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Diagnosed with ASD and ADHD as an adult

Anomoly

Hi, as the title says, I have recently been diagnosed with both ASD and ADHD at the age of 43. Joined the community to learn more about my diagnosis

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steve51

Hi @Anomoly

Welcome to our website & community.

I have put some info for you below I do hope that it is ok ????

https://community.scope.org.uk/categories/ask-an-asd-advisor

https://community.scope.org.uk/categories/physical-impairments-and-cerebral-palsy?_ga=2.171755808.1484044234.1508527315-329981180.1498300069

Please let me know if I can help you further ?????

Anomoly

Thanks Steve, I appreciate it. Will have a look through the links you have provided

steve51

Hi @Anomoly

Your very welcome it's my pleasure !!!

Please please let me know if there is anything else that I can help/support you with ??????

Sam_Alumni

Hi @Anomoly
Welcome to the community

I dont think the above link from Steve is too relevant as it is for CP but we do have this guest post from our ASD advisor about being diagnosed at 46 by @VioletFenn

Anomoly

Many thanks to both of you. I have been looking through the links you both provided. Violet Fenns story sounds very familiar. However, I am struggling to find much info regards adult ADHD. I am aware that I am one of the "lucky" 4-5% of adults diagnosed with the condition so maybe that is the reason. If either of you can point me in the right direction I would be most appreciative as a lot of the info I find online relates to ADHD in children. Although this is interesting I am really looking for info regards adult ADHD and reasonable adjustments in the workplace as I am struggling in my current role due to the number of distractions in the open plan environment I have found myself in

[Deleted User]

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Anomoly

Hi Danny, that makes a lot of sense. I definitely over react to situations and become anxious and aggressive for seemingly no reason. Thankfully, I have a very understanding wife who is able to talk me through a lot of the issues I face.
However, my working environment is causing me a lot of stress and anxiety at the current time and unfortunately is beginning to impact my home life too. I am due to be prescribed methylphenidate (when my blood pressure reduces) and I am going to be referred for CBT via the ASD/Adhd Service so I am hoping that this will have a positive impact. Fingers crossed anyway.

[Deleted User]

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Pippa_Alumni

Hi @Anomoly, I hope you've found the above suggestions useful.

As @DannyMoore says, employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. You might find Scope's information on reasonable adjustments helpful, if you're considering taking this further with your employer.

TheKLF99

Anomoly

I too have Aspergers and ADHD. I was initially diagnosed at school as being hyperactive which later become ADHD but was lead to believe at school that I'd grow out of it. I knew that wasn't actually the case, then when I got to 24 I was assessed by Professer Digby Tantum for Asperger's and also re-assessed for ADHD at a place in Altrincham.

The Digby Tantum assessment confirmed I have Asperger's and the Altrincham assessment confirmed my ADHD (although what's funny is that during the ADHD assessment I was upstairs in this building called The Priory, and my car was parked outside in the car park (it was a brand new blue Nissan Note), and all throughout the assessment I was concentrating more on the how nice the car looked rather than the assessment - I guess that's ADHD for you!

The problem though with diagnosing adults with ADHD and why you won't find very much about it is because for many years in Britain the NHS used to publish information out that ADHD in adults just doesn't exist and adults "outgrow" it.

However for years in the US they've known this not to be the case so you might find more information on adult ADHD by looking at publications from the US rather than the UK. There are also a number of well known adults with ADHD, possibly one of the best examples to look at is Jim Carrey - yes Ace Ventura is an adult with ADHD.

Although one thing that makes it appear that you outgrow ADHD is the fact that you get better over time of hiding it and controlling it. It doesn't mean that it goes away, it's still there but it's more hidden as you grow older. The hyperactive side of ADHD starts to disappear because you start to realise that well maybe it's not normal to be bouncing off the ceiling and you learn when it is appropriate to kind of let your hair down, and actually having a diagnosis of ADHD can actually help with this, because without being diagnosed with ADHD and Aspergers you might get worried about doing things, like if your at a party your ADHD might be saying cool it's a party let's go, karaoke - check, disco - check.... PARTY!!! where as your asperger's might be saying well you know what, people ridiculed you at school for being silly so maybe you don't want people to make fun of you, it might be a bit silly and childish to party, and so you have to learn when it's ok to just let your hair down and go with it (like at a party or an event), and when it's not time to party - like walking into a posh restaurant and deciding to have a food fight, or decorating the aisles of Asda with silly string

The other thing with having both Asperger's and ADHD generally you can see the difference between people who have both Asperger's and ADHD at an autistic event in comparison to someone with just Aspergers. The people with just Asperger's are usually the ones in the corner, very quiet, they always turn up on time to the events, they get quite scared and sometimes leave early if too many people show up, where as the people with ADHD and Asperger's are the ones that turn up late to the event (I'm always late to events or last minute - at times it's annoying but it's just something I can't control), and they're usually a lot more talkative and interactive than those with Aspergers and usually they'll also stay to the bitter end if it's something entertaining like a party or something.

