Is there a name for this?

[MarineMollusc]

I feel like I don’t 100% fit the criteria for ADHD or autism but I definitely feel different. My main issues are:

Obsessive interests and hyperfixations
Problems with change/transitions during the day
Time blindness and getting “stuck”
Lack of sense of self and copying/mimicking others
Black and white thinking (but also endless shades-of-grey ruminations on unanswerable questions!)
Executive dysfunction - things like planning, prioritising and task sequencing - with things like money my life is quite a mess, cooking is a problem
Used to experience sensory overload as a child a lot, less so now but still some
Quite limited capacity for social activities and needing to recharge a lot
Interrupting people
Impulsivity
Prefer my own company and don’t share interests with most people
Off kilter sense only humour
Suppress a lot of stimming which I do alone
Episodes of burnout and becoming non functioning
Anxiety
Do have certain ways of doing things and can get a bit upset if my husband doesn’t adhere to them say
Just don’t feel like I fit in with other people, other women especially, at all - feel like an alien

These things definitely cause me issues and I feel my life is far less functional than my peers. I haven’t progressed in a career. I have good relationships with my husband and immediate family but very few of my own friends which I find quite embarrassing and sad when I think about it.

BUT there are things that don’t really seem to fit with any diagnosis:
I can be quite skilled at some types social interaction and I enjoy them
I have excessive and even problematic levels empathy for all things including people, plants, objects, organisations you name it!
I think I am good at reading between the lines of people’s speech - I do know what they mean and don’t say (this applies more to speech than action though, I’m great at textual analysis!) (although on the other hand I can think of examples where I didn’t manage to interpret intentions like an unexpected marriage proposal(!) which I refused)
I would say I am a good diplomat and with generally quite excellent chameleon skills
I’m fine with eye contact unless I’m having to do a lot of the talking in which case I might find it a bit difficult as my brain is working with too much at once

So for example here is how that comes together. I used to organise a weekly group around an activity I’m obsessed with. I hosted it and made funny jokes and managed the (sometimes challenging, it even involved the police once) group dynamic with a level of skill I think most people lack. However, everyone made friends with each other but I ended up without any :( I was also always late and got days wrong too but I managed to use my humour and charm to cover up the dysfunction and gain forgiveness for this.

I do also find people quite interesting in how they think and behave. I have a degree in psychology and I also have a degree in theatre so perhaps my interest level in these things could be seen as particularly high!

But I do feel like an alien. I feel like I need a name for my experience because I just feel like I don’t fit and I want to belong. But is there one? Maybe it’s just a personality thing?

Highly developed social skills from actively learning them (rather than intuiting them) is common in autistic women, who are more likely to learn social skills by mimicking, copying, scripting, observing the behaviours of others. Being a good diplomat and able to read between the lines doesn't necessarily mean you aren't neurodiverse - it could also mean that you have put a huge amount of effort into learning these skills in the same way that you might learn a foreign language. What happens if things don't go "to script" - are you still able to navigate it?

I have excessive and even problematic levels empathy for all things including people, plants, objects, organisations you name it!
Yes, about that. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1362361318793408 (I only love this article for its name.) It's a myth that autistic people don't feel empathy - many of us feel problem levels of empathy. There's a good article on different types of empathy here the-art-of-autism.com/autistic-people-empathy-whats-the-real-story/
If you search for autistic women and hyper-empathy there is a lot of research on it.

So I wouldn't exclude the possibility of ASD or ADHD based on what you have described.

You sound autistic to me.

I'm autistic and have adhd and relate to most/all of what you've said.
I get really interested in things I find tricky so I've got a counselling diploma, a modern languages degree and a sociology MSc.

@RocketAndAFuckingMelon that is a fantastic article name! The other article makes sense. I would say I do have cognitive empathy but I could also experience the confusion about what road to meet on that it describes - but I might not assume that I knew what the other person meant, I might be more likely to obsessively check my understanding of what they meant.

