I sat down to write my first official blog post. The one before this I just recycled from the time I wrote an article for someone else. I was having a really hard time coming up with a subject, beating myself up about how my blog ‘should be’. Almost a year later, I guess this is my first step in ignoring those rules.
If you don’t know me from twitter, I’M SORRY???? I’m fun over there, honestly. I tweet every thought that comes from my brain and make sense of it through an autism and ADHD lens. It seems to resonate with people sometimes and that’s a really strange feeling. As my twitter is account ageing, I am becoming more comfortable and free. Decide for yourself if that’s a good thing.
But back to that original thought, I sat down to write this and started thinking about my ‘all or nothing’ ways. So, as one does, I tweeted about it and came to the conclusion that I like authenticity. Therefore, it would be best to be honest about my struggles with writing this blog as I love to show what the reality of ADHD and autism is, as opposed to simply stating traits.
Because my whole life is autism and ADHD, I had no idea how to begin. How could I explain every aspect of my life? Or an even harder task, how could I break my whole life down into small, separate parts? And *on top of that*, my brain has a really hard time with breaking literally anything down, anyway. I’m all or nothing. (and not quite ready to write my life memoir, yet.)
I thought I’d make the best out of this situation and write a post about how being an all or nothing type person can show up in 5 different life situations, how that can affect you and some ways I deal with it.
1. Starting new hobbies
(Please note my use of the plural version of hobby.)
Autistic people often have special interests which are often very long-term but can be short-term too! These are interests that we usually really enjoy that help us to escape from, or make sense of the world around us. They take up a lot of thinking space and time.
ADHDers sometimes have short-lived, very intense interests that are referred to as hyperfixations. These are often hobbies that last from hours to about a week and then are usually ditched and never thought of again.
As an autistic ADHDer, I have a few interests that are simply a part of me and will be for life, then a history of thousands and thousands of interests and hobbies I’m at least half-way at *mastering* but can’t bring myself to be interested in again.
At least it keeps life fun.
2. Social events
Social events are hard for me, for sure. I sometimes forget that. I like to think of myself as an extrovert with really poor social awareness who is super socially anxious, who has therefore mastered the laws of socialising but struggles to put it into practice, who is super impulsive but very bubbly who talks a lot. Rolls off your tongue. To summarise, I have a love-hate relationship with socialising.
When I’m feeling impulsive, I’ll often arrange many social events without considering my need to recharge which ends up burning me out and not arranging anything for a long time. Again, very all or nothing!
3. Responding to rejection
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, autistic people or people with ADHD receive more criticism and rejection from neurotypical peers on average. Whether that’s a simple ‘are you actually listening to me?’ or a big friendship drama due to your tone of voice. When things like that happen so often, it’s easy to become very sensitive to it, and rightly so.
On the other hand, it is also just as easy to become so (outwardly) numb to it that you don’t actually know what to believe anymore.
A recent example in my own life is that I had a video reach very nearly 1 million views on tiktok. It was a silly little video of me showing a t-shirt that I made that had ‘I’m the reason people don’t vaccinate their kids’ written on it to kind of laugh at how silly anti-vaxxers are and lighten the load of coping with that fact that parents don’t want their kids to be autistic. As you can imagine, when it hit anti-vaxxers for you page, the hate came flooding in.
By the way, it mustn’t go without saying that I’m so incredibly grateful for the lovely comments I got!
I genuinely found some of the hate comments funny, some of them didn’t bother me as I was expecting it, some of them motivated me to keep doing the autism advocacy work I’m doing but then some upset me so much I just felt like deleting the whole tiktok. None of them were personal hate comments but it sure feels like it when they’re saying stuff about autistic people as a whole.
I just had to remind myself of the reason I posted the tiktok in the first place. It wasn’t for those people.
4. Schedule
If you are an autistic ADHDer, or one or the other, reading this, I’m almost certain that making a schedule is one of the biggest needs yet biggest struggle in your life.
If you take a look at my planner, you will find a few days that are so jam-packed with activities, planned to the minute and then weeks and weeks that are completely blank.
I know how to do it but I JUST CAN’T STICK TO IT!!
Conclusion:
So I think we’ve gathered how much of my life is ruled by all-or-nothing-ness but I have to say, if I didn’t have that trait, I’d never try out so many things. It is a hard thing cope with as I doubt it’s the way you pictured your life, but luckily I’ve learnt to accept that and I hope you do too. As goes with any autistic or ADHD trait, there’s no point in not accepting it because it’s going to be that way anyway!
Thanks for reading my first official blog post! Please check back regularly as to not miss my next ones! Follow me on social media to get notified every time I post a new blog @wonkypeppers on Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok