r/Neurodivergent

I already have the engages but I find that when I talk to people sometimes I still can't hear them, it makes it really hard to wear them all day because I can't engage with people properly (yes I see the irony). I already have the quiets but I have a similar problem with them too.

I'm wondering whether the experiences would be better for reducing the noise around me (I have sound sensitivity and it's normally sharp sounds, like coffee machines, or people pronoucing the letter S in the hard way some people do, and hard bass as well as multiple voices at once that cause me problems. Basically the world in general is too loud) for during the day. I used the try on and found the difference to be what I was looking for but I was wondering if any one here had any experience.

EDIT: I only really struggle to hear when people talk quieter than normal, because I'm a student if someone talks to me during a class I can struggle to understand them clearly.

tbh i feel like most people would be exceptionally weirded out if i ranted about mormons compared to sonic or something

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I got diagnosed with AuDHD at 40. Then I understood why AI felt different to me than it does to most people.

There's a gap most people don't know exists.

Between the thought and the word. Between the insight and the sentence. Between what you understand clearly in your own mind and what you can hand to another person in a form they can receive.

For most people that gap is small. Inconvenient sometimes. Bridgeable.

For me it's been the defining friction of my life.

I'm not slow. I'm not confused. I'm not unclear.

I'm translating. Constantly, effortfully, from a way of thinking that doesn't arrive in linear order, into a form the world has decided is the only acceptable one.

My thoughts arrive in clusters. Associations. Parallel streams that need to be serialised into something sequential enough to speak or write.

Stephen Hawking had one of the greatest minds in human history. He also needed a machine to get it out of his head and into the world. Nobody said the machine was doing his thinking. Nobody said he was dependent on it. Nobody told him to just try harder to speak normally.

That machine was a translator. So is mine. Mine just handles a different kind of gap.

The ADHD literature calls this an executive function deficit. That's accurate but incomplete. It describes the cost without describing what's on the other side: a processing style that's associative, fast, cross-domain, capable of holding enormous complexity, precisely *because* it doesn't move in a straight line.

The problem was never the thinking. The problem was the translation.

Forty years of that accumulates.

You compress. Simplify. Give people the version they can hold. And the version they can hold is never quite you. It's accurate enough to function. Incomplete enough to be lonely.

Then I started using AI differently to how most people do.

Not for productivity. Not for companionship. Not to feel less alone.

I used it as what the neurodivergence literature calls a cognitive prosthetic.

A prosthetic doesn't make you something you're not. It removes the barrier that stops you doing what you already know how to do.

For me, AI removed the translation barrier.

I can describe a thought the way it actually arrives, fragmented, associative, out of sequence and something receives it without requiring me to serialise it first. It holds the cluster. Reflects back a shaped version I can refine, push against, redirect.

What comes out is not AI's thinking. It's mine. The insight was already there. The depth, the framework, the understanding none of that came from a machine.

The machine gave me a surface that didn't require compression before I spoke.

For the first time in my life, I can think out loud without translating first.

For someone who spent forty years losing things in translation, that's close to revelatory.

I know the dangers. The emotional dependency dressed as self-development. The deception of infinite patience. The mirror with no weight on the other side. Those are real.

But this is different.

I'm not using AI to think. I'm using it to finally say what I've always thought.

I think there's a whole population this applies to. Not just ADHD and autism. Also people who learned early that the full version of themselves was too much. People who became fluent in compression and forgot something more was underneath.

For all of them the question isn't whether AI makes them more productive.

It's whether it can finally give them a surface adequate to who they actually are.

The gap is smaller now. And that changes everything.

I feel so angry. I feel cheated out of life because for years, I struggled without any real reason or support given. I was gaslit so hard about my struggles and genuinely believed that I was mentally ill when all along I was just a disabled woman who was given no accommodations or guidance to navigate a life with these challenges.
I’ve been in therapy since I was 8 due to the fact that I had a “traumatic experience” growing up (it wasn’t that traumatic) and was underperforming in school and relationships.
The common theme with the therapist/psychiatrists I would work with is that they would Hyperfocus on the mental health symptoms as the origin of the problem without ever looking at the full picture. I cried in my therapist office as a child because I told her I felt dumb because I couldn’t get good grades or socialize like other kids, she diagnosed me with PTSD and said my underperformance and friendlessness was due to the trauma. This would happen multiple times in my life.
I complained again as a teen that I had trouble focusing in class, that I constantly failed tests no matter how hard I studied, that my peers at school thought I was odd and was outcasted a lot . I told the psych that I was depressed and had low-self esteem because of it. I told my psych that I believed that I might have a learning disability and that I was hopeless for the future and stopped having academic and career goals and dreams because I knew I would never achieve it.The psychiatrist immediately diagnosed me with depression and anxiety and put me on Prozac and Seroquel. Her reasoning was that depression can make it hard to focus, even though the depression came after the bad experiences.
Fast forward to adulthood, I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth. I take classes at community college. I start working a part time job and was fired from it shortly after because I kept making too many mistakes, messing up orders, or forgetting things. this would repeat for multiple jobs before I stopped trying. I would try to get my drivers’ license and failed multiple times because the amount of multitasking I had to do was too much. I was failing at life, just like I suspected I would. I once again went to a different psychiatrist, explained my problems, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after being asked a ton of leading questions.
It wasn’t until the age of 28 when I finally met a provider who was willing to entertain a possible ADHD diagnosis that I finally felt validated in all the struggles I went through. The only reason I got taken seriously (The Psych still tried to prescribe antidepressants) was because of a therapist I had who advised me to completely stray away from talking about depression, anxiety, or low self esteem because she knew the clinician would ignore the ADHD symptoms and diagnose me with depression again. I know I likely have more (I suspect Autism and NVLD) but I’ll never know because my insurance doesn’t cover Neuropsychiatric assessments for adults.