If things don’t go to script am I still able to navigate it? Well I suppose the answer would be sometimes and with varying success. I might be able to divert to an alternative script. Or I might be able to use a specific tactic like making a joke. Today for example I literally had a written script in front of me for an interview type situation and in practice the flow of things did not conform to it - as it so often doesn’t, I remembered once it had started - so I a) made a joke about something to deflect from the awkward pause I created and b) left someone else who is very adept at these things to cover for my failure to rapidly adapt to the changing plan, as I knew she would. She is really very good at these things and I’ve borrowed a lot of her communication tactics over the years!

@SuperLoudPoppingAction Me too! I get very interested in things I find tricky. I yearn to understand the things I don’t understand and master the things that don’t come naturally. With the possible exception of ball sports! Sociology has also been a personal obsession of mine though I haven’t studied it formally.

@PeacefulPrune that helps at least in the sense that it help me feel I’m not wrong to ask questions about this!

You don't sound that different to me and I'm diagnosed with ASD and ADHD. Not everyone with a condition has all the possible symptoms of that condition. For example, I have an English degree, so textual analysis is obviously something not all autistic people find unreasonably difficult Some of your "evidence against" is actually "evidence for" — for example, some of us are quite good at some kinds of detailed textual analysis, because we've trained ourselves to intellectually parse the hidden meanings within language rather than intuiting it. If the way your brain does empathy is different to the norm, that's also evidence for, rather than against. You talk about eye contact as being something you do which requires a certain portion of your attention. And some autistic girls develop special interests in areas which allow them to analyse and understand other humans, their behaviour, and the way they present themselves to the world, for example reading fiction, or watching a particular soap. Studying psychology and theatre would kind of fit that.

Of course you might also not meet the threshold for diagnosis, but that doesn't mean that some of the techniques autistic people have developed to deal with some of these differences won't also work for you.

Thanks @ClumpingBambooIsALie that makes sense. I’m not sure at this point exactly how much I have trained myself in certain things but I know I definitely have to an extent. But now they are very ingrained so it feels confusing to unpick. I don’t really know what would even be the “real me”. The only time I feel I might be close to that is when I’m uncontrollably laughing at an internal joke no one else would get. People always ask me where I’m really from too and the answer is here but…I don’t side like it it’s true. I feel l have been many characters. I can think of some of the key people I have made conscious decisions to borrow things from over my life time.

You certainly sound autistic to me

Have you read into Dyspraxia?

I've just been diagnosed with ASD (I'm 30) and this sounds very much like me as I read it.

You sound autistic to me too :) At least, absolutely nothing you've written is a disqualifier, since so many traits have been roundly misunderstood to begin with and basically everything you've written could describe me. I'm diagnosed ADHD and almost certainly autistic. (The two butt heads constantly - I need novelty and people and experiences, yet burn out with more than a tiny smattering of any one of them and have to go back into hibernation where everything is controlled again and not speak for ages.)

As a PP noted, low empathy in autism is a myth, and the issue is often just that how we show empathy differs. For me, the issue is that I feel things very strongly, meaning I can become overwhelmed and basically shut down from being unable to process all the feelings flying around - to an outsider, this would look like me becoming aloof and impatient, which of course reads as a lack of empathy rather than, erm, too much! Similarly, I'm a great diplomat from a distance, because I can see every nuance to everything and everyone's perspective to a greater degree than most (we often get stuck in analysis paralysis because of it), but my emotional control is crappo so I'll get upset and embarrass myself if it's something that involves me directly. Which means I have subpar diplomacy if I have any emotional stake in the situation.

it seems to be really common for late-diagnosed autistic women to be fascinated by psychology too, and get a huge kick out of people watching and decoding why people respond to things as they do (and then basically mimic it, meaning our autism gets missed). Our tendency to see patterns means a lot of us actually become better at understanding other people's behaviour than they are themselves - but that doesn't mean it was intuitive to us. Early childhood memories might give you some insight to that. E.g, I really liked talking to intelligent, interesting adults as a tiny kid, but had zero interest in other kids my own age, who seemed like a different species (and not a very interesting one!) - but how you relate to your expected peer group is the marker of social reciprocity.

