What Am I Like To Live With
This is going to be a bit different. What am I like to live with. I’ll lean into it pretty hard. As I’ve gone through my personal journey of discovery of my mind I’m pretty much clear I have both ADHD and ASD.
My closest match previously has been 2E (twice exceptional - ADHD + Giftedness) - I cringed at that primarily since I don’t think I’m smart. I have got skills but I’m definitely not smart. And calling it smart automatically creates an immediate dichotomy and a sorting pattern of smart, and it’s antonyms - stupid, dumb, slow. But anyway.
Although not claiming I have a diagnosis or meet the diagnosis criteria, I’m seeing reflections of my critical challenges for myself through this lens. As I learn more, it might evolve. The diagnostic criteria and other literature does provide a reasonable collection of words/phrases to provide.
My Strongest Personality Behaviors
As I created this taxonomy of self, I realized that most of it is firstly around lowering cognitive load in understanding the world and people around me. This might lean towards high functioning ASD, but I don’t know the formal diagnostic criteria. There is the potential that ASD primarily, with co-morbid ADHD.
I don’t feel that I fit either diagnostic critera perfectly, but the DSM-5 is the rule of the land, so I just need to deal with looking at myself through that lens.
The narrative below is more polarizing than I would like, but providing the nuance tersely would be almost impossible. If you asked me 5 years ago about any of this, I simply would not have any clue. Even now, it still feels that
- World Processing For me world processing is about reducing cognitive load.
- Systems/Model Thinking (ASD) Processing the world and the people in it is really at the core of who I am, the behaviors that I show and what happens in my day to day. Ultimately I see the world as a multitude of systems, including people. (see below). This actually makes the world much easier for me to live in. There are minimal surprises, and if there are it’s a cause for the model to be updated. I absolutely absorb conceptual models for the way that anything works.
- Things When considering the the inanimate world it’s governed by simple rules, and for the modern world, most of those things are reasonably understood. Apart from areas that need very deep or specialist knowledge, I tend to pick up a reasonable understanding very quickly.
- Strong pattern Matching (ASD) Pattern matching is a high strength with me, patterns transcend the obvious with patterns being a regular part of my life. This pattern matching allows categorization and interpretation, or applications/adaptations of models in new and novel ways.
- Strong bias for classification/categorization (ASD) Everything has a box, and there is a box for everything. Although I’m usually very comfortable with having mutliple taxonomies for different reasons, there is always going to peers, groupings and relationships. I believe I’m fairly fluid for categorization if there is a more suitable categorization that lowers cognitive load.
- Strong need for information to be right (ASD) Particularly about me, I have a strong need for information to be right, and incorrect information stands out as an unmatched pattern. It doesn’t fit. While I can accept information not being correct, it will always be noted as an outlier, begging for information to be clarified and corrected. Definitely not obsessive, but noted.
- Over Intellectualization (ASD/ADHD?) When everything is, is part of, or creates a system, there is an incredible amount of implicit information that is just below the surface. This presents with me as having thought too much about almost everything.
- People I like people, generally people like me. I get that I can be intense, opinionated and sometimes hard to handle. What I enjoy most about people is that they don’t confirm to being a system - for the most part. However there are some generalize rules that almost everyone operates under. People that I support through mentorship seem to appreciate this.
- Overly Empathetic (ASD) As part of dealing with the world, I’ve become very sensitive to the models and approaches that others are seeing the world through. This leads me to being emotionally, and cognitively empathetic. This can be damaging when you create a model for someone that cuts across their worldview of themselves.
- Emotional Softness (ASD) Part of the systems thinking crosses over into my emotional behaviours. I’m extremely muted. I ultimately have only one deep emotional grouping which is my wife and my kids. I don’t laugh much, cry much, unless it’s within those contexts. Emotions in most cases are part of the human system. For example, comedy is built around a prediction error. You build up an expected path, and the cut sideways into a different situation. Get’s ‘em every time. However, I’m told by my partner, why can’t you just laugh. Bring in my immediate family, and I’m a wreck, particularly if the “system” isn’t working. This also presents when considering intense emotions around people, tragedies and so on. Where some would be horrificly offended, I’ll have an intellectual view that although it’s horrible, I can see the path and the context that allowed it to happen. The stronger the expected emotion, the deeper I’ll go into the understanding how so far off the norm the situation got.
- Overriding Concern for Fairness or Justness (ASD?) A lot of my professional and personal worldview is based around defining the rules, and wanting to apply them. This fundamentally results in economically irrational decisions, since I struggle to take more than my share.
- Good to a fault (?) This one is much harder. I seriously struggle to build negative intent in almost anything I do. I argue fairly, even if I’m in pain getting insults and attacks thrown at me. This assymetry and foundational behavior drives disbelief more often than not.
- Things When considering the the inanimate world it’s governed by simple rules, and for the modern world, most of those things are reasonably understood. Apart from areas that need very deep or specialist knowledge, I tend to pick up a reasonable understanding very quickly.
- World Around Us The previous section presents a picture about me potentially being an unfeeling automaton, unable to simply appreciate the beauty of what is around me, or unable to deal with the variance from what is expected.
