Simon Baron-Cohen can stuff right off

[Zoomer]

Thanks, viggy and Bats, that's interesting.

What a dick, LM.

[Dutchie]

But the days of sitting down to work at 7am, blindly and meaninglessly refreshing the internet til 12pm then crying in frustration at my own shitness. They're hard work. Thank fuck for amphetamine.

Joe has this quite regularly! Especially when we had to do home-schooling. It was like he would just switch off entirely and nothing I could do would lead me to his 'on' switch. Also: Sky's description of hyperfocus was incredibly eye-opening. I'd never heard of hyperfocus before this thread but I find I'm doing a lot of this

[Smunder Woman]

I have been invited to a face to face appointment with my GP this morning to explain adult ADHD. The main reason is that the private practice sent the diagnostic report to them, and asked them to take over prescribing. The GP initially said no, but it seems as though someone is on my side so fingers crossed. It was very strange having them chase me for an appointment :))

[Bat Macdui]

Ooh, best of luck. The local NHS ADHD service basically did a bit of a reassessment on me to take over prescribing but it was relatively painless and just involved saying the same things again. They did want a deeper dive into childhood than the private assessment but we ended up agreeing that childhood was a long time ago and few anecdotes about climbing things without concept of safety and sense and being thrown out of class for disruption would do. :))

My GP was already prescribing at this point but it means my annual assessment will be on the NHS now, not private, which is about a grand back to the bird food fund. :))

[Loralei]

Wowzers! That is a big deal. I'm glad you are both finding people supportive. The idea of a doctor's surgery asking a patient (albeit an expert one) to come and educate them has blown my mind slightly, in a good way.

I probably shouldn't be surprised as my experience has been very positive. I had a follow up call with the autism team a couple of weeks ago, and they were really helpful regarding what to ask for when B moves to secondary school (all of it :)) ). The primary are being especially useless about transition - or perhaps it's the secondary? - but I have a call with the (secondary) SENCO tomorrow to get the ball rolling.

[Smunder Woman]

They don't know how much I know about this (yet) :)) I'm hoping it's the nice female GP who I've had lovely chats about mental health with, and who finally agreed to refer me for autism assessment. There's something like a 7 year wait here for an NHS ADHD assessment so I don't think that will be on the cards

Lora, I love hearing how positive your experience has been. It's very refreshing after being immersed in how awful these things are :)) Best of luck with the SENCO.

I shall report back after my appointment. I'm doing no work this morning because my ADHD Waiting Mode has been activated :ella:

[Mountain Goat]

I feel like a bit of a Munchhausens twat for saying this and have said not a word to a soul in a real life and probably never will, but thanks to this and to Bat's Twitter feed I have gradually, over the past few years, come round to thinking I might be a bit ADHD. Mainly due to constantly thinking OH THAT'S SO TRUE about something on Twitter and then realising (over and over and over) that's it's something via Bats that's to do with ADHD. So I read some stuff. And the main lightbulb was when I read a list of coping mechanisms for ADHD and it was basically my Rules For Living (that I didn't think were anything different to anyone else) that I have followed for a good 30 years. And I kept - and keep - seeing things that I absolutely don't recognise or identify with, and then over the following days I'll have a dream that reminds me of something and realise that - oh actually this did used to be something I did, and have airbrushed. Such as when I used to (as a child) deal with over stimulation by silently taking off and shinning up a tree. :)) (it was ideal, if a suitable tree was handy, as NO-ONE ever follows you up there to continue talking at you, unlike if you lock yourself in the loo or hide in the airing cupboard).

Anyway. It's no drama and is obviously mild but is just really interesting to have a different perspective on the things that I have always done, I'm not sure it changes anything. I am dying inside a bit now because it feels so special snowflake for someone not dramatically anything and argh, but ...I think it's true.

