u/bluestar7r

I started seeing a new therapist about 5 weeks ago. Around the third session, she disclosed that she felt positive I am gifted and encouraged me to get tested. In our following sessions, she doesn’t say “maybe” - she says it as if it’s fact which I don’t appreciate because she could be wrong but she insists that I am “squandering my gift” by trying to deny it.

I knew this therapist is AuDHD, which is one of the reasons I scheduled with her; I have suspected autism for a while, and I wanted to see whether or not she would clock that upon meeting me. Sure enough, 45 minutes into our first session, she asked if I’d ever considered I might be autistic. Finally! Every medical provider I’ve seen has chalked my mental health issues up to trauma and whatnot and did not seem to think I was autistic. I am very good at masking, but I get burnt out and have meltdowns in private.

Yesterday, I asked my therapist if she was gifted, and she confirmed. What are the pros and cons of getting tested? I honestly think my anxiety would be too high to test, as I am already very insecure about my intellect. I basically think I’m dumb, even when I’m told the opposite by almost everyone I’ve met in my adult life. I was intellectually, physically, and emotionally neglected growing up, on top of some physical and sexual abuse.
I’ve been following this sub because there’s a history of giftedness in my family, and I was intrigued.

Idk. Is there really any benefit to being tested? My therapist seems to think so. I’m wondering what others think. I don’t have people in my life that I feel I can confide in regarding this matter, as I was deemed the “dumb child” growing up, even though I went from teaching myself how to factor quadratics as an adult (yes that’s how bad the neglect was) to pursuing electrical engineering in a matter of months.

I had a family emergency over the weekend where I had to leave town abruptly (a family member on hospice). This situation has been a huge stressor this year. I totally forgot about two appointments I had on Monday one with primary care and one with the specialist because of all of the chaos. I returned Monday afternoon after the appointments had already occurred and I saw a letter in my chart saying that after three no-shows, Bozeman health has the right to dismiss the patient. I’ve never missed an appointment before and I do believe I am an accountable person, so this has really been stressing me out because I am somebody that does require more visits with my primary care doctor than the norm and I am also working with the sleep clinic at Bozeman health along with a few other specialists. Does anybody know if Bozeman health takes emergencies like mine under consideration? I am feeling too anxious to schedule more appointments, fearing I may have to leave town abruptly again. I’ve been unable to sleep for the past couple of nights due to the stress. this may sound sad, but my healthcare team is my primary source of any kind of support at the moment. I have faced a lot of loss this year, and I am preparing to face the biggest loss I have experienced thus far in my life, and I am somewhat afraid of what I might do if I lose the health support component.

So, I was previously on 60 mg of Dexedrine IR but now I’m on Adderall XR. My psychiatrist prescribed x2 20 mg capsules and x1 10 mg capsule per day maximum and gave me permission to try different combinations/timing/doses to see what felt best.

20 mg didn’t feel like it helped at all. 30 mg was a little better, but still not great. Yesterday, I tried all 50 mg and an hour later I felt massive brain fog relief. I was elated because I deal with perpetual brain fog, and it felt so good. Then, I noticed I started to become very agitated and even though the brain fog lifted, I felt cognitively challenged working through schoolwork and kept forgetting shit. I almost felt scatterbrained. I had a very rough crash around 3pm-5pm.

Fast forward to today, and I have the worst brain fog. I went down to 40 mg today.

Is this a sign 50 mg is too much?

Fast

I was diagnosed in October 2023. I tried Concerta, but I don’t seem to respond well to the methylphenidate class of medications.

I’ve had some ups and downs with medication recently. My psychiatrist prescribed 20 mg of Adderall twice per day, but I wondered if my dose was too high and that was causing the paradoxical side effects I was experiencing with stimulant medication. However, lowering the dose only seemed to exacerbate those symptoms.

If I take 5 mg IR, I experience a terrible crash about an hour after taking it. I get significant brain fog and fuzziness and usually just wait it out in bed. When I increased the dose to 10 mg, I experienced pretty much the same thing, except the crash occurred after about two hours. When I went up to the prescribed 20 mg dose, I felt much better mentally, but I still started crashing after around two hours.
I don’t experience any obvious physical side effects, so I don’t think it’s anxiety. Other than dry mouth, I don’t notice any physical symptoms.

Has anyone else experienced this? I don’t know what’s going on. My psychiatrist told me to try 20 mg three times a day to see if we can maximize the benefits while minimizing the crashes, but I’m not sure that will work given that I start crashing after only two hours.