YogaAbba
Well-Known Member
Hi,
I am a 56 year-old male and have been working for decades in psychotherapy on my complex PTSD symptoms. (Really bad things happened to me from a very young age). So far so "good" (in the sense of well-understood by me).
Things changed for me a few months ago when I went to a psychiatrist to have my medications reviewed. I thought I might have some mild form of bi-polar, but he ruled that out. But he did think I might have ADHD (which has a suprising amount of overlap with bi-polar) because of my paradoxical reaction to a trial of adderal, and then ritalin, that a previous prescriber had tried on me as an anti-depressant (a lot of other things didn't work well). The psychostimulants made me surprising relaxed, which is typical of people who have ADHD. Assuming I do have ADHD, I adapted through young adulthood to the point where it was not an issue for functioning in my adult life life, other than the fact that I suffer from severe social exhaustion (see below). It also makes sense because both of my daughters have rather significant ADHD (I think I have working memory issues similar to one of my daugthers but not as extreme).
The psychiatrist also identified in me alexythymia, which I thought was really strange because I only saw him briefly for a bit more than an hour. This trait, which I had never heard of, just sounded really weird and not at all like me. At the time, my therapist didn't seem too familiar or impressed with the term either.
Then, a few months later, in an email exchange, my new, regular prescriber remarked that my tendency to hyper focus is indeed consistent with ADHD (I already knew that) and/or (her conjunctions) "being on the autistic spectrum." That is not something I had ever thought of.
Fast forwarding a bit on the alexythymia trait, my therapist recently told me I was doing a much better job of naming my feelings. I was completely shocked. I mean, haven't I been doing that for decades with various therapists? Now I come to find out that whenever she asks how I feel about something, I describe bodily sensations. I was completely unaware of this. I said, "Oh, is that the alexythymia thing that psychiatrist was on about?" She did some research and concluded that, yes, this is alexythymia.
I completely found Yo Samdy Sam's discussion of alexythymia hugely enlighting. Like, yeah, it's totally me. I mean, I can read people's facial expressions (though I'm not always sure I'm reading them correctly; they often seem more menacing than I think they are intended to be). But I am, as my wife describes me, a "total poker face": I can be in a stake of extreme anxiety or upset in some other way and she wouldn't know until I tell her. My emotional vocabulary is limited (though good enough to have a good marriage and to be a good enough parent), and my imagination is limited to the concrete.
Ok, so, being a deep diver and having a busy mind (did you guess that by now?), I've been binging on Yo Samdy Sam's YouTube channel, and I've latched on to the autism thing obsessively. While I don't put a huge amount of stock in do-it-yourself diagnosis, I did take the Autism Quotient Test (recently discussed by Yo Samdy Sam ) and scored 33 out of 50, which is a bit high. I also found a lot in Sam's discussion of what it's like to have autism that sounds like me.
One reason I'm not sure about autism is that I don't have meltdowns. I definitely have shutdowns (like at the end of a workday I cannot stand talking to anyone and need to sit in silence hyperfocusing on something I'm studying for a few hours); but I don't pull my hair or do anything like that. The constant foot shaking and squirming in my chair to get out of the meeting I'm in seems more ADHDish, as does the getting up from the dinner table shortly after the meal is finished to do the dishes while everyone else is still chatting around the table (I drop back in when a fun topic comes up
.
On the other hand, to the extent that genetics is an indicator for me, both of my daugthers have ADHD, and there is my atypical reaction to psychostimulants.
And yes, I know, it's possible to have both ADHD and autism.
The biggest problem I want to solve is the extreme exhaustion that I suffer from being in social situations. I really want to be more engaged with my religious community, but every time I get into it much, it just becomes overwhelmingly exhausting. I come home from work completely wiped out. Unless I do something to keep myself mentally stimulated on Saturday, I get a crashing depression that lasts through Sunday until I get hyped up again.
Is this exhuastion because I have been "masking" all these years but was not aware of what I was doing and how much energy it takes? Could I have gotten so good at masking that social interaction has come to feel natural to me but still exhausting? Or is it just because for someone with ADHD, staying on task (i.e, paying attention) to what people are saying, and coping the stimuli of an office environment, are also inherently exhausting? The sensitivity to light and noise stimuli (which led to persistent low grain migraines a few years ago) could go with either ADHD or autism. Either way, the energy it takes to filter these things out is exhausting.
My therapist is an old-school psychologist who is not having any of this neurodiversity stuff: she insists that it's all about the PTSD. In other words, she would say (not in these words of course) that I am a broken neurotypical rather than neurodivergent. But after all these years of psychotherapy, as helpful as they've been, I am really doubting whether this modality is going to solve this particular problem.
Assuming I haven't lost you yet, I just wanted to share one more thing. As Sam touches on in her discussion of whether it's worth it to get an official diagnosis, going through my childhood experiences through the lens of both ASD and ADHD feels painful. I've always assumed that my complete inability to relate to my social surroundings and the lengthy process (lasting into adulthood) of teaching myself how it all works (like, when people are being serious versus when they are joking, developing a thicker skin around my high emotional sensitivity, and learning to force myself to pay attention when someone is talking, especially in a group situation) were related to my PTSD. It's somehow very different to think I might actually be neurodivergent in some way.
Anyway, that's me in a nutshell
Thanks for listening.
