Autism, ADHD, and Giftedness: The Inner Battle (Dopamine Diaries Part 2)

In today's episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on my everyday experience being AuDHD (Autistic and ADHD). I share how trapped I feel in this body, how overwhelmed I am by my own mind, and how masking & giftedness play a role in it all.

Discovery resources for you:
🎙️ Free audiotraining: https://www.livlabelfree.com/free-audiotraining
✨ Existential Autistic Membership: https://www.livlabelfree.com/membership
💗 1-1 Coaching: https://www.livlabelfree.com/coaching
📚 Neurodiversity-Affirming Books: https://livlabelfreebooks.com

Mentioned episodes:
Second Puberty & Feeling Trapped in a Body https://youtu.be/xKygJ1lExJg
Are Eating Disorders a Form of Autistic Masking? https://youtu.be/6uvYhhN3Bzk
Existential Nausea (go on a walk with me!) https://youtu.be/cSbmVDWHHQs

Episode transcript:
Hello my friend and welcome back to the next installment of the Dopamine Diaries, AKA we’re continuing our conversation on ADHD! Because if you listened to the previous motherfucker of an episode on the relationship between autism, ADHD, and anorexia, you know that I’m all about being comprehensive. Because I am a DEEP learner. When I learn, I LEARN. I want to know everything there is to know about the topic I’m interested in. Which is of course why school was so hard for me, why I was quietly dying inside with my perfect grades and constant studying but struggling to keep up with it all because there was never enough time to truly go deep into the material. 

And while I had SO many questions, a huge part of masking for me was hiding my curiosity. I was SO afraid of not being liked and of people thinking I was not smart enough, that I didn’t ask questions and just tried to figure everything out on my own. Of course, this can make you feel very lonely, because you’re constantly trying to suppress everything that you are. And while I feel like I’m just going off on a tangent here in sharing how I’m a deep & independent learner and how I grew up masking my curious self, I actually do feel this is super relevant to today’s topic. Because in the last episode I was really focused on the restrictive eating disorder manifestation of ADHD traits, but today I want to pull back the curtain on my personal life and talk about my everyday experience of being an AuDHDer, which is of course the combination of Autism and ADHD. I’ve got SOOO much to say so this is enough of an intro, time to dive in!

Okay so where shall we start? Let’s just start at the beginning, I mean that just makes sense, right?

But you don’t look like you have ADHD!

Well for any of you that know my story and perhaps have read my memoir Rainbow Girl, you know I was the “good girl.” I was the star athlete in all my sports, I got good grades, I was one of the favorite students of all my teachers, and well, from the outside, my life was quite perfect! My middle sister Mae, by contrast, was the troublemaker. She was always losing her homework, going to the principal’s office for not listening to the teacher, and she would make us late for everything. The apparent contrast between me and her could not have been greater.

This is why, when I started exploring ADHD for myself after being in the neurodivergent community for a few years after my autism discovery in 2020, my whole family said I *couldn’t* have ADHD. Because whereas my sister would start school assignments past midnight on the due date, I would start 3 weeks in advance to give myself a “buffer” because you know, just in case anything goes wrong. I never misplaced things and I got straight A’s, so how could I claim I had difficulty focusing? Well, I hope you realize I’m being sarcastic because these are precisely the myths that often cause ADHD people to go undiagnosed, especially when autism is also present. Because the thing is that ADHD will present differently in an AuDHD person.

For me personally – and it’s actually funny saying this out loud because we often talk about masking in the context of hiding our autism – but I believe that my autism masks my ADHD. And the most prominent way in which this shows up in my life is that my autism has routines that make up for my ADHD challenges. To give a concrete example, there’s the stereotype of ADHD people always losing their keys. Well for me, it’s not that I’ve never lost my keys or always lose my keys or in the grand scheme of things can never find anything, it’s that my autism has routines to always put everything back in the same place. Or to get even more specific, my autism is really good at finding patterns. So if I notice I’ve lost my keys three times in a week, my pattern-seeking-brain will go “Oh no, this has happened three times already! We better create a routine around the keys to prevent further mishaps.”

This is why autistic traits are inherently adaptive; because in this example, it’s not that we’re being “rigid” about where we’re placing something, it’s that it probably makes us anxious to do something different every time because then you naturally increase the chances that something could go wrong AGAIN! Speaking of anxiety, nothing makes me more anxious than time pressure. When I was growing up, my family was always rushing, and we were always late to everything (and just to be fair to Mae, this wasn’t only because of her. My mother and father are also ADHD). I despised this so much because I was always ready to go way in advance, and in retrospect, even this seemingly insignificant aspect of our family dynamics could have been part of my feeling like I had no control, which is of course where the eating disorder so conveniently came in. I couldn’t control what people thought of me and I couldn’t control whether we’d be on time, but I could control what I ate and how I moved. Going back to not being able to handle time pressure, this is again where my autism is super adaptive. Because I don’t want to rush, my autism ensures I always have a buffer to be way on time, or as we say it in Dutch, “ruim op tijd” which literally translates to “roomily on time” (yes, I totally just made up the word “roomily” for the sake of a precise translation!).

