neurodiverse
What is Neurodivergence?
It's ADHD, Autism, OCD, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, bi-polar, aspd, etc etc etc etc
“neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior”
So, it’s very broad, if you feel like it describes you then it does as far as we're concerned
Rules
1.) ableist language=post or comment will probably get removed (enforced case by case, some comments will be removed and restored due to complex situations). repeated use of ableist language=banned from comm and possibly site depending on severity. properly tagged posts with CW can use them for the purposes of discussing them
2.) always assume good faith when dealing with a fellow nd comrade especially due to lack of social awareness being a common symptom of neurodivergence
2.5) right to disengage is rigidly enforced. violations will get you purged from the comm. see rule 3 for explanation on appeals
3.) no talking over nd comrades about things you haven't personally experienced as a neurotypical chapo, you will be purged. If you're ND it is absolutely fine to give your own perspective if it conflicts with another's, but do so with empathy and the intention to learn about each other, not prove who's experience is valid. Appeal process is like appealing in user union but you dm the nd comrade you talked over with your appeal (so make it a good one) and then dm the mods with screenshot proof that you resolved it. fake screenies will get you banned from the site, we will confirm with the comrade you dm'd.
3.5) everyone has their own lived experiences, and to invalidate them is to post cringe. comments will be removed on a case by case basis depending on determined level of awareness and faith
4.) Interest Policing will not be tolerated in any form. Support your comrades in their joy!
Further rules to be added/ rules to be changed based on community input
RULES NOTE: For this community more than most we understand that the clarity and understandability of these rules is very important for allowing folks to feel comfortable, to that end please don't be afraid to be outspoken about amendments and addendums to these rules, as well as any we may have missed
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I read that comment when you posted it! Doing my best to learn I guess, even before I accepted this might be a thing lol
I have no idea if stimulants will work well for me. I've definitely used caffeine to self medicate most of my adult life so maybe? But either way I know it won't be a magic bullet, just one thing to try if a doc recommends it I guess. I honestly don't know what not being able to mask would look like for me, but I work from home on a computer and have very accepting friends so hopefully the adjustment wouldn't be too rough? I try not to downplay (or play up) my own struggles but all things considered I've lived a pretty chill life I feel like. Lots of self-repression and some serious struggles socially at times but you know, not outright horribly traumatic? So maybe that helps idk.
Thanks for your prolific support and advice all over the site! I just got new insurance so I'll have to see what it will cost to see someone this summer. I hate to say it but I want to see if I can get the ball rolling on this diagnosis stuff without telling them I'm trans... (is that a horrible idea?) Let's just say I don't want to be on that list given the way the US is going lately... My gender is none of their business and even barring government action, telling your doctor you're trans unfortunately seems like an excellent way to get subpar medical care. Or maybe I'm needlessly paranoid but I'd rather be paranoid and wrong than the target of fascist repression or plain ol discrimination.
Oh cool, I'm glad that it got to some of the right people.
The take from one of the foremost global experts in ADHD is that stimulant meds cover about 80% of ADHDers - methylphenidate/ritalin works well for about 40% with amphetamine-based stimulants (Adderal, Vyvanse etc.) working for about another 40%, so there's a good chance that they'll work for you. Honestly I suspect those numbers are a bit low because there's probably another 5 or 10% at least who find that stimulant meds do work but that they can't continue using them because of certain side effects (e.g. weight loss, insomnia etc.)
If we throw in stimulants that aren't the classical ones, like modafinil, I think that number would probably get bumped up a bit higher too.
That's the right attitude to approach stimulants imo.
Cool, that's one less thing to worry about then.
If you're in a customer-facing job or you're in social circumstances that require high masking it can be really difficult for some people because they often find themselves stuck between choosing to be functional and choosing to be a socially-palatable disaster.
I think not being able to mask often presents as being less concerned or less focused on determining the emotional state of others and attempting to match it, along with stimming more, and being less inclined to put a lot of flair into the way you speak and use gestures and stuff like that. There's probably some other stuff that I can't think of at the moment which I'm overlooking too.
That's good to hear. It's definitely going to make things easier for you if you do end up being prescribed stimulants.
Though it's worth keeping in mind that often the self-repression and masking comes due to experiencing a lot of hard knocks socially. This is not to diagnose you or to pathologise what you've been through or anything but sometimes when it's the background noise you just get so accustomed to it being there that it becomes your normal. Stimulants often bring that stuff to a head; I am diagnosed with PTSD and I legit have this condition so this is me just hypothesising but if the stimulants bring that stuff to a head for me then I suspect that it would do the same thing, to a lesser degree, for people who are sub-clinical or who have had some tough battles but where they don't have symptoms of PTSD/they only have milder ones.
All of this is speculation though. This is a massive blind spot in research and as far as I'm aware there's no efforts to really understand this from academia yet. We need more neurodivergent folks in research asap.
Ah no worries. I'm just glad to help and to do my bit to contribute to the knowledge base on these topics because there's such a gap that exists currently.
Honestly it's one of those things where being cautious is something that I'd recommend, if someone were to ask me.
