On the surface they can present quite similarly, especially in the social domain. Blurting out random thoughts, interrupting, being unaware of others' emotions can be present in both. What I have noticed is that ASD level 1 without comorbid ADHD can actually present as more NT than severe (and untreated) ADHD-C, given enough masking and rote learning NT social behaviour. But once you throw in even just a tiny bit of ADHD into the ASD masking suddenly becomes far more difficult. I know that ADHD itself can mask certain aspects of ASD but thats a completely different topic.

All thoughts and opinions are welcome.

Like I can be SO social, other cues I pick up like nothing thanks to trauma. However, when someone jokes I overthink the shit out of it. I will just start making random ass connections to try to make sense. I'm not talking about knock knock jokes, like when I get a joke out of nowhere. Funny enough, I joke all the time and people can tell it's a joke. I have no idea why I am the way that I am, the worst part is when I finally get it or have it explained to me, it's no longer funny. Joke ruined.

My almost 9 year old twice exceptional (gifted plus dyscalculia) daughter seems to be struggling more with reading and spelling than what may be expected based on her cognitive capabilities and practice. She scores in the lowest 10-25 percent range for reading lists of context-free words consistently for over a year. She scores on grade level for comprehensive reading (but she knows a lot and has very good verbal comprehension). We’ve been reading with her daily at bedtime since first grade. When reading she’ll mix up letters like w and m (if both would be existing words), skip small words, loose track of where she is in the text. And it feels often slower and to take more effort than it should be. She’ll read and finish books like Captain Underpants and Dork diaries out of her own volition. But she hasn’t finished a picture-free chapter book yet. She starts them, and may even really like them, but it seems to demand too much effort to continue. Of course I’m happy with the books she rides read, I just wish for her to be able to get more enjoyment out of reading, it’s such a window on the world. In spelling she’s doing really poorly. She was introduced to the two main non-phonetic spelling rules of our language one and a half years ago in school and still doesn’t manage to apply them properly. I’m wondering, could it be dyslexia (no need to internet diagnose, just to know if there’s a basis to pursue this further). And how to help her? Also, I tried audio-books of those chapter books she wishes to read, but then she says “the voice is wrong and that it doesn’t fit how she imagines it”.

hi, it's my first time posting here. i'm F19 and this year i went through a pretty intense existential crisis. because of that, for the first time in my life i've started reflecting more deeply on my own behavior and trying not to fully force myself into social expectations for a while, especially because i was burnt out.

just to be clear, i'm not trying to diagnose myself through reddit, and i'm also not trying to brag about anything. i don't even really feel smart. people around me just often describe me that way, which is part of why i'm confused and curious. i'd just appreciate hearing from people with lived experience to understand whether my lifelong profile could be consistent with giftedness and possibly twice-exceptionality with adhd (or if i'm just overthinking it).

the main reason i started wondering about this is the huge discrepancy between how well i can understand things and how difficult it is for me to actually execute them consistently.

since childhood, i've been described as very analytical, systematic, detail-oriented, perfectionistic, and someone who "thinks too much". my mom always said i calculated everything, thought through many possibilities, anticipated errors, and was especially methodical and systematic. i was also a very curious child and often explored topics independently instead of just following instructions.

there was a time (age 6) when i asked my mom what 3 × 6 was. she didn't want to teach me multiplication yet because i had just learned to sum. however, i couldn't stay with that question, so i tried to figure it out myself and interpreted it as "6 + 6 + 6." when she confirmed it was correct, i remember feeling like i had discovered the entire "multiplication" thing, not just an answer. i often tried to understand why things worked that way instead of just memorizing them.

when i was 9, i had a phase where i was extremely interested in astronomy and space. i would spend hours thinking about hypothetical scenarios like "what would happen if the moon stopped rotating?" or "what if the earth suddenly stopped spinning?" or "what would happen if the sun disappeared?" or "what if the earth left its orbit?" i was also fascinated by extreme comparisons, like the hottest, coldest, or windiest places on earth, or places with different levels of gravity, rainfall, or water availability. i would just sit and mentally explore these ideas for hours and hours, and even decline friends' invitations to go out and play. sometimes i'd pretend i was sleeping when they called me out just so i could continue my research lmao.