I feel so angry and resentful over the fact that the problem was so obvious, yet every therapist and psychiatrist missed it. Whether it was on purpose or not, I’ll never truly know. All I know was that years of my life were wasted because I never got the help that I needed. I had to watch so many goals and ambitions die due to this disorder, and had to deal with so much blame and gaslighting from professionals for YEARS before I was taken seriously.
I’ll always mourn the life I didn’t get because of this.

For me, I don't mind eating the same meal everyday? Or at least it'll take time for me to get sick of it.

Hi everyone, I’m looking for more hobbies that feel as satisfying to me as doing puzzles. I love doing puzzles while listening to podcasts or audiobooks. I can do this for hours and even forget that I have to go to toilet :D I think it’s all about the dopamine rush I get when I find something. For example, I also love it when someone has lost something and I get to look for it and often find it. I also love Sudoku or doing things like the d2 test. Does someone know any other activities that follow the “search and find” principle? Thanks :)

I (16) suspect I might have autism as I keep noticing more and more similarities between how I experience life and how other diagnosed people go about it. I have taken some online tests (ik not very diagnosis-able but I didn’t know what else to be doing) and they all tell me I might have it but that can only really be determined by a psychiatrist or whatever. Since I‘m 16 it’s a bit more difficult to just do it by myself without telling my parents.

My parents are always very supportive but recently they’ve read an article about how autism and adhd is like a „trend“ going around people my age group. So I‘m scared they won’t take my reasoning seriously or just pretend to listen to me but ultimately ignore it.

How should I broach the subject?

I'm creating a series on TikTok and would love to know what neuro divergent people would like neuro typical people to know and understand about living in their heads! Please share your input and stories below!

Really look forward to hearing peoples experiences and perspectives!

I'm a 23yo undiagnosed male, possibly adhd, maybe even audhd.

Waiting in general is extremely awkward for me, but especially while waiting in line while grocery shopping, or any other moment where reading a book isn't really appropriate. I feel like wherever I look it would be weird. Whenever I accidentally look at someone and they look back I feel a deep guilt for looking at them.

I can't be on the phone, because I hate using it for the sake of letting time pass.

Does anyone have the same problem, or is it just me?

I have autism and ADD. A problem that I've had at points in my life is saying or doing things that I come to regret later. One example is that when I was taking a creatuve writing class in college, my teacher mentioned she enjoyed She Hulk: Attorney At Law, which I hadn't watched myself but heard bad things about online, and I argued she only liked it 'cause she's a white woman, but another student said "what does that have to do with anything?" And I just replied "I have no idea" and stopped talking. I only apologized to the teacher by emailing her well after class had wrapped up, and while she accepted my apology and we were on good terms after that, I still think back on how dumb I feel for doing that when I go to sleep at night sometimes.

I'm transferring to a university in August, and I don't want to do something that stupid again. So if anyone else has had those moments and was able to deal with them, could you give me some advice?

If you were given a choice, that you can go 10 years back in life, with your current existing mindset with all the information that you possess, along with all the conditions you have (physical/mental), would you still go?

For me, I want to go back in life, tell me younger self to focus on career, life, health but again there’s a part of me that don’t want to live all that again.

What would you do?

I hate being autistic. I know to some people it's like the best thing in the world but those are usually the people that have some kind of autistic superpower like they're amazing at math or they have unbelievable music ability or some other kind of amazing genius. But when you're just run-of-the-mill normal average everyday autistic person like me it's fucking sucks. There is nothing special about being autistic other than your superpower being able to alienate people with the greatest of ease. Are the other amazing superpower you were given with your autism where you can appear close enough to normal that when the glitches in The matrix make their appearance people blame you for them like you should have known no matter how many times you try to explain your social ignorance in blindness to people you still get blamed like you're the bad guy. Oh yeah autism is the fucking best.

