I was hospitalized for a seizure recently and the nurse ended up going and grabbing me a little silicon bubble fidget thing because I just couldn’t stop messing with shit.
Edit: exact phrasing was “let me go grab you something to play with”
Similar situation but I was at a work event sitting next to a colleague I didn’t know very well. We work in IT so our boss had placed a bunch of fidget toys at each table. After maybe 10 minutes of us being there, she grabbed one and said “here, you need this”.
It did actually help me that day and now I just carry one with me or else just stim with my jewelry, which I hadn’t noticed is something I do until that day.
Some person I just met at a party asked me if I have Asperger’s. He explained he has Asperger’s himself and just wondered.
I thought it was a rude remark of him. Especially since we barely know each other. I certainly don’t have Asperger’s.
This was some years ago.
Either way, I just got diagnosed.
Yeah at a party here as well. I was told I had ASD, but was ‘high functioning’, and able to mask it. Sounds about right.
Does my doctor who stopped in the middle of an appointment, looked at me, and said “you know you’re neurodivergent, right?” count?
A friend recently commented “Of course you have ADHD! Just look at your apartment! Spots that are important for your hobbies are designed with surgical precision and everything else slowly sinks into chaos.”
He might be right.
My kids got screening forms for ADHD and I just kept saying “but this is normal” after almost all of the questions, I thought they were control questions not screening questions, and my kids were like “no, Mom, you have ADD”. I still tend to think it’s pretty typical though, more like our brains just weren’t evolved for modern life.
I am trying to get diagnosed as an adult and recently reached out to my parents for symptoms from when I was younger as those are necessary for adult diagnosis. My mom had pretty much the same reaction as you when I went over the symptoms. Lol ADHD is genetic.
I am learning an instrument as an adult and my instructor commented “You’re so good at recognizing patterns.” That comment hit way harder than it had any right to.
Reminds me of one of mine. In the middle of my lesson, my instrument teacher paused to ask me some questions: can you tie your shoes without looking? Do you have trouble unlocking your door in the dark? Etc. Turns out I have little to no muscle memory lol.
Holy crap is that a thing? I have to pay attention to stuff like that - I will be brushing my teeth and it seems awkward and I’ll realize I’m using my non dominant hand.
Though my feet do point reflexively when I jump or kick, and arm positions for dance I can feel still, large motor skills my body remembers.
ETA I’ve been thinking about this and don’t think the right/left thing is the same, because I can touch type without looking on a real keyboard. That is muscle memory for sure.
If you don’t mind me asking is there more context to this or was it literally in the middle of an annual physical or something
I think you replied to the wrong comment. Most music instructors don’t do those, haha
Sounds like you’re going to the wrong music instructors.
You’re right but this is funny so I’m gonna leave it here.
Nope, just finished some scales and arpeggios and was moving on to some warm up pieces.
My boss has got very high EQ, but tends to have fraught, tense relationships with our female coworkers (I described it to my husband as working with a mother and daughter who don’t get along- they say a bunch of things that seem nice and also seem to hurt each other a lot and I don’t know why).
She sometimes says passive aggressive things to me, but it always takes me too long to parse passive aggression in person, so I respond completely earnestly. This seems to confuse her without being rude, and she’s just vexed by me.
Actually, passive aggression in general makes me feel very neurodivergent.
Honestly this seems like the best way to deal with someone being passive aggressive. If they have a problem make them actually say something.
I fully agree. It’s not always intentional, because sometimes I do pick up on it (probably the non native language + work makes it just impossible to get in the moment from her), but I almost always pretend not to, and it generally defuses the situation pretty well.
I’m also a crier, so the alternative is not great
No I changed my mind next time you should start balling. Like the ugly kind of crying that makes it hard for others to look.
I dated a girl who worked with elderly neurodivergent people. She was at my place and i heard the dryer was done with it’s cycle. I said i’ll have to go and make my bed, because you know how it is, if you don’t do it right away, you’re not doing it for two weeks.
She laughed and said: but you know why “we” have to do that, right? I was like: what? No. And she said, because we have adhd.
I just laughed and thought: YOU have adhd, i do… Oooooooooooh
A friend posted a link to something and mentioned me saying “you’re hyper literal brain will like this” and when I got done being annoyed about the typo I realized for the first time I am excessively literal.
