r/neurodiversity

It's like I never learnt how to breathe properly and it's not until I feel like headed or ill that I realise I haven't breathed through my nose or mouth for a good few minutes. Sometimes my hand will be fully covering my mouth and then I have to take some time to focus on breathing for a while.

I know this might sound ridiculous but I'm wondering if anyone else struggles with this and if you have any tips to help me not accidentally suffocate myself.

Forgive my ignorance. This is a new term for me. I have epilepsy and take heavy medications to make sure I don't have seizures.

I have been getting a little social lately and hear this term being thrown out pretty lightly. I really have to bite my tounge sometimes (pun intended) in order to not be rude.

It seems like a lot of people are dealing with issues. I'm not trying to downplay anyone's experience but it kinda irks me after everything I've been through. Multiple neurologists, meds, GPs. I look at people that bring this term up so casually and it kind of hurts.

Sorry for the rant. I guess if I wasn't on all these meds I'd probably have more patience for other people throwing that term out so loosely.

Soo, listen. We can only see the things I listed when an artist online etc is making art, because that is what they choose to SHOW us, and many times, we don’t know what they are like outside of that. Plus, OBVIOUSLY, not all artists are the same. However, I have noticed a lot of certain patterns and stuff that just seem like neurodivergent traits to me, and that can be seen/found/noticed in a significant amount of creative people.

-Obviously, the creativity.

-Most artists use art as a form of „escapism“ from their daily life. Not just in a “oh, I don’t want to think about the following weeks right now, I want a bit of time to myself“ way. They NEED it like it’s oxygen. It is also a way to process their emotions and translate their feelings into a language that is more understandable to others

-They love the process of making art, and focus on it for HOURS on end, forgetting about everything around them.

->This is also why they hate AI „art“ so much: the entire POINT of art is not even the end result, it is about the thought they poured into it, and the working process, while to non-artists, it’s mainly about the result, and they focus on the result, and that’s why letting a machine do it for them is basically the instant reward without the "unnecessary" process beforehand. That sounds suspiciously similar to the ADHD versus Neurotypical reward system, doesn’t it?

-SOO MANY OF THEM got bullied in school or were seen as „weird“!

-Many popular artists online are already diagnosed with ADHD and/or Autism, and even joke about how practically all of them are neurodivergent. For example, Jaiden Animations. She even said something similar in one of her videos, specifically, the one where she talked about her diagnosis. „That’s how it goes in content creation, all these mfs have it“. And have you ever looked at a friend group of neurodivergent teens? At least half of them do some form of art.

-THE ART BLOCK. Nearly every artists gets art blocks REGULARLY.

-The way no one wants to study autonomy because it’s a long, boring, and unrewarding process?

-Many of them start by doing fanart! And for doing fanart, you need to be REEEEALLY passionate about something, to a level where you start a new and difficult thing in order to express your love for it and visualize your thoughts. Sounds like hyperfixation/special interest to me ._.

-Artists also tend to be also either extremely organized or chronically forgetful. „How did you feel before handing in your essay for the contest?“ „Uhm, I didn’t feel much, to be honest, because I forgot the contest even existed until it was four hours before the deadline, and my friend, who also wanted to participate, forgot too. And then I just sat down and wrote the essay in two hours“ (quote from an interview in this year’s award show at my school btw)

-10p.m.-3a.m. seems to be their most productive time of the day. They are basically nocturnal

These are just a few things. Can somebody tell me if I’m absolutely delusional or if I’m onto something ? 🥹

Not sure which sub to post this kind of stuff. Even though I’ve not been diagnosed with anything, this sub seems at least somewhat relavant to the subject matter.

I am extremely introverted (in the layman sense of the term). I fufill a lot of my social needs by daydreaming. I have some people I call friends that I talk to or meet up with once per year as an attempt to at least maintain a distant friendship. Outside of my daydreams and an occasional periods of romantic hyper-fixation towards a specific person in my life, I feel no desire to interact with people, not even the sense of loneliness. I know of other introverts who play multiplayer games, online chatrooms or use AI chatbot companions, but I am play mostly single player (strategy) games. I tried using AI, but I can’t help but treat AI as a tool instead of a companion (as in, I find it impossible to anthropomorphize the AI). I have no urge to interact with people even online. I also dislike animals since childhood (although, I developed a liking for cats during military service because I encountered a cat in camp that only came to me for food - which I felt like I understood. I did not feed the cat though before I was redeployed).