A few examples of the ADHD taking control with me was a few weeks ago I was at a concert in Liverpool Echo Arena, it was I Love The 90's and one of my favourite rap groups of all time were playing - Salt N Pepa - when I went in they were selling t-shirts at the door with an offer that if you bought a t-shirt you got to dance with Salt N Pepa on stage. Now you'd think someone with Asperger's the shock of actually going on stage with thousands of people watching, etc would be just too much.... but roll out the ADHD - and it was like - a chance to dance with one of my favourite artists of all time - quickly buy a t-shirt and make sure I'm at the front ready to go on when I can go on. I got on stage that night and danced with Salt N Pepa, I even sang along and shared a mic with Pepa and at the end she even give me a big shout out for joining in. Also on Saturday I went to see Team Rickshaw as part of Children in Need arrive in Cannock and cheer them on, before the start they had a DJ from BBC Radio WM on - Daz Hale - doing a bit of a warm up, during the warm up he kept pointing the mic at the audience trying to get them to sing along, pretty much all of them ran away, but I went for it - I was like point a mic at someone with ADHD - I know I'm not the greatest singer but what the heck it's party time, Team Rickshaw are coming to town it's an amazing event, loads of money is being raised for CiN - let's party Cannock!

So being an adult with ADHD it's all about knowing when to go wild and put on a show. However also with ADHD as an adult there is another annoying side to ADHD, and that is the Attention Deficit side. The Hyperactive side you learn to control, but the Attention Deficit (AD) side is very hard to control. With the AD side you tend to find yourself taking on way too much all at once. It can be quite frustrating when you look back at all the different plans you have and everything you've planned seems always half-finished. It's extremely hard to try and complete something and see it all the way through. Every week my mum says to me about how much stuff I'm doing... I do loads but it's never enough there is always something else there that I'd like to try and do, and usually it only gets half finished before something else grabs my attention, and this is a major problem with ADHD.

A number of years ago I was involved in a drama group in Warrington for people with ADHD and Aspergers, and one thing I remember was we were doing a play. One of the lads in the group with ADHD was writing the play. The play itself never got wrote and never got finished, the reason for this is because every single week the play got longer and longer (the length of a Ken Dodd Happiness Show was nothing in comparison to the length of this play!), and all the time the play got new additions to it, depending on what the lad was interested in that week. It was an interesting play if we ever got to the end of it, but that is the problem with ADHD, because the interests change every week it's very hard to stay focused on one particular project and see it through all the way to the end.

One of my other favourite pop groups (you might tell from my username - The KLF) I have a suspicion they might actually also have ADHD and Aspergers - if you read about The KLF's history they too had loads of plans, they had plans to build a pyramid at Loch Ness that never amounted to anything, they were going to K The Millennium (apparently the pyramid was something to do with this plan), they wrote a major album called The White Room and were also going to write an album called The Black Room which was the opposite of The White Room (The White Room was all soft and chilled out, the mainstream releases were all pop style songs, and The Black Room was going to be all grungy and heavy metal style), but again The Black Room never became much. They also have a very big obsession with numbers, especially prime numbers which I suspect is possibly their Asperger's showing through, and a deep obsession with The Illuminatus Trilogy books which is what a lot of their band was based on. They also liked to have a laugh in a hyperactive style - some of their events were quite unusual like when they burnt a million pounds on the isle of jura to make a brick and stamped all the journalists passports with the pyramid blaster symbol, the leaving a dead sheep at the Brit Awards in 1992, the pyramid idea, etc...

johnnight15

Hi Anomoly,

I've been diagnosed with ADHD for 4 years now, I really feel your struggles right now. I've been seeing my specialist eversince. Also, I read alot of blogs about ADHD that I could insights for with my symptoms, would u like to read the blogs too? Hopefully it could help you too.

Thanks

johnnight15

Hi Anomoly,

Here's the Link to the blog I've been reading since last year, Hopefully, you get insights too.
https://www.adhdcentre.co.uk/blog/

Thank you

Anomoly

Hi johnnight. Thanks for sending these through I will check them out. Like you I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject which has been quite insightful. I am currently seeing my specialist and am taking methylphenidate which is very helpful in managing my symptoms.

johnnight15

Anomoly said:

Hi johnnight. Thanks for sending these through I will check them out. Like you I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject which has been quite insightful. I am currently seeing my specialist and am taking methylphenidate which is very helpful in managing my symptoms.

you're welcome Anomoly, its my pleasure to help you

hope

I'm ,53 ADHD could not read it all but someone mentioned I may have one of the other things and yo made me laugh as u went on and on like me and now i look like a liar as me PTSD complex just kicked in at least u made me laugh