Another time at lunch with a friend she mentioned in an offhand way that I have anxiety and that was when I first realized what anxiety is and that it’s not normal to feel the way I do all the time.
and when I got done being annoyed about the typo I realized
I love this excessively literal description :)
It was 13 years ago but I still can’t forget the typo.
I know that. I don’t get annoyed by typos in internet comments, but when a news organization has a typo I hate that whole article. even if it’s just, a wrongly placed comma, or missing a capital letter.
It took me revisiting this comment to see the type and uh… AAAAA
I didn’t get converted to a permanent position after a whole year at my job. The only negative feedback (among otherwise great remarks) I had was six months in:
- Be more organized and send updates more often.
- Speak without tangents or sounding scattered.
- Improve prediction of how long tasks will take and completion dates when considering other priorities.
Does anyone want to guess my diagnosis?* Lol
The maddening thing is that I didn’t get any follow-up after those comments until five months later, when I got the surprising news that they would not be continuing with me. If I had thought my subsequent med change and work strategies were not, in fact, improving my performance, I would have pursued accommodations.
* It’s ADHD.
My psychiatrist does all the time
I got a weird one. Multiple friends, including one who is diagnosed with autism and one who is diagnosed with ADHD and family members have asked me if I thought I had some form of neurodivergence. The autist friend thinks probably autism, the ADHD friend thinks maybe ADHD. The others, who don’t know much, mostly asked about autism or aspergers. But I don’t see ASD as fitting at all.
I’m quite introverted and don’t do well in big social situations, sure. I also don’t deal well with conflict even if I’m not directly involved. But I have no issue with faces, or eye contact, or body language, or reading emotions, or sarcasm.
I’m quite analytical in my thinking, but not overly so, I would say. Sometimes I get episodes of hyper-focus where I stay on a task for unnaturally long, not managing to take a break to eat and such. That one is a bit suspicious, but it’s also a pretty rare occurrence.
To be fair, there are symptoms shared between many ND diagnoses, and you can have aspects of one or more without meeting the criteria for diagnosis. At the end of the day, I think it’s about helping to find resources to help your individual situation
Had 2 psychologists refuse to work with me, after they got to know me
For extra context, various therapeutic methods do not work as well on neurodivergent people, especially people on the spectrum. CBT, one of the main go-to (adjunctive at least) therapies for example, is nearly useless for most folks on the spectrum.
So it may be that their therapists discovered they were not equipped to help op with their issue(s).
Do you work in that field?
No, but I have a close relation who is both on the spectrum and in therapy who was told this. In the distant past I did have a background in medical research, so I went to PubMed and looked it up for them to confirm.
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The reverse, actually.
I’ve since found help at an institute that specializes in my particularities, I’m happy to share.
I’m learning to be kind to myself, too. Slowly.
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It’s not a specific person and not directly confronting me but the thing that really helped open my eyes was all the people out there that have at most 1 or 2 hobbies. Like, I talk about all the things I want to learn and do all the time but everyone else always has this one particular thing. How do people only have 2 things they do ever, for years. I didn’t get it. I’m in the process of approaching testing with my counselors now.
I was working on a personal project when a friend visited. I went through a quick series of successes and failures with my project and openly emoted at each, afterward he said to me “I’ve never seen anyone go through so many emotions in such a short amount of time.”
Probably in their mind, but not that I’d care to pay attention; so not obvious to me.
Human beings are diverse. defining a human as “divergent” is meaningless and so fucking dumb. Psychologists seem to be really bad at statistical analysis; and/or data collection that is representative of the species. But they’re maybe good at conning mugs to pay them to denigrate people who don’t fit their world view, or confound their predictions.
It’s not meaningless. Some peoples brain work in a completely different way than the majority, and why should we ignore that? It’s very important knowledge to figure out things.
It’s not like it’s a tiny scale of small differences between people. It’s more like 99% being quite similar and then 1% being completely different. That is very significant. Numbers are made up to make a point.
It’s almost like saying let’s not study sociopaths because they are just like everyone else. They aren’t.
“Completely” different, interesting way to put it. Diagnosis must be trivial.