For games, I find it near to impossible to roleplay. I almost always end up self inserting into RPGs and find it extremely uncomfortable playing characters that are not like me.

Any use of social media by me is more like my talking about myself or my area of interest. I don’t feel a strong desire to really connect with people through social media, but rather see the value in their ideas only.

As for the friends I do have, I don’t even identify them by names in my head. I attach functions to them like: “the one I go to for social advice”, “the one I go to for academic advice” etc. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to make friends without a deliberate motive such as “he seems intelligent and will be useful for this class”.

I am aware I am doted on by my parents and extended family but don’t really feel any urge to reciprocate. I only feel the urge to do the bare minimum to encourage them to care about me more - again, ulterior motive (which is also why I felt an affinity and affection towards that cat). I do feel slightly bad about that but I suppress it pretty easily because it is distracting. The only time I want to interact with my parents is to boast about my achievements.

I can put on a show socially and am decent in public speaking. But the mask usually drops after a day or 2 of interacting with me.

In terms of moral convictions, I am also almost completely amoral.

Anyone else have the same experience?

Sorry if any of the content I post here is insensitive/ignorant.

Backstory: I have never been *officially* handed an autism diagnosis. I'm 27 now, and I have been evaluated for autism by several mental health professionals for nearly my whole life, starting at around the age of 4 years old. Each of them has more or less said the same thing: "yeah, he's quirky and has some neurodivergent traits....but I wouldn't put a label on him." Awesome. So even in the eyes of mental health professionals, all they can tell me is that I'm just weird. Great, as if everyone around me wasn't already telling me that lmao.

When I most recently got evaluated in 2024, I took another full blown autism screening (if you can call it that) and the doc who evaluated me basically told me something to the effect of "yeah, technically you meet criteria, but it's by the skin of your teeth. And your symptoms are so tame that they don't really seem to be drastically affecting your life, so it's not really worth it to warrant a diagnosis." Once again, basically telling me the same thing that a ton of other mental health professionals said about me in years past.

And if I'm being frank....I mostly agree. I can absolutely "mask" in a social setting very well, I don't have any "meltdowns" at all (I actually have pretty damn good control over my emotions), and more. The TLDR here is that when someone first meets me, they aren't going to immediately jump to the conclusion of "he's definitely autistic." At the same time.....I hate super loud noises and bright lights (I have to cover my ears during a fire alarm drill), I stim a lot by shaking my hands, I miss social cues here and there, I often mistake people's sarcastic tones as them being dead serious, and I have very niche interests, many of which have drastically shifted over the years; currently, I love high fashion, personal growth/development, psychology, metaphysics, philosophy, and history. My interests in these subjects, along with the fact that I'm completely sober nowadays, leads to the conundrum of having essentially nothing in common with just about everyone I come across.

Nowadays, the most frustrating part about my "condition," if you will, is trying to make/keep friends and also attempting to have romantic relationships. I'm quite the lone wolf right now, although I'd much rather be literally alone than be surrounded by fake friends who make me feel even more alone. And I promise I'm not trying to gloat/brag at all when I say this but.....I keep getting feedback from people I consistently interact with, telling me I'm very good looking. The reason I mention this is because for many years now, I've had the vexing experience of several women quickly expressing their attraction to my looks upfront, but then slowly ghosting/losing interest in me because I'm "weird" and/or awkward with them, and we end up having nothing in common. Same thing with friends; if I'm being frank, I don't think I've ever had a truly super close friend in my entire life, i.e a friend who truly saw and understood me.

Is there anyone else out there like this? I don't think I've ever met anybody else, face-to-face, in my entire life, who also has the same "condition" as me. Again, this is not a "poor me, I feel sorry for myself" post. I am actually glad that I'm now learning to find strength in being comfortably alone. I just wonder if there's anyone else out there with similar experiences to mine.