A lot of things stick with your medical records and, although I'm somewhere in the non-binary spectrum (meaning that I'm not cis so therefore that means I'm trans) I've never really hashed this one out with myself because I have had more urgent priorities so I am happy to sit this stuff out since I'm barely even an expert in my own experience. That means this next bit is just me making an educated guess here but I suspect that if you're trans in the sense of being opposite to your assigned gender and you're open about it with medical professionals then you're probably going to receive less quality of care and you run the risk of having anything you present with as being considered a "trans issue". Idk if I'm making sense here but for people with chronic mental illness they very often report that medical professionals just get locked in on the mental health stuff to the exclusion of everything else, so it's hard to get physical issues considered and often it just gets lumped in as being caused by mental illness or brushed off as a side effect of medication. I have no knowledge about this for trans people but I have a suspicion that, in a similar way, a lot of doctors would be quick to blame ADHD symptoms on a person being trans or on hormone therapy side effects and stuff like that. Hopefully a trans person who is knowledgeable about this stuff might chime in with their experience to let us know what it's been like for them.
Then, as you've mentioned, there's the overarching concerns about politics and long-term safety to consider as well.
So my general advice would be to try and go for an ADHD diagnosis first, if you're able to prioritise it, and go from there. Honestly an autism diagnosis probably only provides you with about the same study and workplace accomodations as an ADHD diagnosis would, and given the cost of an autism assessment it might not be worth the price of admission.
To be clear, my childhood wasn't severely traumatic, but stressful enough that I had forgotten most of my childhood.
I have been diagnosed with Autism and ADHD at an early age. Of course, the doctors said at that time that I would never be able to experience any emotion besides anger and sadness for my entire life, so I would be careful with the information you give to them and try to find a good psychologist/psychiatrist. I have had to jump between multiple as often they were on a grift to get me on a particular med that didn't work for me. This was during the med change after dropping out of college, but I had other doctors before that wanted to use me for profit when I was younger. Others were just backwards and refused to update themselves in their profession.
I have been on the max dose on methylphenidate since middle school. It does work for me, but I have taken it so long that I believe the effects are not enough to overcome my severe burnout. When I quit my job, I am considering going off meds for a week and sleeping all day. When I have had breaks with my stimulant, its effects have improved again for another period of time until the burnout overcomes it again.
I went on antidepressants for situational depression after dropping out of school, and then I continued going through a med change and ended up back on a stimulant again, but this time Vyvanse. It's effects were the same on me, but I believe I felt a bit weird (tingly in the brain?), so I think the side effects were worse on me. I went back to methylphenidate because I was poor and it was cheaper at the time. Going back on stimulants after around a year made me feel much more functional again.
I have also been drinking a lot of caffeine on top of my stimulants, sometimes even 600-1000 mg, because I have been struggling to do work. Once I drink around 900+ mg, I get a terrible headache and stomach ache, so I try to avoid that range.
Rant incoming
I haven't been able to take a vacation for so long, and I feel a 6 month vacation would be necessary for me to recover.A lot of the people in my job are quitting and moving to other positions as my workplace, a $200 billion indie company, refuses to invest in more IT people even though they spent millions on an IT audit only to find out we are more than 50% understaffed, meaning we would have to over double our IT team, including contractors. My coworkers say one day we are going to be all just contractors.
Meanwhile we have problematic higher-level IT teams that treat production as the testing environment and constantly break things. They're a bunch of dinosaurs that were grandfathered in to higher positions and have no experience outside of the company, thus they are a bunch of egotistical morons that refuse to hold themselves accountable or admit they made a mistake, turning every email that could have been 5 minutes to resolve a user's issue to an hour long argument. They also make decisions such as "let's delete Visual C++ off of everyone's computers because it is a sEcUrItY vUlErNaBiLiTy!1!", and then everyone's softphone stops working, which I called way beforehand and no one listened to me.
A script was requested to disable settings on a network adapter that have been causing disconnects and reconnects in our environment, and an old contractor in our team that was hired to be in the networking team with no experience mentioned they attempted a small script. I then added to the email that I already have an improved version already in production to run on new machines, and they congratulated the networking guy, circlejerked each other exclaiming how well they are communicating, meanwhile completely ignoring me.
These glorious geniuses also use ChatGPT (prohibited at our workplace) to create scripts without any modification to match our environment needs. We have also had scripts from the higher level IT teams that are completely broken and that have been running in our environment. I didn't even know PowerShell starting my job, but I managed to quickly learn to write scripts at a professional level and had to fix all of these broken scripts made by our lovely Newtons who had a frozen apple fall on each of their heads.
The company also uses the worst software ever because they buy everything a shell company tries to sell them. Meanwhile they are harping on us regarding tickets and making every project a number one priority, so honestly what's a priority at this point.
I honestly feel the work I have to do would be very difficult for even neurotypicals, and it's amplified due my neurodivergence and ongoing, worsening burnout. I'm going back to college next year in a last ditch effort to turn my life around.
I have been going very late to my job, and I use the restroom a lot out of anxiety and stress. It's a 35+ min drive to work and a 45+ min back home, and it absolutely sucks. I think I have managed to keep my job as I have made a lot of PowerShell scripts that have helped the company immensely, which I even received a large pay raise and multiple gift cards for. I feel as I have always relied on my ability to do work at a perfectionist quality to make up for my shortcomings.
I went on Jornay during my current job, which seemed to help me get to work on time a little easier, but I had to go back to my old meds because it was very expensive, and it would really suck when I forgot to take it the previous night.