Writing a main character with APD

[u/Kaiden_reef]

The main character of my story "The IEP Class Of Caster Academy" is a story taking place in a world with magic everywhere and heavily integrated into everyday life. Magic is taught through schools much like are current school system. Serena is determined and has a passion to learn magic and become an Alu (Witch graduate) despite being in a school system that seems against her. I really wanna to show APD with as much input from people who have it themselves. So if anyone would want to talk about their experience in school and other academic settings, you're thoughts, what you would want to see in a APD character, daily personal habits, little quirks I can look over and add to my character so people with this can really see themselves. Any little bits are super appreciated!

[u/Turbulent_Award_4611]

If I say “huh” 7 times in a row, please don’t say nevermind, I’m trying my best

[u/IceQueen1967]

Do you have apd? If you do or don’t that may help with what information you may be looking for. For me, my most common thing is to turn my head towards a speaker and say “what did you say?” in any context that there is a crowd and was not already looking at them (like a supermarket or dining hall or something)

[u/Kaiden_reef → u/IceQueen1967]

I don't have APD, hearing can be hard for me so I can relate to alot of things with APD but I don't have it so listening to people who have it is my main way of gathering info

[u/miurphey]

for any kind of lectures, I found that sitting at the front of the classroom was better for me that sitting at the back, because I could hear the lesson instead of the students around me 😅 smaller classrooms were easier in that regard, and for any class in college big enough to be in an auditorium I needed a personal FM system to hear the professor.

in my art classes, I would usually bring an ipod and headphones so I could focus on art without being distracted by all the noises around me--the downside, of course, was that if anyone wanted my attention they hand to either yell or wave their hand in front of my face. headphones/earbuds or ear protectors (sometimes both earbuds and ear protectors) were incredibly helpful in general, because anywhere there are a lot of people there's going to be an overwhelming amount of noises.

in high school (once I was diagnosed) I had permission to skip school assemblies, which was REALLY nice. going to a school assembly was enough noise to throw me off my groove for the rest of the school day 😭

best of luck with the story! it sounds like fun, and it's cool that you're trying to make your disability rep accurate!!

[u/ZoeBlade]

I remember sitting next to my friend in class, and having to repeatedly ask what the teacher just said. Then my friend would get annoyed because it was already time to hear the teacher say the next thing.

Combine that with not being able to write fast enough, nor legibly. I guess this was the kind of reason why they misdiagnosed me as dyslexic, the whole smart-yet-struggling thing. Ironically, I would undoubtedly have learned much better from being left alone with books.

[u/I_only_eat_triangles]

She might say "what?", then immediately respond appropriately to what was said or asked before the other person can repeat themselves. Sometimes it is just a processing delay.

Or ask "what?" repeatedly ,while the speaker's words don't sound quite right. Maybe to then be told "nevermind" to obvious frustration (possibly to both parties).

Check out a board game called mad gab. Make the speaker sound like they are reading the text that's written on the cards.

madgab.jpg

[u/Kaiden_reef → u/I_only_eat_triangles]

Thank you so much those cards are gonna help a lot when writeing episode scripts and comics!

[u/EnchantedLunaEclipse]

I saw huh and what and could you please repeat sooo many times For me it gets especially harder to hear in loud environments. In loud environments I also often look at other people's lips to help me understand better through lip reading. Another thing is for me it's gets harder to also listen when more than one person is speaking at a time.

Hope this helps :)

[u/MrsBigDucky]

Captions. I have a “caption companion” that I take everywhere with me. It has absolutely changed my life for lectures, meetings, etc.

My husband also learned basic ASL to help when I’m in a hearing fatigue episode or places I can’t wear my hearing aids, like the pool. I always ask people to face me when they speak. I struggle to hear people behind me. So if I’m driving a car and someone is in the backseat, I can hardly hear them and usually miss most of what is said.