I think one of the biggest lies my ADHD brain ever sold me was that every setback required a full reset.

Burned out?

New planner.
New routine.
Wake up at 5.
Delete every app.
Become a completely different human being.

😂

Lately I’ve been experimenting with a different question instead:

“What would make this character build 2% easier to play today?”

Not tomorrow.
Not forever.
Just today.

Maybe I don’t need a character rebuild.

Maybe I just need a patch update.

Patch notes v1.2:

• Reduced friction by putting my meds next to the coffee maker.
• Added quest markers (visual reminders).
• Increased HP by actually eating lunch.
• Rebalanced mana regeneration by letting myself rest before I was completely empty.
• Equipped a better tool instead of relying on willpower.
• Added a party member instead of trying to solo the dungeon.

None of those changed who my character was.

They just made the game more playable.

I think that’s been the biggest shift for me.

For years I kept asking, “How do I become someone who doesn’t struggle with this?”

Now I ask, “What’s one tiny patch note that would make today a little easier?”

Turns out my character wasn’t broken.

The build just needed balancing.

Please share your thoughts on this.

All my life I've always had a way with babies, children and animals. Kids especially will often come up to me without even having any prior interactions with me and they just start talking to me about something they're interested in or something fun going on in their lives and I always engage back with them and babies always seem to like me as well I'm very good at making them smile and laugh and they'll often want me to hold them which I'll only do if the parent says it's okay. Animals as well are very drawn to me like when I've interacted with someone's pet on more than one occasion I've had people be surprised and tell me their pet usually isn't that comfortable with strangers and are very selective on who they like and also I do volunteer work at a cat shelter and the cats love me at times it's hard for me to do my job because they'll want my attention while I'm trying to clean there litter boxes. I was wondering if maybe me being neurodivergent has anything to do with this.

I made a post a few days ago asking whether ADHD, especially poor working memory, could mimic aphantasia.

At that time I genuinely thought I had weak visualization.

Now, after reading papers, reading many comments, talking to people with aphantasia and ADHD, and spending the last two days basically experimenting on myself, I'm honestly not sure I understood what "visualization" even meant.

The biggest realization wasn't that I might have aphantasia.

It was that I might have been confusing knowing with seeing my whole life.

One thing that completely changed my thinking was learning that aphantasia is about voluntarily creating a mental image while fully awake.

Dreams, hypnagogia, hallucinations and involuntary flashes are different questions.

That made me realize I had been asking myself the wrong question.

I wasn't asking:

> "Can I voluntarily create and hold a mental image while fully awake?"

Instead I was asking:

> "Does anything briefly come to mind?"

Those are not the same thing.

I also read Adam Zeman's original paper on congenital aphantasia. If I remember correctly, about half of the participants reported involuntary flashes, yet they were still considered to have aphantasia because they lacked voluntary visual imagery.

That made me start testing myself.

---

Apple

If someone tells me:

> "Imagine an apple."

Something briefly comes to mind.

But I don't think I create it.

It feels like a faint flash that appears and disappears on its own.

I can't hold it.

I can't inspect it.

I can't deliberately recreate it.

If I focus on shape, I briefly get the typical apple shape.

If I focus on colour, I get redness.

If I focus on movement, I can think of a rotating apple, but I don't really see the apple before or after the movement.

I never have one complete stable apple sitting there.

---

Faces

Then I tried faces.

If someone asks me to imagine someone I know, their face briefly comes to mind.

But the moment I try to sustain it...

it's gone.

The weird thing is I don't think I actually see the contours of their face.

It's more like I know that person's face is there.

If I try imagining different facial expressions...

nothing.

Different poses...

nothing.

Same with the body.

I know it's their body.

I can't voluntarily see different postures or attitudes.

---

Clothes

This one surprised me.

If I think of my red T-shirt, I know exactly which T-shirt I'm thinking about.

But if I try imagining that exact same T-shirt in orange or purple...

nothing comes.