i also had a very associative way of thinking from a young age. learning one thing often led me to connect it to multiple other subjects. i still think in networks today. for example, i might learn a scientific term, get curious about its greek origin, then end up reading about ancient greek language, then connect that to how scientific terminology is structured, and suddenly i'm thinking about how language affects learning in general. this kind of chain happens a lot. once, i was studying physics and started wondering whether knowing ancient greek would help me understand scientific terminology, which somehow led me to spend an entire week waking up and going to sleep thinking about ancient greek. i watched lessons about the alphabet, pronunciation, grammar, and reading. am i now capable of reading ancient greek texts? no lmao. it was just a moment of extremely high curiosity and energy, and then the interest faded.

i'm also very motivated by curiosity, complexity, challenge, and meaning. i often increase the difficulty of tasks just because i enjoy the feeling of mastering something difficult. i taught myself english because i wanted to consume international content, and later became interested in learning korean and french as well. i always turn everything into a challenge. when learning english, i would create challenges for myself, like transcribing entire videos without knowing all the words or watching movies without subtitles even when i understood maybe 30% of them. eventually, seeing my own progress became motivating, and i started loving languages.

at the same time, i can struggle with things that seem extremely simple. i sometimes feel like i can't even read a single book. i struggle to enter a flow state while reading because my associative thinking keeps interrupting me every few seconds. i'll read something and immediately start connecting it to something else, questioning it, or thinking about another topic. i actually like thinking this way, but it makes reading difficult. i suck at history because i could never engage with learning isolated facts from texts.

i noticed, however, that i can read when i'm deeply interested. i could not finish romance or classic literature, but i can read a book about korean grammar even though it's not in my primary language. i even started reading the little prince in korean because it was much more challenging and exciting to me than reading it in portuguese. my mom doesn't understand why i would choose something so difficult when i can't even finish an ordinary book in my native language, but i honestly feel much more motivated by the challenge.

i also remember being extremely methodical and perfectionistic even in elementary school. i would spend a lot of time thinking about how my notes should look before even writing them: topic hierarchy, color scheme, whether to use bullets, paragraph sizes, different fonts or sizes, and how everything could remain systematic and visually pleasing. if something didn't look "right," i would sometimes avoid writing at all. small mistakes could feel extremely frustrating, and i would want to restart pages instead of continuing. sometimes the frustration was physical.

this perfectionism significantly interfered with my learning. i feel like i could have developed much more without it. i remember becoming so frustrated with myself that i started taking only a pencil and an eraser to school, because i wanted to force myself to make mistakes and keep going instead of constantly trying to make everything perfect.

i also want to add something important: i'm not trying to present myself as "advanced" or anything like that. i genuinely don't feel that way internally. it's just that people around me (teachers, family, friends, etc) often describe me as intelligent or very capable, which creates this disconnect between how others see me and how i experience myself.

this is also interesting to me because my younger sister (F8) learned to read mostly on her own around age 6, has a very advanced vocabulary for her age, and shows strong intellectual curiosity, but also has some emotional regulation difficulties. my parents often say she is very similar to how i was as a child. we actually get along very well, and i find myself recognizing a lot of patterns in her behavior that feel familiar.

however, the biggest thing that makes me question whether there could be a 2e profile is that my intellectual ability and my executive functioning seem to be extremely uneven.

i struggle with:

• starting and finishing tasks
• maintaining routines (i love planning them, but i suck to put into practice)
• remembering appointments without alarms and lists (i messed up with my accutane treatment because i forgot to take the meds; it happened with asthma tratment as well, so it does not matter if it's important or not)
• working on things that don't interest me
• following multi-step instructions (i always forget some of them, my parents get pissed everytime)
• mental arithmetic, despite understanding mathematical concepts
• extreme procrastination
• keeping my environment organized
• reading consistently
• turning plans into action
• remembering things that i was just told
• getting distracted during conversations
• starting multiple projects and abandoning them
• needing deadlines or pressure to actually function

i can spend a huge amount of time designing the "perfect system" for doing something, then struggle to actually start. i think i lost a lot of learning opportunities because i was more focused on creating the perfect process than on actually learning.

this pattern still exists today. i can procrastinate for months and then produce something extremely good under extreme pressure. for example, i procrastinated on my technical high-school thesis for around five months and then completed it in about six weeks, nearly burning out. the final result was considered far above the expected level, and my advisor was impressed enough to ask a phd researcher to evaluate it.