From this perspective, I have often wondered whether someone who presents as autistic and ADHD can even be labeled with the simple amalgamation “AuDHD” – because our experience goes way beyond “pure autism” plus “pure ADHD.” I don’t solely resonate with either label, meaning I feel like it’s almost a unique condition, or rather, a unique way of being. And maybe it’s just me, but don’t you feel that merging two existing conditions – or again, two ways of being – misses the point entirely? Because the point is to represent a unique human being? Anyways, here I go again with my semantic rabbit holes and this is why I always come back to liv label free. Because the truth is, no matter what we call anything, words can never even begin to encompass the complexity of the energy that has coalesced to create the unique human that is you.

And as I’ve said before on this podcast and in my books, I’m not against labels. It’s all about the intention behind the label. For example, the label “anorexic” or “disordered” is not helpful because you’re essentially intertwining someone’s identity with something that is not a core part of their being. However, when I use the terms autism, ADHD, and AuDHD to explain my experience so I can connect with you, well now the labels are serving a really important function, right? That being said, this is actually a perfect transition into the next thing I want to discuss which is what I like to call the autism vs ADHD battle.

The Autism vs ADHD Battle

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt an internal tug-of-war. My autism craves safety, predictability, routines, and stillness. But my ADHD constantly wants the complete opposite. My ADHD is constantly chasing movement. It wants novelty, which, for me, looks like NEVER being satisfied with what I’m doing. When I’m walking, I want to be writing. When I’m writing, I want to be biking. When I’m biking, I want to be eating. But when I’m eating, I want to be writing! For me, this is where the existential claustrophobia comes in – which, on previous podcasts, I defined as the acute awareness of being a boundless creative that’s confined by the limitations of physical reality.

Because I want to do so much and I want to do it all at once, realizing that I can’t actually do multiple things at once AND that this body I inhabit has limits to how much it can do at all causes me to feel really claustrophobic in this human body costume. I literally cannot handle being bored because in moments of stillness, my soul feels like it’s pressing against my physical skin which is obviously so painful. But I think the most painful realization for me is the innate sense of my soul being pure energy – so the concept, dream, vision, soul experience, whatever we’re gonna call it – of being able to create and move and flow all at the same time does not match the physical laws. I know that’s kind of abstract, so what I mean by this, is that in my dreams (or rather, in my soul sense, if you know what I mean, like the part of me that is not bound by physical constraints) that part of me is most creative and writes best when I am running at the speed of light. My most creative ideas come when I’m working out, which has so often made me want to have the ability to write and be exercising at the same time. But of course, this is not physically possible! (And by the way, no, a walking pad or stationary bike is not the same. I literally feel like I need to be sprinting or doing something intense as fuck AND be creating my art at my most intense capacity.) So, I think that is precisely why I always want to be doing something different; it’s because in my soul, I do possess the ability to be doing everything at once. Or if we’re getting real spiritual, I am everything at once!

And wow I honestly don’t know how I went from talking about ADHD to my soul being everything, but I guess it makes a lot of sense because this is the essence of the internal battle. The essence is that my essence is infinite, but the human body and nervous system I rely on to exist in this physical world create these boundaries that cannot be pushed. And perhaps that’s what we actually mean when we’re talking about ADHD and autism and giftedness. Maybe what we’re actually talking about is exceptional, remarkable, boundless souls… but because these souls exist within the boundaries of humanness, we present as “disabled.” Well, there’s a ton of food for thought!

Autism, ADHD, and Twice-Exceptionality

Now, speaking of giftedness, I learned the term twice exceptional – or 2e for short – a few years ago, which is defined as the intersection between giftedness and neurodivergence. In other words, a 2e individual is intellectually gifted but struggles immensely in the physical human world due to being neurodivergent. So if you imagine a Venn Diagram, where one circle is neurodivergent and the other circle is gifted, twice exceptionality is that converging zone in the middle. While this may seem totally irrelevant to our discussion on autism and ADHD, there are a few interesting connections I want to draw which I promise will make all of this make sense.

