This chart was especially helpful for me - for sorting my traits into categories, because I don’t fit well into any single one. It explains how I was able to fly under the radar for over 30 years: by compensating each with the other two, at the cost of permanent stress and anxiety.

The extremely short version of my story is: Too good grades to be considered ADHD. Too much executive dysfunction to fulfill the expectations placed upon me for scoring high on intelligence tests. Too impulsive and thrillseeking to be considered Autistic.

  • narnach@feddit.nlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    It’s an interesting puzzle to see which things/symptoms you have vs which you have learned to cope/mask for, or which cancel each other outwardly but exist as internal contradictions.

    Most of the pure gifted and overlapping segments resonate, but the more isolated ones for ADHD and autism resonate much less. Makes sense, giftedness is a given for me, and allows me to compensate for a lot of other things (even if it costs me more energy than regular folks). It’s why I’m only now really considering the other aspects at age 37.

    My (computer) analogy is that it feels like my brain CPU has many cores and is overclocked, so much more powerful than a regular single core CPU regular folks have, but social interactions are something other folks have the equivalent of a dedicated graphics card for while I must simulate them on that overclocked CPU. It sort of approximates getting the job done, but it takes a lot of energy for a worse result.