Try it with your favourite shirt.

Can you change its colour while keeping everything else identical?

I can't.

---

Reading

This completely changed everything.

I always thought I could imagine scenes while reading books.

Then I actually paid attention.

Imagine this sentence.

> You are standing in a quiet kitchen. Bright white sunlight streams through a window on your left onto a dark wooden table.

My experience isn't one whole scene.

It's:

standing...

gone.

kitchen...

gone.

sunlight...

gone.

window...

gone.

left...

gone.

table...

gone.

Each thing briefly comes to mind then immediately evaporates.

I can't hold them together.

I can't inspect them.

I don't see details.

I mostly know what they are because I've seen them before in real life.

If I stop reading and try creating the whole scene myself...

it immediately becomes an abstract concept.

I know exactly what's happening.

I can explain everything.

But I can't voluntarily experience it as one image.

The same thing happens with simpler stories.

"A boy under a tree eating an apple while a white dog sits beside him."

While reading...

boy...

gone.

tree...

gone.

apple...

gone.

dog...

gone.

When I finish reading I know exactly what happened.

But I can't combine them into one stable mental scene.

Trying to force it honestly gives me a headache.

---

Memories

Then I noticed memories.

I don't replay memories like movies.

They're more like PowerPoint presentations.

Sometimes one isolated frame briefly appears.

Then another.

But I don't continuously replay the event like watching a video.

It's more like I know what happened.

---

Drawing

Looking back...

I think this might explain something from childhood.

I always thought I was terrible at drawing because I simply lacked artistic skill.

My friends could draw things from imagination and include tiny details.

I never understood how.

If someone told me to draw a dog...

I knew a dog had:

head

body

four legs

tail

But I couldn't inspect a mental image to see:

what the ears looked like

how the fur lay

the proportions

the small details

I knew the concepts.

Not the visual details.

Eventually I just accepted I couldn't draw.

Looking back now...

it makes a lot more sense.

The same thing happened in anatomy.

Drawing anatomical structures from memory was incredibly difficult compared to understanding the concepts.

---

Other senses

Then I realized...

Maybe this isn't only visual.

I don't think I can voluntarily recreate sounds either.

If I think about my favourite song...

I don't hear the original singer.

I have to sing it in my own mental voice.

Taste...

blank.

Smell...

blank.

I know exactly what they are.

I just can't voluntarily recreate the experience.

I haven't explored touch enough yet.

---

Dreams

The weird part is...

My dreams are vivid.

Hypnagogia is vivid.

Lucid dreams are vivid.

Colours.

People.

Movement.

Entire conversations.

So my brain clearly can generate imagery.

Just not when I consciously try to.

That made me wonder whether the issue isn't generating imagery itself...

but voluntarily accessing it.

Originally I thought maybe this was just ADHD, poor working memory or executive dysfunction.

Now I'm genuinely not sure.

Maybe ADHD made it harder to notice.

Maybe they're separate.

Maybe they overlap.

I honestly don't know.

---

The biggest thing I discovered through all this wasn't a diagnosis.

It was realizing that I may have spent my whole life confusing concepts with mental imagery.

When I think of an apple...

maybe I don't actually see an apple.

Maybe I simply know what an apple is.

When I think of a beach...

maybe I'm not seeing waves, sand and rocks.

Maybe I'm just retrieving the concepts: waves... sand... rocks.

For years I thought that was what everyone meant by "imagining."

Now I'm not so sure.

So I'm genuinely curious...

Has anyone else gone through this exact realization?

Not just discovering aphantasia...

but realizing you may have misunderstood what visualization itself meant your entire life?