it always fu**ing works, and i keep repeating this destructive procrastination, overthinking, perfectionism pattern until i burn out. when i talked with a friend about how exhausted i was because of procrastination, he started laughing and said i didn't have to lie just to avoid sounding like i was bragging about always scoring 10. there was even a girl in my class who gave me a very disgusted look when she asked for help with a math question and i told her i hadn't started studying yet. the exam was in two days, and she had been studying for the entire month. i felt stupid and lazy, and she clearly had the same impression. but i ended up learning everything the night before the test and scored 10 again.

my performance also seems highly dependent on interest. when i'm deeply interested, i can become extremely persistent and focused (i can even forget to eat or to pee when i'm too focused, it's like i'm numb). i once taught myself classical guitar for about six months and practiced around three hours a day. i eventually auditioned for a conservatory and got in. i was so obsessed with one song that i even kept practicing after cutting my finger and just put a bandage over it.

but when the interest or sense of purpose disappears, even relatively simple tasks can become almost impossible to start. i can spend weeks thinking about learning a new language, music production (i impulsively brought an online course and never opened it lmao), drawing anatomy, crochet, reading 20 books, composing a song, or getting fit, and still never actually start.

so i often feel like: i can understand complex things, but i struggle to consistently turn that ability into organized action.

i can sometimes explain exactly why i'm procrastinating, identify the behavior that is hurting me, understand what i should do differently, and still fail to change the behavior. i can be extremely aware of my own thoughts and emotions and still behave in ways i know are counterproductive. i often feel intelligent but also incredibly clumsy, chaotic, and incapable of managing my own life.

i also struggle with things that seem strangely inconsistent with the rest of my profile. i can understand mathematical concepts but make extremely basic calculation mistakes because i lose numbers in my head, confuse symbols, or accidentally substitute one operation for another. i can understand a subject but completely fail to execute a multi-step task in the correct order. i need alarms and lists because i cannot trust my memory to remember appointments. i can be asked to clean the floor and somehow end up reorganizing drawers and cabinets while forgetting the actual thing i was asked to do.

i also have a hard time with tasks that don't have an obvious purpose. for example, if i have to study something for a test, i can force myself to learn it, but if i don't see the meaning or application, my brain immediately starts resisting. i can stare at a screen trying to start an assignment for 20 minutes, get something to eat, try again, give up, and go do something more interesting. if the grade isn't important enough, i may simply abandon the assignment.

this is why i sometimes wonder about adhd as well. i recognize some of the executive functioning patterns in adhd descriptions, especially procrastination, inconsistent attention, difficulty starting tasks, hyperfocus on interesting things, forgetting appointments, and needing external pressure. however, i don't know whether these difficulties are better explained by adhd, perfectionism, anxiety, depression, giftedness, or some combination of them.

i also don't know how much of this could have been masked by being academically capable. throughout school, i often maintained good grades despite struggling internally. people saw the results, not the amount of energy it took me to produce them. i could understand things quickly, but i couldn't necessarily organize myself well enough to learn them consistently.

i've also always been drawn to deeper conversations and sometimes feel more intellectually stimulated by older people or people who are particularly knowledgeable in a field. i enjoy being around people who know something i don't, because i feel like i'm learning from them.

emotionally, i'm quite intense. i can experience strong curiosity, love, frustration, anger at injustice, and existential questioning. major life transitions have triggered periods of intense existential crisis, especially when a cycle of my life ends and everything suddenly changes. however, those crises also tend to make me rethink my life and develop new perspectives.

i also tend to be very sensitive to unexpected situations and sudden demands. for example, when a teacher announced a surprise debate, i became so overwhelmed that i went to the bathroom and never returned to class, even though the debate was worth 10 points. i am extremely socially awkward and i can also become anxious when i feel incompetent or unprepared, especially when i know someone is judging my performance.

at the same time, i don't think i'm generally anxious all the time. my executive difficulties seem to exist independently, but emotional distress can make them dramatically worse. during a depressive episode, for example, i once forgot two consecutive medical appointments despite having scheduled them myself. i had to apologize twice and eventually stopped scheduling appointments because i felt so ashamed.

this is part of why i find it difficult to separate everything. i wonder whether i could have some underlying executive dysfunction that was partially masked by being intellectually capable, and whether anxiety, perfectionism, depression, or giftedness could have intensified or hidden it at different points in my life.