First off, masking. I’ve talked a lot about masking on this podcast, specifically how my autism went undiagnosed for practically my entire life because I was a pro masker. And for anyone who hasn’t read my book Rainbow Girl or hasn’t listened to episodes in which I share the beautiful story of how I discovered I’m autistic (which was through my very first 1-1 coaching client, another reason why I’m SO glad I didn’t wait until I was “qualified” to start helping people), I was actually the one who advocated for the autism diagnosis before it was even discussed with a professional. But that rabbit hole aside, like I said at the top of this episode, I was the “good girl.” I was the epitome of perfectionist, bound to do great things – which, in most people’s eyes, and if I’m honest, my own at the time, meant following the expected path to “success.” Ya know, doing good in school, doing good in more school, then getting into a good school to do good in even more school, and then of course, to get the fancy job so you can show everyone how much status you have.

Well, it’s no secret that my eating disorder really threw those plans for a loop, which, as I know many of you resonate with, caused me to feel behind in life. I was literally 21 by the time I finished high school, and I didn’t even go to the graduation ceremony because the whole thing just felt so pointless to me. And while, at the time, others labeled my decision to start my own business as “reckless,” and “impulsive” (which, now looking back, I do think was thanks to my ADHD in many regards, and my taking risks is definitely the ADHD part of me, I think more so than the autistic part of me), that was me learning in the most powerful school of all: the school of life!

I’ve also done an entire deep dive episode on how my eating disorder was a mask in so many ways, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you check out my episode very creatively titled “Are Eating Disorders a Form of Autistic Masking?” in which I explain 3 types of masking and how this presents across the entire adaptive eating spectrum – so not just anorexia, but also binge eating, bulimia, orthorexia, and ARFID.

But what I haven’t ever really talked about, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard this talked about, is how autism can mask ADHD and vice versa. I discovered my autism years before I even considered ADHD because I didn’t present in the typical ADHD way my younger sister did. And that’s because, as I mentioned earlier, my autism compensates for my ADHD challenges in many ways. But that’s again where I think the label AuDHD is quite accurate, is that it really helps us understand – or at least, conceptualize – how in AuDHD individuals, autism is constantly trying to override the ADHD and ADHD is constantly trying to override the autism.

Now, it goes without saying that this creates an absolutely exhausting inner world. When one part of your soul is constantly wanting one thing but the other part of your soul is constantly wanting another, it can literally feel like you’re being ripped apart from the inside. Yeah, I know that’s graphic, but that is the closest way to describe what it feels like. And that’s why I say that for me, every day is suffering. I don’t mean that in a pathological, depressing, suicidal way, but more in a, I don’t know, just matter-of-fact kinda way. And I share it with you now because I’m guessing you feel the same way! And for me personally, reading and hearing other’s stories about feeling this way as well made me feel SO much less alone, and in fact, has illustrated to me that the best artists, the greatest creatives, these are the ones who do tend to feel like they are being ripped apart from the inside!

Existential Suffering of Being an Artist

If you’re a loyal listener of this podcast, I’m sure you’ve heard me mention Franz Kafka before because I swear he’s like my soul brother. If you haven’t read his diaries, oh gosh please do. They’re hella long and a lot of the books are just random experiences he’s had that obviously I don’t always resonate with,  and honestly there are moments when I’m quite uninterested when he’s writing about sitting in the train with his friends or whatever, but because it’s just his raw, stream-of-consciousness writing, there are so many nuggets of resonance in there, a lot of them being about that constant inner battle and just how painful it is to be in a body. He has a quote that goes “I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with this body.” And while there are SO many quotes I’d want to share with you right now, I am, once again, physically limited by time and energy and all those constraints, so I want to share another one that is quite relevant to our current discussion: “The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it.” I mean, obviously, everyone has their own way of interpreting such quotes, but I believe it illustrates the impossible choice many gifted neurodivergent people face, which is to either express your vastness and risk being overwhelmed and judged by it, or to suppress it and feel like you’re suffocating your own soul. And what is the eating disorder if not the ultimate suffocation?

Now, back to what I was saying about ADHD, and that is that, I think for me, I will always appear more autistic than ADHD just because of course, these labels have connotations and it’s a spectrum of presentations, but part of the reason why I really started chasing the ADHD diagnosis earlier this year is so that I could try medication. And the reason I wanted to try medication is because I hit kind of a breaking point in my distractibility, because there was this slow evolution of my ADHD becoming way more prominent. 

But, if you ask me WHY my ADHD is suddenly coming out more, I don’t have one straight answer for you because it’s something I’ve been reflecting on a lot myself. But what I learned in my research is that ADHD symptoms can worsen due to stress, lack of sleep, inconsistent routines, overstimulation, hormonal changes, and well, basically anything in existence. So yeah, that’s not really helpful! Which means I kind of had to draw my own conclusions which ties together all these root causes and that is being in fight-or-flight mode. Because yes, I experience so much stress, I struggle with sleep, I went through a freaking second puberty last year, so hello hormonal changes (and I did do an episode on this a while ago which I will link in the shownotes), not to mention, my routines have been all over the place due to all the moving, evolving existential awareness, and again, everything I’ve been talking about on this podcast!