Please share your thoughts on this.

do i have anauralia??? i am not sure if I can hear my inner voice?

it's just i cannot recreate a song i heard in past or someone's voice

no i can't hear my mom or dad sound

but I can recognise them and only what they say the words coming to my mind

but their voice??

wait people can really hear others voice in their mind??

i cannot hear my mom's voice

im hearing nothing

but like I said I need to mentally say myself what she says to think the speaking at all, i don't think that counts

do we really need to try to imagine famous someone's voice or should I say along with it?

because when I'm imagining there is nothing coming to my mind at all

i said hello

this is very confusing

am i supposed to hear an actual sound in my mind??

i can say hello

but i don't know if it's actually a sound in my mind or just words in silence

i cannot explain

how do you hear a sound in your mind??

it's confusing

i mean i can change the way i say hello

you know manipulating the way i say hello

ofc i can say hello imitating child, high pitch , low pitch , angry

but saying that way doesn't mean hearing that way too??

i feel like I'm not hearing anything but I can say that way

so I'm very much confused

or can I hear but I cannot say exactly I hear?

no i can only listen if i try to generate it

otherwise I cannot hear songs or anything anyone says

you can imagine others laugh????

i simply can't

i feel like I can talk

even I different tone

but not sure if I can hear them at all

idk if I can hear my thoughts either

anyways there is something i want to add

sometimes I get auditory hallucinations

you know how clear the voice is

it is exactly same as when i hear in real life

but in my mind

feels like listening to 4K voice

are we talking about that kinda sound in my mind?

i mean is it how people hear when they listen to someone else voice or sound?

is it how own inner voice heard!

im just going crazy thinking about this

It’s happened kind of often in the past where I’d meet someone of the opposite sex and pretty quickly become infatuated with them despite not really fully knowing them. Oftentimes I would also even be convinced they had a thing for me too despite as I said we’d barely know each other or not even be fully acquainted but just based on them being even a little friendly with me or even just looking at me a certain way. I figured it had to with being bad with social signals and being fairly lonely as a person in general but I wanted to see what others thought.

So basically ive started to realize whenever im talking to people about topics such as, mental health/kinks/interests/guilt/grief or just anything really specific and personal i get super invested and I kind of use them as an experiment in a way???

I have always found myself asking them why they feel certain ways about certain things and I feel like im interrogating them to learn and read them better and it feels so weird whenever I start to realize thats what im doing! I use people as a lab rat just to learn more about how our species acts/moves/talks/etc. And its so odd, i want to understand more about people, and if anyone else does this please lmk bc i really want to know more of it.

For instance if someone sees in black and white they do not need to have their life seriously impacted to be color blind, and I know color blindness is more varied than just seeing in black and white, and most color blind people don’t see in black and white, but I think the extreme example of someone seeing in black and white without having their life significantly impacted helps illustrate the issue with defining a disability by how much it impacts someone’s quality of life. I know a lot of us who are autistic do have our lives significantly affected but I still think using that as part of a definition of autism is problematic. I going back to the colorblind analogy mean colorblindness can significantly impact ones quality of life, but that’s not what defines colorblindness and I feel the same should apply to autism. Also a colorblind person could learn to compensate some for colorblindness in some situations, by say finding alternative ways of telling if a fruit is ripe, or choosing games that rely less on distinguishing colors, and I think a similar thing can sometimes apply with autism, at least for people who are lower support needs for at least some situations. For instance I would wear shoes with Velcro to compensate for difficulty with tying my shoes. This isn’t to say that all autistic people could learn to compensate for autistic qualities, but I think if autism is defined in terms of how much it impacts ones life that could still cause a decent fraction of autistic people to get missed because they learned to compensate too much for autistic qualities. I think if it was to cause some autistic people to get missed that could also lead to a gap in understanding of how to best accomodate autistic people as the ones who would be missed from not having their lives significantly impacted might also be the ones who are the most accomodated without a diagnosis.

Hey everyone, hope all is well. I’m a guy with AuDHD, BPD, PTSD, and a shit load of other mental disorders.

I’ve been losing a lot of sleep by just watching my social life crumble in front of my eyes. Coworkers always giving each other weird faces after they were talking to me, in the sense they are just talking to me to get some dirt to talk behind my back, my friends excluding me from plans, and people just not wanting to talk to me in hobby spaces. Not to mention that a lot of friendships burned down in the past because I was just being myself. Talkative, being dumb and silly, cracking jokes. It just led to people calling me weird and too much, so I toned it down a bit to the point I’m just silent. Then whenever someone tries to have a convo with me, I give generic answers bc I’m afraid of looking weird again if I were to be entertaining.

