I am the parent of a daughter diagnosed at age 14 with the inattentive version of ADHD, who was very successfully prescribed stimulants and strategies to assist her in focusing. She became in fairly short order a highly successful high school and college student. These are by no means the only metric for happiness and success in life: at 14 before her diagnosis she was a sensitive, empathetic, loving and smart young woman. She became a sensitive, empathic, loving and smart young woman who had much greater ability to focus and to implement her own (self directed) study and work discipline. As far as I can tell, cutting off carefully prescribed and calibrated stimulants for her is a bit like taking away spectacles or contact lenses from someone with severe short sight.
At the time of her clinical diagnosis, I self diagnosed - as a then 50ish adult the list of behaviors and peculiarities of an inattentive ADHD person fitted me extremely well - although I had been very successful at school/university and quite successful at work. One thing I attributed this to was the ability to hyperfocus, which was extremely helpful to a young chess player, student and later knowledge worker. I had next to no tolerance for boring tasks, but could make unique inroads into very complex problems, often pulling together two or three seemingly unrelated strands (later, I’d think “wasn’t that obvious?” Well, it wasn’t.”)
Hyperfocus was, for me, my special sauce or superpower. I didn’t want to mess with it at all. Coping strategies, 100%, and explanations to a sympathetic but frequently exasperated spouse. But no medication, thanks.
I put my daughter in the group who had successful medical intervention for a very real but hard to spot condition. I put myself in a group who thought “ah, this actually helps a lot.” It’s possible I might have gained focus and retained the ability to hyperfocus - anyone who reads this and says “hey, I did this!”, it would be great to hear your story.
In my experience the Right have a very small set of models for healthy lives, while the Left are readier to embrace diversity in its many and varied forms. I don’t think one size fits all for autism, ADHD, or companion divergences from the norm. E pluribus, pluribum. (I never studied Latin)
Thank you for writing this Roland. I, too, have a personal interest in this subject.
It will always be impossible to get the level of diagnosis exactly right; the question then becomes in which direction we, as a society, choose to err. My feeling is that we should regard people as individuals and, if anything, try too hard to help them. Whilst there may be people who are diagnosed against their will, or for whom a diagnosis affects them negatively, I feel that the numbers on the other side - of people who do not choose, or are unable to get diagnosed - will always be greater.
Like most people advocating for autistic people, I wish to see societal change, and I would prefer us to err on the side of showing too much empathy and understanding than not enough.
Thank you for this post Roland - we have neuro diverse members of my family and my daughter's have identified that I'm probably ADHD myself. I have spent most of my adult life mitigating some of its aspects but wouldn't trade the ability to hyperfocus and draw together multiple separate threads in interpreting and acting on problems.
As humans we need divergence to solve the issues we need to resolve. My interpretation is that the world maybe needed more people on the autistic spectrum because of the particular skills they bring to the tech dominated world we now live in. Nature has a habit of evolving in response to a changing world - perhaps we are just witnessing another example of natural selection rather than the slapdash interpretation by politically motivated observers like Julia Hartley-Brewer et al.
Thank you, Roland. This helps readers understand you, and I hope the revealing helps you too.
Sometimes I think certain variations run through humans as veins of quartz and other minerals run through bedrock. Only faults or flaws to those requiring purity—as some seem to. Let’s diagnose them as puristic!
Re ‘Effort to fit in’.
Clearly, for some people with ‘AuDHD’, such effort is significant. Masking. Conscious modification of one’s own behaviour. I suspect that it’s the ‘effort’ to ‘accommodate’ people with different styles of being that really irks the Right. ‘Conservatives’ like certainty, dislike deviation and difference, dislike complexity. The ‘effort’ of interacting with someone exhibiting a difference is too much for them. Lazy, impatient, simplistic, intolerant, inflexible, unable to adapt: all characteristics you see time and again in some. “It’s not really a thing”. “It’s fake”. “They’re just doing it for [whatever].” “It’s not complex; it’s simple.” It’s just too much effort. They can’t be arsed. My way or the Highway. A common human variant. Another way of being. Sometimes seems to bring ‘success’ in life. Doesn’t seem to bring contentment.
Re: ‘Makes you interesting’. Ring of truth. In my life I feel I’ve oscillated somewhat between a desire to be interesting and a desire to be invisible. There is obviously widespread compulsion to be interesting. See how the Internet has allowed huge numbers of humans to seek interestingness. Spondylodactyly made me a better croquet player! Quirks became ‘superpowers’. Billions of people crying out to be seen and heard. It’s Bedlam. Mostly, I seek the quiet backwater nowadays, and I’m not unusual in that.
Re: ‘Human condition’. Don’t we keep coming back to this? It’s almost as if all human lives turn out to be extended tutorials on (a) how to live (snag: there’s only one performance and you’re in it) (b) how you’re not the only person struggling with personhood but every single other person you encounter has exactly the same sort of thing, in some flavour or other, going on inside them! Maybe it’s taken me six or seven decades to grasp this. Great writers and artists, I reckon, glimpse the marvellous and ineluctable problem of the human condition earlier in life, and do us the favour of alerting us, even trying to help. Still ringing in my ears (above the tinnitus: ah! we all have our cross to bear!) are my daughters words as she embarked on Adulthood: “Is that all there is? You work and work and then you die?”