- Appreciation of The Systems Behind Art (?) I have deep appreciation for natural systems. For example, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers are amazing. But I don’t look at them as just art. I see the sets, and the repetion, the variance between them, I wonder about the texture of the paint, and the cracks that should have formed. The texture of the canvas where the paint was thin. The clarity of the brush strokes and mixing of the colors. The fact that they can all come together is breathtaking. The artistic aspect itself - meh..
- Prediction Having a Systems and Pattern Matching view on the world means that outliers - the areas to learn, come from prediction and more importantly misprediction. The misprediction provides an opportunity to learn, build a more complex system and integrate that into me. It does make moves a bit less interesting, and makes people very predictable. As I observe more, and learn more I can see more and more patterns and the prediction goes up.
- Systems/Model Thinking (ASD) Processing the world and the people in it is really at the core of who I am, the behaviors that I show and what happens in my day to day. Ultimately I see the world as a multitude of systems, including people. (see below). This actually makes the world much easier for me to live in. There are minimal surprises, and if there are it’s a cause for the model to be updated. I absolutely absorb conceptual models for the way that anything works.
- Hyperfocus (ADHD/ASD) Building A System means exploring and understanding. If I need to dig into something, I’ll go 2 or 3 levels deeper than most. This presents as hyperfocus, and potential distractability as the internal narrative and the outliers and pattern matching process in the background, always bringing more insights to the foreground.
- Executive Function EF is where my ADHD behaviors kick in. Almost text book. When I consider the dopamine theory of ADHD, a lot of it makes sense. I’ve got a lifetime of behaviors built around chasing dopamine and that’s given me some very difficult behaviors to overcome. It’s clear that the few dopamine buzzes I get is from learning. See Goals below for some more thoughts.
- Prioritization (ADHD) I can intellectually prioritize and unsuprisingly I can declare multiple systems to use. However prior to diagnosis and medication, I was very poor at knowing what I needed to work on. Dopamine wise, if it isn’t going to
- Focus (ADHD) Having a “busy mind” particular one that is always running in the background processing the world to determine what is going on means at any point in time, I might have an intrussion as the background processing calls out a discovery, a not or whatever. Suddenly I’ve got an internal mismatch, and so it’s all out the window. I’m on something else. Who cares about prioritization, I’ve got something to learn, a dopamine hit just around the corner - I’m off.
- Follow Through (ADHD) Once the novelty wears off, it’s a drag. Finishing is always hard.
- Goal Orientation (ADHD) Dopamine is about future reward prediction. Without that, I don’t have a need for goals since I won’t get that rush. As a result, I live in a continuum. I’ve never actively sought a promotion in my 28 year career. I’ve never had an overriding joy when a project is completed. It’s just the learning. I wouldn’t care if I was a poorly paid junior flunky learning all the time. Fortunately in tech, breadth + depth is paid well.
- Working Memory Without saliency, I can’t keep things in memory. I need scaffolding to be able to hold on to ideas that have been shared. This makes ordering randomized food items for the family from a fast food restaurant extremely painful. I can’t recall music since that would involve streaming information into my working memory. You can’t get me to sing very easily too since I’ll lose the lines fater than the beat can change.
- Communication (ASD) This is where I begin to fall apart personally.
- Alignment Although I can intellectually guess where someone is, when communicating I find it extremely hard to communicate in a way that talks to others at their level. This isn’t intended to be derogatory in any way, shape or form. I actively consider the background, experience and interests of the person I’m talking to. However I miss more often than not. The primary tool I use is context.
- Context Context rocks, context disambiguates. Context can also destroy communication. Here’s where I’m at.
- Too Little If I don’t provide enough context, I appear that I’m off in the weeds - completely unrelated to what people are expecting. If asked (which happens not nearly enough), I can usually switch to high-context mode, and draw a credible path to where I am to back where it started. A lot of times, I’ll just wait it out until the world catches up.
- Too Much Since I will jump 1 or 2 steps ahead, I’ll try to provide context and what feels to me being a clear path from where I am to where it is important. If the other party doesn’t have background, experience or understanding, it usually comes across as messy and confused. Not because it is, but because even the too much is not enough for the way I see things, but I can’t compress it down small enough to communicate well.
- Gaining Context Since model building and categorization is such a critical part to way I process the world, I’ll see ambiguity in a lot of what is communicated to me. The only way I can get context is by asking questions. The context helps me find the right point in the taxonomy This gets me into more marital problems than I would like. “Why couldn’t you make an assumption?” is a common request. “I could be wrong and in my mind the difference between to assumptions is frighteningly small.”
- Truthfulness about me The only true thing I have is myself. I know what I’m thinking, I know what I’m feeling. When I am told something that is incorrect about me, it hurts, and it hurts bad. I will get very defensive, I will get frustrated and angry when I’m mischaracterized, or something is wrong. Professionally, I can deal with it. Personally it’s the highest level of pain that I cna endure.
What Doesn’t Present
There are some typical symptoms of ASD and ADHD that do not present with me.
- Black and White Thinking ALthough am almost always going to have a model that fits the worldview I an looking at, I have no concerns whatsoever switching models or interpretation if new information comes to light. If my foundational understanding is unchanged, I’ll keep my view. But the moment something contradicts, I’m there learning again.
- Stress from things not being right I live a surprising stress free life. There are models that I have, but I know they are fallible.If I’m wrong, that’s fine. But marital stress is probably the biggest stressors.