I had my ADHD assessment this week and it was a very intense experience.
2 hours of dense, deficit based questioning about my struggles related to ADHD traits made me understand myself, my life and my neurodivergence much better, but it was also very painful. Especially the question "In which ways would your life have been different without all these struggles related to ADHD?" hit hard.
I would like to work on the topic in a different way, in the same neurodiversity affirming way I came to an understanding of me being autistic 3 years ago. Both autism and ADHD are disabling and come with it's own challenges, but there are also strengths related to being AuDHD.
My abilities for problem solving are a good example for it. The autism makes me analyse a situation in detail and the ADHD makes me doing it very fast with an even stronger hyperfocus and helps shifting perspectives. I think without the ADHD this process would be more precise, I would make less mistakes, but sometimes speed and shifting perspectives can be more important in certain situations.
After being subjected to this deficit based perspective it currently feels like being autistic is my operating system while the ADHD is more of an additional software with a lot of bugs, but I am not sure if this is the right way of looking at it.
Maybe being AuDHD is an operating system of it's own, a unique neurotype that comes with very specific strengths and weaknesses?
How do you perceive being AuDHD?
#AuDHD #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #neurodivergent @autistics