I am the parent of a daughter diagnosed at age 14 with the inattentive version of ADHD, who was very successfully prescribed stimulants and strategies to assist her in focusing. She became in fairly short order a highly successful high school and college student. These are by no means the only metric for happiness and success in life: at 14 before her diagnosis she was a sensitive, empathetic, loving and smart young woman. She became a sensitive, empathic, loving and smart young woman who had much greater ability to focus and to implement her own (self directed) study and work discipline. As far as I can tell, cutting off carefully prescribed and calibrated stimulants for her is a bit like taking away spectacles or contact lenses from someone with severe short sight.
At the time of her clinical diagnosis, I self diagnosed - as a then 50ish adult the list of behaviors and peculiarities of an inattentive ADHD person fitted me extremely well - although I had been very successful at school/university and quite successful at work. One thing I attributed this to was the ability to hyperfocus, which was extremely helpful to a young chess player, student and later knowledge worker. I had next to no tolerance for boring tasks, but could make unique inroads into very complex problems, often pulling together two or three seemingly unrelated strands (later, I’d think “wasn’t that obvious?” Well, it wasn’t.”)
Hyperfocus was, for me, my special sauce or superpower. I didn’t want to mess with it at all. Coping strategies, 100%, and explanations to a sympathetic but frequently exasperated spouse. But no medication, thanks.
I put my daughter in the group who had successful medical intervention for a very real but hard to spot condition. I put myself in a group who thought “ah, this actually helps a lot.” It’s possible I might have gained focus and retained the ability to hyperfocus - anyone who reads this and says “hey, I did this!”, it would be great to hear your story.
In my experience the Right have a very small set of models for healthy lives, while the Left are readier to embrace diversity in its many and varied forms. I don’t think one size fits all for autism, ADHD, or companion divergences from the norm. E pluribus, pluribum. (I never studied Latin)
Thank you for writing this Roland. I, too, have a personal interest in this subject.
It will always be impossible to get the level of diagnosis exactly right; the question then becomes in which direction we, as a society, choose to err. My feeling is that we should regard people as individuals and, if anything, try too hard to help them. Whilst there may be people who are diagnosed against their will, or for whom a diagnosis affects them negatively, I feel that the numbers on the other side - of people who do not choose, or are unable to get diagnosed - will always be greater.
Like most people advocating for autistic people, I wish to see societal change, and I would prefer us to err on the side of showing too much empathy and understanding than not enough.
Thank you for this post Roland - we have neuro diverse members of my family and my daughter's have identified that I'm probably ADHD myself. I have spent most of my adult life mitigating some of its aspects but wouldn't trade the ability to hyperfocus and draw together multiple separate threads in interpreting and acting on problems.
As humans we need divergence to solve the issues we need to resolve. My interpretation is that the world maybe needed more people on the autistic spectrum because of the particular skills they bring to the tech dominated world we now live in. Nature has a habit of evolving in response to a changing world - perhaps we are just witnessing another example of natural selection rather than the slapdash interpretation by politically motivated observers like Julia Hartley-Brewer et al.
Very good piece, Roland.
Thank you, Roland. This helps readers understand you, and I hope the revealing helps you too.
Sometimes I think certain variations run through humans as veins of quartz and other minerals run through bedrock. Only faults or flaws to those requiring purity—as some seem to. Let’s diagnose them as puristic!
Re ‘Effort to fit in’.
Clearly, for some people with ‘AuDHD’, such effort is significant. Masking. Conscious modification of one’s own behaviour. I suspect that it’s the ‘effort’ to ‘accommodate’ people with different styles of being that really irks the Right. ‘Conservatives’ like certainty, dislike deviation and difference, dislike complexity. The ‘effort’ of interacting with someone exhibiting a difference is too much for them. Lazy, impatient, simplistic, intolerant, inflexible, unable to adapt: all characteristics you see time and again in some. “It’s not really a thing”. “It’s fake”. “They’re just doing it for [whatever].” “It’s not complex; it’s simple.” It’s just too much effort. They can’t be arsed. My way or the Highway. A common human variant. Another way of being. Sometimes seems to bring ‘success’ in life. Doesn’t seem to bring contentment.
Re: ‘Makes you interesting’. Ring of truth. In my life I feel I’ve oscillated somewhat between a desire to be interesting and a desire to be invisible. There is obviously widespread compulsion to be interesting. See how the Internet has allowed huge numbers of humans to seek interestingness. Spondylodactyly made me a better croquet player! Quirks became ‘superpowers’. Billions of people crying out to be seen and heard. It’s Bedlam. Mostly, I seek the quiet backwater nowadays, and I’m not unusual in that.
Re: ‘Human condition’. Don’t we keep coming back to this? It’s almost as if all human lives turn out to be extended tutorials on (a) how to live (snag: there’s only one performance and you’re in it) (b) how you’re not the only person struggling with personhood but every single other person you encounter has exactly the same sort of thing, in some flavour or other, going on inside them! Maybe it’s taken me six or seven decades to grasp this. Great writers and artists, I reckon, glimpse the marvellous and ineluctable problem of the human condition earlier in life, and do us the favour of alerting us, even trying to help. Still ringing in my ears (above the tinnitus: ah! we all have our cross to bear!) are my daughters words as she embarked on Adulthood: “Is that all there is? You work and work and then you die?”
Thank you for your writing!
Er yes, *hands up* me over here. 62. Feel identical to this.
I really appreciated this intelligent, sensitive and insightful analysis. Thanks. Chris G.
It is for all these reasons (besides the cost!) that, like you, I've resisted getting my own autism diagnosis.