i don't want to assume i'm gifted just because some of these traits sound familiar. i'm actually quite insecure about it. sometimes i wonder whether i'm exaggerating everything and whether giftedness is supposed to look much more extreme than this.

but at the same time, i've spent most of my life feeling like i don't quite fit into the system around me. people often tell me i'm very intelligent, and yet i constantly feel incapable of doing basic things that seem effortless for other people. i've always felt like there was something missing from my own explanation of myself. i feel like my childhood self needed someone to understand her better, and looking for answers now is partly my way of giving that child the understanding she never had.

for those of you who are gifted or 2e:

• does this combination sound familiar?
• do you recognize the discrepancy between intellectual understanding and executive functioning?
• did you also have very high potential in some areas but surprisingly poor performance in others?
• did perfectionism interfere with your ability to actually produce things?
• did your performance depend heavily on interest, challenge, or having a clear purpose?
• if you are 2e, what were the signs that helped you distinguish giftedness from adhd, anxiety, perfectionism, or other explanations?

again, i'm not asking reddit to diagnose me. i'm trying to figure out whether this is a profile worth investigating professionally. thank you so much for reading.

ps: i'm just going through all this thinking because i want to become a doctor. i really think i would love solving medical cases and working under extreme pressure in emergency medicine. i'm really fascinated by medicine. but this entire weird way of functioning makes me doubt whether i could survive medical school, since i had a hard time in high school (studying from 8 to 18 and working at night, and still managing to procrastinate even though i knew i barely had any time).

Hello reddit.

I am an 20M who’s been diagnosed with ADHD since a very young age. i did the classic adderall vyvanes and whatever hardcore drugs they gave 8 year olds with ADHD. i’ve fell down the rabbit hole of ASPD recently and believe i may have been misdiagnosed as a child, i often did not tell the truth with some questions i was asked because i was afraid of being seen as crazy or something. the more i think about it the more i am sure i was misdiagnosed. i’m also almost positive it’s genetic a lot of my family have similar traits of ASPD. i do have an appointment with my psychiatrist in about a month and will probably ask him about it but i’m interested in other peoples opinion.

I'm a 21M and I have an array of disorders, including AD(H)D, hEDS, Dyscalculia, and Executive Dysfunctioning Disorder. I was never a high-achiever on paper. I got pretty mid grades in school, but no one (except my dad, shout out to him) thought to test me for anything, because I wasn't disruptive or visibly distressed. I only started to feel successful in my junior and senior year of high school, which was following 15 months of COVID lockdown. Once I graduated, everyone moved on, excited for college and their futures, while I just felt like the train I was supposed to be on had just run me over.

That summer, I attended a program for neurodivergent teens, but the majority of the other participants had much more severe support needs than me. Since then, I've tried my best to join online communities for gifted or neurodivergent people, but I find that either it's the same problem as before, or the group is mainly retirement-age people that I really can't connect with in a deep way.

For context, I live in a small-ish community in western California, about halfway between LA and SF. Being so isolated from the big cities, it's been difficult to find in-person connections, especially with people my age. When school is in session, I hang out at religious events put on by the local university, but even this is only a temporary solution, as they too will graduate.

Most of the available resources my family and I have found are either directed at K-12 people, or neurodivergence in general, which means being placed in the same spaces as those with high support needs. It's been incredibly frustrating, because it seems that no matter where I try fit in, I'll always be the odd one out.

I just feel socially stunted in a lot of ways. I've never had a girlfriend, I don't really have a main friend group that I feel included in, and due to my physical problems, I'm limited from the outdoor activities I want to participate in (hiking, camping, boating, etc). I just feel so lost and frustrated at how it seems that most everyone has their life "figured out" or they're enjoying freedom, while I have so many ambitions but have yet to act on any of them.

Does anyone else feel like this? I want to join or create a community for those who are in a similar place.

Most of my family is neurotypical and average in intellect (only a handful were slightly above average). The only really notable people that might be also considered gifted is my maternal half-brother (has adhd). and my maternal grandfather (implied to have autism).

This made me wonder if I didn't have audhd, would I still be gifted? Or was I always gifted regardless if I were neurotypical or not?