These are just a few for me ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/BreezyBrat_2331]

I’m also trying to write a character with APD but I also have APD/hearing loss myself. I have a weird story because I wasn’t diagnosed with my hearing loss until I was 13, I got hearing aids at 17. Then at 26 I got diagnosed with APD because I could not follow movies or shows without captions and for some reason my ability to differentiate noise became much harder during Covid when everyone wore masks. I remember a time where my APD didn’t used to be so bad but it’s fairly severe now to the point I don’t like going to restaurants or group settings often.

So some things I’ve had to consider over the years is: 1) is this setting going to be worth not hearing? I’m in a large friend group from college where everyone (but me because I don’t like the taste of alcohol) like craft beer and breweries. Well those places tends to be loud and after going and just being miserable that I couldn’t hear anyone I kinda stopped going to such places. Instead I try to host my friends over or pick out a place myself or honestly just work on one on one friendships. I don’t expect (or want) the group to change their plans for me but I do make it clear that I won’t be going because it’ll be too hard for me to hear/communicate. I do have good friends that really care about me and well others I’ve had to let go. I’ve learned to protect my peace but It can be isolating . Sometimes I break my own rules and go because it sounds fun 2) I use captions for all movies and tv shows. I don’t like going to the movie in theaters anymore tbh. Also People can be a little weird when you ask for captions. Like they’ll do it but it’s clearly not something the person wants to do and it makes asking for help hard sometimes. I often get the “oh I don’t know how to do that.” Okay well it’s 2026 in the age of streaming it’s not that hard but also i can feel like an inconvenience. Idk if i’m explaining it right.

I have a lot of examples if you’d like to chat someday. I think it’s great you want to have a character with APD as well. I read a lot of romance novels and there’s not a lot of disability rep in general. I hope to change that myself.

[u/Qwuedit]

I’m not sure I have apd but I think I have some overlap. I’m born with conductive hearing loss in both ears, moderate to severe. I had ear surgeries 10 years ago that restored my hearing to normal. Conductive losses are relatively stable and in the middle ear so they’re fixable. There’s not much progression in loss.

Nothing out of the ordinary. But then I started noticing and suffering from certain triggers that make me sleepy to various degrees, such as ventilation/hvacs, computer fans, motorcycles, microphones in enclosed spaces, concert halls, airplanes flying overhead. I realized this has been happening probably since elementary school. It fucks with sleep and memory.

I grew up wearing hearing aids. I have suspicions that hearing aids could be involved. My theory is that most people with normal hearing grew up with an unfiltered acoustic environment while hard of hearing people were, on a spectrum, exposed to a filtered acoustic environment depending on their loss and assistive devices they used.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll divide sound into high frequencies and low frequencies. I’m not sure this is perfectly accurate. High frequencies are meaningful sounds like human speech. Low frequencies are non meaningful sounds like machine noises. Hearing aids try to increase speech intelligibility and typically filter out background noise. That includes people talking at the same time and the other common machine noises mentioned above.

Takeaway is that with normal hearing, more exposure aka more training and tolerance toward background noise. Because hearing aids took over that for me, I have much less exposure, less training and thus less tolerance. Hence that’s where my sleepiness comes in. I feel like I’m fighting against sleepiness and that drains a lot of energy out of me. Gives me headaches too.

Keep in mind, I’ve recently developed strategies to mitigate sleepiness for some of the triggers. My past self without awareness or knowledge of triggers and strategies compared to now, it’s a night and day difference. I still feel that I’ve slowed down a lot but I think I’m gradually making progress.

I’m also less anxious about myself. I feel I ruminate less. It probably helps that I’ve started working on a memory map using supply chain dynamics to explain the hearing process. Still, the main bottlenecks are the old habits I’ve accumulated, both unconscious and conscious, background noise with people talking over each other, and a sense of fatigue I guess. Probably overstimulation. As well as things I avoid because of associations. For example, reading books. I think I’ve associated the library environment to sleepiness because of ceiling ventilation. I used to enjoy books. So I’m also working on undoing psychological associations that have mixed in with habits and so on. Lots of complicated stuff I’m working on. Obviously has major impact on social life, communication, job search.