Your eye contact sounds like mine, by the way. Lots of us are ok looking people in the eye (although I find breaking eye contract unintuitive and artificial, so end up staring if left to my own devices), but I can't simultaneously look someone in the eye and process what I'm trying to say, meaning my eyes will dance all over the place when I'm talking and I suspect I look like I'm totally oblivious to the other person and off in my own world if I get on a roll with something.

A couple of resources for you - one great thread on twitter, and a link to a youtube channel you might find handy (she studied psychology too, by the way!). The linked video talks specifically about masking, which might help you get your head about it a bit more, but there are masses of useful videos on there that might give you a few "ding ding!" moments. She breaks it all down into "real life" autism rather than the "clinical" autism that is all most of us are aware of, but which totally misrepresents what it is like to actually be an autistic person and unhelpfully makes a lot of us think, "that can't possibly be me".

twitter.com/mykola/status/1112883937272107008

@MarineMollusc You had me at not really knowing who you are! That’s exactly how I feel, having masked “chameleon like” in order to fit in, for so long. I was diagnosed via the nhs as a very mature lady!

I have ADHD and relate to all of the things in your list that are ADHD related (but not the ones that are more autism related).

So I would say high likelihood of ADHD + autism based on a one minute armchair diagnosis.

If things don’t go to script am I still able to navigate it? Well I suppose the answer would be sometimes and with varying success. I might be able to divert to an alternative script. Or I might be able to use a specific tactic like making a joke. Today for example I literally had a written script in front of me for an interview type situation and in practice the flow of things did not conform to it - as it so often doesn’t, I remembered once it had started - so I a) made a joke about something to deflect from the awkward pause I created and b) left someone else who is very adept at these things to cover for my failure to rapidly adapt to the changing plan,

As someone without autism I would say this points to an autism diagnosis to me.

This isn't how an NT person thinks about these kind of situations. It just kind of...flows. There aren't any scripts or tactics with how to deal with an unexpected change. The only exceptions to that might be, for example, extremely important conversations - like the kind that happen once a year or less.

An interview might be one of those situations...and this was an 'interview type situation'. Would you have a similar approach to less important conversations?

Also I would say NT people don't think about eye contact at all (as I'm NT in that area since I only have ADHD).

I don't think about eye contact, it's not something that I spend time thinking about ever.

So if you find yourself thinking about eye contact a fair amount - are you doing enough? Are you doing too much? Are you being too intense or looking away too much?

I'd say that's a pointer towards autistic traits.

The only time most NT people actively think about eye contact would be in certain situations like being on a date / around someone you like or that feeling you get when you walk past the police and try to 'look normal' even though you are 'normal' and so then worry that you've ended up looking 'not normal' by trying too hard to look 'normal'.

I'm wondering if the police thing is a good way of explaining it to NT people? Is that what it's like but all the time?

Is that what it's like but all the time?

Yes. Perfect explanation.

Ugh. That sucks...having to think about that on top of normal life and that's only one trait.

No wonder ND people are burnt out so often!

It really does!

In compensation, when the computer insurrection happens and we're all back to using mechanical typewriters, I can be my village's human spellcheck. #autismismysuperpower <heavy sarcasm intended>

This…

”I really liked talking to intelligent, interesting adults as a tiny kid, but had zero interest in other kids my own age, who seemed like a different species (and not a very interesting one!) - but how you relate to your expected peer group is the marker of social reciprocity”

I had zero natural interaction with peers, as a kid. Then I got a scholarship to ballet school which “saved” me. We did academic work obviously but the big focus was vocational. I was in my element. When I’d come home from boarding school I had no friends and was a fish out of water.

And absolutely this… classic ads for me

“But now they are very ingrained so it feels confusing to unpick. I don’t really know what would even be the “real me”“