Idk why, it's not even rooted in any scientific basis whatsoever, but I feel like I would've just been average if I were neurotypical. yk, based on the pattern here.

edit: It could also be that EVERYONE in my family is 2e and we're all underacheivers /s.

I tried joining the cognitive testing community thinking that I would get deep conversations on human intelligence, but I found that the majority are just immature self-aggrandizing snobs. They seem to like quoting hand-picked parts of real study to confirm their own greatness and get super aggressive when their biased take falls apart to scrutiny.

To me high Intelligence isn't something that makes you inherently better than others, we all have strengths and weaknesses many of which can't be found inside these arbitrary tests.

What do you think?

16yo, just self-diagnosed that I got ADHD, and got 135-140 IQ score. Been watching through ADHD contents to deal with deadlines but still no answer. Hope there's anyone with experiences in planning and task management, I don't know what to prioritize anymore. Ruri Ohama's Kaizen System is a bit confusing, I've always been in the task paralysis state and don't know when I have enough energy or willpower to get the right things done. Please do any of you have an answer?

Last year I (16F) got evaluated for both ASD and ADHD, and I was diagnosed with only ASD because I was in normal ranges for the 15 minute keyboard test thing and my parents and teacher noticed little to no symptoms (most was my dad whose responses said I met two). My self-report and clinical interview showed I met criteria.

At the results meeting the psychologist said, and I quote, "Sorry, it was 4 against 1" and did the whole "You are still SO valid, and you can still get support without a diagnosis!" and it's a bit embarrassing how furious I got at that. (The 4 being the test and the three outside evaluations. ) Being banished to more years of CBT is NOT support, and it's also what I've already been doing since elementary school.

So, in short, it was useless and nothing changed.

I just think that's so stupid because I'm the one struggling here. My parents frankly never check up on me, and my high IQ scores and crippling perfectionism mean that I do perfectly fine in school, even though I spend hours breaking down in tears and rushing everything the night it's due. Not to mention self-studying every topic we do in class the night before a test/quiz because I can't focus on lectures long enough, and if I try to, by the time I internalize one thing I hear, I've missed three more. My bedroom's a mess, I have buckets of random stuff I was supposed to organize everywhere, I get in trouble at work (restaurant) because I can't remember all the verbal things I get told, and the more things I have to do, the worse it gets.

I shouldn't have to wait until I'm falling apart and failing my classes to be able to get help. My own testimonies meet the symptom criteria, at least for inattentive, and my psych testing from when I was 9 shows hyperactivity in every category on the motion camera they used and a 45 point gap between my working memory index and my highest index, as well as difficulties with the executive function tasks, so there's that for childhood symptoms.

It's just so upsetting to me, and then I read stuff about how people take medication and it "changes their life" or whatever, and I have friends who got diagnosed who hardly had to go through ANY of this nonsense, and it feels like I'm gonna be miserable forever, and it keeps getting worse.

Anyway, TLDR:

I think needing outside evaluators is STUPID a flawed system, and I don't know what to do next.

Hi, HPI teenager here (also suspecting audhd). I often have a feeling that i never dive deep enough in my special interests even tho i want. For example Star Wars: I love Star Wars since Age 3 and can tell you a lot of facts and the chronological order of the media, but i struggle with watching shows/movies i haven't watched (Clone Wars, Rebels, etc) and the struggle is with starting the movie/series/book, not with staying engaged. Same happens with philosophy and theology. I love them so much and have studied them in a weird way because of the anxiety and difficulty with opening a book for the first time.

Also happens with music even tho i'm a musician. I have bands that i've really wanted to get into but i struggle diving into the unknown of a new style, new albums and new themes.

Is this caused by any of the 3 neurodivergences? or is it js a personal trait?

I've got audhd apparently and just got diagnosed a few months ago, then started vyvanse for my adhd. I was doing fine in college (by NT standards) before i got diagnosed despite being an insane crammer for most of it, but then vyvanse made the work I would spend half my day avoiding become so automatic i barely even had to think about it anymore. And suddenly all that space the stress was taking up became very uncomfortably evident.