I have tried getting to know people at my hobbies. Airsoft is one of them and I go with a friend but it hurts to see that people talk to him more since he’s smarter and extroverted. When I try to talk to those people, they just stare me down. It doesn’t help that I make a lot of wrong plays and people def see that so they think that I’m just a dumbass.

Just venting, would be nice to see if people have similar experiences of feeling left out or judged heavily. I just feel really isolated and it hurts

i’m 21 and i feel so immature all the time even among ppl my age or even younger. i have social anxiety , ADHD and i think autism. i can’t make eye contact well, can’t respond well, very awkward and not fun to talk to.

i’m also slow too like i don’t think i’m stupid but it takes me a while to learn things and i’m also clumsy.
i make a lot of mistakes at work and ppl get annoyed by me and i just feel so useless.

i feel like my behaviours lead ppl to not take me seriously, hate me and it ruins my chances of making friends and having a good career.

TLDR; I'm looking for y'alls weirdest/strangest tips to managing your focus and motivation.

My mom has been.....not great to me. She's always said she'll never be like her mom, a bipolar abuser, and instead she's become another beast. Ever since I was 12 I KNEWWW something was wrong with me on a brain functions typa scale. She denied this adamantly, because she was a teacher, and "oh there's nothing wrong with you, the kids in my class are awful and you're nothing like them" was her biggest reason. Because of her very black and white thinking, all of my concerns had been, and still are, dismissed and are even still dismissed after my diagnosis. On top of the dismissal, she's also done a lot of gaslighting and pulled the "well others have it worse" card, which left me insanely insecure about any symptoms or behaviors exhibited, and in turn left me with no way to manage them. I was screened once for ADHD in eighth grade, but because I was still battling severe depression at the time I was behaving completely differently than I normally do. The results came back as "lol ur kids not ADHD they're depressed", and that just cemented my mom's belief, and therefore I never had any type of help with managing any ADHD symptoms I did have at the time in therapy, because why would I need help with that in therapy if I don't have it? Spoiler alert, I have ADHD. It shows far more as inattentive than hyperactive, but I have my hyperactive days. I'm entering my junior year now, and I've been struck with the fear of God because: Woah, I can hardly do a basket of laundry without getting distracted and ending up petting my cat in the basement. How am I supposed to be a functional person if I can't even be a moderately functional person on a good day? I genuinely don't know what to do to manage myself, and with graduation approaching far too soon for my liking, I desperately need help. I'm looking for strange/weird tips to help manage symptoms, as I've tried so much of the textbook guidance and it hardly works, which is why I'm here, asking my fellow neurodiverce friends for help.

Thanks ahead of time, from a desperate highschooler 🥲

Last night at 9 pm, my 5-year-old nephew escaped from home. I phoned the police, and they found him and brought him home in about 20 minutes.

Once they arrived at my house, the cop asked me to go to their car to get my nephew, who had escaped from home. So I walked to the car, and one of the cops asked if I had any idea why he escaped. I told them that my dad forgot to lock the door when he left, and I guess he wanted to be out on his own. The cop stopped me from walking to the car cuz he questioned why I wasn't looking at him when talking to him. Uhh, because I'm walking away?? And I just don't like eye contact, that's it. He tells me he thinks it's weird that I wasn't looking at him when talking to him. Ok cool, I don't care; I just don't like eye contact. The other cop asks if I have a condition. Uhh, why does that matter?? I told them I don't need to disclose personal information like that and just want to go to the car. They tell me some BS like they're just trying to figure everything out and that I'm not in trouble. Yeah, yeah, whatever. And then they finally let me go to the car to bring my nephew inside.

Next time police ask me anything, I'm gonna stfu because we do indeed have the right to remain silent. Idk if this was some psychological tactic and they were just trying to get a reaction out of me and get me arrested. Luckily, I remained calm, but man, that was annoying. This was in Canada, btw, if that matters.

What a bunch of clowns.