[Luce]

Oh, Goat, I was literally just popping in to say the same thing but about myself! :)) Bats and Smund, I think we might all owe you a pint. Sometimes you read something and mull it over for months and try and ignore it but it just kind of...clicks. I also thought it meant just being a bit hyper

Since my nephew has been officially diagnosed, I've self diagnosed both myself, my sister and my youngest :)) Nephew is a proper boy shaped box-ticker and his assessment was easy.

But this thread make me look at my sister's childhood in a completely different light. Severe lack of focus, incredibly literal, super stressed by noise. Could not hack education at all despite being really smart. We used to think she was lazy and a bit weird We're both blaming getting it from our Dad.

Mine is very different, if true; super successful in school, to a fault, room always tidy, never caused a scene. And EXTREMELY anxious as a result. I was such a Type A kid that my whole life was about preventing problems from cropping up rather than dealing with them in a calm way. I had methods when I needed to tidy, methods for how to make myself study etc. I thought everyone was doing this. I'm extremely sensitive about rejection, suffer almost constantly from decision paralysis, get hyper-focused on a thing for months, struggle to communicate with people. The aha moment for me was someone describing how, in conversations, you appear very rude because you're interrupting with your own experiences. I thought we all did this, I thought that was how you show someone you listen. I'm addicted to dopamine fixes and feel like, my whole life, I've been searching for dopamine. Every time I think I've found The Thing that will mean I'm never bored, I'm high as a kite. Insomnia. Really sociable but find it exhausting and need to recharge for days. I'm since finding out this isn't totally normal. My youngest is almost exactly the same as me. Both me and my sister talk about all this a lot and its really helped us re-frame things.

Anyway. Hyper-focused on talking about myself there. To avoid working. For a long time I've just assumed I'm a lazy narcissist with anxiety. And maybe I'm completely off the mark here and I am a lazy narcissist. But maybe not.

Now every time I read about a new thing I do a sense-check with T because it feels like such a normal 'thing' to do. T, the most stable person I know has to keep gently pointing out that, no, he's never done things like or thought things like that. It's a very strange feeling.

Oh, I'm quite convinced there is a link between ADHD and forum users too, for obvious reasons :))

[Mountain Goat]

:lol:

I can identify with a lot of that too (not the tidy part). :)) I was happy at school, star pupil, friends with everyone, how can it be? But my actual time at school was about being star pupil in the things I cared about and being class clown with zero impulse control in the others. Locking the German teacher in the stationery cupboard on impulse was probably my peak.

[Luce]

I was really happy at school too. Apart from all the times when I assumed everyone hated me. Still do, actually, it turns out :)) Again, I thought EVERYONE just spent their lives assuming everyone in their lives dislikes them And school work was super easy, as long as I followed all my self-imposed rules for getting things done. Everything would be totally fine as long as I planned things.

I organise and plan for a living, now. I'm really good at it but also sometimes HATE it :lol:

Also, apologies - I am VERY aware that this is just my own self-diagnosis and I might be walking into dangerous territory of appropriating something that has nothing to do with me etc.

[Mountain Goat]

While I hyperfocus for a living now, and I'm really good at it. :)) The madder and more complex the project, the better I do, while everything else in my life spirals away and I have to spend a week making up for all the stuff I failed to do while working too intensely.

[smalex]

Locking the German teacher in the stationery cupboard on impulse was probably my peak.

Oh my god Goat :lol:

[Luce]

Since having Theo, I really buy into the concept of how magical someone with a different brain can be. He absolutely blows me away with the things he can see and think and do. I honestly think he could do something hugely important when he grows up. I hate the things we have in common like the sensitivity and the insomnia and the dissociation etc but still. Again, might just be his brand of coolness rather than a diagnosable brain difference.