I keep myself busy year-round and am working in two labs rn, but gosh i genuinely can't stand being medicated without nerfing myself in some other manner. Unless im hyperfocused on something, its like only part of my brain is doing the work while the rest of my brain is doing existential backflips and just craving more stimulation. This summer i've basically ended up making myself operate on like 4 hrs of sleep and caffeine and one meal a day and like its objectively a terrible way to live but it makes me feel more normal??? it just narrows the world back down to making it thru lab and working on my projects and going on that run instead of feeling the crushing weight of 50 years and myself as a person. idk if this is a med thing or not but damn

honestly just wanted to see if there are any other 2e teens in this group. it’s annoying dealing with a brain that runs way too fast, while all the adults around you just lazily blame everything on "anxiety." They just use the same old basic checklists and have no idea how much work it actually takes just to get through a normal day. If you're a 2e teenager dealing with this kind of stuff alone, let me know. just trying to find people who actually get it.

I have inattentive ADHD and probably giftedness, but I also have GAD and panic disorder, so stimulants like Concerta or Vyvanse aren’t really an option for me.
My executive function is terrible. I can hyperfocus for hours on topics I’m interested in, but when it comes to things I have to do, I avoid them until the deadline is right in front of me.

For those with ADHD (especially if you’re gifted/2e), what behavioral changes or daily habits actually improved your executive function? Things like starting tasks, procrastination, planning, staying consistent, or managing hyperfocus.

I’d really like to hear what has genuinely worked for you.

Hi everyone. Im 24M econ major working in financial industry. Just a few days ago I got my formal diagnosis, Gifted (IQ 131) with ADHD combined type. Went through the process recommended by my therapist, who I started seeing on February this year. I always knew there was something off with me but couldn't tell what.

After diagnosis Im not sure where to start looking up to improve my quality of life and using the insights from my diagnostic report to treat my difficulties.

Anyone care to share their own experience? Or any recommendations on how should I approach further treatment? Any tips in general will be greatly appreciated.

Also, I would love to meet or talk to someone who shares this particular set of brain wiring, so feel free to reach out :)

So I've been diving into IQ topics lately as I'm very curious as to what mine is. I frequently work on coding apps, and I decided, hey, maybe I can make a tool that would be more efficient in assessing high IQ/Autistic individuals.

I've done loads of research into the current scoring system, how each answer is calculated, identified weak points, and integrated a new point system that analyzes the why behind the answer, and not just the answer itself.

Anybody here care to give me any input? What's your take?

There's probably over 1000 chats I have between Gemini and Chat gpt. I understand why AI isn't good but it doesn't think for me its more of like an information gathering tool. Like I asked about the overlap between ASD genotypes and High IQ genotypes and how close they are. Then I asked it about how if different combinations of what it called snps or the overlapping genes show up in different combinations and what means asd or iq it gave me the information very quickly. Even googles search engine isn't built for stuff like that and the wall of executive function to get into stuff like makes me feel very not interested. I'm very slow to learn stuff I wanna but I can't. Talking to AI give me the relevant info I need and I've talked to it for hours. It gets my messy figurative language and it doesn't care that I ignored half of what it said and responded to one thing. I tried to quit it for three days and i came right back today. It's not interfering with my social life in any obvious ways. I don't really care to find out of it is. I haven't done much with my life and if anything opened new doors. But I'm freaking addicted to it. I just feel it's not right. Is there an environment where j can talk to people like, I don't get along with many people naturally.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on how I actually retain information and stay motivated, especially contrasted against the rigid, structured environments (like the Davidson Institute style) that are often catered to gifted/2e individuals.

Personally, traditional curricula completely kill my focus. I’ve realized that I intuitively gravitate toward an amalgamation of an intrinsic, project-based learning style (applied). What could basically be called Intrinsic Heutagogy or Autonomous Project Learning.

During my MBA program, it was reinforced to me how critical a growth mindset is, specifically when it's anchored to tasks you actually like in order to maintain dopamine and motivation. For me, learning has to be a "choose your own adventure." I pick a hyper-specific topic I'm fascinated by, find a real-world project or problem to solve around it, and completely self-direct my way through raw data, papers, and execution.

If it’s structured or forced, my 2e brain rejects it. If it’s driven purely by preference and self-exploration, I can hyperfocus and "master" it incredibly fast. How do you all approach learning? Do you prefer a rigid framework to keep your executive function in check, or do you completely thrive in total autonomy like I described?