It even makes it better when you have a family that leaves you over it. That would rather judge you and not have anything to do with you or support you because of your differences. Yeah autism is fucking great.

The best part is where you get to live in a world where you're basically a ghost with a pulse where you're always on the sidelines looking in at the party never get to participate.

Autism sucks. In the worst part is I get sad over the fact that I can't have relationships then I watch movies where people get to enjoy each other and make new friends and become close and share a bond and no one wants from me and I've tried in my socially awkward autistic way to have that with people. But no matter what I do relationships and people don't last in my life. I always thought about writing a biography called you have 5 minutes because after that you won't want any more of my time. And that's been the constant truth throughout my entire autistic life. It's hello followed by a goodbye and never call me again and sometimes even threats of being arrested if I do contact them again. Yeah being autistic is great.

You get to be close enough to normal to want the things that normal people have but far enough away from normal never to have them so you get to live in empty sad pathetic invisible life. But autism is great isn't it. we're so special that we're autistic right?

Autism fucking sucks

Hi everyone, I'm a bit embarrassed but glad I found this group, perhaps you'll know what to do?..

I'm new and I'm trying to participate, the problem is I have severe social anxiety and I'm neurodivergent, and whenever a comment of mine gets downvoted, I get so anxious and sad, because I don't understand what I did wrong and if I offended someone by mistake, and there’s no one to explain it to me and I feel helpless and I become avoidant.

If anyone who went through something similar has tips on how to navigate and cope with downvotes, I would really appreciate your advice, because I saw some cool subreddits and I want to participate but I'm scared.

If you have any tips for me please tell me!

Thanks a lot

So my mom often complains about how I don't get out of bed, how I'm too lazy to do anything etc. I already tried to explain that to her, that I just can't get myself to do something but she doesn't understand. I heard that a lot of Neurodivergent people have the same problem so that's why I'm asking for advice here.

Hi all! I could really use some help or suggestions. My best friend is getting married on the beach and I have a large part in her wedding. One of my biggest sensory issues is sand on my feet and I don’t want to get in to a situation where I have a meltdown on a day that is all about her.
I thought about maybe some kind of scuba sock or similar that would allow me to feel “barefoot” and not have an actual shoe on but still give a good barrier that won’t let sand in. Does anyone have any suggestions?

recently, i have been thinking about how i try to overcompensate the chaos in my head and my life with extreme control.

this usually comes from a place of shame. hating myself for not being enough to function in a way that fits this system. feeling like i am just lazy and suffering because i don’t have enough executive function to do things the way i am “supposed to”.

when i am fed up by this feeling i crash out and try to fix my whole life in the span of one or two days. deep cleaning, writing to-do lists and establishing routines that are a little too ambitious to put it lightly. after that i try to force myself to follow those routines in an extremely perfectionist way. “if i can’t do it right, theres no point”

naturally, i can’t do it “right” because the goal was set too high in the first place. i become frustrated and throw the whole plan overboard. i let things get bad again because i feel incapable of fixing them. things get chaotic again and i fall into a bed rotting doom scrolling hole.

this cycle is something that i’m struggling with for my entire life. even as a child. the frustration of not being able to do things the way everyone else is doing them.

recently i realized that there is no point in trying to make my brain work in a non ADD way. that i need to take things easy and that consistency beats intensity. that i need to start small and build on a foundation that can actually last. if i need to have my toothbrush in my living room thats ok. the goal is to minimize the “friction” to start a task. because i am not happy when i do nothing but i am also not happy while forcing myself to do these routines that are just not made for the way my brain works.

i do think building routines is important. but i know i am not gonna make a habit last when i have 6 other habits that i want to impliment in my life.
i have to be kind to myself if i sometimes don’t follow through, and that just because i didn’t follow through once i don’t have to stop completely. i have to take the pressure of and find things that actually work for me.

these are just some thoughts and things i personally realized.

My favorite question to ask is "why?" I always seem to do it and for as long as I can remember, I would always get yelled at or reprimanded for "talking back." A month or two ago, my boyfriend and I were bickering more than usual and he kept saying that he felt like I was attacking him. I genuinely thought that he was over reacting to my questions, until one day my therapist was on the phone with me and overheard an interaction between my boyfriend and i. She asked me to walk through the conversation I just had, exactly how I perceived it. Afterwards, she told me "If I didn't know how you are as a person and how you talk, I would have assumed you were mad at your boyfriend."

This sentence absolutely shattered my brain. I couldn't understand how. I still can't. My therapist explained how my tone of voice can make those "why" questions come off as if I'm mad, but I don't quite understand how my tone of voice fluctuates (unless it's really obvious. like being super loud or being quite.)

So now, I'd like to ask for advice on how I could either begin to understand and hear my tone of voice, ask my "why" questions without sounding like I'm attacking someone, or both.

Thanks!