So of course, there are an infinite number of directions I could now go in, but what’s coming up for me right now is the existential claustrophobia because intuitively, this just seems to parallel my increasing ADHD traits.

How ADHD Contributes to Existential Claustrophobia

So In the past two years especially, I have gotten SO many ideas, I’ve been receiving SO many downloads from the Universe if you will, many more than physical reality will ever allow me to manifest. Well because there’s so many ideas, not to mention the infinite number of ways I can use each of these ideas, my soul just feels like it’s bursting at the seams of this human body costume. And because, naturally, as humans, especially as autistic and ADHD humans, we’re constantly weighing the pros and cons of going in different directions because hello existentialism and wanting to make the “right” decision, we become paralyzed by our own mind, known as analysis paralysis.

When your thoughts are running at the speed of light but the physical body can’t match up, execution of anything can feel too overwhelming because you know that no matter what you do, you’ll be “behind” all the other thoughts… and then comes in that existential question of “what’s the point?” which of course just makes everything harder! Pair this with having a hypersensitive autistic nervous system that picks up EVERYTHING on the highest volume and well, no wonder we’re all so freaking burnt out! I think it also explains why so many neurodivergent people procrastinate. It’s not that we’re not interested or that we lack motivation, it’s just that we want to do SO much while having this acute awareness that we’ll never be able to do it all anyways, and because we also often think in black and white, it’s like “Well, if I can’t do it all anyways, I won’t do any of it!”

And OHHH this perfectly circles back to twice exceptionality because this lack of execution due to the overwhelm of your own nervous system due to being neurodivergent is exactly why so many gifted individuals struggle to do anything with their gifts. Especially when you experience your giftedness as pressure, which we talk about quite a bit in the Existential Autistic Membership, you just become crushed by the pressure and will do anything to try to escape it. And ohmygosh, add PDA onto that, and well hello eating disorder and fear of growing up and being healthy, because as long as you stay small in every sense of the word, well then you can avoid responsibility, which also means you can avoid doing anything with your gifts!

But now you may be wondering, how does giftedness and twice exceptionality relate to our discussion on ADHD? Well, I did promise this would all make sense, so here goes. It’s no secret that more ADHD people and more autistic people are gifted than neurotypical people are gifted. I almost feel like neurodivergence is the cost of giftedness…like the Universe couldn’t make it too easy for us to be gifted, so it created this world where most people are neurotypical and shallow and are practically sleepwalking through life. And then us neurodivergent aliens were placed on this Earth to literally have the opportunity of a lifetime, which is to express our gifts and create our art and to find and connect with fellow neurodivergent beings…but of course, no journey comes without challenges, so our challenge of this lifetime is turning our MESSes into our MESSages, aka learning how to navigate this messy, scary, and overwhelming world in a way that respects our neurodivergent traits.

That being said, when the Venn Diagram has all those masks going on, from giftedness masking autism to autism masking ADHD to ADHD masking giftedness, well the more neurodivergences you add to this equation, the more masking that can happen and the more an individual will struggle to express their artistic self. Well, THIS is precisely why it is so important that we learn to recognize and accommodate neurodivergent traits, because the world needs our gifts, the world needs us to be operating at our maximum potential. And that’s exactly what I help you do through 1-1 coaching, the Existential Autistic Membership, and all the other content I put out. I am an artist and this is my art. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s often very painful. But it’s also what I know in my heart is what I was put on this planet to do.

That being said though, I believe neurotypical people are afraid of artists. In fact – and full credit to Anna from the Existential Autistic Membership for instilling this insight into me – I think that neurotypical people feel threatened by neurodivergent people. I mean, we all know the system demands conformity. It wants people to follow the rules and to fit into the boxes society has made up. Anyone who doesn’t fit into those boxes threatens the system because their existence challenges the established order. And since the system must protect itself, just like an ego in a way, the system turns the tables by labeling those who don’t conform as “out of order.” Rather than being curious as to how neurodivergent humans bring necessary creativity and innovation, society pathologizes difference to maintain the status quo.

And on that note, in the next installments of this ADHD series, I will be sharing how I experienced this pathologization and misunderstanding to the max with my psychiatrist who thankfully did diagnose me with ADHD, which we’re gonna talk about what that process was like, but we’re also gonna be talking about my experience with ADHD medication as an autistic person. Because my oh my, that has been a wild freaking ride. So, be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you are watching or listening, rate and review the show if you haven’t already, and I’ll talk to you in the next episode. Bye bye for now!