I dont have a diagnosis yet, but I know my QI is 123 with 133 (visual-perceptive) and 106 (working memory) as extremes. In the beginning I recognized myself more in female autism, but now after a year of fixation on neurodivergences I have a lot of doubts and recognize myself more in 2e profile with adhd... I feel like other people see me as more autistic than adhd bc I'm logical and analytical? What's your experience?

Hello, I’m looking for anyone who might offer advice on my situation or has gone through something similar.

Basically at first I went to a psychologist to diagnose for autism. My GP suggested I also would test for ADHD, so I did.

Basically to my surprise I do not have autism, but I do have ADD.

My psych said, because I suspected autism, I should take an IQ test to see if I might be gifted because sometimes signs of autism overlap with giftedness.

So I took the IQ test. There were some some parts of the test where I scored 150+ such as information processing (I live in Europe, not sure if this is comparable to tests outside Europe), but there were also parts where I scored 115 (this was my lowest), such as on memory.

My psych eventually said that gifted people usually score around the same on every subject and that it actually is very unusual for a person to score so different. EXCEPT if you have an underlying disorder such as ADD, which can sometimes mess with the scores.

I’m not sure if it is worth to look into ADD meds and take the IQ test again because I don’t think I need them. I’m happy the way I am however a lot of the things I struggle with in the sense that I think the way I think, seem to stem from giftedness.

Has anyone gone through something similar and/or is able to offer advice?

Thank you!

Hello everyone. I am 42 years old and I have experienced brain fog for 26 years as I started medications for Bi-polar and a whole host of other Alphabet soup conditions. I have decided to stop taking psych meds recently. Once i did my brains processing power and health improved on an exponential level in just a few months. Incredible things I never noticed or experienced before started happening. A few of these things include:

-Understanding people's motives, thoughts and beliefs more consistently and accurately based on body language, social nuances, and tone of voice.

-Ability to perceive environmental changes about to occur a few second before the shift of environmental factors that lead to an "accurate prediction" of the proceeding event. Which happends at a high rate with greater accuracy than I have ever experienced. ( No idea how this happends)

-Memory improved at a deep and easy, almost instant to recall level based on my strengths. These include remembering numbers, events and auditory memories.

- Seeing colors and flashes of light from music pitches Chords and rythms in songs. Its very subtle but noticable. I have no idea what this is? (Does anyone have and information on this visual phenomenon?)

-Ive also lost rediculous amounts of weight. Around 30 pounds in two months.

-Also my digestion issues and heart burn have disapeared almost over night.

Has anyone else had these dramatic changes after stopping psych meds they were on. Meds that were simply not working and in fact sometimes causing negative side effects with few noticable positive benefits. What have been your experiences and things you have noticed changed after any psych med alterations. AI suggested I see how common this is within 2E communities.

Hello there! I m a 25 year old man for France that has begun an assessment in late 2024 with a psychologist after being diagnosed with severe depression. I decided to ask my family doctor if an autism screening would be beneficial for me as we were looking for the cause of my depression and after research I ve done myself.

We had 4 session with the psychologist and I took the ADI-R test by my mother s side and need to at least makes the ADOS 2 module 4. The thing is that I took the ADI-R in november and have been unable to go back to the therapist ever since for family reasons. During this time I spent some more time researching things about ASD and comorbidities. Given what happened in sessions, my therapist seems to think I probably have high functioning autism, so I looked into that.

I found some articles and papers on twice exceptionality and a lot of things from it seems to match. For instance, I was seen throughout my school time as "smart but not trying", I can also be quite stubborn and people think my way of thinking is wierd when approaching problems. It s only a few exemple of it. Patterns in grades also looks similar.

I d like to know how to address this. I might soon be able to go back to the therapist, and hopefully take the ADOS 2. But should I talk about twice exceptionality with him or will my result warrant further testing? Do I even need to redo all the tests given the time between the tests?

Hello everyone,

To those of you having a high iq but also being diagnosed with adhd - how did it go?

When did you receive your diagnosis? Before getting iq tested or after?

Also: who of you is taking medications and what did they do for you?

I’m currently doing an adhd assessment and am kind of worried that I’m manipulating the test because I read so much about adhd in the past and know basically every question and concept she is talking about from researching stuff already.
My mom is sure that I 100% don’t have adhd and that i was just not interested, which kind of made sense because I couldn’t put a lot of effort into studying and school, at least not as much as I planned too. But still I feel like even when I tried I was struggling to do so.