Thought I’d get the ball rolling as this is empty!
I’m neamhsplach, I’m undiagnosed but I’m being screened for possible ADHD and/or dyspraxia because of some issues I’ve had with work.
I love Taskmaster and never miss an episode of The Blindboy Podcast. Looking forward to chatting to you all!
Hi! I’m 40m with:
- Major depressive disorder, recurrent, in partial remission
- Post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic
- Autistic disorder
The first one I’ve known about and fought, to varying degrees of success, throughout most of adulthood. Sometimes I’m fine; content, motivated, unmedicated, truckin’ along living my best life, and other times I need to ask for help. Luckily my depressive disorder manifests as a lack of executive function and disinterest in everything, so I haven’t had any struggles with self harm or ideation.
The last few years of therapy - I thought primarily only for depression - have made me realize just how much PTSD I had from growing up. I had an awful home life as a child with two parents in way over their head, way too young, and without any good healthy coping strategies of their own. I learned to survive by:
- be afraid of everything all the time
- never ask for help
- never indicate blame
- never suggest any failings in anyone other than self
- make everyone laugh as much as possible; if they think you’re funny, they are less likely to hurt you when they’re angry
- be aware of every movement and emotion people are feeling at all times, no matter what
- be afraid. don’t forget that part.
- oh, and it’s vitally important you never, ever let people know you’re afraid, because that makes them feel bad and they’ll react by justifying your fear
So when I found out I was a high functioning autistic - it finally made everything I was feeling and trying to do throughout my entire life snap into place. I must have known that at some level I had to work 10x harder than someone without my challenges to read people. It was critical that I read people correctly at all times, and any failure could end in disaster. I was exhausted all the time around other people, because I had to be at the absolute top of my game, all of the time, or else. I use italics there because the reality is that was only true for a very small subset of two people, but what you know cerebrally and what you know in your lizard brain are two very different things.
I’ll be untangling this mess for the foreseeable future, but I’m finally starting to extend myself grace and dabbling in some exposure therapy; simple things like “I’m sorry, this isn’t what I ordered” are now possible, albeit hard.
Good on you for taking care of yourself :) I’m on my own ASD - PTSD journey too and it has been incredibly hard at times but I’m still here fighting it out :) Every small bit of progress counts.
I’m a retired science teacher and union president. I’ve had a history of depression. I like science fiction.
Hon the unions ✊️ nice to meet you!!
Hi neamhsplach,
I’ve been here 5 days or so, but been busy… Been away for a few days travelling, currently in Coimbra, Portugal. Anyway, I haven’t been doing much union stuff since I retired, but have been boosting union content on Mastodon. I’ve also been writing up stuff to help explain the fediverse and the reddit stuff.
https://babylon4.com/fediverse and https://babylon4.com/rexxit
Since Mastodon isn’t about grabbing your eyeballs and not letting go, when you get to the end of your feed, try closing the browser and doing something else. Take a walk, read a book, talk to your sweetie. It’s much better for your mental health.
I love this part!
You sound like a fun person to talk to :)
Thanks mananevergone,
Anything in particular you want to chat about? Right now I’m traveling to Coimbra Portugal. It’s very pretty, but also with very steep hills, which my aging feet and knees don’t like.
I like science fiction too! What’s your favourite at the moment?
Hi SanityFM,
I’ve been here 5 days or so, but been busy… Been away for a few days travelling, currently in Coimbra, Portugal. Anyway, I just finished reading Dune for the nth time, because I want it fresh in my mind when the second half of the movie comes out. I’ve also been writing up stuff to help explain the fediverse and the reddit stuff.
https://babylon4.com/fediverse and https://babylon4.com/rexxit
I’m 31M with Dyspraxia/ASD. Diagnosed since I was very young, grew up with quite severe developmental delays and hypersensitivity etc. Nowadays I mostly get along fine.
I’ll certainly follow this community but I must admit, perhaps controversially, that I’m not fond of the term “neurodiverse”. I’m not just diverse, I have a disability. And if it were possible to cure it, I would.
I don’t know if it’s controversial but I struggle with the disability label too, as I masked a lot growing up. I get swayed from one side to the other as time passes.
For me there are parts of me that I don’t want to be neurotypical like how NT small talk, social hierarchy, judgment, group politics etc works. I also like how I view and understand things.
There are parts like executive function deficits, hypersensitivity, difficulty understanding emotions and so on that I would like to get better at. So it’s a mixed bag.
31, bipolar
I’m Demondice, but I’m nowhere near as demonic as the name might suggest. 40 years old, and just going through the diagnostic process now as I’m very likely autistic. It’s a bit of an anxiety-inducing time as I worry that I’m just imagining the symptoms and I’m wasting everyone’s time. However, pretty much everyone I speak to tells me that I’m one of the most obviously autistic people they’ve ever met and find the concept of me doubting it hilarious.
I felt that way for a long time too but I struggled with the opposite with people not believing I could possibly be autistic. It was a relief to finally get a diagnosis :) I don’t think you’ll be wasting anyone’s time if you ask for an assessment. In fact you’ll be saying yourself, your partner, friends and family, a lot of pain and time.