--YA
I am a 56 year-old male and have been working for decades in psychotherapy on my complex PTSD symptoms. (Really bad things happened to me from a very young age). So far so "good" (in the sense of well-understood by me).
Things changed for me a few months ago when I went to a psychiatrist to have my medications reviewed. I thought I might have some mild form of bi-polar, but he ruled that out. But he did think I might have ADHD (which has a suprising amount of overlap with bi-polar) because of my paradoxical reaction to a trial of adderal, and then ritalin, that a previous prescriber had tried on me as an anti-depressant (a lot of other things didn't work well). The psychostimulants made me surprising relaxed, which is typical of people who have ADHD. Assuming I do have ADHD, I adapted through young adulthood to the point where it was not an issue for functioning in my adult life life, other than the fact that I suffer from severe social exhaustion (see below). It also makes sense because both of my daughters have rather significant ADHD (I think I have working memory issues similar to one of my daugthers but not as extreme).
The psychiatrist also identified in me alexythymia, which I thought was really strange because I only saw him briefly for a bit more than an hour. This trait, which I had never heard of, just sounded really weird and not at all like me. At the time, my therapist didn't seem too familiar or impressed with the term either.
Then, a few months later, in an email exchange, my new, regular prescriber remarked that my tendency to hyper focus is indeed consistent with ADHD (I already knew that) and/or (her conjunctions) "being on the autistic spectrum." That is not something I had ever thought of.
Fast forwarding a bit on the alexythymia trait, my therapist recently told me I was doing a much better job of naming my feelings. I was completely shocked. I mean, haven't I been doing that for decades with various therapists? Now I come to find out that whenever she asks how I feel about something, I describe bodily sensations. I was completely unaware of this. I said, "Oh, is that the alexythymia thing that psychiatrist was on about?" She did some research and concluded that, yes, this is alexythymia.
I completely found Yo Samdy Sam's discussion of alexythymia hugely enlighting. Like, yeah, it's totally me. I mean, I can read people's facial expressions (though I'm not always sure I'm reading them correctly; they often seem more menacing than I think they are intended to be). But I am, as my wife describes me, a "total poker face": I can be in a stake of extreme anxiety or upset in some other way and she wouldn't know until I tell her. My emotional vocabulary is limited (though good enough to have a good marriage and to be a good enough parent), and my imagination is limited to the concrete.
Ok, so, being a deep diver and having a busy mind (did you guess that by now?), I've been binging on Yo Samdy Sam's YouTube channel, and I've latched on to the autism thing obsessively. While I don't put a huge amount of stock in do-it-yourself diagnosis, I did take the Autism Quotient Test (recently discussed by Yo Samdy Sam ) and scored 33 out of 50, which is a bit high. I also found a lot in Sam's discussion of what it's like to have autism that sounds like me.
One reason I'm not sure about autism is that I don't have meltdowns. I definitely have shutdowns (like at the end of a workday I cannot stand talking to anyone and need to sit in silence hyperfocusing on something I'm studying for a few hours); but I don't pull my hair or do anything like that. The constant foot shaking and squirming in my chair to get out of the meeting I'm in seems more ADHDish, as does the getting up from the dinner table shortly after the meal is finished to do the dishes while everyone else is still chatting around the table (I drop back in when a fun topic comes up
. On the other hand, to the extent that genetics is an indicator for me, both of my daugthers have ADHD, and there is my atypical reaction to psychostimulants.
And yes, I know, it's possible to have both ADHD and autism.
The biggest problem I want to solve is the extreme exhaustion that I suffer from being in social situations. I really want to be more engaged with my religious community, but every time I get into it much, it just becomes overwhelmingly exhausting. I come home from work completely wiped out. Unless I do something to keep myself mentally stimulated on Saturday, I get a crashing depression that lasts through Sunday until I get hyped up again.
Is this exhuastion because I have been "masking" all these years but was not aware of what I was doing and how much energy it takes? Could I have gotten so good at masking that social interaction has come to feel natural to me but still exhausting? Or is it just because for someone with ADHD, staying on task (i.e, paying attention) to what people are saying, and coping the stimuli of an office environment, are also inherently exhausting? The sensitivity to light and noise stimuli (which led to persistent low grain migraines a few years ago) could go with either ADHD or autism. Either way, the energy it takes to filter these things out is exhausting.
My therapist is an old-school psychologist who is not having any of this neurodiversity stuff: she insists that it's all about the PTSD. In other words, she would say (not in these words of course) that I am a broken neurotypical rather than neurodivergent. But after all these years of psychotherapy, as helpful as they've been, I am really doubting whether this modality is going to solve this particular problem.
Assuming I haven't lost you yet, I just wanted to share one more thing. As Sam touches on in her discussion of whether it's worth it to get an official diagnosis, going through my childhood experiences through the lens of both ASD and ADHD feels painful. I've always assumed that my complete inability to relate to my social surroundings and the lengthy process (lasting into adulthood) of teaching myself how it all works (like, when people are being serious versus when they are joking, developing a thicker skin around my high emotional sensitivity, and learning to force myself to pay attention when someone is talking, especially in a group situation) were related to my PTSD. It's somehow very different to think I might actually be neurodivergent in some way.
Anyway, that's me in a nutshell
Thanks for listening.
--YA
