You may continue.