[Smunder Woman]

Honestly, I firmly believe that if you are seriously asking yourself if you've got ADHD or similar, you probably do :)) I have had similar conversations with The Swede because we are very very alike :lol:

GP went fine. They're not taking over my prescribing, but he was quite keen that I should not be paying for something the NHS can provide, so has given me some ideas on getting it through. He's also agreed to support Joe's referral for ADHD diagnosis, which matters way more than me having to pay for prescriptions really :))

[Loralei]

Spending a lot of time thinking everyone secretly hates you is pretty universal though, as is relating to someone by sharing your experiences. It's really tricky as someone can have a lot of neurodivergent traits while still being neurotypical :raises hand: I would say that J and I have as many typically autistic traits as B or P (social awkwardness, tics, special interests) but in neither of us does it add up to being autistic.

Which isn't to say there isn't something worth investigating. As Smunder says, if you have all those lightbulbs going off it probably means something.

That sounds...ok...Smunder? Shame they won't take over prescribing but I'm glad they are working out how you shouldn't have to pay.

[Luce]

I would say I probably fall into that category, Lora. ADHD adjacent :)) I think I’ve probably inherited the same genes as my sister but not had the same results. Her childhood was a lot harder than mine, despite having similar lives and the same parents. I’m also conscious of the fact that having researched so much with nephew that I’m looking for things I wouldn’t normally see.

That’s good about the GP, Smund. My sister has just got funding for D which is brilliant as it pays for a lot of things she has found helpful. Not to mention repairs for things he’s broken but also for the mountains of crafts she gets through to keep him occupied.

[Mountain Goat]

Locking the German teacher in the stationery cupboard on impulse was probably my peak.

Oh my god Goat :lol:

She was a TERRIBLE teacher (I still have the campaign literature I wrote in order to oust her ) and endangered all our O levels, and eventually got sacked (not thanks to my campaign, nor my shutting her in the cupboard), although these are not valid reasons for imprisonment. :lol:

That is good news Smunder.

I am kind of the opposite in that I've spent the past three years (on and off) dismissing the idea, until my subconscious butts in with a reminder of some odd thing I used to do, or some sort of trauma that I've convinced myself I never had as I never had any problems with any of this anyway did I HA, but oh, there was that one time. And that one. But I'm definitely not, come on. Oh but that other time. Generally, I think my subconscious is the sensible adult part of my brain and I trust that it knows a lot better than my daily brain, which is an idiot, on most things, so when they're fighting like this I can usually be confident about which one's more likely to be correct. Now wondering which one is typing this. :)) Anyway it hardly matters or changes anything. Whatever my brain is, I'm used to it and we muddle along pretty well together by now and the era of struggling with its little ways is long gone.

[Smunder Woman]

My general thoughts on all this is that most of it isn't really a thing, because so many people have traits. But I think we probably need a lot more diagnoses so it's obvious how widespread these differences are, and then it becomes less of a big thing.

I don't think anyone who recognises any traits necessarily needs to do any massive soul searching and be diagnosed BUT, when it's something that keeps recurring, it's clearly resonated. I think I would have been more evangelical about this a year or so ago, but I'm bored of it now and it's less of a novelty knowing how to name my weirdness :))

[Kenickie]

This is very interesting as I've just finished reading Furious Thing by Jenny Downham which is about a teen with ADHD and I recognised so much of my teenhood in her (not the terrible dad, I should hasten to add) especially in the lack of impulse control (I've never thought of it in that way) and rage. I just thought I was a bit of a horrible person. I don't know that it adds up to anything significant nowadays that's worth investigating but it chimed such a chord and made me feel a lot more normal.

[Smunder Woman]

I also have a theory that very few academics are neurotypical

More seriously though, I did find even recognising reasons for things was helpful. I'm not sure I'd have pursued the diagnosis if my life wasn't consistently such a shit show :)) There's a lot to be said for that bit validation and reassurance from recognising traits, I think.

On a semi related note, I'm edging away from the neurodiversity element of my research. Not entirely, but I cannot keep it as the main focus, for my own sanity. Everything is essentially the same, but I've reframed a lot so I am researching the role of communities and networks in transformational learning, rather than writing it with primary focus on autism. I think this fits with my actual aim better too, as it was always to highlight the fact that autistic people are still people, and not putting the word autism in lights seems more appropriate.