Parent of a kindergarten aged kid on the spectrum here. Undiagnosed myself, but there are lots of parallels between what my kid is going through and what I experienced as a child, so I have a strong suspicion that I’m likely neurodivergent as well. I intend to mostly follow the community for the sake of my kid to ensure that as a parent I’m doing the best possible to allow them to thrive.
Even you being aware is a huge step forward :) My father was in the same position but he wasn’t aware of ASD and leaned on me pretty hard to mask. He is great person but I’ve struggled with being myself as an adult.
16, almost 17, professionally diagnosed as Autistic!!!
Hi! My neurodivergence is ADHD. The same goes for my wife and two kids. We participated in a little study at one point looking at children of ADHD parents.
Thanks for making this post! I (30NB) was diagnosed with cPSTD a little over a year ago and just this week my therapist is referring me for ASD screening. I find Discord utterly overwhelming and I like the reddit/lemmy kind of forum stuff over twitter/mastodon.
I’m looking forward to lemmy making progress! I’m a SWE and I wish I could contribute but I’m focusing on EMDR and general trauma processing right now 😕
Hi! Good luck with your ASD screening, I hope you get some progress with it.
When you say you prefer Lemmy over Discord… is it Discord in particular you have issues with? Or chat programmes in general? I generally have no problems with chat systems, but I find Discord overwhelming too.
Hi, thanks! I’ve seen occasional Slack channels that are full of animated reactions and gifs, but Discord is so, so much worse.
I love forums because it’s hard to miss something. It’s easy to ignore subforums or mark them as read, and there’s no realtime pressure. With Discord, I feel more likely to miss than catch anything. I’ve had notification badges that after 30 minutes I still couldn’t figure out how to make go away. There’s a mode to disable animations, but you can’t see them again without disabling the mode (why not a button for each gif??). I tried joining a queer Discord but everyone’s pronouns are a different font in a different color in a different size, all the time, with no way for me to simply the UI on my end. It really seems to me like it’s only popular because of mobile apps.
Diagnosed ADHD (combined type), getting close to finding the right medication.
Undiagnosed autism, I’ve suspected for many years and am trying to get a bit more involved in the community to better understand myself.
Hello, everyone! I’m 26 years old, living in New England and was diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder at a young age. I strongly suspect inattentive ADHD as well. I really wonder about getting re-diagnosed to see whether I’d be placed in the autism bucket or stuck with PPD-NOS. In any case, I consider myself autistic. I enjoy reading, history, pretentious video games, TTRPGs (especially Mythras) and BattleTech.
I’m Chris.
This sounds bizarre but I think I was diagnosed when I was a child (I remember lots of tests and conversations with professionals before being removed from mainstream education) but put it down to being a bit messed up about my toxic parents overwrought divorce. I had parents that would hide things so I wasn’t told the truth about a lot of things.
I’ve always known my brain works differently to others and on occasions its made me a target.
It was during the pandemic that it all came to a head. I felt an immense relief not working in the office, where it felt like a sensory overload of noises, smells and touch. I started reading online and finally took an online RAAD-R test but got some friends to also take it.
One scored 17, the other 65 but he said he had issues with the questions whereas mine was 189 and I was making an effort to temper my answers!
So I’m currently self diagnosed but its pretty obvious and when I get my full medical records, I’ll find out what happened when I was a kid.
I’ll jump in as well. Parent to a 10 yo boy that has ADHD. He’s a great kid and while he struggles with reading, we always receive praise from his teachers for his attitude and treatment of others. We’re struggling with medication right now as his previous medication, methylphenidate delay-release, wasn’t working as well as it did in the past. We switched to Vivance and while it has worked well for him during the day, it seems to have really increased his mood swings in the evening. He’ll get periods of…I dunno… depression? Saying things you don’t want to hear your child say (he’s worthless, not good at anything, no friends, etc, when its not true - he has friends and he’s great at drawing and baseball). Anyway, that’s my intro. Hoping this community takes off.
That sounds really though. I’ve struggled with finding the correct medication and often letting go of medication that worked but made essential things worse. Have you sought second option from someone else? That might be worthwhile given your son’s struggle.
methylphenidate delay-release
I was on the same for a couple of years and had the same problem. I’m on Elvanse now, which is better, I think, but I need to ask the dr if I can up my dose. Easier said than done, though…
Hi y’all, I’m socialgaff, or Liam. I’m pretty likely AuDHD, diagnosed and medicated for the ADHD side of things (if anyone has questions about what Stratera is like, I’m not a doctor but I’ve been on it for about a decade now). Self-diagnosed dyslexic and dyscalculic. Glad to have another community to talk brain stuff with!!
Hi Liam! Brains are weird but I’m glad ours brought us both here!
Hi friends! Im 33 with ADHD, diagnosed at age 27 and it explained so much of my childhood. I go in and out if hobbies but currently am into cross stitch, Guild Wars 2, and cozy video games.
